Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series

by Cassandra Clare

  Raphael’s expression was a mix of fury and disbelief. “I will not,” he said. “Any harm done to him will rebound upon the doer sevenfold. That is the nature of the Mark. Of course, if any of you would like to be the one to take that risk, by all means, be my guest.”

  No one spoke or moved.

  “I thought not,” said Raphael. His eyes raked Simon. “Like the evil queen in the fairy tale, Lucian Graymark has sent me a poisoned apple. I suppose he hoped I would harm you, and reap the punishment that would follow.”

  “No,” Simon said hastily. “No—Luke didn’t even know what I’d done. His gesture was made in good faith. You have to honor it.”

  “And so you chose this?” For the first time there was something other than contempt, Simon thought, in the way Raphael was looking at him. “This is no simple protection spell, Day-lighter. Do you know what Cain’s punishment was?” He spoke softly, as if sharing a secret with Simon. “And now thou art cursed from the earth. A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be.”

  “Then,” Simon said, “I’ll wander, if that’s what it comes to. I’ll do what I have to do.”

  “All this,” said Raphael, “all this for Nephilim.”

  “Not just for Nephilim,” said Simon. “I’m doing this for you, too. Even if you don’t want it.” He raised his voice so that the silent vampires surrounding them could hear him. “You were worried that if other vampires knew what had happened to me, they’d think Shadowhunter blood could let them walk in the daylight too. But that’s not why I have this power. It was something Valentine did. An experiment. He caused this, not Jace. And it isn’t replicable. It won’t ever happen again.”

  “I imagine he is telling the truth,” said Jacob, to Simon’s surprise. “I’ve certainly known one or two of the Night Children who’ve had a taste of Shadowhunter in the past. None of them developed a fondness for sunlight.”

  “It was one thing to refuse to help the Shadowhunters before,” said Simon, turning back to Raphael, “but now, now that they’ve sent me to you—” He let the rest of the sentence hang in the air, unfinished.

  “Don’t try to blackmail me, Daylighter,” said Raphael. “Once the Night Children have made a bargain, they honor it, no matter how badly they are dealt with.” He smiled slightly, needle teeth gleaming in the dark. “There is just one thing,” he said. “One last act I require from you to prove that indeed you acted here in good faith.” The stress he put on the last two words was weighted with cold.

  “What’s that?” Simon asked.

  “We will not be the only vampires to fight in Lucian Graymark’s battle,” Raphael said. “So will you.”

  Jace opened his eyes on a silver whirlpool. His mouth was filled with bitter liquid. He coughed, wondering for a moment if he was drowning—but if so, it was on dry land. He was sitting upright with his back against a stalagmite, and his hands were bound behind him. He coughed again and salt filled his mouth. He wasn’t drowning, he realized, just choking on blood.

  “Awake, little brother?” Sebastian knelt in front of him, a length of rope in his hands, his grin like an unsheathed knife. “Good. I was afraid for a moment that I’d killed you a bit too early.”

  Jace turned his head to the side and spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. His head felt as if a balloon were being inflated inside it, pressing against the interior of his skull. The silvery whirling above his head slowed and stilled to the bright pattern of stars visible through the hole in the cave roof. “Waiting for a special occasion to kill me? Christmas is coming.”

  Sebastian gave Jace a thoughtful look. “You have a smart mouth. You didn’t learn that from Valentine. What did you learn from him? It doesn’t seem to me that he taught you much about fighting, either.” He leaned closer. “You know what he gave me for my ninth birthday? A lesson. He taught me that there’s a place on a man’s back where, if you sink a blade in, you can pierce his heart and sever his spine, all at once. What did you get for your ninth birthday, little angel boy? A cookie?”

  Ninth birthday? Jace swallowed hard. “So tell me, what hole was he keeping you in while I was growing up? Because I don’t remember seeing you around the manor.”

  “I grew up in this valley.” Sebastian jerked his chin toward the cave exit. “I don’t remember seeing you around here either, come to think of it. Although I knew about you. I bet you didn’t know about me.”

  Jace shook his head. “Valentine wasn’t much given to bragging about you. I can’t imagine why.”

  Sebastian’s eyes flashed. It was easy to see, now, the resemblance to Valentine: the same unusual combination of silver-white hair and black eyes, the same fine bones that in another, less strongly molded face would have looked delicate. “I knew all about you,” he said. “But you don’t know anything, do you?” Sebastian got to his feet. “I wanted you alive to watch this, little brother,” he said. “So watch, and watch carefully.” With a movement so fast it was almost invisible, he drew the sword from its sheath at his waist. It had a silver hilt, and like the Mortal Sword it glowed with a dull dark light. A pattern of stars was etched into the surface of the black blade; it caught the true starlight as Sebastian turned the blade, and burned like fire.

  Jace held his breath. He wondered if Sebastian merely meant to kill him; but no, Sebastian would have killed him already, while he was unconscious, if that were his intention. Jace watched as Sebastian moved toward the center of the chamber, the sword held lightly in his hand, though it looked to be quite heavy. His mind was whirling. How could Valentine have another son? Who was his mother? Someone else in the Circle? Was he older or younger than Jace?

  Sebastian had reached the huge red-tinged stalagmite in the center of the room. It seemed to pulse as he approached, and the smoke inside it swirled faster. Sebastian half-closed his eyes and lifted the blade. He said something—a word in a harsh-sounding demon language—and brought the sword across, hard and fast, in a slicing arc.

  The top of the stalagmite sheared away. Inside, it was hollow as a test tube, filled with a mass of black and red smoke, which swirled upward like gas escaping a punctured balloon. There was a roar—less a sound than a sort of explosive pressure. Jace felt his ears pop. It was suddenly hard to breathe. He wanted to claw at the neck of his shirt, but he couldn’t move his hands: They were tied too tightly behind him.

  Sebastian was half-hidden behind the pouring column of red and black. It was coiling, swirling upward—“Watch!” he cried, his face glowing. His eyes were alight, his white hair whipping on the rising wind, and Jace wondered if his father had looked like that when he was young: terrible and yet somehow fascinating. “Watch and behold Valentine’s army!”

  His voice was drowned out then by the sound. It was a sound like the tide crashing up the shore, the breaking of an enormous wave, carrying massive detritus with it, the smashed bones of whole cities, the onrush of a great and evil power. A huge column of twisting, rushing, flapping blackness poured from the smashed stalagmite, funneling up through the air, pouring toward—and through—the torn gap in the cavern roof. Demons. They rose shrieking, howling, and snarling, a boiling mass of claws and talons and teeth and burning eyes. Jace recalled lying on the deck of Valentine’s ship as the sky and earth and sea all around turned to nightmare; this was worse. It was as if the earth had torn open and hell had poured through. The demons carried a stench like a thousand rotting corpses. Jace’s hands twisted against each other, twisted until the ropes cut into his wrists and they bled. A sour taste rose in his mouth, and he choked helplessly on blood and bile as the last of the demons rose and vanished overhead, a dark flood of horror, blotting out the stars.

  Jace thought he might have passed out for a minute or two. Certainly there was a period of blackness during which the shrieking and howling overhead faded and he seemed to hang in space, pinned between the earth and the sky, feeling a sense of detachment that was somehow . . . peaceful.

  It was over too soon. Suddenly he was slammed back into hi
s body, his wrists in agony, his shoulders straining backward, the stench of demon so heavy in the air that he turned his head aside and retched helplessly onto the ground. He heard a dry chuckle and looked up, swallowing hard against the acid in his throat. Sebastian knelt over him, his legs straddling Jace’s, his eyes shining. “It’s all right, little brother,” he said. “They’re gone.”

  Jace’s eyes were streaming, his throat scraped raw. His voice came out a croak. “He said midnight. Valentine said to open the gate at midnight. It can’t be midnight yet.”

  “I always figure it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission in these sorts of situations.” Sebastian glanced up at the now empty sky. “It should take them five minutes to reach Brocelind Plain from here, quite a bit less time than it will Father to reach the lake. I want to see some Nephilim blood spilled. I want them to writhe and die on the ground. They deserve shame before they get oblivion.”

  “Do you really think that Nephilim have so little chance against demons? It’s not as if they’re unprepared—”

  Sebastian dismissed him with a flick of his wrist. “I thought you were listening to us. Didn’t you understand the plan? Don’t you know what my father’s going to do?”

  Jace said nothing.

  “It was good of you,” said Sebastian, “to lead me to Hodge that night. If he hadn’t revealed that the Mirror we sought was Lake Lyn, I’m not sure this night would have been possible. Because anyone who bears the first two Mortal Instruments and stands before the Mortal Glass can summon the Angel Raziel out of it, just as Jonathan Shadowhunter did a thousand years ago. And once you’ve summoned the Angel, you can demand of him one thing. One task. One . . . favor.”

  “A favor?” Jace felt cold all over. “And Valentine is going to demand the defeat of the Shadowhunters at Brocelind?”

  Sebastian stood up. “That would be a waste,” he said. “No. He’s going to demand that all Shadowhunters who have not drunk from the Mortal Cup—all those who are not his followers—be stripped of their powers. They will no longer be Nephilim. And as such, bearing the Marks they do . . .” He smiled. “They will become Forsaken, easy prey for the demons, and those Downworlders who have not fled will be quickly eradicated.”

  Jace’s ears were ringing with a harsh, tinny sound. He felt dizzy. “Even Valentine,” he said, “even Valentine would never do that—”

  “Please,” said Sebastian. “Do you really think my father won’t go through with what he’s planned?”

  “Our father,” Jace said.

  Sebastian glanced down at him. His hair was a white halo; he looked like the sort of bad angel who might have followed Lucifer out of heaven. “Pardon me,” he said, with some amusement. “Are you praying?”

  “No. I said our father. I meant Valentine. Not your father. Ours.”

  For a moment Sebastian was expressionless; then his mouth quirked up at the corner, and he grinned. “Little angel boy,” he said. “You’re a fool, aren’t you—just like my father always said.”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” Jace demanded. “Why are you blathering about angels—”

  “God,” said Sebastian, “you don’t know anything, do you? Did my father ever say a word to you that wasn’t a lie?”

  Jace shook his head. He’d been pulling at the ropes binding his wrists, but every time he jerked at them, they seemed to get tighter. He could feel the pounding of his pulse in each of his fingers. “How do you know he wasn’t lying to you?”

  “Because I am his blood. I am just like him. When he’s gone, I’ll rule the Clave after him.”

  “I wouldn’t brag about being just like him if I were you.”

  “There’s that, too.” Sebastian’s voice was emotionless. “I don’t pretend to be anything other than I am. I don’t behave as if I’m horrified that my father does what he needs to do to save his people, even if they don’t want—or, if you ask me, deserve—saving. Who would you rather have for a son, a boy who’s proud that you’re his father or one who cowers from you in shame and fear?”

  “I’m not afraid of Valentine,” said Jace.

  “You shouldn’t be,” said Sebastian. “You should be afraid of me.”

  There was something in his voice that made Jace abandon his struggle against the bindings and look up. Sebastian was still holding his blackly gleaming sword. It was a dark, beautiful thing, Jace thought, even when Sebastian lowered the point of it so that it rested above Jace’s collarbone, just nicking his Adam’s apple.

  Jace struggled to keep his voice steady. “So now what? You’re going to kill me while I’m tied up? Does the thought of fighting me scare you that much?”

  Nothing, not a flicker of emotion, passed across Sebastian’s pale face. “You,” he said, “are not a threat to me. You’re a pest. An annoyance.”

  “Then why won’t you untie my hands?”

  Sebastian, utterly still, stared at him. He looked like a statue, Jace thought, like the statue of some long-dead prince—someone who’d died young and spoiled. And that was the difference between Sebastian and Valentine; though they shared the same cold marble looks, Sebastian had an air about him of something ruined—something eaten away from the inside. “I’m not a fool,” Sebastian said, “and you can’t bait me. I left you alive only long enough so that you could see the demons. When you die now, and return to your angel ancestors, you can tell them there is no place for them in this world anymore. They’ve failed the Clave, and the Clave no longer needs them. We have Valentine now.”

  “You’re killing me because you want me to give a message to God for you?” Jace shook his head, the point of the blade scraping across his throat. “You’re crazier than I thought.”

  Sebastian just smiled and pushed the blade in slightly deeper; when Jace swallowed, he could feel the point of it denting his windpipe. “If you have any real prayers, little brother, say them now.”

  “I don’t have any prayers,” said Jace. “I have a message, though. For our father. Will you give it to him?”

  “Of course,” Sebastian said smoothly, but there was something in the way he said it, a flicker of hesitation before he spoke, that confirmed what Jace was already thinking.

  “You’re lying,” he said. “You won’t give him the message, because you’re not going to tell him what you’ve done. He never asked you to kill me, and he won’t be happy when he finds out.”

  “Nonsense. You’re nothing to him.”

  “You think he’ll never know what happened to me if you kill me now, here. You can tell him I died in the battle, or he’ll just assume that’s what happened. But you’re wrong if you think he won’t know. Valentine always knows.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sebastian said, but his face had tightened.

  Jace kept talking, pressing home his advantage. “You can’t hide what you’re doing, though. There’s a witness.”

  “A witness?” Sebastian looked almost surprised, which Jace counted as something of a victory. “What are you talking about?”

  “The raven,” Jace said. “He’s been watching from the shadows. He’ll tell Valentine everything.”

  “Hugin?” Sebastian’s gaze snapped up, and though the raven was nowhere to be seen, Sebastian’s face when he glanced back down at Jace was full of doubt.

  “If Valentine knows you murdered me while I was tied up and helpless, he’ll be disgusted with you,” Jace said, and he heard his own voice drop into his father’s cadences, the way Valentine spoke when he wanted something: soft and persuasive. “He’ll call you a coward. He’ll never forgive you.”

  Sebastian said nothing. He was staring down at Jace, his lips twitching, and hatred boiled behind his eyes like poison.

  “Untie me,” Jace said softly. “Untie me and fight me. It’s the only way.”

  Sebastian’s lip twitched again, hard, and this time Jace thought he had gone too far. Sebastian drew the sword back and raised it, and the moonlight burst off it in a thousand
silver shards, silver as the stars, silver as the color of his hair. He bared his teeth—and the sword’s whistling breath cut the night air with a scream as he brought it down in a whirling arc.

  Clary sat on the steps of the dais in the Hall of Accords, holding the stele in her hands. She had never felt quite so alone. The Hall was utterly, totally empty. Clary had looked everywhere for Isabelle once the fighters had all passed through the Portal, but she hadn’t been able to find her. Aline had told her that Isabelle was probably back at the Penhallows’ house, where Aline and a few other teenagers were meant to be looking after at least a dozen children under fighting age. She’d tried to get Clary to go there with her, but Clary had declined. If she couldn’t find Isabelle, she’d rather be alone than with near strangers. Or so she’d thought. But sitting here, she found the silence and the emptiness becoming more and more oppressive. Still, she hadn’t moved. She was trying as hard as she could not to think of Jace, not to think of Simon, not to think of her mother or Luke or Alec—and the only way not to think, she had found, was to remain motionless and to stare at a single square of marble on the floor instead, counting the cracks in it, over and over.

  There were six. One, two, three. Four, five, six. She finished the count and started again, from the beginning. One—

  The sky overhead exploded.

  Or at least that was what it sounded like. Clary threw her head back and stared upward, through the clear roof of the Hall. The sky had been dark a moment ago; now it was a roiling mass of flame and blackness, shot through with an ugly orange light. Things moved against that light—hideous things she didn’t want to see, things that made her grateful to the darkness for obscuring her view. The occasional glimpse was bad enough.

  The transparent skylight overhead rippled and bent as the demon host passed, as if it were being warped by tremendous heat. At last there was a sound like a gunshot, and a huge crack appeared in the glass, spiderwebbing out into countless fissures. Clary ducked, covering her head with her hands, as glass rained down around her like tears.