They were almost to the battlefield when the sound came, ripping the night in half. One moment the woods were as silent as they were dark. The next moment the sky was lit with a hellish orange glow. Simon staggered and nearly fell; he caught at a tree trunk to steady himself and looked up, barely able to believe what he was seeing. All around him the other vampires were staring up at the sky, their white faces like night-blooming flowers, lifting to catch the moonlight as nightmare after nightmare streaked across the sky.
“You keep passing out on me,” Sebastian said. “It’s extremely tedious.”
Jace opened his eyes. Pain lanced through his head. He put his hand up to touch the side of his face—and realized his hands were no longer tied behind him. A length of rope trailed from his wrist. His hand came away from his face black—blood, dark in the moonlight.
He stared around him. They were no longer in the cavern: He was lying on soft dirt and grass on the valley floor, not far from the stone house. He could hear the sound of the water in the creek, clearly close by. Knotted tree branches overhead blocked some of the moonlight, but it was still fairly bright.
“Get up,” Sebastian said. “You have five seconds before I kill you where you are.”
Jace stood as slowly as he thought he could get away with. He was still a little dizzy. Fighting for balance, he dug the heels of his boots into the soft dirt, trying to give himself some stability. “Why did you bring me out here?”
“Two reasons,” Sebastian said. “One, I enjoyed knocking you out. Two, it would be bad for either of us to get blood on the floor of that cavern. Trust me. And I intend to spill plenty of your blood.”
Jace felt at his belt, and his heart sank. Either he’d dropped most of his weapons while Sebastian was dragging him through the tunnels, or, more likely, Sebastian had thrown them away. All he had left was a dagger. It was a short blade—too short, no match for the sword.
“Not much of a weapon, that.” Sebastian grinned, white in the moon-dazzled darkness.
“I can’t fight with this,” Jace said, trying to sound as quavering and nervous as he could.
“What a shame.” Sebastian came closer to Jace, grinning. He was holding his sword loosely, theatrically unconcerned, the tips of his fingers beating a light rhythm on the hilt. If there was ever going to be an opening for him, Jace thought, this was probably it. He swung his arm back and punched Sebastian as hard as he could in the face.
Bone crunched under his knuckles. The blow sent Sebastian sprawling. He skidded backward in the dirt, the sword flying from his grip. Jace caught it up as he darted forward, and a second later was standing over Sebastian, blade in hand.
Sebastian’s nose was bleeding, the blood a scarlet streak across his face. He reached up and pulled his collar aside, baring his pale throat. “So go ahead,” he said. “Kill me already.”
Jace hesitated. He didn’t want to hesitate, but there it was: an annoying reluctance to kill anyone lying helpless on the ground in front of him. Jace remembered Valentine taunting him, back at Renwick’s, daring his son to kill him, and Jace hadn’t been able to do it. But Sebastian was a murderer. He’d killed Max and Hodge.
He raised the sword.
And Sebastian erupted off the ground, faster than the eye could follow. He seemed to fly into the air, performing an elegant backflip and landing gracefully on the grass barely a foot away. As he did, he kicked out, striking Jace’s hand. The kick sent the sword spinning out of Jace’s grasp. Sebastian caught it out of the air, laughing, and slashed out with the blade, whipping it toward Jace’s heart. Jace leaped backward and the blade split the air just in front of him, slicing his shirt open down the front. There was a stinging pain and Jace felt blood welling from a shallow slice across his chest.
Sebastian chuckled, advancing toward Jace, who backed up, fumbling his insufficient dagger out of his belt as he went. He looked around, desperately hoping there was something else he could use as a weapon—a long stick, anything. There was nothing around him but the grass, the river running by, and the trees above, spreading their thick branches overhead like a green net. Suddenly he remembered the Malachi Configuration the Inquisitor had trapped him in. Sebastian wasn’t the only one who could jump.
Sebastian slashed the sword toward him again, but Jace had already leaped—straight up into the air. The lowest tree branch was about twenty feet high; he caught at it, swinging himself up and over. Kneeling on the branch, he saw Sebastian, on the ground, spin around and look up. Jace flung the dagger and heard Sebastian shout. Breathless, he straightened up—
And Sebastian was suddenly on the branch beside him. His pale face was flushed angrily, his sword arm streaming blood. He had dropped the sword, evidently, in the grass, though that merely made them even, Jace thought, since his dagger was gone as well. He saw with some satisfaction that for the first time Sebastian looked angry—angry and surprised, as if a pet he’d thought was tame had bitten him.
“That was fun,” Sebastian said. “But now it’s over.”
He flung himself at Jace, catching him around the waist, knocking him off the branch. They fell twenty feet through the air clutched together, tearing at each other—and hit the ground hard, hard enough that Jace saw stars behind his eyes. He grabbed for Sebastian’s injured arm and dug his fingers in; Sebastian yelled and backhanded Jace across the face. Jace’s mouth filled with salty blood; he gagged on it as they rolled through the dirt together, slamming punches into each other. He felt a sudden shock of icy cold; they’d rolled down the slight incline into the river and were lying half-in, half-out of the water. Sebastian gasped, and Jace took the opportunity to grab for the other boy’s throat and close his hands around it, squeezing. Sebastian choked, seizing Jace’s right wrist in his hand and jerking it backward, hard enough to snap the bones. Jace heard himself scream as if from a distance, and Sebastian pressed the advantage, twisting the broken wrist mercilessly until Jace let go of him and fell back in the cold, watery mud, his arm a howl of agony.
Half-kneeling on Jace’s chest, one knee digging hard into his ribs, Sebastian grinned down at him. His eyes shone out white and black from a mask of dirt and blood. Something glittered in his right hand. Jace’s dagger. He must have picked it up from the ground. Its point rested directly over Jace’s heart.
“And we find ourselves exactly where we were five minutes ago,” Sebastian said. “You’ve had your chance, Wayland. Any last words?”
Jace stared up at him, his mouth streaming blood, his eyes stinging with sweat, and felt only a sense of total and empty exhaustion. Was this really how he was going to die? “Wayland?” he said. “You know that’s not my name.”
“You have as much of a claim to it as you have to the name of Morgenstern,” said Sebastian. He bent forward, leaning his weight onto the dagger. Its tip pierced Jace’s skin, sending a hot stab of pain through his body. Sebastian’s face was inches away, his voice a hissing whisper. “Did you really think you were Valentine’s son? Did you really think a whining, pathetic thing like yourself was worthy of being a Morgenstern, of being my brother?” He tossed his white hair back: It was lank with sweat and creek water. “You’re a changeling,” he said. “My father butchered a corpse to get you and make you one of his experiments. He tried to raise you as his own son, but you were too weak to be any good to him. You couldn’t be a warrior. You were nothing. Useless. So he palmed you off on the Lightwoods and hoped you might be of some use to him later, as a decoy. Or as bait. He never loved you.”
Jace blinked his burning eyes. “Then you . . .”
“I am Valentine’s son. Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern. You never had any right to that name. You’re a ghost. A pretender.” His eyes were black and glinting, like the carapaces of dead insects, and suddenly Jace heard his mother’s voice, as if in a dream—but she wasn’t his mother—saying Jonathan’s not a baby anymore. He isn’t even human; he’s a monster.
“You’re the one,” Jace choked. “The one with the demon blo
od. Not me.”
“That’s right.” The dagger slid another millimeter into Jace’s flesh. Sebastian was still grinning, but it was a rictus grin, like a skull’s. “You’re the angel boy. I had to hear all about you. You with your pretty angel face and your pretty manners and your delicate, delicate feelings. You couldn’t even watch a bird die without crying. No wonder Valentine was ashamed of you.”
“No.” Jace forgot the blood in his mouth, forgot the pain. “You’re the one he’s ashamed of. You think he wouldn’t take you with him to the lake because he needed you to stay here and open the gate at midnight? Like he didn’t know you wouldn’t be able to wait. He didn’t take you with him because he’s ashamed to stand up in front of the Angel and show him what he’s done. Show him the thing he made. Show him you.” Jace gazed up at Sebastian—he could feel a terrible, triumphant pity blazing in his own eyes. “He knows there’s nothing human in you. Maybe he loves you, but he hates you too—”
“Shut up!” Sebastian pushed down on the dagger, twisting the hilt. Jace arched backward with a scream, and agony burst like lightning behind his eyes. I’m going to die, he thought. I’m dying. This is it. He wondered if his heart had already been pierced. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He knew now what it must be like for a butterfly pinned to a board. He tried to speak, tried to say a name, but nothing came out of his mouth but more blood.
And yet Sebastian seemed to read his eyes. “Clary. I’d almost forgotten. You’re in love with her, aren’t you? The shame of your nasty incestuous impulses must nearly have killed you. Too bad you didn’t know she’s not really your sister. You could have spent the rest of your life with her, if only you weren’t so stupid.” He bent down, pushing the knife in harder, its edge scraping bone. He spoke in Jace’s ear, a voice as soft as a whisper. “She loved you, too,” he said. “Keep that in mind while you die.”
Darkness flooded in from the edges of Jace’s vision, like dye spilling onto a photograph, blotting out the image. Suddenly there was no pain at all. He felt nothing, not even Sebastian’s weight on him, as if he were floating. Sebastian’s face drifted over him, white against the darkness, the dagger raised in his hand. Something bright gold glittered at Sebastian’s wrist, as if he were wearing a bracelet. But it wasn’t a bracelet, because it was moving. Sebastian looked toward his hand, surprised, as the dagger fell from his loosened grasp and struck the mud with an audible sound.
Then the hand itself, separated from his wrist, thumped to the ground beside it.
Jace stared wonderingly as Sebastian’s severed hand bounced and came to rest against a pair of high black boots. The boots were attached to a pair of delicate legs, rising to a slender torso and a familiar face capped with a waterfall of black hair. Jace raised his eyes and saw Isabelle, her whip soaked with blood, her eyes fastened on Sebastian, who was staring at the bloody stump of his wrist with openmouthed amazement.
Isabelle smiled grimly. “That was for Max, you bastard.”
“Bitch,” Sebastian hissed—and sprang to his feet as Isabelle’s whip came slashing at him again with incredible speed. He ducked sideways and was gone. There was a rustle—he must have vanished into the trees, Jace thought, though it hurt too much to turn his head and look.
“Jace!” Isabelle knelt down over him, her stele shining in her left hand. Her eyes were bright with tears; he must seem pretty bad, Jace realized, for Isabelle to look like that.
“Isabelle,” he tried to say. He wanted to tell her to go, to run, that no matter how spectacular and brave and talented she was—and she was all those things—she was no match for Sebastian. And there was no way that Sebastian was going to let a little thing like getting his hand sliced off stop him. But all that came out of Jace’s mouth was a sort of gurgling noise.
“Don’t talk.” He felt the tip of her stele burn against the skin of his chest. “You’ll be fine.” Isabelle smiled down at him tremulously. “You’re probably wondering what the hell I’m doing here,” she said. “I don’t know how much you know—I don’t know what Sebastian’s told you—but you’re not Valentine’s son.” The iratze was close to finished; already Jace could feel the pain fading. He nodded slightly, trying to tell her: I know. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to come looking for you after you ran off, because you said in your note not to, and I got that. But there was no way I was going to let you die thinking you have demon blood, or without telling you that there’s nothing wrong with you, though honestly, how you could have thought anything so stupid in the first place—” Isabelle’s hand jerked, and she froze, not wanting to spoil the rune. “And you needed to know that Clary’s not your sister,” she said, more gently. “Because—because you just did. So I got Magnus to help me track you. I used that little wooden soldier you gave to Max. I don’t think Magnus would have done it normally, but let’s just say he was in an unusually good mood, and I may have told him Alec wanted him to do it—although that wasn’t strictly true, but it’ll be a while before he finds that out. And once I knew where you were, well, he’d already set up that Portal, and I’m very good at sneaking—”
Isabelle screamed. Jace tried to reach for her, but she was beyond his grasp, being lifted, flung to the side. Her whip fell from her hand. She scrambled to her knees, but Sebastian was already in front of her. His eyes blazed with rage, and there was a bloody cloth tied around the stump of his wrist. Isabelle darted for her whip, but Sebastian moved faster. He spun and kicked out at her, hard. His booted foot connected with her rib cage. Jace almost thought he could hear Isabelle’s ribs crack as she flew backward, landing awkwardly on her side. He heard her cry out—Isabelle, who never cried out in pain—as Sebastian kicked her again and then caught up her whip, brandishing it in his hand.
Jace rolled onto his side. The almost finished iratze had helped, but the pain in his chest was still bad, and he knew, in a detached sort of way, that the fact that he was coughing up blood probably meant that he had a punctured lung. He wasn’t sure how long that gave him. Minutes, probably. He scrabbled for the dagger where Sebastian had dropped it, next to the grisly remains of his hand. Jace staggered to his feet. The smell of blood was everywhere. He thought of Magnus’s vision, the world turned to blood, and his slippery hand tightened on the hilt of the dagger.
He took a step forward. Then another. Every step felt like he was dragging his feet through cement. Isabelle was screaming curses at Sebastian, who was laughing as he brought the whip down across her body. Her screams drew Jace forward like a fish caught on a hook, but they grew fainter as he moved. The world was spinning around him like a carnival ride.
One more step, Jace told himself. One more. Sebastian had his back to him; he was concentrating on Isabelle. He probably thought Jace was already dead. And he nearly was. One step, he told himself, but he couldn’t do it, couldn’t move, couldn’t bring himself to drag his feet one more step forward. Blackness was rushing in at the edges of his vision—a more profound blackness than the darkness of sleep. A blackness that would erase everything he had ever seen and bring him a rest that would be absolute. Peaceful. He thought, suddenly, of Clary—Clary as he had last seen her, asleep, with her hair spread across the pillow and her cheek on her hand. He had thought then that he had never seen anything so peaceful in his life, but of course she had only been sleeping, like anyone else might sleep. It hadn’t been her peace that had surprised him, but his own. The peace he felt at being with her was like nothing he had ever known before.
Pain jarred up his spine, and he realized with surprise that somehow, without any volition of his own, his legs had moved him forward that last crucial step. Sebastian had his arm back, the whip shining in his hand; Isabelle lay on the grass, a crumpled heap, no longer screaming—no longer moving at all. “You little Lightwood bitch,” Sebastian was saying. “I should have smashed your face in with that hammer until I was sure you weren’t breathing any more—”
And Jace brought his hand up, with the dagger in it, and sank the blade into Sebast
ian’s back.
Sebastian staggered forward, the whip falling out of his hand. He turned slowly and looked at Jace, and Jace thought, with a distant horror, that maybe Sebastian really wasn’t human, that he was unkillable after all. Sebastian’s face was blank, the hostility gone from it, and the dark fire from his eyes. He no longer looked like Valentine, though. He looked—scared.
He opened his mouth, as if he meant to say something to Jace, but his knees were already buckling. He crashed to the ground, the force of his fall sending him sliding down the incline and into the river. He came to rest on his back, his eyes staring sightlessly up at the sky; the water flowed around him, carrying dark threads of his blood downstream on the current.
He taught me 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, Sebastian had said. I guess we got the same birthday present that year, big brother, Jace thought. Didn’t we?
“Jace!” It was Isabelle, her face bloody, struggling into a sitting position. “Jace!”
He tried to turn toward her, tried to say something, but his words were gone. He slid to his knees. A heavy weight was pressing on his shoulders, and the earth was calling him: down, down, down. He was barely aware of Isabelle crying his name as the darkness carried him away.
Simon was a veteran of countless battles. That is, if you counted battles engaged in while playing Dungeons and Dragons. His friend Eric was the military history buff and he was the one who usually organized the war part of the games, which involved dozens of tiny figurines moving in straight lines across a flat landscape drawn on butcher paper.
That was the way he’d always thought of battles—or the way they were in movies, with two groups of people advancing at each other across a flat expanse of land. Straight lines and orderly progression.
Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series Page 120
