Lady Midnight (60 page)

“Always,” he said. “Even when it seemed like I loved them.”

Emma’s arm was still burning, an agony that felt as if her skin was being lanced down to the bone. Her Endurance rune felt as if it were on fire. She tried not to let it show on her face. “That’s horrible. It’s not their fault. You can’t blame them for their ancestors’ sins.”

“Blood is blood,” Malcolm said. “We are all what we were born to be. I was born to love Annabel and that was taken from me. Now I live only for revenge. Just as you have, Emma. How many times have you told me that all you want in life is to kill the one who killed
your parents? What would you give up for it? Would you give up the Blackthorns? Would you give up your precious
parabatai
? The one you’re in love with?” His eyes glittered as she shook her head in denial. “Please. I
always
saw the way you looked at each other. And then Julian told me that your rune had healed him from Rook’s poison. No normal Shadowhunter’s rune should have been able to do that.”

“Not—proof of anything—” Emma gasped.

“Proof? You want proof? I saw you, the two of you. On the beach, sleeping in each other’s arms. I stood over you and watched you and thought how easy it would be to kill you. But then I realized that that would be a mercy, wouldn’t it? Killing the two of you while you were in each other’s arms? There’s a reason you can’t fall in love with your
parabatai
, Emma. And when you find out what it is, you will feel the cruelty of the Shadowhunters, just as I have.”

“You’re a liar,” she said in her weakest voice, her words trailing off into a whisper. The pain in her arm had gone. She thought of people who bled nearly to death, how they talked about the fact that in the last moments, all the pain vanished.

Smiling, Malcolm knelt down beside her. He patted her left hand; her fingers twitched. “Let me tell you a truth before you die, Emma,” he said. “It is a secret about the Nephilim. They hate love, human love, because they were born of angels. And while God charged his angels to take care of humans, the angels were made first, and they have always hated God’s second creation. That is why Lucifer fell. He was an angel who would not bow to mankind, God’s favored child. Love is the weakness of human beings, and the angels despise them for it, and the Clave despises it too, and therefore they punish it. Do you know what happens to
parabatai
who fall in love? Do you know why it’s forbidden?”

She shook her head.

His mouth quirked into a smile. There was something about
that smile, so faint and yet so full of bone-deep hatred, that chilled her the way none of his grinning had. “Then you have no idea what your death will spare your beloved Julian,” he said. “So think about that as the life leaves your body. In a way, your death is a mercy.” He raised his hand, violet fire beginning to crackle between his fingers.

He hurled his magic at her. And Emma flung her arm up, the arm that Julian had carved the Endurance rune on, the arm that had been burning and aching and screaming at her to use it since she’d struck the Black Volume.

Fire slammed into her arm. She felt it like a hard blow, but nothing more. The Endurance rune was pulsing through her body with its power, and alongside that power rose her own rage.

Rage at knowing Malcolm had killed her parents, rage for the wasted years she’d searched for their killer when he’d been right in front of her. Rage for every time he’d smiled at Julian or picked up Tavvy when his heart was full of hate. Rage at one more thing that had been taken from the Blackthorns.

She seized Cortana and wrenched herself to her knees, her hair flying as she drove the sword into Malcolm’s gut.

This time there was no Black Volume to block her thrust. She felt the blade go in, felt it tear through skin and rip past bone. Saw the tip of it burst out through his back, his white jacket soaked through with red blood.

She sprang to her feet, yanking the sword free. He made a choking noise. Blood was spilling onto the ground, running across the stone, spattering the Hands of Glory.

“This is for my parents,” she said, and slammed his body as hard as she could against the glass wall.

She felt his ribs snap as the glass behind him fissured. Water began to pour through the cracks. She felt it splatter against her face, salty as tears.

“I’ll tell you about the
parabatai
curse,” he gasped. “The Clave will never let you know it—it’s forbidden. Kill me and you’ll never learn—”

With her left hand, Emma yanked down the lever.

She threw herself behind the glass door as it swung open, and the current exploded through. It moved like a living thing—like a hand, shaped out of water, formed by the sea. It surrounded Malcolm, and for a frozen moment Emma saw him there clearly, struggling with feeble motions, within a whirlpool of water, water that spilled across the floor, water that gripped him, encircling him like an unbreakable net.

It lifted Malcolm off his feet. He gave a cry of terror and the ocean took him, the current rushing back out, carrying him with it. The glass door slammed shut.

The silence the water left behind was deafening. Exhausted, Emma slumped against the glass of the porthole door. Through it she could see the ocean, the color of the night sky. Malcolm’s body was a pale white star in the darkness, drifting among the weeds, and then a dark, spiky talon curled upward, through the ripples, and caught hold of Malcolm by the ankle. With a quick jerk, his body was yanked down and out of view.

There was a bright flicker. Emma turned to see that the violet wall of light in the corridor behind her had vanished—spells disappeared when the warlocks who cast them died.

“Emma!” There were pounding footsteps in the corridor. Out of the shadows, Julian appeared. She saw his stricken expression as he caught her to him, his hands knotting in her soaked, bloodstained gear. “Emma, God, I couldn’t get to you through the wall, I knew you were there but I couldn’t save you—”

“You saved me,” she said hoarsely, wanting to show him the Endurance rune on her arm, but she was pressed too tightly against him to move. “You did. You don’t know it, but you did.”

And then she heard their voices. The others, coming toward them down the corridor. Mark. Cristina. Diego. Diana.

“Tavvy,” she whispered. “Is he—”

“He’s fine. He’s outside with Ty and Livvy and Dru.” He kissed her temple. “Emma.” His lips brushed hers. She felt a shock of love and pain go through her.

“Let me go,” she whispered. “You have to let me go, they can’t see us like this. Julian, let me go.”

His head came up, his eyes full of agony, and he moved away. She saw what it cost him, saw the tremor in his hands as he lowered them to his sides. Felt the space between them like the space of a wound torn into flesh.

She dragged her gaze from his and looked down at the ground. The floor was awash with seawater and blood, ankle-deep. Somewhere Malcolm’s candelabra floated beneath the surface.

Emma was glad. The salt would dissolve Malcolm’s gruesome monument to murder, dissolve it and pick it clean, and it would be white bones, settling as Malcolm’s body settled to the floor of the ocean. And for the first time in a long time, Emma felt grateful to the sea.

26

T
HE
W
INGED
S
ERAPHS
OF
H
EAVEN

The
parabatai
curse. The Clave
will never let you know it—it’s
forbidden—

Malcolm’s words rang in Emma’s ears as she made her way back out into the night, following the others down the damp corridors of the convergence. Julian and Emma walked deliberately apart, keeping distance between them. Exhaustion and pain were slowing Emma down. Cortana was back in its sheath. She could feel the sword humming with energy; she wondered if it had absorbed magic from Malcolm.

But then, she didn’t want to think about Malcolm, the red tendrils of his blood unfurling through the dark water like banners.

She didn’t want to think about the things he’d said.

Emma was the last to step out of the cave, into the darkness of the outside world. Ty, Livvy, and Dru were sitting on the ground with Tavvy—the little boy was cradled in Livvy’s arms, seeming sleepy but awake. Kieran stood a distance away, a scowl on his face that relaxed only somewhat when Mark emerged from the convergence.

“How is Tavvy? Is everything all right?” Julian approached his siblings. Dru jumped up and hugged him tightly—then gasped and pointed.

A loud grinding noise cracked through the air. The gap in the hill was closing up behind them like a wound healing. Diana darted toward it, as if she could hold the pathway open, but the stone sealed shut; she snatched her hand back just in time to keep it from being crushed.

“You cannot stop it,” said Kieran. “The opening and the path inside were made by Malcolm. This hill does not naturally hold within it tunnels and caves. Now that he is dead, his enchantments are failing. There may perhaps be another entrance into this space, at some other ley line convergence. But this door will not open again.”

“How did you know he was dead?” Emma said.

“Lights going on in the city below,” said Kieran. “The—I don’t know what your mundane word is for it—”

“Blackout,” said Mark. “The blackout’s over. And Malcolm cast the spell that was responsible for the blackout, so—yeah.”

“Does that mean we can get a signal on our phones?” Ty wondered.

“I’ll check,” Julian said, and walked away to press his phone to his ear. Emma thought she heard him say Uncle Arthur’s name, but she couldn’t be sure, and he moved out of earshot before she could hear another word.

Diego and Cristina had joined Livvy, Ty, and Dru. Cristina was bending down over Tavvy, and Diego was reaching for something inside his gear jacket. Emma moved to join them; as she drew closer, she saw that Diego was holding a silver flask.

“Not giving him booze, are you?” Emma said. “He’s a little young for it.”

Diego rolled his eyes. “It’s an energy draught. Made by the Silent Brothers. Might counteract whatever Malcolm gave him to make him sleepy.”

Livvy took the flask from Diego and tasted the contents; with
a nod, she tipped the fluid into her little brother’s mouth. Tavvy drank gratefully as Emma knelt down and put her hand to his cheek.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she said. “Are you all right?”

He smiled up at her, blinking. He looked like Julian when he and Emma were children. Before the world had changed him.
My best friend and my best love.

She thought of Malcolm.
The
parabatai
curse.
Her heart aching, she kissed Tavvy’s baby-soft cheek and rose to her feet to find Cristina behind her.

“Your left arm,” Cristina said gently, and led her a few feet away. “Hold it out?”

Emma obeyed and saw that the skin of her hand and wrist was red and blistered, as if she’d been burned.

Cristina shook her head, drawing her stele from her jacket. “There were a few minutes there, when you were behind that wall Malcolm made, where I thought you weren’t coming out.”

Emma bumped her head against Cristina’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

“I know.” Cristina turned brisk, pushing up Emma’s sleeve. “You need healing runes.”

Emma leaned into Cristina as the stele ran over her skin, taking comfort in the fact that she was there. “It was weird, being trapped in there with Malcolm,” she said. “Mostly he just wanted to tell me about Annabel. And the thing is—I actually felt bad for him.”

“It’s not weird,” said Cristina. “It’s a terrible story. Neither he nor Annabel did anything wrong. To see someone you love so horribly punished and tortured—to think they’d abandoned you only to find out that you abandoned them—” She shuddered.

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” Emma said. “You think he felt guilty?”

“I’m sure he did. Anyone would.”

Emma thought of Annabel with a pang. She had been blameless, a victim. Hopefully she had never been aware of anything,
never been aware of Malcolm’s efforts to revive her. “I told him he was as bad as the Clave and he actually seemed surprised.”

“No one is ever the villain of their own story.” Cristina released Emma, pausing to examine her healing handiwork. Already the pain in Emma’s arm was receding. She knew a rune from Julian would most likely have worked more quickly, but after what had happened with the Endurance rune, she didn’t dare let him rune her in front of everyone else.

Julian. Past Cristina’s shoulder, she could see him, near the car. He was holding his phone to his ear. As she watched, he tapped the screen and slid it back into his pocket.

“So are the signals working again?” Ty asked. “Who were you calling?”

“Pizza,” Julian said.

They all stared at him. Like the rest of them, he was filthy, a long scratch along his cheek, his hair tangled. In the moonlight his eyes were the color of an underground river.

“Thought we might all be hungry,” he said with that deceptive mildness that Emma now knew meant that whatever was happening on the surface didn’t match what was going on in Julian’s mind.

“We should go,” he said. “The convergence’s collapse means the Clave is going to be able to see the dark magic emanating from this place on their map. When we get back, I don’t think we’ll be alone.”

*   *   *

They hurried to get everyone ready to go: Livvy carrying Octavian on her lap in the backseat of the Toyota, Diana taking Cristina and Diego in the truck, which she had hidden among some scrub brush. Kieran offered the use of Windspear again to Mark, but Mark declined.

“I wish to ride with my brothers and sisters,” he said simply.

Julian turned to Kieran. The faerie’s eyes were flat, unreflective. Julian wished he could see what his brother had loved: a Kieran who had been warm toward Mark or kind. He wished he could thank Kieran for not leaving Mark alone among the Hunt.

He wished he felt less hatred in his heart.

“You don’t need to come back with us,” Julian said. “We don’t need your help anymore.”

“I will not go until I know Mark is safe.”

Julian shrugged. “Have it your way. When we get back, don’t come into the Institute until we say so. We’d be in trouble just for fighting alongside you.”

Kieran’s mouth hardened. “Without me, you would have been defeated this night.”

“Probably,” said Julian. “I’ll remember to be grateful every time I see the scars on Emma’s back.”

Kieran flinched. Julian turned and walked toward the car. Diana cut in front of him, holding up a hand. She was wrapped in a heavy shawl, and her face was speckled with blood like light freckles.

“The Clave may well be waiting for you,” she said without preamble. “If you want, I’ll take the blame for everything and throw myself on their mercy.”

Julian looked at her for a long moment. He had lived by ironclad rules for so long.
Protect Tavvy, protect Livvy and Ty, protect Dru. Protect Emma.
Recently that had widened out slightly—he would protect Mark, because Mark had come back, and he would protect Cristina, because Emma loved her.

It was a sort of love few other people could understand. It was total and it was overwhelming and it could be cruel. He would destroy a whole city if he thought that city posed some threat to his family.

When you were twelve years old and you were all that stood between your family and annihilation, you didn’t learn moderation.

He considered now, with all the detachment he could muster, what would happen if Diana tried to take the blame—he entertained the idea, turned it over in his head, and rejected it. “No,” he said. “And I’m not being kind. I don’t think it would work.”

“Julian—”

“You hide things,” he said. “The Angel knows there’s something you’re still hiding, some reason you couldn’t take over the Institute. Something you won’t tell, anyway. You’re a good hider, but you’re not a good liar. They won’t believe you. But they will believe me.”

“So you already have a story for them?” Diana asked, her dark eyes widening.

Julian didn’t say anything.

She sighed, pulling the shawl tighter. “You’re a piece of work, Julian Blackthorn.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, though he doubted she meant it as one.

“Did you know I’d be here tonight?” she asked. “Did you think I was in league with Malcolm?”

“I didn’t think it was likely,” Julian said. “But then, I don’t entirely trust anyone.”

“That’s not true,” Diana said, looking across to where Mark was helping Emma into the driver’s side of the car. Her blond hair flew like sparks in the starlight. Diana glanced back at Julian. “You’d better get back. I’ll make myself scarce until tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell them you didn’t know anything. It isn’t as if people don’t deceive their tutors all the time. And you don’t even live with us.” He heard the Toyota start up. The others were waiting for him. “So you’ll drop Diego and Cristina at the Institute and then head home?”

“I’ll head somewhere,” she said.

He started toward the car, then paused and turned to look back at her. “Do you ever regret it? Choosing to be our tutor? You didn’t have to.”

The wind blew her dark hair across her face. “No,” she said. “I am who I am because I’ve been part of your family. Never forget, Jules. The choices we make, make us.”

*   *   *

The drive back was silent and exhausted. Ty was quiet, looking out the window of the passenger seat. Dru was curled into a ball. Tavvy was awake but barely, his head against Livia’s shoulder. Emma was slumped against a backseat window, holding Cortana, her damp blond hair straggling around her face, her eyes closed. Mark was squeezed in beside her.

Julian wanted to reach for Emma, slide his hand into hers, but he didn’t dare, not in front of the others. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching back from the driver’s seat to touch Tavvy’s arm, though, making sure that his little boy was still alive, still all right.

They were
all
still alive, and it was little short of a miracle. Julian felt as if every nerve in his body had been pulled out of his skin. He visualized the nerve endings exposed, each one like a Sensor, reacting to the presence of his family around him.

He thought of Diana, saying,
You’re going to have to let go.

And he knew it was true. Someday he would have to open his hands, let his brothers and sisters go freely into the world, a world that would cut them, bruise them, knock them down and not help them back up again. Someday he would have to do that.

But not yet. Not quite yet.

“Ty,” Julian said. He spoke quietly, so that the passengers in the backseat wouldn’t hear him.

“Yes?” Ty looked over. The shadows under his eyes were as gray as his irises.

“You were right,” Julian said. “I was wrong.”

“I was?” Ty sounded surprised. “About what?”

“You coming with us to the convergence,” said Julian. “You fought well—amazingly, in fact. If you hadn’t been there . . .” His
throat closed up. It was a moment before he could speak again. “I’m grateful,” he said. “And I’m also sorry. I should have listened. You were right about what you could do.”

“Thanks,” said Ty. “For apologizing.” He fell silent, which Julian assumed meant the conversation was over, but after a few seconds Ty leaned over and touched his head lightly to Julian’s shoulder—a friendly head butt, as if he were Church, seeking affection. Julian reached out to ruffle up his younger brother’s hair and nearly smiled.

The nascent smile vanished quickly when they bumped to a stop in front of the Institute. It was lit up like a Christmas tree. It had been dark when they’d left, and as they piled out of the car, Julian caught the faintest of faint glimmers on the air.

He exchanged a look with Emma. Light in the air meant a Portal, and a Portal meant the Clave.

Diana’s truck pulled up, and Diego and Cristina spilled out. They slammed the doors behind them and the truck sped away. The Blackthorns had all emerged as well: some of them blinking and barely awake (Dru, Mark), some looking quietly suspicious (Ty), and some nervous (Livvy, who was clutching Tavvy tightly). In the distance, Julian thought he could see the faint pale shape of Windspear.

They headed toward the Institute steps together. At the top of the stairs, Julian hesitated with his hand on the front door.

Anything could be waiting for him on the other side, from the massed array of the Council to a few dozen Clave warriors. Julian knew there was no more hiding Mark. He knew what his plans were. He knew they balanced, like a million angels, on the head of a pin. Chance, circumstance, and determination held them together.

He glanced over and saw Emma looking at him. Though her tired and grimy face didn’t break into a smile, he saw her confidence and her trust in him in her eyes.

He’d missed one, he thought. Chance, circumstance, determination—and faith.

He opened the door.

The light in the entryway was blazingly bright. Both witchlight chandeliers were burning, and the upstairs gallery was illuminated by rows of torches that the family almost never used. Light glowed beneath the doors of the Sanctuary.

In the middle of the room stood Magnus Bane, resplendent in an elegant outfit: a brocade jacket and trousers, his fingers adorned with dozens of rings. Beside him was Clary Fairchild, her bright red hair tied up in a messy bun, wearing a delicate green dress. They both looked as if they had just come from a party.