The Infernal Devices 01 - Clockwork Angel (28 page)

It was impossible not to notice the effect de Quincey’s speech was having on Will. He was as taut as a bow, his hands clenched in his lap, the veins standing out in his neck.

“We have a prisoner,” de Quincey went on. “His crime is betraying the Night Children.” He swept his gaze across the audience of waiting vampires. “And what is the punishment for such treason?”

“It is death!” cried a voice, the vampire woman Delilah. She was straining forward in her seat, a terrible eagerness on her face.

The other vampires took up her cry. “Death! Death!”

More shadowy forms slipped between the curtains that
formed the makeshift stage. Two male vampires, holding between them the struggling form of a human man. A black hood concealed the man’s features. All Tessa could see was that he was slender, probably young—and filthy, his fine clothes torn and ragged. His bare feet left bloody smears on the boards as the men dragged him forward and flung him into the chair. A faint gasp of sympathy escaped Tessa’s throat; she felt Will tense beside her.

The man continued to thrash feebly, like an insect on the end of a pin, as the vampires strapped his wrists and ankles to the chair, and then stepped back. De Quincey grinned; his fangs were out. They shone like ivory pins as he surveyed the crowd. Tessa could sense the vampires’ restlessness—and more than their restlessness, their hunger. No longer did they resemble a well-bred audience of human theatergoers. They were as avid as lions scenting prey, lurching forward in their chairs, theirs eyes wide and glowing, their mouths open.

“When can you summon the Enclave?” Tessa said to Will in an urgent whisper.

Will’s voice was tight. “When he draws blood. We must
see
him do it.”

“Will—”

“Tessa.” He whispered her real name, his fingers gripping hers. “Be
quiet
.”

Reluctantly Tessa returned her attention to the stage, where de Quincey was approaching the shackled prisoner. He paused by the chair—reached out—and his thin pale fingers brushed the man’s shoulder, as light as a spider’s touch. The prisoner convulsed, jerking in desperate terror as the vampire’s hand slid from his shoulder to his neck. De Quincey laid two white
fingers to the man’s pulse point, as if he were a doctor checking a patient’s heartbeat.

De Quincey wore a silver ring on one finger, Tessa saw, one side of which sharpened to a needle point that protruded when he tightened his hand into a fist. There was a flash of silver, and the prisoner screamed—the first sound he had made. There was something familiar about the sound.

A thin line of red appeared on the prisoner’s throat, like a loop of red wire. Blood welled and spilled down into the hollow of his collarbone. The prisoner thrashed and struggled as de Quincey, his face now a rictus mask of hunger, reached to touch two fingers to the red liquid. He lifted the stained fingertips to his mouth. The crowd was hissing and moaning, barely able to stay in their seats. Tessa glanced toward the woman in the white-plumed hat. Her mouth was open, her chin wet with drool.

“Will,” Tessa murmured. “Will,
please
.”

Will glanced past her, at Magnus. “Magnus. Take her out of here.”

Something in Tessa rebelled at the idea of being sent away. “Will, no, I’m all right here—”

Will’s voice was quiet, but his eyes blazed. “We’ve been over this. Go, or I won’t summon the Enclave. Go, or that man will die.”

“Come.” It was Magnus, his hand on her elbow, guiding her to stand. Reluctantly she allowed the warlock to draw her to her feet, and then toward the doors. Tessa glanced around anxiously to see if anyone noticed their departure, but no one was looking at them. All attention was riveted on de Quincey and the prisoner, and many vampires were already on their feet, hissing and cheering and making inhuman hungry sounds.

Among the seething crowd, Will was still seated, leaning forward like a hunting dog yearning to be released from the leash. His left hand slid into his waistcoat pocket, and emerged with something copper held between his fingers.

The Phosphor.

Magnus swung the door open behind them. “Hurry.”

Tessa hesitated, looking back at the stage. De Quincey was standing behind the prisoner now. His grinning mouth was smeared with blood. He reached out and took hold of the prisoner’s hood.

Will rose to his feet, the Phosphor held aloft. Magnus swore and pulled at Tessa’s arm. She half-turned as if to go with him, then froze as de Quincey whipped off the black hood to reveal the prisoner beneath.

His face was swollen and bruised with beatings. One of his eyes was black and swelled shut. His blond hair was pasted to his skull with blood and sweat. But none of that mattered; Tessa would have known him anyway, anywhere. She knew now why his cry of pain had sounded so familiar to her.

It was Nathaniel.

We all are men,

In our own natures frail, and capable

Of our flesh; few are angels

—Shakespeare,
King Henry VIII

Tessa screamed.

Not a human scream but a vampire scream. She barely recognized the sound that came from her own throat—it sounded like shattering glass. Only later did she even realize that she was screaming words. She would have thought she’d cry her brother’s name, but she didn’t.

“Will!” she screamed. “Will, now! Do it now!”

A gasp ran through the room. Dozens of white faces swung toward Tessa. Her scream had broken through their bloodlust. De Quincey was motionless on the stage; even Nathaniel
was looking at her, dazed and staring, as if wondering if her screams were a dream born out of his agony.

Will, his finger on the button of the Phosphor, hesitated. His eyes met Tessa’s across the room. It was only for a split second, but de Quincey saw their glance. As if he could read it, the look on his face changed, and he swung his hand up to point directly at Will.

“The boy,” he spat. “Stop him!”

Will tore his gaze from Tessa’s. The vampires were already rising to their feet, moving toward him, their eyes glittering with rage and hunger. Will looked past them, at de Quincey, who was staring at Will with fury. There was no fear on Will’s face as his gaze met the vampire’s—no hesitation, and no surprise.

“I am not a boy,” he said. “I am Nephilim.”

And he pressed the button.

Tessa braced herself for a flare of white witchlight. Instead there was a great
whoosh
of sound as the flames of the candelabras shot toward the ceiling. Sparks flew, scattering the floor with glowing embers, catching in the curtains, in the skirts of women’s dresses. Suddenly the room was full of billowing black smoke and screams—high-pitched and horrible.

Tessa could no longer see Will. She tried to dart forward, but Magnus—she had nearly forgotten he was there—caught her firmly by the wrist. “Miss Gray, no,” he said, and when she responded by pulling away harder, he added, “Miss Gray! You’re a vampire now! If you catch fire, you’ll go up like kindling wood—”

As if to illustrate his point, at that moment a stray spark landed atop Lady Delilah’s white wig. It burst into flames. With
a cry she tried to rip it from her head, but as her hands came in contact with the flames, they, too, caught fire as if they were made of paper instead of skin. In less than a second both her arms were burning like torches. Howling, she raced toward the door, but the fire was faster than she was. Within seconds a bonfire raged where she had stood. Tessa could just see the outline of a blackened screaming creature writhing inside it.

“Do you see what I mean?” Magnus shouted in Tessa’s ear, struggling to make himself heard over the howls of the vampires, who were diving this way and that, trying to avoid the flames.

“Let me go!” Tessa shrieked. De Quincey had leaped into the melee; Nathaniel was slumped alone onstage, apparently unconscious, only his manacles holding him to the chair. “That’s my brother up there. My
brother
!”

Magnus stared at her. Taking advantage of his confusion, Tessa jerked her arm free and began to run toward the stage. The room was chaos: vampires rushing to and fro, many of them stampeding toward the doorway. The vampires who had reached the door were pushing and shoving to get through it first; others had turned course and were streaming toward the French doors that looked out over the garden.

Tessa veered to avoid a fallen chair, and nearly ran headlong into the redheaded vampire in the blue dress who had glared at her earlier. She looked terrified now. She plunged toward Tessa—then seemed to stumble. Her mouth opened in a scream, and blood poured from it like a fountain. Her face crumpled, folding in on itself, the skin resolving into dust and raining down from the bones of her skull. Her red hair shriveled and turned gray; the skin of her arms melted and turned to
powder, and with a last despairing shriek the vampire woman collapsed into a stringy heap of bones and dust lying atop an empty satin dress.

Tessa gagged, tore her eyes away from the remains, and saw Will. He stood directly in front of her, holding a long silver knife; the blade was smeared with scarlet blood. His face was bloody too, his eyes wild. “What the
hell
are you still doing here?” he shouted at Tessa. “You
unbelievably
stupid—”

Tessa heard the noise before Will did, a thin whining sound, like a piece of broken machinery. The fair-haired boy in the gray jacket—the human servant Lady Delilah had drunk from earlier—was rushing at Will, a high-pitched wailing sound coming from his throat, his face smeared with tears and blood. He was carrying a torn-off chair leg in one hand; the end of it was ragged and sharp.

“Will, look
out
!” Tessa shouted, and Will spun. He moved
fast
, Tessa saw, like a dark blur, and the knife in his hand was a flash of silver in the smoky dimness. When he stopped moving, the boy was lying on the ground, the blade protruding from his chest. Blood welled around it, thicker and darker than vampire blood.

Will, staring down, was ashen. “I thought …”

“He would have killed you if he could,” Tessa said.

“You know nothing of it,” Will said. He shook his head, once, as if clearing it of her voice, or of the sight of the boy on the ground. The subjugate looked very young, his twisted face softer in death. “I told you to go—”

“That’s my brother,” Tessa said, pointing toward the back of the room. Nathaniel was still unconscious, limp in his manacles. If it weren’t for the blood still flowing from the wound in
his neck, she would have thought he was dead. “Nathaniel. In the chair.”

Will’s eyes widened in astonishment. “But how—?” he began. He didn’t get a chance to finish his question. At that moment the sound of shattering glass filled the room. The French windows burst inward, and the room was suddenly flooded with Shadowhunters in their dark fighting gear. They were driving before them in a screaming, ragged group the vampires who had fled into the garden. As Tessa stared, more Shadowhunters began flooding in from the other doors as well, herding more vampires in front of them, like dogs herding sheep into a pen. De Quincey staggered before the other vampires, his pale face smeared with black ash, his teeth bared.

Tessa saw Henry among the Nephilim, easily recognizable by his ginger hair. Charlotte was there too, dressed like a man all in dark fighting gear, like the women pictured in Tessa’s Shadowhunter book. She looked small and determined and surprisingly fierce. And then there was Jem. His gear made him appear all the more startlingly pale, and the black Marks on his skin stood out like ink on paper. In the crowd she recognized Gabriel Lightwood; his father, Benedict; slim black-haired Mrs. Highsmith; and behind them all strode Magnus, blue sparks flying from his hands as he gestured.

Will exhaled, some of the color returning to his face. “I wasn’t sure they’d come,” he muttered, “not with the Phosphor malfunctioning.” He tore his eyes away from his friends and looked at Tessa. “Go attend to your brother,” he said. “That’ll get you out of the worst of it. I hope.”

He turned and walked away from her without a backward glance. The Nephilim had herded the remaining vampires,
those who had not been killed by the fire—or by Will—into the center of a makeshift circle of Shadowhunters. De Quincey towered among the group, his pale face twisted in rage; his shirt was stained with blood—his own or someone else’s, she couldn’t tell. The other vampires huddled behind him like children behind a parent, looking both fierce and wretched at the same time.

“The Law,” de Quincey growled, as Benedict Lightwood advanced on him, a shining blade in his right hand, its surface scored with black runes. “The Law protects us. We surrender to you. The Law—”

“You have broken the Law,” snarled Benedict. “Therefore its protection no longer extends to you. The sentence is death.”

“One mundane,” said de Quincey, sparing a glance toward Nathaniel. “One mundane who has
also
broken Covenant Law—”

“The Law does not extend to mundanes. They cannot be expected to follow the laws of a world they know nothing of.”

“He is worthless,” de Quincey said. “You do not know how worthless. Do you really desire to shatter our alliance over one worthless mundane?”

“It is more than just one mundane!” Charlotte cried, and from her jacket she drew the paper Will had taken from the library. Tessa had not seen Will pass it to Charlotte, but he must have. “What of these spells? Did you think we would not discover them? This—this black sorcery is absolutely forbidden by the Covenant!”

De Quincey’s still face betrayed only a hint of his surprise. “Where did you find that?”

Charlotte’s mouth was a hard thin line. “That doesn’t matter.”

“Whatever it is you think you know—,” de Quincey began.

“We know enough!” Charlotte’s voice was full of passion. “We know you hate and despise us! We know your alliance with us has been a sham!”

“And have you made it against Covenant Law now to dislike Shadowhunters?” de Quincey said, but the sneer was gone from his voice. He sounded ragged.