The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (334 page)

Jace’s eyes moved around the room, and Clary followed his gaze. The light outside the windows had dimmed slightly, and she could see the dais more clearly. On it sat two immense—well, the only word for them was “thrones.” They were ivory and gold, with gold steps leading up to them. Each had a curved back embossed with a single key.

“
‘I am he that liveth, and was dead
,’ ” said Sebastian, “ ‘
and behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death
.’ ” He made a sweeping gesture toward the two chairs, and Clary realized with a sudden jolt that there was someone kneeling beside the left-most chair—a Dark Shadowhunter in red gear. A woman on her knees, her hands clasped in front of her. “These are the keys, made over in the shapes of thrones and given to me by the demons who rule this world, Lilith and Asmodeus.”

His dark eyes moved to Clary, and she felt his gaze like cold fingers walking up her spine. “I don’t know why you’re showing me this,” she said. “What do you expect? Admiration? You won’t get it. You can threaten me if you want; you know I don’t care. You can’t threaten Jace—he has the fire of Heaven in his veins; you can’t hurt him.”

“Can’t I?” he said. “Who knows how much of Heaven’s fire he has still in his veins, after that fireworks display he put on the other night? That demon got to you, didn’t she, brother? I
knew you could never quite bear the knowledge of it, that you had killed your own kind.”

“You forced me to murder,” Jace said. “It wasn’t my hand holding the knife that killed Sister Magdalena; it was yours.”

“If you like.” Sebastian’s smile turned cold. “Regardless, there are others I can threaten. Amatis, rise, and bring Jocelyn here.”

Clary felt tiny daggers of ice shoot through her veins; she tried to keep her face from showing any expression as the woman kneeling by the throne rose. It was indeed Amatis, with her disconcerting Luke-blue eyes. She smiled. “With pleasure,” she said, and stalked out of the room, the hem of her long red coat sweeping behind her.

Jace stepped forward with an inarticulate growl—and stopped in his tracks, several feet from Sebastian. He put his hands out, but they seemed to collide with something translucent, an invisible wall.

Sebastian snorted. “As if I’d let you get near me—you, with that fire burning in you. Once was enough, thank you.”

“So you know I can kill you,” Jace said, facing him, and Clary couldn’t help but think how alike they were and how different—like ice and fire, Sebastian all white and black, and Jace burning up with red and gold. “You can’t hide in there forever. You’ll starve.”

Sebastian made a quick gesture with his fingers, the way Clary had seen Magnus gesture when casting a spell—and Jace flew up and back, and slammed into the wall behind them. Her breath caught in a gasp as she spun to see him crumple to the ground, a bloody gash across the side of his head.

Sebastian hummed in delight and lowered his hand. “Don’t
worry,” he said conversationally, and turned his gaze back to Clary. “He’ll be fine. Eventually. If I don’t change my mind about what to do with him. I’m sure you understand, now that you’ve seen what I can do.”

Clary held herself still. She knew how important it was to keep her face blank, not to look at Jace in panic, not to show Sebastian her anger or her fear. Deep down in her heart she knew what he wanted, better than anyone else; she knew what he was
like
, and that was the best weapon she had.

Well, maybe the second-best.

“I’ve always known you had power,” she said, deliberately not looking toward Jace, deliberately not analyzing his motionlessness, the thick trickle of blood that was making its way down the side of his face. This was always going to happen; it was always going to be her facing Sebastian with no one else, not even Jace, by her side.

“Power,”
he echoed, as if it were an insult. “Is that what you call it? Here I have more than power, Clary. Here in this keep I can shape what is real.” He had begun to pace inside the circle he had drawn, his hands looped casually behind his back, like a professor delivering a lecture. “This world is connected only by the thinnest threads to the one where we were born. The road through Faerie is one such thread. These windows are another. Step through that one”—he pointed to the window on the right, through which Clary could see dark blue twilight sky, and stars—“and you will return to Idris. But it’s not that simple.” He regarded the stars through the window. “I came to this world because it was a place to hide. And then I began to realize. I am sure our father quoted these words to you many times”—he spoke to Jace, as if Jace could hear him—“but it
is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. And here I rule. I have my Dark Ones and my demons. I have my keep and citadel. And when the borders of this world are sealed, everything here will be my weapon. Rocks, dead trees, the ground itself will come to my hand and wield its power for me. And the Great Ones, the old demons, will look down on my work, and they will reward me. They will raise me up in glory, and I will rule the abysses between worlds and the spaces between all the stars.”

“
‘And he shall rule them with a rod of iron,’
” said Clary, remembering Alec’s words in the Accords Hall, “
‘and I will give him the Morning Star.’
”

Sebastian whirled on her, his eyes bright. “Yes!” he said. “Yes, very good, you’re understanding now. I thought I wanted our world, to bring it down in blood, but I want more than that. I want the legacy of the Morgenstern name.”

“You want to be the devil?” Clary said, half-baffled and half-terrified. “You want to rule Hell?” She spread her hands out. “Go ahead, then,” she said. “None of us will stop you. Let us go home, promise you’ll leave our world alone, and you can
have
Hell.”

“Alas,” said Sebastian. “For I have discovered one other thing that perhaps sets me apart from Lucifer. I do not want to rule alone.” He extended his arm, an elegant gesture, and indicated the two great thrones on the dais. “One of those is for me. And the other—the other is for you.”

The streets of Alicante turned and twisted back in on themselves like the currents of a sea; if Emma hadn’t been following Helen, who was carrying a witchlight in one hand and her
crossbow in the other, she would have been hopelessly lost.

The last of the sun was vanishing from the sky, and the streets were dark. Julian was carrying Tavvy, the baby’s arms locked around his neck; Emma held Dru by the hand, and the twins clung together in silence.

Dru wasn’t fast, and kept stumbling; she fell several times, and Emma had to drag her to her feet. Jules called out to Emma to be careful, and she
was
trying to be careful. She couldn’t imagine how Julian did it, holding Tavvy so carefully, murmuring so reassuringly that the little boy didn’t even cry. Dru was sobbing silently; Emma brushed the tears off the younger girl’s cheeks as she helped her up for the fourth time, murmuring nonsense comforting words the way her mother once had to her when she’d been a child and had fallen.

She had never missed her parents more agonizingly than she did now; it felt like a knife under her ribs.

“Dru,” she began, and then the sky lit up red. The demon towers had flamed to the color of pure scarlet, all the gold of warning gone.

“The city walls are broken,” Helen said, staring up at the Gard. Emma knew she was thinking about Aline. The red glow of the towers turned her pale hair the color of blood. “Come on—quickly.”

Emma wasn’t sure they
could
go any more quickly; she got a tighter hold of Drusilla’s wrist and yanked the little girl nearly off her feet, muttering apologies as she went. The twins, hand in hand, were faster, even as they raced up a jagged set of stairs toward Angel Square, led by Helen.

They were almost at the top step when Julian gasped out, “Helen, behind us!” and Emma spun around to see a faerie
knight in white armor approaching the foot of the stairs. He carried a bow made from a curved branch, and his hair was long and bark-colored.

For a moment his eyes met Helen’s. The expression on his face changed, and Emma couldn’t help wondering if he recognized the Fair Folk in her blood—and then Helen raised her right arm and shot her crossbow directly at him.

He whirled away. The bolt hit the wall behind him. The faerie smirked, and leaped up the first step, then the second—and screamed. Emma watched in shock as his legs buckled under him; he fell and howled as his skin came into contact with the edge of the step. For the first time Emma noticed that corkscrews, nails, and other hunks of cold-forged iron had been hammered into the step edges. The faerie warrior reeled back, and Helen shot again. The bolt went through his armor and into his chest. He crumpled.

“They’ve
faerie-proofed
,” Emma said, remembering looking out the window at the Penhallows’ with Ty and Helen. “All the metal, the iron.” She pointed at a nearby building, where a long row of scissors hung from cords connected to the edge of the roof. “That’s what the guards were doing—”

Suddenly Dru shrieked. Another figure raced up the street. A second faerie knight, this one a woman with armor of pale green, carrying a shield of overlapping carved leaves.

Emma whipped a knife from her belt and threw it. Instinctively the faerie raised her shield to block the knife—which sailed past her head, and severed the cord holding a pair of scissors to the roof above. The scissors fell, blade-first, and plunged between the faerie woman’s shoulders. She fell to the ground with a shriek, her body spasming.

“Good job, Emma,” said Helen in a hard voice. “Come on, all of you—”

She broke off with a cry as three Endarkened surged from a side street. They wore the red gear that had appeared so often in Emma’s nightmares, dyed even redder by the light from the demon towers.

The children were as silent as ghosts. Helen raised her crossbow and shot a bolt. It struck one of the Endarkened in the shoulder, and he spun away, staggering but not falling. She fumbled to reload the bow; Julian struggled to hold Tavvy while reaching for the blade at his side. Emma put her hand on Cortana—

A spinning circle of light hurtled through the air and buried itself in the throat of the first Endarkened, blood spattering the wall behind him. He clawed at his throat, once, and fell. Two more circles flew, one after the other, and sliced into the chests of the other Dark Nephilim. They crumpled silently, more blood spreading in a pool along the cobblestones.

Emma whirled and looked up. Someone stood at the top of the stairs: a young Shadowhunter with dark hair, a gleaming
chakhram
still in his right hand. Several others were hooked to his weapons belt. In the red light of the demon towers he seemed to glow—a tall, thin figure in dark gear against the darker black of night, the Accords Hall rising like a pale moon behind him.

“Brother Zachariah?”
said Helen in amazement.

“What’s going on?” Magnus asked hoarsely. He was no longer able to sit up, and was lying, half-propped on his elbows, on the floor of the cell. Luke was standing with his face pressed
to the arrow-slit window. His shoulders were tense, and he’d barely moved since the first screams and shouting had begun.

“Light,” Luke said, finally. “There’s some kind of light pouring out of the keep—it’s burning the mist away. I can see the plateau down below, and some of the Endarkened running around. I just don’t know what’s caused it.”

Magnus laughed under his breath, and tasted metal in his mouth. “Come on,” he said. “Who do you think?”

Luke looked at him. “The Clave?”

“The
Clave
?” Magnus said. “I hate to break it to you, but they don’t care enough about us to come here.” He tipped his head back. He felt worse than he could remember ever feeling—well, maybe not ever. There had been that incident with the rats and the quicksand around the turn of the century. “Your daughter, though,” he said. “She does.”

Luke looked horrified. “Clary. No. She shouldn’t be here.”

“Isn’t she always where she isn’t supposed to be?” Magnus said in a reasonable voice. At least, he thought he sounded reasonable. It was hard to tell when he felt so dizzy. “And the rest of them. Her constant companions. My . . .”