Lord of Shadows
Page 54

“I’m fine,” he protested. Ty was halfway down the steps; he drew his hand back and flung the dagger he was still holding. It sank into the wide, flat flounder-eye of a rearing fish-headed demon, which blinked into oblivion.
He turned back to look at Kit and his sister. “Livvy,” he said. “Let him—”
The door slammed open again, and to Kit’s surprise, it was Arthur Blackthorn, still in jeans with his bathrobe over them, but he had jammed his feet into shoes at least. An ancient, tarnished sword dangled from his hand.
Diana, locked in combat with a lizard-demon, looked up in horror. “Arthur, no!”
Arthur was panting. There was terror on his face, but something else as well, a sort of fierceness. He hurtled down the steps, flinging himself at the first demon he saw—a fringed, reddish thing with a single massive mouth and a long stinger. As the stinger came down, he sliced it in half, sending the creature bobbing and shrieking through the air like a deflating balloon.
Livvy released Kit. She was staring at her uncle in amazement. Kit turned to descend the stairs, just as the demons began to draw back—retreating, but why? The Centurions had started to cheer as the space before the Institute cleared, but to Kit, it seemed too soon. The demons hadn’t been losing. They hadn’t been winning, but it was too early for a retreat.
“Something’s going on,” he said, looking between Livvy and Ty, both of whom were poised on the steps with him. “Something’s wrong—”
Laughter pierced the air. The demons froze in a semicircle, blocking the way to the road, but not moving forward. In the middle of their semicircle walked a figure out of a horror movie.
It had once been a man; he still had the blurred shape of one, but his skin was fish-belly gray-green, and he limped because most of one arm and his side had been chewed away. His shirt hung in rags, showing where the white bones of his ribs had been picked clean, the drained gray skin around his terrible wounds.
His hair was mostly gone, though what remained of it was bone-white. His face was drowned and bloated, his eyes gone milky, bleached by seawater. He smiled with a mouth that was mostly lipless. In his hand he clutched a black sack, its fabric stained wet and dark.
“Shadowhunters,” he said. “How I’ve missed you.”
It was Malcolm Fade.
* * *
In the silence that followed the unmasking of the Unseelie champion, Julian could hear his own heart slamming against his chest. He felt the burning of his parabatai rune, a clear searing pain. Emma’s pain.
He wanted to go to her. She stood like a knight in a painting, her head bowed and her sword at her side, blood splattering her gear, her hair half-torn out of its bindings, floating down around her. He saw her lips move: He knew what she was saying, even if he couldn’t hear her. It cut through him with memories of the Emma he had known what seemed like a thousand years ago, a little girl reaching out her arms for her father to lift her up.
Daddy?
The King laughed. “Cut his throat, girl,” he said. “Or can’t you kill your own father?”
“Father?” Cristina echoed. “What does he mean?”
“That’s John Carstairs,” said Mark. “Emma’s father.”
“But how—”
“I don’t know,” Julian said. “It’s impossible.”
Emma dropped to her knees, sliding Cortana back into its scabbard. In the moonlight she and her father were shadows as she bent over him.
The King began to laugh, his eerie face split by a wide grin, and the Court laughed with him, howls of mirth exploding around them.
No one was paying attention to the three Shadowhunters in the center of the clearing.
Julian wanted to go to Emma. He wanted it desperately. But he was someone who was used to not doing, or getting, what he wanted. He spun toward Mark and Cristina. “Go to her,” he said to Cristina. Her dark eyes widened. “Go to him,” he said to Mark, and Mark nodded and slipped into the crowd, a shadow into shadows.
Cristina disappeared after him, plunging the opposite way into the crowd. The courtiers were still laughing, the sound of their ridicule rising up, painting the night. Human emotions are so foolish to them, and human minds and hearts so fragile.
Julian slid a dagger from his belt. Not a seraph blade, or even a runed one, but it was cold iron, and fit comfortably into his palm. The princes among the knights were looking toward the pavilion, laughing. It took Julian only a few steps to reach them, to throw his arms around Prince Erec from the back and press the edge of his dagger to his throat.
* * *
Kit’s first, distracted thought was, So that’s why they haven’t been able to find Malcolm’s body.
His second was a memory. The High Warlock had been a fixture of the Shadow Market, and friendly with Kit’s father—though he had only learned later that they had been more than acquaintances, but partners in crime. Still, the lively, purple-eyed warlock had been popular at the Market, and had sometimes produced interesting candy for Kit that he claimed came from faraway places he had traveled to.
It had been strange for Kit to realize that the friendly warlock he knew was a murderer. It was even stranger now to see what Malcolm had become. The warlock moved forward, stripped of all his previous grace, lurching over the grass. The Shadowhunters snapped into formation, like a Roman legion: They faced Malcolm in a line, shoulder to shoulder, their weapons out. Only Arthur stood alone. He stared at Malcolm, his mouth working.
The grass in front of them all was seared black and gray by demon blood.
Malcolm smirked, as well as he could with his ruined face. “Arthur,” he said, gazing at the shrinking man in his bloodstained bathrobe. “You must miss me. You don’t look as if you’re doing well without your medication. Not at all.”
Arthur flattened himself against the Institute wall. There was a murmur among the Centurions, cut off when Diana spoke. “Malcolm,” she said. She sounded remarkably calm, considering. “What do you want?”
He came to a stop, close to the Centurions, though not close enough for them to strike. “Have you been enjoying looking for my body, Centurions? It’s been a real treat to watch you. Splashing around in your invisible boat, no idea what you’re looking for or how to find it. But then you never have been much use without warlocks, have you?”
“Silence, filth,” said Zara, vibrating like an electrical wire. “You—”
Divya elbowed her. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Let Diana talk.”
“Malcolm,” said Diana, in the same cold tone. “Things aren’t like they were before. We have the might of the Clave on our side. We know who you are, and we will find out where you are. You are a fool to have come here and shown your hand.”
“My hand,” he mused. “Where is my hand again? Oh, right. It’s inside this bag . . . .” He plunged his hand into the sack he’d been carrying. When he drew it out, he was carrying a severed human head.
There was a horrified silence.
“Jon!” Diego said hoarsely.
Gen Aldertree seemed about to collapse. “Oh God, poor Marisol. Oh—”
Zara was staring with openmouthed horror, though she made no move to go forward. Diego took a step, but Rayan caught his arm as Diana snapped, “Centurions! Remain in formation!”