Chapter 11
Font Size:
AA+A++
Jace raised his hand and ran it along the banister. It
came away wet, streaked with something that looked
ckish red in the dim light. “Blood.”
“Maybe it’s mine.” Her voice sounded tinny. “From the
other night.”
“It’d be dry by now if it were,” Jace said. “Come on.”
He headed up the stairs, ry close behind him. The
landing was dark, and she fumbled her keys three
times before she managed to slide the right one into
the lock. Jace leaned over her, watching impatiently.
“Don’t breathe down my neck,” she hissed; her hand
was shaking. Finally the tumblers caught, the lock
clicking open.
Jace pulled her back. “I’ll go in first.”
She hesitated, then stepped aside to let him pass. Her
palms were sticky, and not from the heat. In fact, it
was cool inside the apartment, almost cold—chilly air
seeped from the entryway, stinging her skin. She felt
goose bumps rising as she followed Jace down the
short hallway and into the living room.
It was empty. Startlingly, entirely empty, the way it had
been when they’d first moved in—the walls and floor
bare, the furniture gone, even the curtains torn down
from the windows. Only faint lighter squares of paint
on the wall showed where her mother’s paintings had
hung. As if in a dream, ry turned and walked
toward the kitchen, Jace pacing her, his light eyes
narrowed.
The kitchen was just as empty, even the refrigerator
gone, the chairs, the table. The kitchen cabs stood
open, their bare shelves reminding her of a nursery
rhyme. She cleared her throat. “What would demons,”
she said, “want with our microwave?”
Jace shook his head, mouth curling under at the
corners. “I don’t know, but I’m not sensing any
demonic presence right now. I’d say they’re long
gone.”
She nced around one more time. Someone had
cleaned up the spilled Tabasco sauce, she noticed
distantly.
“Are you satisfied?” Jace asked. “There’s nothing
here.”
She shook her head. “I want to see my room.”
He looked as if he were about to say something, then
thought better of it. “If that’s what it takes,” he said,
sliding the seraph de into his pocket.
The light in the hallway was out, but ry didn’t need
much light to navigate inside her own house. With
Jace just behind her, she found the door to her
bedroom and reached for the knob. It was cold in her
hand—so cold it nearly hurt, like touching an icicle
with your bare skin. She saw Jace look at her quickly,
but she was already turning the knob, or trying to. It
moved slowly, almost stickily, as if the other side of it
were embedded in something glutinous and syrupy—
The door blew outward, knocking her off her feet. She
skidded across the hallway floor and mmed into the
wall, rolling onto her stomach. There was a dull
roaring in her ears as she pulled herself up to her
knees.
Jace, t against the wall, was fumbling in his pocket,
his face a mask of surprise. Looming over him like a
giant in a fairy tale was an enormous man, big around
as an oak tree, a broad-ded ax clutched in one
gigantic dead-white hand. Tattered filthy rags hung off
his grimy skin, and his hair was a single matted
tangle, thick with dirt. He stank of poisonous sweat
and rotting flesh. ry was d she couldn’t see his
face—the back of him was bad enough.
Jace had the seraph de in his hand. He raised it,
calling out: “Sansanvi!”
A de shot from the tube. ry thought of old
movies where bays were hidden inside walking
sticks, released at the flick of a switch. But she’d
never seen a de like this before: clear as ss,
with a glowing hilt, wickedly sharp and nearly as long
as Jace’s forearm. He struck out, shing at the
gigantic man, who staggered back with a bellow.
Jace whirled around, racing toward her. He caught her
arm, hauling her to her feet, pushing her ahead of him
down the hall. She could hear the thing behind them,
following; its footsteps sounded like lead weights
being dropped onto the floor, but it wasing on
fast.
They sped through the entryway and out onto the
landing, Jace whipping around to m the front door
shut. She heard the click of the automatic lock and
caught her breath. The door shook on its hinges as a
tremendous blow struck against it from inside the
apartment. ry backed away to the stairs. Jace
nced at her. His eyes were glowing with manic
excitement. “Get downstairs! Get out of the—”
Another blow came, and this time the hinges gave
way and the door flew outward. It would have knocked
Jace over if he hadn’t moved so fast that ry barely
saw it; suddenly he was on the top stair, the de
burning in his hand like a fallen star. She saw Jace
look at her and shout something, but she couldn’t
hear him over the roar of the gigantic creature that
burst from the shattered door, making straight for him.
She ttened herself against the wall as it passed in a
wave of heat and stink—and then its ax was flying,
whipping through the air, slicing toward Jace’s head.
He ducked, and it thunked heavily into the banister,
biting deep.
Jaceughed. Theugh seemed to enrage the
creature; abandoning the ax, he lurched at Jace with
his enormous fists raised. Jace brought the seraph
de around in an arcing sweep, burying it to the hilt
in the giant’s shoulder. For a moment the giant stood
swaying. Then he lurched forward, his hands
outstretched and grasping. Jace stepped aside
hastily, but not hastily enough: The enormous fists
caught hold of him as the giant staggered and fell,
dragging Jace in his wake. Jace cried out once; there
was a series of heavy and cracking thumps, and then
silence.
ry scrambled to her feet and raced downstairs.
Jacey sprawled at the foot of the steps, his arm
bent beneath him at an unnatural angle. Across his
legsy the giant, the hilt of Jace’s de protruding
from his shoulder. He was not quite dead, but flopping
weakly, a bloody froth leaking from his mouth. ry
could see his face now—it was dead-white and
papery,tticed with a ckwork of horrible scars
that almost obliterated his features. His eye sockets
were red suppurating pits. Fighting the urge to gag,
ry stumbled down thest few stairs, stepped over
the twitching giant, and knelt down next to Jace.
He was so still. Sheid a hand on his shoulder, felt
his shirt sticky with blood—his own or the giant’s, she
couldn’t tell. “Jace?”
His eyes opened. “Is it dead?”
“Almost,” ry said grimly.
“Hell.” He winced. “My legs—”
“Hold still.” Crawling around to his head, ry slipped
her hands under his arms and pulled. He grunted with
pain as his legs slipped out from under the creature’s
spasming carcass. ry let go, and he struggled to
his feet, his left arm across his chest. She stood up.
“Is your arm all right?”
“No. Broken,” he said. “Can you reach into my
pocket?”
She hesitated, nodded. “Which one?”
“Inside jacket, right side. Take out one of the seraph
des and hand it to me.” He held still as she
nervously slipped her fingers into his pocket. She was
standing so close that she could smell the scent of
him, sweat and soap and blood. His breath tickled the
back of her neck. Her fingers closed on a tube and
she drew it out, not looking at him.
“Thanks,” he said. His fingers traced it briefly before
he named it: “Sanvi.” Like its predecessor, the tube
grew into a wicked-looking dagger, its glow
illuminating his face. “Don’t watch,” he said, going to
stand over the scarred thing’s body. He raised the
de over his head and brought it down. Blood
fountained from the giant’s throat, sttering Jace’s
boots.
She half-expected the giant to vanish, folding in on
itself the way the kid in Pandemonium had. But it
didn’t. The air was full of the smell of blood: heavy
and metallic. Jace made a sound low in his throat. He
was white-faced, whether with pain or disgust she
couldn’t tell. “I told you not to watch,” he said.
“I thought it would disappear,” she said. “Back to its
own dimension—you said.”
“I said that’s what happens to demons when they die.”
Wincing, he shrugged his jacket off his shoulder,
baring the upper part of his left arm. “That wasn’t a
demon.” With his right hand he drew something out of
his belt. It was the smooth wand-shaped object he’d
used to carve those ovepping circles into ry’s
skin. Looking at it, she felt her forearm begin to burn.
Jace saw her staring and grinned the ghost of a grin.
“This,” he said, “is a stele.” He touched it to an inked
mark just below his shoulder, a curious shape almost
like a star. Two arms of the star jutted out from the
rest of the mark, unconnected. “And this,” he said, “is
what happens when Shadowhunters are wounded.”
? N?velDrama.Org - All rights reserved.
With the tip of the stele, he traced a line connecting
the two arms of the star. When he lowered his hand,
the mark was shining as if it had been etched with
phosphorescent ink. As ry watched, it sank into his
skin, like a weighted object sinking into water. It left
behind a ghostly reminder: a pale, thin scar, almost
invisible.
An image rose in ry’s mind. Her mother’s back, not
quite covered by her bathing suit top, the des of
her shoulders and curves of her spine dappled with
narrow, white marks. It was like something she had
seen in a dream—her mother’s back didn’t really look
like that, she knew. But the image nagged at her.
Jace let out a sigh, the tense look of pain leaving his
face. He moved the arm, slowly at first, then more
easily, lifting it up and down, clenching his fist. Clearly
it was no longer broken.
“That’s amazing,” ry said. “How did you—?”
“That was an iratze—a healing rune,” Jace said.
“Finishing the rune with the stele activates it.” He
shoved the slim wand into his belt and shrugged his
jacket back on. With the toe of his boot he prodded
the giant’s corpse. “We’re going to have to report this
to Hodge,” he said. “He’ll freak out,” he added, as if
the thought of Hodge’s rm gave him some
satisfaction. Jace, ry thought, was the sort of
person who liked it when things were happening, even
things that were bad.
“Why will he freak?” ry said. “And I get that that
thing isn’t a demon—that’s why the Sensor didn’t
register it, right?”
Jace nodded. “You see the scars all over its face?”
“Yes.”
“Those were made with a stele. Like this one.” He
tapped the wand in his belt. “You asked me what
happens when you carve Marks onto someone who
doesn’t have Shadowhunter blood. Just one Mark will
only burn you, but a lot of Marks, powerful ones?
Carved into the flesh of a totally ordinary human being
with no trace of Shadowhunter ancestry? You get
this.” He jerked his chin at the corpse. “The runes are
agonizingly painful. The Marked ones go insane—the
pain drives them out of their minds. They be
fierce, mindless killers. They don’t sleep or eat unless
you make them, and they die, usually quickly. Runes
have great power and can be used to do great good—
but they can be used for evil. The Forsaken are evil.”
ry stared at him in horror. “But why would anyone
do that to themselves?”
“Nobody would. It’s something that gets done to them.
By a warlock, maybe, some Downworlder gone bad.
The Forsaken are loyal to the one who Marked them,
and they’re fierce killers. They can obey simple
commands, too. It’s like having a—a ve army.” He
stepped over the dead Forsaken, and nced over
his shoulder at her. “I’m going back upstairs.”
“But there’s nothing there.”
“There might be more of them,” he said, almost as if
he were hoping there would be. “You should wait
here.” He started up the steps.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a shrill and
familiar voice. “There are more of them where the first
one came from.”
Jace, who was nearly at the top of the stairs, spun
and stared. So did ry, although she knew
immediately who had spoken. That gravelly ent
was unmistakable.
“Madame Dorothea?”
The old woman inclined her head regally. She stood in
the doorway of her apartment, dressed in what looked
like a tent made of raw purple silk. Gold chains
glittered on her wrists and roped her throat. Her long
badger-striped hair straggled from the bun pinned to
the top of her head.
Jace was still staring. “But …”
“More what?” ry said.
“More Forsaken,” replied Dorothea with a
cheerfulness that, ry felt, didn’t really fit the
circumstances. She nced around the entryway.
“You have made a mess, haven’t you? I’m sure you
weren’t nning on cleaning up either. Typical.”
“But you’re a mundane,” Jace said, finally finishing his
sentence.
“So observant,” said Dorothea, her eyes gleaming.
“The ve really broke the mold with you.”
The bewilderment on Jace’s face was fading,
reced by a dawning anger. “You know about the
ve?” he demanded. “You knew about them, and
you knew there were Forsaken in this house, and you
didn’t notify them? Just the existence of Forsaken is a
crime against the Covenant—”
“Neither ve nor Covenant have ever done anything
for me,” said Madame Dorothea, her eyes shing
angrily. “I owe them nothing.” For a moment her
gravelly New York ent vanished, reced with
something else, a thicker, deeper ent that ry
didn’t recognize.
“Jace, stop it,” ry said. She turned to Madame
Dorothea. “If you know about the ve and the
Forsaken,” she said, “then maybe you know what
happened to my mother?”
Dorothea shook her head, her earrings swinging.
There was something like pity on her face. “My advice
to you,” she said, “is to forget about your mother.
She’s gone.”
The floor under ry seemed to tilt. “You mean she’s
dead?”
Source:
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
by
Articles you may like
Ads by