Chapter 41
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“Jace,” she said. “Give me your stele.”
He pressed it, warm and alive-feeling, into her palm.
She turned the card over and traced over the runes
painted on its back—a twist here and a line there and
they meant something entirely different. When she
turned the card back over, the picture had subtly
changed: The fingers had released their grip on the
Cup’s stem, and the hand seemed almost to be
offering the Cup to her as if to say, Here, take it.
She slid the stele into her pocket. Then, though the
painted square was no bigger than her hand, she
reached into it as if through a wide gap. Her hand
wrapped around the base of the Cup—her fingers
closed on it—and as she drew her hand back, the
Cup gripped firmly in it, she thought she heard the
smallest of sighs before the card, now nk and
empty, turned to ash that sifted away between her
fingers to the carpeted floor.
19
ABBADON
CLARY WASN’T SURE WHAT SHE’D EXPECTED—
EXCLAMATIONS of delight, perhaps a smattering of
apuse. Instead there was silence, broken only
when Jace said, “Somehow, I thought it would be
bigger.”
ry looked at the Cup in her hand. It was the size,
perhaps, of an ordinary winess, only much heavier.
Power thrummed through it, like blood through living
veins. “It’s a perfectly nice size,” she said indignantly.
“Oh, it’s big enough,” he said patronizingly, “but
somehow I was expecting something … you know.”
He gestured with his hands, indicating something
roughly the size of a house cat.
“It’s the Mortal Cup, Jace, not the Mortal Toilet Bowl,”
said Isabelle. “Are we done now? Can we go?”
Dorothea had her head cocked to one side, her beady
eyes bright and interested. “But it’s damaged!” she
eximed. “How did that happen?”
“Damaged?” ry looked at the Cup in bewilderment.
It looked fine to her.
“Here,” said the witch, “let me show you,” and she
took a step toward ry, holding her long red-nailed
hands out for the Cup. ry, without knowing why,
shrank back. Suddenly Jace was between them, his
hand hovering near the sword at his waist.
“No offense,” he said calmly, “but nobody touches the
Mortal Cup except us.”
Dorothea looked at him for a moment, and that same
strange nkness returned to her eyes. “Now,” she
said, “let’s not be hasty. Valentine would be
displeased if anything were to happen to the Cup.”
With a soft snick, the sword at Jace’s waist came free.
The point hovered just below Dorothea’s chin. Jace’s
look was steady. “I don’t know what this is about,” he
said. “But we’re leaving.”
The old woman’s eyes gleamed. “Of course,
Shadowhunter,” she said, backing up to the curtained
wall. “Would you like to use the Portal?”
The point of Jace’s sword wavered as he stared in
momentary confusion. Then ry saw his jaw tighten.
“Don’t touch that—”
Dorothea chuckled, and quick as a sh she jerked
down the curtains hanging along the wall. They fell
with a sound of soft copse. The Portal behind them
was open.
ry heard Alec, behind her, suck in his breath.
“What is that?” ry had caught only a glimpse of
what was visible through the door—red roiling clouds
shot through with ck lightning, and a terrible dark,
rushing shape that hurtled toward them—when Jace
shouted for them to get down. He dropped to the floor,
yanking ry down with him. t on her stomach on
the carpet, she lifted her head in time to see the
rushing dark thing strike Madame Dorothea, who
screamed, thrusting her arms upward. Rather than
knocking her down, the dark thing wrapped her like a
shroud, its ckness seeming to seep into her like ink
sinking into paper. Her back humped monstrously, her
whole shape elongating as she rose and rose into the
air, her bulk stretching and re-forming. A sharp rattle
of objects striking the floor made ry look down:
They were Dorothea’s bracelets, twisted and broken.
Scattered among the jewels were what looked like
small white stones. It took ry a moment to realize
that they were teeth.
Beside her Jace whispered something. It sounded like
an exmation of disbelief. Next to him, Alec in a
choked voice said, “But you said there wasn’t much
demonic activity—you said the levels were low!”
“They were low,” Jace growled.
“Your version of low must be different from mine!” Alec
shouted, as the thing that had once been Dorothea
howled and twisted. It seemed to be spreading,
humped and knobbled and grotesquely misshapen—
ry tore her eyes away as Jace stood, pulling her
after him. Isabelle and Alec stumbled to their feet,
gripping their weapons. The hand holding Isabelle’s
whip was trembling slightly.
“Move!” Jace shoved ry toward the apartment
door. When she tried to look back over her shoulder,
she saw only a thickly swirling grayness, like storm
clouds, a dark shape at its center …
The four of them burst out into the foyer, Isabelle in
the lead. She raced toward the front door, tried it, and
turned with a stricken face. “It’s resistant. Must be a
spell—”
Jace swore and fumbled in his jacket. “Where the hell
is my stele?”
“I have it,” ry said, remembering. As she reached
for her pocket, a noise like thunder exploded through
the room. The floor heaved under her feet. She
stumbled and nearly fell, catching at the banister for
support. When she looked up, she saw a gaping new
hole in the wall separating the foyer from Dorothea’s
apartment, lined all around its ragged edges with
wood and ster rubble, through which something
was climbing—almost oozing—
“Alec!” It was Jace, shouting: Alec was standing in
front of the hole, white-faced and horrified-looking.
Swearing, Jace ran up and grabbed him, dragging
him back just as the oozing thing pulled itself free of
the wall and into the foyer.
ry heard her breath catch. The creature’s flesh
was livid and bruised-looking. Through the seeping
skin, bones protruded—not new white bones, but
bones that looked as if they had been in the earth a
thousand years, ck and cracked and filthy. Its
fingers were stripped and skeletal, its thin-fleshed
arms pocked with dripping ck sores through which
more yellowing bone was visible. Its face was a skull,
its nose and eyes caved-in holes. Its taloned fingers
brushed the floor. Tangled around its wrists and
shoulders were bright swatches of cloth: all that
remained of Madame Dorothea’s silk scarves and
turban. It was at least nine feet tall.
It looked down at the four teenagers with empty eye
sockets. “Give me,” it said, in a voice like the wind
blowing trash across empty pavement, “the Mortal
Cup. Give it to me, and I will let you live.”
Panicked, ry stared at the others. Isabelle looked
as if the sight of the thing had hit her like a punch to
the stomach. Alec was motionless. It was Jace, as
always, who spoke. “What are you?” he asked, voice
steady, though he looked more rattled than ry had
ever seen him.
The thing inclined its head. “I am Abbadon. I am the
Demon of the Abyss. Mine are the empty ces
between the worlds. Mine is the wind and the howling
darkness. I am as unlike those mewling things you
call demons as an eagle is unlike a fly. You cannot
hope to defeat me. Give me the Cup or die.”
Isabelle’s whip trembled. “It’s a Greater Demon,” she
said. “Jace, if we—”
“What about Dorothea?” ry’s voice came shrilly out
of her mouth before she could stop it. “What
happened to her?”
The demon’s empty eyes swung to regard her. “She
was a vessel only,” it said. “She opened the Portal
and I took possession of her. Her death was swift.” Its
gaze moved to the Cup in her hand. “Yours will not
be.”
It began to move toward her. Jace blocked its way, the
glittering sword in one hand, a seraph de
appearing in the other. Alec was watching him, his
expression sick with horror.
“By the Angel,” Jace said, looking the demon up and
down. “I knew Greater Demons were meant to be
ugly, but no one ever warned me about the smell.”
Abbadon opened its mouth and hissed. Inside its
mouth were two rows of jagged ss-sharp teeth.
“I’m not so sure about this wind and howling darkness
business,” Jace went on, “smells more likendfill to
me. You sure you’re not from Staten Ind?”
The demon leaped at him. Jace whipped his des
up and outward with an almost frightening speed; both
sank into the fleshiest part of the demon, its abdomen.
It howled and struck at him, knocking him aside the
way a cat might bat aside a kitten. Jace rolled and got
to his feet, but ry could see from the way he was
holding his arm that he’d been hurt.
That was enough for Isabelle. Darting forward, she
lashed out at the demon with her whip. It struck the
demon’s gray hide, and a red weal appeared, welling
blood. Abbadon ignored her, moving toward Jace.
With his uninjured hand Jace drew out a second
seraph de. He whispered to it and it sprang free,
bright and gleaming. He raised it as the demon
loomed up before him; he looked impossibly small in
front of it, a child dwarfed by a monster. And he was
grinning, even as the demon reached for him.
Isabelle, screaming,shed at it, sending blood in a
thick spray across the floor—
The demon struck, its razored handshing down at
Jace. Jace staggered back, but he was unharmed.
Something had thrown itself between him and the
demon, a slim ck shadow with a gleaming de in
its hand. Alec. The demon shrieked—Alec’s
featherstaff had pierced its skin. With a snarl it struck
again, bone-talons catching Alec a vicious blow that
lifted him off his feet and hurled him against the far
wall. He struck with a sickening crunch and slid to the
floor.
Isabelle screamed her brother’s name. He didn’t
move. Lowering the whip, she started to run to him.
The demon, turning, caught her a backhanded blow
that sent her spinning to the ground. Coughing blood,
Isabelle started to get to her feet; Abbadon knocked
her down again, and this time shey still.
The demon moved toward ry.
Jace stood frozen, staring at Alec’s crumpled body
like someone caught in a dream. ry screamed as
Abbadon neared her. She began to back up the stairs,
stumbling on the broken steps. The stele burned
against her skin. If only she had a weapon, anything—
Isabelle had wed her way into a sitting position.
Pushing her bloody hair back, she screamed at Jace.
ry heard her own name in Isabelle’s screams and
saw Jace, blinking as if pped awake, spin toward
her. He began to run. The demon was close enough
now that ry could see the ck sores on its skin,
could see that there were things crawling inside them.
It reached for her—
But Jace was there, knocking Abbadon’s hand aside.
He flung the seraph de at the demon; it stuck in the
creature’s chest, next to the two des already there.
The demon snarled as if the des were no more
than an annoyance.
“Shadowhunter,” it snarled. “I shall take pleasure in
killing you, in hearing your bones crunch as your
friend’s did—”
Springing onto the banister, Jace flung himself at
Abbadon. The force of the jump knocked the demon
backward; it staggered, Jace clinging to its back. He
seized a seraph de out of its chest, sending up a
spray of ichor, and brought the de down, again and
again, into the demon’s back, its shoulders running
with ck fluid.
Snarling, Abbadon backed toward the wall. Jace had
to drop or be crushed. He fell to the ground,nded
lightly, and raised the de again. But Abbadon was
too swift for him; its handshed out, knocking Jace
into the stairs. Jace went down, a circle of talons at
his throat.
“Tell them to give me the Cup,” Abbadon snarled,
talons hovering just above Jace’s skin. “Tell them to
give it to me and I will let them live.”
Jace swallowed. “ry—”
But ry would never know what he would have said,
because at that moment the front door flew open. For
a moment all she saw was brightness. Then, blinking
away the fiery afterimage, she saw Simon standing in
the open doorway. Simon. She had forgotten he was
outside, had almost forgotten he existed.
He saw her, crouched on the stairs, and his gaze
moved past her and over Abbadon and Jace. He
reached back over his shoulder. He was holding
Alec’s bow, she realized, and the quiver was strapped
across his back. He drew an arrow from it, fitted it to
the string, and lifted the bow expertly, as if he’d done
the same thing a hundred times before.
The arrow sprang free. It made a hot buzzing sound,
like a huge bumblebee, as it shot over Abbadon’s
head, plunged toward the roof—
And shattered the skylight. Dirty ck ss fell like
rain, and through the broken pane streamed sunlight,
quantities of sunlight, great golden bars of it stabbing
downward and flooding the foyer with light.
Abbadon screamed and staggered back, shielding its
misshapen head with its hands. Jace put a hand to his
unharmed throat, staring in disbelief as the demon
crumpled, howling, to the floor. ry half-expected it
to burst into mes, but instead it began to fold in on
itself. Its legs copsed toward its torso, its skull
crumpling like burning paper, and within the span of a
minute it had vanished entirely, leaving only scorch
marks behind.
* * *
Simon lowered the bow. He was blinking behind his
sses, his mouth slightly open. He looked as
astonished as ry felt.
Jacey on the stairs where the demon had thrown
him. He was struggling to sit up as ry slid down the
steps and fell to her knees beside him. “Jace—”
“I’m all right.” He sat up, wiping blood from his mouth.
He coughed and spit red. “Alec—”
“Your stele,” she interrupted, reaching for her pocket.
“Do you need it to fix yourself?”
He looked at her. The sunlight pouring through the
shattered skylight lit his face. He looked as if he were
holding himself back from something with a terrible
effort. “I’m all right,” he said again, and pushed her
aside, none too gently. He got to his feet, staggered,
and nearly fell—the first ungraceful thing she’d ever
seen him do. “Alec?”
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