Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

Something silver bloomed from Diana's hand. A sharp-pointed throwing star. It whipped toward Malcolm; one moment he was in its path, the next he was across the room. The throwing star hit the wall of the cave and tumbled to the ground, where it lay glimmering.

Malcolm made a hissing noise, like an angry cat. Sparks flew from his fingers. Diana was lifted up into the air and flung back against the wall, then to the floor, her arms clamping themselves to her sides. She rolled into a sitting position, but when she tried to stand, her knees crumpled under her. She thrashed at her invisible bonds.

"You won't be able to move," Malcolm said in a bored voice. "You're paralyzed. I could have killed you instantly, of course, but well, this is quite a trick I'm about to perform and every trick needs an audience." He smiled suddenly. "I suppose I shouldn't forget the audience I have. It's just that they aren't very lively."

Suddenly the cavern was alive with light. The thick shadows behind the stone table dissolved, and Emma could see that the cavern reached back and back--there were long rows of seats set up, like church pews, neat and orderly, and the seats were filled with people.

"Followers," Ty breathed. He had only seen them before out of the window of the Institute, Emma thought, and wondered what he thought of them up close. It was strange to know that Malcolm had led all these people, that he had had such power over them that they did anything for him--Malcolm, who they'd all thought of as a foolish figure, someone who tied his own shoelaces together.

The Followers sat very still, their eyes wide open, their hands in their laps, like rows of dolls. Emma recognized Belinda and some of the others who had come to retrieve Sterling. Their heads were tilted to the side--a gesture of interest, Emma thought, until she realized how awkward the angle was and knew that it wasn't fascination that kept them so still. It was that their necks were broken.

Someone pressed forward and put a hand on Emma's shoulder. It was Cristina. "Emma," she whispered. "We must attack. Diego thinks we can surround Malcolm, that enough of us could bring him down--"

Emma stood paralyzed. She wanted to run forward, to attack Malcolm. But she could feel something in the back of her mind, an insistent voice, telling her to wait. It wasn't fear. It wasn't her own hesitation. If she hadn't known better, if she didn't think it would mean she was going crazy, she would have said it was Julian's voice. Emma, wait. Please wait.

"Wait," she whispered.

"Wait?" Cristina's anxiety was palpable. "Emma, we need to--"

Malcolm strode into the circle. He was standing close to Tavvy's feet, which looked bare and vulnerable in the light. He reached out to the draped object standing at the foot of the table and twitched the cloth off it.

It was the candelabra Emma remembered, the brass one that had been bare of candles. It had become a far more macabre thing. Onto each spiked point was jammed a severed hand, wrist down. Rigid, dead fingers reached for the ceiling.

One hand bore a ring with a flashy pink stone. Sterling's hand.

"Do you know what this is?" Malcolm asked, a gloating note in his voice. "Do you, Diana?"

Diana looked up. Her face was swollen and bloody. She spoke in a croaking whisper. "Hands of Glory."

Malcolm looked pleased. "It took me quite a long time to figure out that this was what I needed," he said. "This is why my attempt with the Carstairs family didn't work. The spell called for mandrake, and it was a long time before I realized that the word 'mandrake' was meant to stand in for main de gloire--a Hand of Glory." He smiled with keen pleasure. "The darkest of dark magic."

"Because of the way they're made," said Diana. "They're murderers' hands. The hands of killers. Only a hand that has taken a human life can become a Hand of Glory."

"Oh." The small gasp in the darkness was Ty, his eyes wide and startled. "I get it now. I get it."

Emma turned toward him. They were pressed against opposite walls of the tunnel, looking across at each other. Livvy was next to Ty, Diego on his other side. Dru and Cristina were beside Emma.

"Diego said it was weird," Ty continued in a low whisper, "that the murder victims were such a mix--humans, faeries. It's because the victims never mattered. Malcolm didn't want victims, he wanted murderers. It was why the Followers needed Sterling back--and why Belinda cut off his hands and left with them. And why Malcolm let her. He needed the murderer's hands, the hands they'd killed with--so he could do this. Belinda took both hands because she didn't know which one he'd killed with--and she couldn't ask."

But why? Emma wanted to demand. Why the burning, the drowning, the markings, the rituals? Why? But she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, a scream of rage would come out.

"This is wrong, Malcolm." Diana's voice was choked but steady. "I've spent days talking to those who've known you for years. Catarina Loss. Magnus Bane. They said you were a good, likable man. That can't be all lies."

"Lies?" Malcolm's voice rose. "You want to talk about lies? They lied to me about Annabel. They said she had become an Iron Sister. All of them told me the same lie: Magnus, Catarina, Tessa. It was from a faerie I found out that they had lied. From a faerie I learned what had really happened to Annabel. By then she was long dead. The Blackthorns, murdering their own!"

"That was generations back. The boy you have chained to that table never knew Annabel. These are not the people who hurt you, Malcolm. These are not the people who took Annabel from you. They're innocent."

"No one is innocent!" Malcolm shouted. "She was a Blackthorn! Annabel Blackthorn! She loved me, and they took her--they took her and walled her up and she died there in the tomb. They did that to me and I do not forgive! I will never forgive!" He took a deep breath, clearly forcing himself to be calm. "Thirteen Hands of Glory," he said. "And Blackthorn blood. That will bring her back, and she will be with me again."

He turned away from Diana, toward Tavvy, and picked up the knife that lay on the table by Tavvy's head.

The tension in the tunnel was sudden and silent and explosive. Hands reached for weapons. Grips tightened on hilts. Diego raised his ax. Five pairs of eyes turned to Emma.

Diana struggled even more desperately as Malcolm raised the knife. Light sparked off it, strangely beautiful, illuminating the lines of the poem on the wall.

But we loved with a love that was more than love--

Julian, Emma thought. Julian, I've got no choice. We can't wait for you.

"Go," she whispered, and they exploded out of the tunnel: Ty and Livvy and Emma and Cristina, all of them, Diego rushing straight for Malcolm.

For a split second Malcolm looked surprised. He dropped the knife--it hit the floor and, made of soft copper, the blade bent. Malcolm stared down at it, then back up at the Blackthorns and their friends--and began laughing. He stood, laughing, in the center of the protection circle, as they rushed at him--and one by one were slammed backward by the force of the invisible protective wall. Diego swung his battle-ax. The ax glanced off the air as if it had struck steel and recoiled backward.

"Surround Malcolm!" Emma shouted. "He can't stay in the protected area forever! Circle him!"

They spread out, surrounding the protective runes on the floor. Emma found herself across from Ty, knife in hand; he was looking at Malcolm with a peculiar expression on his face: half incomprehension, half hatred.

Ty understood acting, pretending. But betrayal on the scale Malcolm had practiced it was something else again. Emma couldn't understand it herself and she'd had a clear view of just what kind of betrayal people were capable of when she'd watched the Clave exile Helen and abandon Mark.

"You'll have to come out of there eventually," Emma said. "And when you do--"

Malcolm bent and seized his damaged knife from the floor. When he straightened up, Emma saw that his eyes were the color of bruises. "When I do, you'll be dead," he spat, and whirled to reach out a hand toward the rows of the d

ead. "Rise!" he called. "My Followers, rise!"

There was a series of groans and creaks. Throughout the cave the dead Followers began to stand.

They moved neither unusually slowly nor unusually quickly, but they moved with steady determination. They did not seem to be armed, but as they neared the main chamber, Belinda--her eyes blank and empty, her head cocked to the side--flung herself at Cristina. Her fingers were bent into claws, and before Cristina could react, Belinda had torn bloody gashes down the side of her face.

With a cry of disgust, Cristina shoved the corpse away from her, slashing her butterfly knife across Belinda's throat.

It made no difference. Belinda stood up again, the wound in her throat bloodless and flapping, and swung toward Cristina. Before she could take more than a single step there was a flash of silver. Diego's ax sang out, whipping forward, severing Belinda's head from her neck. The headless body sank to the ground. The wound still wasn't bleeding; it looked cauterized.

"Behind you!" Cristina shouted.

Diego whirled. Behind him two other Followers were reaching to grab and claw at them. He spun in a swift arc, his ax taking both their heads with it.

There was a noise behind Emma. Instantly she calculated where the Follower behind her was; she leaped, spun, kicked, and knocked him back. It was the clarinetist with the curly hair. She stabbed downward with Cortana, severing his head from his body.

She thought of him winking at her in the Midnight Theater. I never knew his name, she thought, and then whirled back around.

The room was in chaos. Just as Malcolm must have wanted, the Shadowhunters had abandoned the perimeter of the protection circle to ward off the Followers.

Malcolm was ignoring everything that was going on around him. He had seized up the candelabra with the Hands of Glory on it and carried it to the head of the table. He set it down beside Tavvy, who slept on, a rosy flush on his cheeks.

Dru had run to Diana and was struggling to help her get to her feet. As a Follower approached them, Dru whipped around and ran the woman through with her blade. Emma saw her swallow as the body crumpled and realized it was the first time Dru had killed someone in battle--even if that someone was already dead.

Livvy was fighting gloriously, feinting and parrying with her saber, driving Followers toward Ty. He was carrying a seraph blade, one that blazed brightly in his grip. As a blond Follower lurched into him, he drove the blade into the back of the dead man's neck.