Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

"I am better," Emma said. "I'm better than you. Because I'm not a murderer, Malcolm."

To Emma's shock, Malcolm recoiled--a true recoil of surprise, as if he hadn't imagined being called a murderer before. Emma lunged, Cortana outstretched. The sword drove into Malcolm's chest, splitting his blazer--and rammed to a stop, as if she'd stabbed it into a boulder.

She shrieked with pain as what felt like a bolt of electricity went up her arm. She heard Malcolm laugh, and a wave of energy shot from his outstretched fingers, slamming into her body. She was lifted and hurled backward, magic tearing through her like a bullet ripping a hole through a paper screen. She hit the uneven stone ground on her back, Cortana still gripped in her nerveless hand.

Red pain misted behind her eyelids. Through the fog, she saw Malcolm standing over her. "Oh, that was precious." He grinned. "That was amazing. That was the hand of God, Emma!" He yanked his blazer open, and Emma saw what Cortana had struck--the Black Volume, tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Cortana dropped from her hand, the metal hitting stone. Wincing, Emma shoved herself up onto her elbows, just as Malcolm bent down and seized the dropped candelabra. He looked at it and then down at her, his grin still slashed across his face.

"Thank you," he said. "These Hands of Glory would have been very hard to replace. Now, Blackthorn blood, that'll be easy."

"Stay away from the Blackthorns," Emma said, and was horrified to hear the weakness of her own voice. What had the Black Volume done to her? Her chest felt as if something heavy had been rolled onto it, and her arm burned and ached.

"You don't know anything," Malcolm snarled. "You don't know the monsters they are."

"Have you," Emma said in a near whisper, "have you always hated them? Julian and the rest?"

"Always," he said. "Even when it seemed like I loved them."

Emma's arm was still burning, an agony that felt as if her skin was being lanced down to the bone. Her Endurance rune felt as if it were on fire. She tried not to let it show on her face. "That's horrible. It's not their fault. You can't blame them for their ancestors' sins."

"Blood is blood," Malcolm said. "We are all what we were born to be. I was born to love Annabel and that was taken from me. Now I live only for revenge. Just as you have, Emma. How many times have you told me that all you want in life is to kill the one who killed your parents? What would you give up for it? Would you give up the Blackthorns? Would you give up your precious parabatai? The one you're in love with?" His eyes glittered as she shook her head in denial. "Please. I always saw the way you looked at each other. And then Julian told me that your rune had healed him from Rook's poison. No normal Shadowhunter's rune should have been able to do that."

"Not--proof of anything--" Emma gasped.

"Proof? You want proof? I saw you, the two of you. On the beach, sleeping in each other's arms. I stood over you and watched you and thought how easy it would be to kill you. But then I realized that that would be a mercy, wouldn't it? Killing the two of you while you were in each other's arms? There's a reason you can't fall in love with your parabatai, Emma. And when you find out what it is, you will feel the cruelty of the Shadowhunters, just as I have."

"You're a liar," she said in her weakest voice, her words trailing off into a whisper. The pain in her arm had gone. She thought of people who bled nearly to death, how they talked about the fact that in the last moments, all the pain vanished.

Smiling, Malcolm knelt down beside her. He patted her left hand; her fingers twitched. "Let me tell you a truth before you die, Emma," he said. "It is a secret about the Nephilim. They hate love, human love, because they were born of angels. And while God charged his angels to take care of humans, the angels were made first, and they have always hated God's second creation. That is why Lucifer fell. He was an angel who would not bow to mankind, God's favored child. Love is the weakness of human beings, and the angels despise them for it, and the Clave despises it too, and therefore they punish it. Do you know what happens to parabatai who fall in love? Do you know why it's forbidden?"

She shook her head.

His mouth quirked into a smile. There was something about that smile, so faint and yet so full of bone-deep hatred, that chilled her the way none of his grinning had. "Then you have no idea what your death will spare your beloved Julian," he said. "So think about that as the life leaves your body. In a way, your death is a mercy." He raised his hand, violet fire beginning to crackle between his fingers.

He hurled his magic at her. And Emma flung her arm up, the arm that Julian had carved the Endurance rune on, the arm that had been burning and aching and screaming at her to use it since she'd struck the Black Volume.

Fire slammed into her arm. She felt it like a hard blow, but nothing more. The Endurance rune was pulsing through her body with its power, and alongside that power rose her own rage.

Rage at knowing Malcolm had killed her parents, rage for the wasted years she'd searched for their killer when he'd been right in front of her. Rage for every time he'd smiled at Julian or picked up Tavvy when his heart was full of hate. Rage at one more thing that had been taken from the Blackthorns.

She seized Cortana and wrenched herself to her knees, her hair flying as she drove the sword into Malcolm's gut.

This time there was no Black Volume to block her thrust. She felt the blade go in, felt it tear through skin and rip past bone. Saw the tip of it burst out through his back, his white jacket soaked through with red blood.

She sprang to her feet, yanking the sword free. He made a choking noise. Blood was spilling onto the ground, running across the stone, spattering the Hands of Glory.

"This is for my parents," she said, and slammed his body as hard as she could against the glass wall.

She felt his ribs snap as the glass behind him fissured. Water began to pour through the cracks. She felt it splatter against her face, salty as tears.

"I'll tell you about the parabatai curse," he gasped. "The Clave will never let you know it--it's forbidden. Kill me and you'll never learn--"

With her left hand, Emma yanked down the lever.

She threw herself behind the glass door as it swung open, and the current exploded through. It moved like a living thing--like a hand, shaped out of water, formed by the sea. It surrounded Malcolm, and for a frozen moment Emma saw him there clearly, struggling with feeble motions, within a whirlpool of water, water that spilled across the floor, water that gripped him, encircling him like an unbreakable net.

It lifted Malcolm off his feet. He gave a cry of terror and the ocean took him, the current rushing back out, carrying him with it. The glass door slammed shut.

The silence the water left behind was deafening. Exhausted, Emma slumped against the glass of the porthole door. Through it she could see the ocean, the color of the night sky. Malcolm's body was a pale white star in the darkness, drifting among the weeds, and then a dark, spiky talon curled upward, through the ripples, and caught hold of Malcolm by the ankle. With a quick jerk, his body was yanked down and out of view.

There was a bright flicker. Emma turned to see that the violet wall of light in the corridor behind her had vanished--spells disappeared when the warlocks who cast them died.

"Emma!" There were pounding footsteps in the corridor. Out of the shadows, Julian appeared. She saw his stricken expression as he caught her to him, his hands knotting in her soaked, bloodstained gear. "Emma, God, I couldn't get to you through the wall, I knew you were there but I couldn't save you--"

"You saved me," she said hoarsely, wanting to show him the Endurance rune on her arm, but she was pressed too tightly against him to move. "You did. You don't know it, but you did."

And then she heard their voices. The others, coming toward them down the corridor. Mark. Cristina. Diego. Diana.

"Tavvy," she whispered. "Is he--"

"He's fine. He's outside with Ty and Livvy and Dru." He kissed her temple. "Emma." His lips brushed hers. She felt a shock of love and pain

go through her.

"Let me go," she whispered. "You have to let me go, they can't see us like this. Julian, let me go."

His head came up, his eyes full of agony, and he moved away. She saw what it cost him, saw the tremor in his hands as he lowered them to his sides. Felt the space between them like the space of a wound torn into flesh.

She dragged her gaze from his and looked down at the ground. The floor was awash with seawater and blood, ankle-deep. Somewhere Malcolm's candelabra floated beneath the surface.

Emma was glad. The salt would dissolve Malcolm's gruesome monument to murder, dissolve it and pick it clean, and it would be white bones, settling as Malcolm's body settled to the floor of the ocean. And for the first time in a long time, Emma felt grateful to the sea.

The parabatai curse. The Clave will never let you know it--it's forbidden--

Malcolm's words rang in Emma's ears as she made her way back out into the night, following the others down the damp corridors of the convergence. Julian and Emma walked deliberately apart, keeping distance between them. Exhaustion and pain were slowing Emma down. Cortana was back in its sheath. She could feel the sword humming with energy; she wondered if it had absorbed magic from Malcolm.

But then, she didn't want to think about Malcolm, the red tendrils of his blood unfurling through the dark water like banners.

She didn't want to think about the things he'd said.

Emma was the last to step out of the cave, into the darkness of the outside world. Ty, Livvy, and Dru were sitting on the ground with Tavvy--the little boy was cradled in Livvy's arms, seeming sleepy but awake. Kieran stood a distance away, a scowl on his face that relaxed only somewhat when Mark emerged from the convergence.

"How is Tavvy? Is everything all right?" Julian approached his siblings. Dru jumped up and hugged him tightly--then gasped and pointed.

A loud grinding noise cracked through the air. The gap in the hill was closing up behind them like a wound healing. Diana darted toward it, as if she could hold the pathway open, but the stone sealed shut; she snatched her hand back just in time to keep it from being crushed.

"You cannot stop it," said Kieran. "The opening and the path inside were made by Malcolm. This hill does not naturally hold within it tunnels and caves. Now that he is dead, his enchantments are failing. There may perhaps be another entrance into this space, at some other ley line convergence. But this door will not open again."

"How did you know he was dead?" Emma said.

"Lights going on in the city below," said Kieran. "The--I don't know what your mundane word is for it--"

"Blackout," said Mark. "The blackout's over. And Malcolm cast the spell that was responsible for the blackout, so--yeah."