Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices 2)

The Queen's lips curved. "I cannot tell you," she said. "I do not know what will happen myself. But if you do not look, you will never know either. And it is not my experience of humans or Nephilim that they can bear not knowing." She glanced down into the water. "Ah," she said. "He arrives at the convergence."

Julian was beside the plinth before he could stop himself, gazing down into the water. What he saw shocked him.

The water was like sheer glass, like the screen of a television onto which a scene was projected with an almost frightening clarity. Julian was looking at night in the Santa Monica Mountains, a sight familiar enough to send a dart of homesickness through him.

The moon rose over the ruins of the convergence. Boulders lay tumbled around a plain of dry grass that stretched to a sheer drop toward the ocean, blue-black in the distance. Wandering among the boulders was Arthur.

Julian couldn't remember the last time he had seen his uncle out of the Institute. Arthur had put on a rough jacket and boots, and in his hand was a witchlight, dimly glowing. He had never looked quite so much like a Shadowhunter, not even in the Hall of Accords.

"Malcolm!" Arthur called out. "Malcolm, I demand you come to me! Malcolm Fade! I am here, with Blackthorn blood!"

"But Malcolm's dead," Julian murmured, staring at the bowl. "He died."

"It is a weakness of your kind, to regard death as so final," said the Queen with glee, "especially when it comes to warlocks."

Fear tore through Julian like an arrow. He had been sure when they'd left the Institute that they were leaving his family safe. But if Malcolm was there--still hunting for Blackthorn blood--though, if Arthur was offering it, Malcolm must still not have acquired it--but then, Arthur could hardly be trusted--

"Hush," said the Queen, as if she could hear the clamor of his thoughts. "Watch."

"Malcolm!" Arthur cried, his voice echoing off the mountains.

"I am here. Though you are early." The voice belonged to a shadow--a twisted, misshapen shadow. Julian swallowed hard as Malcolm stepped out into the moonlight and what had been done to him, or what he had done to himself, was clearly revealed.

The water in the bowl blurred. Julian almost reached for the image before checking himself and jerking his hand back. "Where are they?" he said, in a harsh voice. "What are they doing?"

"Patience. There is a place they must go. Malcolm will take your uncle there." The Seelie Queen gloated. She thought she had Julian in the palm of her hand now, he thought, and hated her. She dipped her long fingers into the water, and Julian saw a brief swirl of images--the doors of the New York Institute, Jace and Clary asleep in a green field, Jem and Tessa in a dark, shadowy place--and then the images resolved again.

Arthur and Malcolm were inside a church, an old-fashioned one with stained-glass windows and carved pew-ends. Something covered in a black cloth lay on the altar. Something that moved ever so slightly, restlessly, like an animal waking from sleep.

Malcolm stood watching Arthur, with a smile playing on his ruined face. He looked like something dragged up from some watery Hell dimension. Cracks and runnels in his skin leaked seawater. His eyes were milky and opaque; half his white hair was gone, and his bald skin was patchy and scabbed. He wore a white suit, and the raw fissures in his skin disappeared incongruously under expensive collar and cuffs.

"For any blood ritual, willing blood is better than unwilling," said Arthur. He stood in his usual slumped posture, hands in the pockets of his jeans. "I'll give you mine willingly if you'll swear to leave my family alone."

Malcolm licked his lips; his tongue was bluish. "That's all you want? That promise?"

Arthur nodded.

"You don't want the Black Volume?" Malcolm said in a taunting voice, tapping the book tucked into the waistband of his trousers. "You don't want assurance I'll never harm a single Nephilim?"

"Your revenge only matters to me inasmuch as my family remains unharmed," said Arthur, and relief weakened Julian's knees. "The Blackthorn blood I give you should slake your thirst for it, warlock."

Malcolm smiled. His teeth were twisted and sharp, like a shark's. "Now, if I make this agreement, am I taking advantage of you, given that you are a madman?" he mused aloud. "Has your shaky mind mistaken the situation? Are you confused? Bewildered? Do you know who I am?" Arthur winced, and Julian felt a pang of sympathy for his uncle, and a flash of hate for Malcolm.

Kill him, he thought. Tell me you brought a seraph blade, Uncle, and run him through.

"Your uncle will not be armed," said the Queen. "Fade would have seen to that." She was watching with an almost avaricious delight. "The mad Nephilim and the mad warlock," she said. "It is like a storybook."

"You are Malcolm Fade, betrayer and murderer," said Arthur.

"Quite an ungrateful thing to say to someone who's been providing you with your cures all these years," Malcolm murmured.

"Cures? More like temporary lies. You did what you had to do to continue to deceive Julian," said Arthur, and Julian started to hear his own name. "You gave him medicine for me because it made him trust you. My family loved you. More than they ever did me. You twisted a knife in their hearts."

"Oh," Malcolm murmured. "If only."

"I would rather be mad my way than yours," said Arthur. "You had so much. Love once, and power, and immortal life, and you have thrown it away as if it were trash by the side of the road." He glanced toward the twitching thing on the altar. "I wonder if she will still love you, the way you are now."

Malcolm's face contorted. "Enough," he said, and a quick look of triumph passed over Arthur's tired, battered features. He had outwitted Malcolm, in his own way. "I agree to your promise. Come here."

Arthur stepped forward. Malcolm seized him and began to propel him toward the altar. Arthur's witchlight was gone, but candles burned in brackets fastened to the walls, casting a flickering, yellowish light.

Malcolm held Arthur with one hand, bending him over the altar; with the other he drew the dark covering away from the altar. Annabel's body was revealed.

"Oh," breathed the Queen. "She was lovely, once."

She was not now. Annabel was a skeleton, though not the clean white down-to-the-bones type one usually saw in art and pictures. Her skin was leathery and dried, and pocked with holes where worms had crawled in and out. Nausea rose in Julian's stomach. She was covered with white winding-sheets, but her legs were visible, and her arms: There were places the skin had peeled away, and moss grew on the bones and dried tendons.

Brittle dark hair spilled from her skull. Her jaw worked as she saw Malcolm, and a moan issued from her destroyed throat. She seemed to be shaking her head.

"Don't worry, darling," said Malcolm. "I've brought you what you need."

"No!" Julian cried, but it was as he had feared: He could not halt the events unfolding before him. Malcolm snatched up the blade from beside Annabel and sliced open Arthur's throat.

Blood fountained over Annabel, over her body and the stone she lay on. Arthur groped at his neck, and Julian gagged, clutching the sides of the bowl with his fingers.

Annabel's winding-sheets had turned crimson. Arthur's hands dropped slowly to his sides. He was upright now only because Malcolm was holding him. Blood soaked Annabel's brittle hair and dried skin. It turned the front of Malcolm's white suit to a sheet of scarlet.

"Uncle Arthur," Julian whispered. He tasted salt on his lips. For a moment he was terrified that he was crying, and in front of the Queen--but to his relief he had only bitten his lip. He swallowed the metal of his own blood as Arthur went limp in Malcolm's grasp, and Malcolm shoved his body impatiently away. He crumpled to the ground beside the altar and lay still.

"Annabel," Malcolm breathed.

She had begun to stir.

Her limbs moved first, her legs and arms stretching, her hands reaching for nothing. For a moment Julian thought there was something wrong with the water in the bowl, an odd reflection, before he realized that it was actually Annabel herself. A

white glow was creeping over her--no, it was skin, rising to cover bare bones and stripped tendons. Her corpse seemed to swell up and out as flesh filled out the shape of her, as if a smooth, sleek glove had been drawn over her skeleton. Gray and white turned to pink: Her bare feet and her calves looked human now. There were even clear half-moons of nails at the tips of her toes.

The skin crawled up her body, slipping under the winding-sheets, rising to cover her chest and collarbones, spreading down her arms. Her hands starfished out, each finger splayed as she tested the air. Her neck arched back as black-brown hair exploded from her skull. Breasts rose under the sheets, her hollow cheeks filled, her eyes snapped open.

They were Blackthorn eyes, shimmering blue-green as the sea.