Lady Midnight

by Cassandra Clare

  Emma was already beside the motorcycle, running her hands over it. The metal felt smooth like glass, cool under her fingers, milk white and glowing. She had wanted to ride a motorcycle all her life. Jace and Clary had ridden a flying motorcycle. There were paintings of it. "Does it fly?"

  Mark nodded, and she was lost.

  "I want to drive it," she said. "I want to drive it myself."

  He swept an elaborate bow. It was a graceful, alien gesture, the kind that might have existed in the court of a king, hundreds of years ago. "Then you are welcome to do so."

  "Julian would kill me," Emma said reflexively, still stroking the machine. Beautiful as it was, she felt a thrill of trepidation at the thought of riding it--it didn't have an exhaust pipe, a speedometer, any of the normal gear she associated with a cycle.

  "You don't strike me as that easy to kill," Mark said, and now he wasn't smiling, and the way he looked at her was direct and challenging.

  Without another word Emma swung her leg over the bike. She reached to grip the handlebars, and they seemed to bend inward to fit her hands. She looked at Mark. "Get on behind me," she said, "if you want to ride."

  She felt the cycle rock under her as he climbed on behind her; his hands clasped her sides lightly. Emma exhaled, her shoulders tensing. "It's alive," Mark whispered. "It will respond to you, if you will it."

  Her hands tightened on the handlebars. Fly.

  The cycle shot up into the air and Emma screamed, half in shock and half in delight. Mark's hands tightened on her waist as they hurtled up, the ground receding below them. The wind poured around them. Untrammeled by gravity, the cycle shot forward as Emma urged it on, leaning forward to communicate with her body what she wanted it to do.

  They whipped past the Institute, the road that led down toward the highway opening up under them. They raced along above it, desert wind giving way to salt on Emma's tongue as they reached the Pacific Coast Highway, cars darting past below them in blaring lines of pale gold headlights. She cried out in delight, willing the cycle onward: Faster, go faster.

  The beach flew by beneath them, pale gold sand turned white by starlight, and then they were out over the ocean. The moon lit a silvery path for them; Emma could hear Mark yelling something in her ear, but for the moment there was nothing but the ocean and the cycle under her, the wind whipping her hair back and making her eyes water.

  And then she looked down.

  On either side of the moonlit path was the water, navy blue in the darkness. Land was a distant line of brilliant lights, the etched shadow of mountains against the sky. And below was ocean, miles of ocean, and Emma felt the familiar cold of fear, like a block of ice applied suddenly to the back of her neck and spreading through her veins.

  Miles of ocean, and oh, the vastness of it, shadows and salt, fierce dark water filled with alien emptiness and the monsters that lived there. Imagine falling into that water and knowing it was below you, even as you treaded water, desperately trying to remain on the surface; the terror of the realization of what was under you--miles and miles of nothingness and monsters, blackness stretching away everywhere and the sea floor so far below--would tear your mind apart.

  The cycle jerked under her hands, rebelling. She bit down hard on her lip, summoning blood to the surface, focusing her mind.

  The cycle slewed around under her hands and shot back toward the beach. Faster, Emma urged it, suddenly desperate to have dry land under them. She thought she could see shadows moving under the skin of the sea. She thought of old stories of sailors whose boats were lifted out of the water on the backs of whales and sea monsters. Of small craft torn apart by sea demons, their crews fed to the sharks--

  She caught her breath, the cycle jumping under her, momentarily losing her grip on the handlebars. They plunged downward. Mark cried out as they shot past the crashing waves and toward the beach. Emma's fingers scrabbled and seized on the handlebars again, her grip tight as the front wheel grazed the sand, and then the bike was rising again, skimming over the beach, lifting to pass over the highway below them.

  She heard Mark laugh. It was a wild sound; she could hear the echo of the Hunt in it, the roar of the horn and the pounding of hooves. She breathed in cool, clear air; her hair whipped behind her; there were no rules. She was free.

  "You have proved yourself, Emma," he said. "You could ride with Gwyn, if you chose."

  "The Wild Hunt doesn't allow women," she pointed out, the words torn from her mouth by the wind.

  "The more fool they," he said. "Women are fiercer by far than men." He pointed at the shore, toward the ridges of the mountains that ran along the coast. "Go that way. I will take you to the convergence."

  No wonder Jace Herondale had once jumped at the chance to fly a motorcycle, Emma thought. It was a completely different vantage point on the world. She and Mark followed the line of the highway north, flying over mansions with massive swimming pools that hung out over the ocean, castles tucked up into canyons and bluffs, dipping down low enough once to see a party going on in someone's backyard, complete with glowing multicolored lanterns.

  Mark guided her from behind with taps on her wrists; the wind had risen too high for her to hear his voice. They passed over a late-night seafood shack, music and light pouring out of the windows. Emma had been there before and remembered sitting on the big wooden picnic tables with Jules, dunking fried oysters in tartar sauce. Dozens of Harley-Davidsons were parked outside the restaurant, though Emma doubted any of them could fly.

  She grinned to herself, unable to help it, feeling drunk on the height and the cold air.

  Mark tapped her right wrist. A smooth stretch of sand spilled from the beach, reaching halfway up high bluffs. Emma tilted the cycle so that they were nearly vertical, hurtling up the side of a cliff. They cleared the lip of the bluff with a foot of space and shot forward, the wheels scraping the tips of the California thistle that grew among the long grass.

  A granite rise loomed in front of them, a dome-like hill atop the bluffs. Emma leaned back, preparing to gun the cycle, but Mark reached around her, his voice in her ear: "Stop! Stop!"

  The cycle skidded to a halt just as they passed the tangle of weeds that bordered the bluffs. Inside the border of coastal shrubs was a stretch of grass that reached to the low granite hill. The grass looked trampled in places, as if it had been walked on, and in the distance, to the right of the grassy stretch, Emma could see a faint dirt road winding down the bluffs toward the highway.

  Emma swung herself off the cycle. Mark followed, and they stood for a moment, the sea a gleam in the distance, the hill rising dark in front of them.

  "You drive too fast," said Mark.

  Emma snorted and checked the strap of Cortana where it fastened across her chest. "You sound like Julian."

  "It brought me joy," Mark said, moving to stand beside her. "It was as if I flew with the Hunt again, and tasted the blood of the sky."

  "Okay, you sound like Julian on drugs," Emma muttered. She glanced around. "Where are we? Is this the ley line convergence?"

  "There." Mark pointed at a dark opening in the rock of the hill. As they moved toward it, Emma reached back to touch the hilt of Cortana. Something about the place was giving her shivers--maybe it was simply the power of the convergence, but as they neared the cave, and the hair rose on the back of her neck, she doubted it.

  "The grass is flat," she said, indicating the area around the cave with a sweep of her hand. "Trampled. Someone's been walking here. A lot of someones. But there are no fresh tire tracks on the road."

  Mark glanced around, head tilted back, like a wolf scenting the air. His feet were still bare, but he seemed to have no problem walking on the rough ground, despite the thistles and sharp rocks visible between the grasses.

  There was a sharp, bright trill--Emma's phone ringing. Jules, she thought, and snatched it out of her pocket.

  "Emma?" It was Cristina, her low, sweet voice oddly startling--a sharp reminder of reality after the unr
eal flight through the sky. "Where are you? Did you find Mark?"

  "I found him," Emma said, glancing over toward Mark. He appeared to be examining the plants growing around the mouth of the cave. "We're at the convergence."

  "What? Where is it? Is it dangerous?"

  "Not yet," Emma said as Mark ducked into the cave. "Mark!" she called. "Mark, don't--Mark!"

  The phone connection dropped. Swearing, Emma stuck the phone back into her pocket and took out her witchlight. It came on, soft and bright, raying out through her fingers. It illuminated the mouth of the cave. She headed toward it, cursing Mark under her breath.

  He was just inside the cave, looking down at more of the same plants, clustering around the dry, soft stone. "Atropa belladonna," he said. "It means 'beautiful lady.' It's poisonous."

  Emma made a face. "Does it grow around here normally?"

  "Not in this quantity." He reached down to touch it. Emma caught his wrist.

  "Don't," she said. "You said it was poisonous."

  "Only if swallowed," he said. "Hasn't Uncle Arthur taught you anything about the death of Augustus?"

  "Nothing I haven't worked hard to forget."

  Mark straightened up, and she let go of him. She flexed her fingers. There was wiry strength in his arms.

  As he moved forward into the cave, which began to narrow into a tunnel, she couldn't help but remember Mark the last time she had seen him, before he had been taken by Sebastian Morgenstern. Smiling, blue-eyed, short pale hair curling over the tips of his pointed ears. Broad-shouldered--or at least she, at twelve, had thought so. Certainly he had been bigger than Julian, taller and broader than all of them. Grown up.

  Now, prowling ahead of her, he seemed a feral child, hair gleaming in the witchlight. He moved like a cloud across the sky, vapor at the mercy of wind that could tear it to shreds.

  He vanished around a bend of rock, and Emma almost closed her eyes against the image of a vanished Mark. He belonged to the past that contained her parents, and you could drown in the past if you let it have you while you were working.

  And she was a Shadowhunter. She was always working.

  "Emma!" Mark called, his voice echoing off the walls. "Come and see this."

  She hurried after him down the tunnel. It opened out into a circular chamber lined with metal. Emma turned on her heel in a slow circle, staring. She wasn't sure what she had expected, but not something that looked like the inside of an occult ocean liner. The walls were bronze, covered in strange symbols, a scrawled mixture of languages: some demonic, some ancient but human--she recognized demotic Greek and Latin, a few passages from the Bible. . . .

  Two massive glass doors like portholes were set into the walls, shut and bolted with rivets. A strange metal ornament had been fixed in the wall between them. Through the glass, Emma could see only surging darkness, as if they were underwater.

  There was no furniture in the room, but a circle of symbols, done in chalk, was drawn onto the smooth black stone floor. Emma brought out her phone and began to take pictures. The flash going off seemed eerie in the dimness.

  Mark moved toward the circle. "Don't--" Emma lowered her phone. "Go in there," she sighed.

  He was already inside the circle, looking around curiously. Emma couldn't see anything in there with him besides bare floor.

  "Please come out," she said wheedlingly. "If there's some magic spell in there and it kills you, explaining to Jules is going to be so awkward."

  There was a faint shimmer of light as Mark stepped out of the circle. "'Awkward' seems like an understatement," he said.

  "That's the point," Emma said. "That's why it's funny." He looked blank. "Never mind."

  "I read once that explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog," Mark said. "You find out how it works, but the frog dies in the process."

  "Maybe we should get out of here before we die in the process. I took some pictures with my phone, so--"

  "I found this," Mark said, and showed her a square leather object. "It was inside the circle along with some clothes and what looked like"--he frowned--"broken teeth."

  Emma snatched the object out of his hand. It was a wallet--a man's wallet, semi-scorched by fire. "I didn't see anything," she said. "The circle looked empty."

  "Glamour spell. I felt it when I passed through."

  She flipped the wallet open, and her heart leaped. Pressed behind plastic was a driver's license with a familiar picture. The man whose body she'd found in the alley.

  There was money in the wallet and credit cards, but her eyes were fixed on the license and his name--Stanley Albert Wells. The same longish, graying hair and round face she remembered, only this time his features weren't twisted up and stained with blood. The address under the name had been burned to illegibility, but the birth date and other information were clear.

  "Mark. Mark!" She waved the wallet over her head. "This is a clue. An actual clue. I think I love you."

  Mark's eyebrows went up. "In Faerie, if you said that, we would have to pledge our troth, and you might put a geas upon me that I would not stray from you or I would die."

  Emma shoved the wallet in her pocket. "Well, here it's just an expression that means 'I like you very much' or even 'Thanks for the bloodstained wallet.'"

  "How specific you humans are."

  "You're human, Mark Blackthorn."

  A sound echoed through the room. Mark jerked his gaze from hers and raised his head. Emma almost imagined his pointed ears twitching toward the sound and suppressed a smile.

  "Outside," he said. "There's something outside."

  Her incipient smile disappeared. She slipped into the tunnel, sliding her witchlight into her pocket to douse the illumination. Mark fell into step behind her as she drew out her stele with her left hand, scrawling a number of quick runes onto her arms--Sure-Strike, Swift-Footedness, Battle-Rage, Soundless. She turned to Mark as they neared the entrance, her stele out, but he shook his head. No. No runes.

  She flipped the stele back into her belt. They had reached the mouth of the cave. The air was cooler here, and she could see the sky, dotted with stars, and the grass, silvery in the moonlight. The field in front of the cave looked bare and empty. Emma could see nothing but grass and thistles, pounded flat as if by the tread of boots, reaching all the way to the edge of the bluff. There was a sharp musical sound in the air, like the buzz of insects.

  She heard Mark's sharp intake of breath behind her. Light flared as he spoke. "Remiel."

  His seraph blade blazed to life. As if the light had ripped away a glamour, suddenly, she could see them. Whistling and chittering among the long grass.

  Demons.

  She whipped Cortana free so quickly it was as if it had leaped into her hand. There were dozens of them, spread between the cave and the bluff. They looked like enormous insects: praying mantises, to be precise. Triangular heads, elongated bodies, massive grasping arms ridged with blades of chitin, sharp as razors. Their eyes were pallid, flat, and milky.

  They were between her and Mark and the motorcycle.

  "Mantid demons," Emma whispered. "We can't fight all of them." She looked up at Mark, his face illuminated by Remiel. "We have to get to the cycle."

  Mark nodded. "Go," he said.

  Emma sprang forward. It came down like a cage the moment her boots hit the grass: a wave of cold that seemed to slow time. She saw one of the Mantids turn toward her, lashing out with grasping, spiked forelegs. She bent her knees and sprang, rising into the air as she slashed downward, severing the Mantid's head from its body.

  Green ichor sprayed. She landed on soaked ground as the demon's body folded up and vanished, sucked back to its home dimension. A flicker rose in her peripheral vision. She spun and struck out again, jamming the point of Cortana into another Mantid's thorax. She jerked her sword back, struck again, watched the demon crumble around the blade.

  Her heart was beating in her ears. This was the sharp point of the blade, the moments when all the training, all the
hours and the passion and the rage narrowed down to a single point of focus and determination. Killing demons. That was what mattered.

  Mark was easily visible, his seraph blade lighting up the grass around him. He slashed out at a Mantid, severing its forelegs. It wobbled, chittering, still alive. Mark's face twisted with disgust. Emma ran toward a heap of rocks, darted up the side, and sailed down, slicing the crippled Mantid in half. It vanished as she landed in front of Mark.

  "That was mine to dispatch," he said with a cold look.

  "Trust me," Emma said, "there's plenty." She grabbed him with her free hand and spun him around. Five Mantids were lurching toward them from cracks in the granite hill. "Kill those," she said. "I'll get the cycle."

  Mark leaped forward with a cry like a hunting horn. He cut at the Mantids' legs and forelegs, crippling them; they fell around him, spraying green-black ichor. It stank like burning gasoline.

  Emma began to run for the bluff. Demons surged up at her as she went. She slashed at where they were weakest, the connective tissue where the chitin was thin, severing heads from thoraxes, legs from bodies. Her jeans and cardigan were wet with demon blood. She skidded around a dying Mantid, slid toward the edge of the bluff--

  And froze. A Mantid was lifting the cycle in its forelegs. She could swear it was grinning at her, its triangular head splitting open to reveal rows of needle teeth, as it clamped razored forelegs around the cycle, crushing it to pieces. Metal screamed and rent, tires popped, and the Mantid chittered in joy as the machine came apart, the pieces hurtling down the side of the bluff, taking with it Emma's hope of an easy escape.

  She glared at the Mantid. "That," she said, "was a really sweet ride," and catching up a knife from her belt, she threw it.

  It jammed into the Mantid's body, severing thorax from prothorax. Ichor sprayed from the demon's mouth as it tipped backward, spasming, its body following the cycle down the cliffside.

  "Jerk," Emma muttered, whirling back toward the field. She hated using throwing knives to kill an enemy, mostly because you were unlikely to get them back. She had three more in her belt, a seraph blade, and Cortana.

  She knew it wasn't nearly enough to take on the two dozen Mantids still prowling the grass. But it was what she had. It would have to do.