Livvy cried out her brother's name and lunged forward. Julian caught hold of her, hauling her back. She struggled incredulously against his grip. "We need to save him," she hissed. "We have to get to him--"
"There's a protection circle," Julian hissed back. "Drawn around him on the floor. If you step through it, it could kill you."
Someone was murmuring softly. Cristina, whispering a prayer.
Mark had stiffened. "Be quiet," he said. "Someone's coming."
They did their best to melt back into the shadows, even Livvy, who had not stopped struggling. Julian's witchlight winked out.
A figure had appeared out of the darkness. Someone in a long black robe, a hood hiding their face. A tall someone with hands sheathed in black gloves. He always showed up in a robe and gloves and a hood, okay? Completely covered.
Emma's heart began to pound.
The figure approached the table, and the protection circle opened like a lock, runes vanishing and fading until there was a gap to step through. Head down, the figure came closer to Tavvy.
And closer. Emma felt the Blackthorns all around her, their fear like a living thing. She could taste blood in her mouth; she was biting her lip, so badly did she want to throw herself forward, risk the circle, grab Tavvy and run.
Livvy broke away from Julian and burst into the cavern. "No!" she cried. "Step away from my brother, or I'll kill you, I'll kill you--"
The figure froze. Slowly, it raised its head. Its hood fell back, and long, curling black hair spilled out. A familiar koi tattoo glimmered against brown skin. "Livvy?"
"Diana?" Ty spoke, voicing his sister's disbelief. Livvy was stricken silent.
Diana jerked away from the table, staring. "By the Angel," she breathed. "How many of you are here?"
It was Julian who spoke. His voice was level, though Emma could feel the effort it took to keep it that way. Diego was leaning forward, his eyes narrow. Jace Herondale and the Lightwoods were betrayed by their own tutor. "All of us," Julian said.
"Even Dru? You don't understand how dangerous this is--Julian, you have to get everyone out of here."
"Not without Tavvy," Emma snapped. "Diana, what the hell are you doing? You told us you were in Thailand."
"If she was, no one at the Bangkok Institute knew about it," said Diego. "I checked."
"You lied to us," Emma said. She remembered Iarlath saying: Foolish Shadowhunters, too naive to even know who you can trust. Had he meant Malcolm or Diana? "And you've barely been here, this whole investigation, like you were hiding something from us--"
Diana recoiled. "Emma, no, it's not like that."
"Then what is it like? Because I can't imagine what possible reason you could have for being here--"
There was a noise. Approaching footsteps, from the shadows. Diana flung out a hand. "Get back--get away--"
Julian grabbed for Livvy, hauling his sister back into the shadows just as Malcolm appeared.
Malcolm.
He looked just as he always did. A bit scruffy in jeans and a white linen jacket that matched his hair. In his hand he carried a large black book, tied with a leather strap.
"It is you," Diana whispered.
Malcolm looked at her calmly.
"Diana Wrayburn," he said. "Now, now. I didn't expect to see you here. I rather thought you'd run away."
Diana faced him. "I don't run."
He seemed to look at her again, to see how close she was to Tavvy. He frowned. "Step away from the boy."
Diana didn't move.
"Do it," he said, tucking the Black Volume into his jacket. "He's nothing to you, anyway. You're not a Blackthorn."
"I'm his tutor. He has grown up in my care."
"Oh, come now," said Malcolm. "If you'd cared about those children, you'd have taken the post as head of the Institute years ago. But I suppose we all know why you didn't do that."
Malcolm grinned. It transformed his whole face. If Emma had still held lingering doubts about his guilt, about the story Kieran had told, they vanished in that moment. His mobile, amusing features seemed to harden. There was cruelty in that smile, framed against a backdrop of echoing, depthless loss.
A flare went up from the table, a burst of fire. Diana cried out and stumbled back, out of the circle of protection. It sealed itself up behind her. She hurled herself to her feet and threw herself toward Tavvy, but this time the circle held fast; she bounced off it as if off a glass wall, the force sending her staggering back.
"No human thing can cross that barrier," said Malcolm. "I'm guessing you had a charm to get you through the first time, but it won't work again. You should have stayed away."
"You can't possibly hope for success, Malcolm," Diana gasped. She was clutching her left arm with her right; the skin looked burned. "If you kill a Shadowhunter, the Nephilim will hunt you for the rest of your days."
"They hunted me two hundred years ago. They killed her," said Malcolm, and the throb of emotion in his voice was something Emma had never heard before. "And we had done nothing. Nothing. I do not fear them, their unjust justice or unlawful laws."
"I understand your pain, Malcolm," Diana said carefully. "But--"
"Do you? Do you understand, Diana Wrayburn?" he snarled--then his voice softened. "Maybe you do. You have known the injustice and intolerance of the Clave. If only you hadn't come here--it's the Blackthorns I despise, not the Wrayburns. I always rather liked you."
"You liked me because you thought I was too frightened of the Clave to look closely at you," Diana said, turning away from him. "To suspect you." For a moment she faced Emma and the others. She mouthed RUN at them silently, before turning back to Malcolm.
Emma didn't budge, but she did hear a movement behind her. It was quiet; if she hadn't been wearing a rune that sharpened her hearing, it would have been inaudible. To her surprise, the movement was Julian, disappearing from her side. Mark was next to him. Silently they slipped back into the tunnel.
Emma wanted to call after Julian--what was he doing?--but she couldn't, not without alerting Malcolm. Malcolm was still moving toward Diana; in a moment he'd be where he could see them. She put a hand to the hilt of Cortana. Ty was gripping a knife, white-knuckled; Livvy held her saber, her face set and determined.
"Who told you?" Malcolm said. "Was it Rook? I didn't think he'd guessed." He tipped his head to the side. "No. You weren't sure when you got here. You suspected . . ." His mouth turned down at the corners. "It was Catarina, wasn't it?"
Diana stood with her feet apart, her head back. A warrior stance. "When the second line of the poem was deciphered and I heard the phrase 'Blackthorn blood,' I realized that we weren't searching for a killer of mundanes and faeries. That this was about the Blackthorn family. And there is no one more likely to know about a grudge that goes back years than Catarina. I went to her."
"And you couldn't tell the Blackthorns where you went because of the reason you know Catarina," said Malcolm. "She's a nurse--a nurse to mundanes. How do you think I found out--?"
"She didn't tell you about me, Malcolm," snapped Diana. "She keeps secrets. What she told me about you was simply what she knew--that you'd loved a Nephilim girl and that she'd become an Iron Sister. She'd never questioned the story because as far as she knew, you'd never questioned the story. But once she told me that, I was able to check with the Iron Sisters. No Nephilim girl with that story had become one of them. And once I realized that was a lie, the rest began to come together. I remembered what Emma had told us about what she'd found here, the clothes, the candelabra. Catarina went to the Spiral Labyrinth and I came here--"
"So Catarina gave you the charm to get you through the protection circle," said Malcolm. "Unfortunate that you wasted it. Did you have a plan or did you just rush here in a panic?"
Diana said nothing. Her face looked carved out of stone.
"Always have a plan," said Malcolm. "I, for one, have been crafting my current plan for years. And now here you are, the proverbial fly in the ointment. I supp
ose there's nothing to do but kill you, though I hadn't planned to, and exposing you to the Clave would have been so much more fun--"
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.
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