“That’s not true—”
“Really?” Zara tossed her filthy, bloody hair back. “Would you have been my friend? If I’d asked you?”
Emma thought of the things Zara had said about Downworlders. About Mark. About half-breeds and perverts and registries and cruelties large and small.
“That’s what I thought,” Zara sneered. “And you think you’re so much better than me, Emma Carstairs. I laughed when Livvy died, we all did, just at the looks on your smug, stupid faces—”
Rage flooded through Emma, white-hot. She slashed out with Cortana, turning the blade at the last second so that the flat hit Zara, knocking her off her feet. She hit the ground on her back, coughing blood, and spat at Emma as she leaned over her, laying the tip of Cortana against her throat.
“Go on,” Zara hissed. “Go on, you bitch, do it, do it—”
Zara was the reason they were all here, Emma thought, the reason they were all in danger: The Cohort had been the reason they had needed to fight and struggle for their lives, had been the reason Livvy had died there on the dais in the Council Hall. The yearning for vengeance was hot in her veins, burning against her skin, begging for her to thrust the blade forward and cut Zara’s throat.
And yet Emma hesitated. An odd voice had come into her head—a memory of Arthur Blackthorn, of all people. Cortana. Made by Wayland the Smith, the legendary forger of Excalibur and Durendal. Said to choose its bearer. When Ogier raised it to slay the son of Charlemagne on the field, an angel came and broke the sword and said to him, “Mercy is better than revenge.”
She had taken down the pictures in her room because she was done with vengeance. Cristina was right. She needed to be done. In that moment she knew she would never cut the parabatai rune, no matter what happened now. She had seen too many parabatai on the battlefield today. Perhaps being parabatai was a weakness that could trap you. But so was any kind of love, and if love was a weakness, it was a strength, too.
She moved the sword aside. “I won’t kill you.”
Tears spilled from Zara’s eyes and streaked down her dirty face as Emma stepped away from her. A second later Emma heard Julian call her name; he was there, hauling Zara to her feet by one arm, saying something about taking her where the prisoners were. Zara was looking from him to Emma, not trying to struggle; she stayed passive in Julian’s grip, but her eyes—she was looking past Julian, and Emma didn’t like the look on her face at all.
Zara made a little choking noise, almost a laugh. “Maybe I’m not the one you have to worry about,” she said, and pointed with her free hand.
Julian went white as chalk.
In a cleared space on the field, under the blue-black sky, stood Annabel Blackthorn.
It was as if the sight of her formed itself into a fist that punched Emma directly in the guts. She gasped. Annabel wore a blue dress, incongruous on the battlefield. A vial of red fluid glimmered at her throat. Her dark brown hair lifted and blew around her. Her lips curved into a smile.
Something was wrong, Emma thought. Something was very, very wrong, and not just the fact that Annabel couldn’t possibly be here. That Annabel was dead.
Something was more wrong than that.
“You didn’t really think you could kill me, did you?” Annabel said, and Emma saw that her feet were bare, pale as white stones on the bloody ground. “You know I am made of other stuff. Better stuff than your sister. You cannot make my life run out with my blood as I squeal for mercy—”
Julian let go of Zara and ran at her. He tore across the ground and flung himself at Annabel, just as Emma screamed his name, screamed at him that something was wrong, screamed at him to stop. She started toward him, and a blow hit her hard in the back.
The pain came a second later, hot and red. Emma turned in surprise and saw Zara standing with a small knife in her hand. She must have taken it from her belt.
The hilt was red and dripping. She had stabbed Emma in the back.
Emma tried to lift Cortana, but her arm felt as if it wasn’t working. Her mind, too, was racing, trying to catch up to her injury. As she tried to call out to Julian, choking on blood, Zara slammed the knife into Emma’s chest.
Emma’s legs went out from under her. She fell.
32
HEAVEN COME DOWN
It was all happening again.
Annabel was in front of him and she was looking at him with a sneering contempt. In her eyes he could see the reflection of himself on the dais in the Council Hall, soaked in Livvy’s blood. He saw her in Thule, screaming for Ash. He remembered the swing of his sword, her blood spreading all around her body.
None of it mattered. She would kill Emma if she could. She would kill Mark and Helen; she would cut Ty’s throat, and Dru’s, and Tavvy’s. She was the ghost of every fear he had ever had that his family would be taken from him. She was the nightmare he had wakened and not been able to destroy.
He reached her without slowing and plunged his longsword into her body. It slid in as if there was no resistance—no bones, no muscle. Like a knife through air or paper. It sank to the hilt and he found himself staring into her bloodshot scarlet eyes, barely an inch away.
Her lips drew back from her teeth in a hiss. But her eyes aren’t red. They’re Blackthorn blue.
He jerked back, dragging the sword with him. The hilt was dark with blackish ichor. The stench of demon was everywhere. Somewhere in the back of his head he could hear Emma calling to him, shouting that something was wrong.
“You’re not Annabel,” he said. You’re a demon.
Annabel began to change. Her features seemed to melt, to drip like candle wax. Beneath her pale skin and dark hair Julian could see the outlines of an unformed Eidolon demon—greasy and white, like a bar of dirty soap, pocked all over with gray craters. The glittering vial made of etched glass still dangled around its neck.
“You knew my brother,” the demon hissed. “Sabnock. Of Thule.”
Julian remembered blood. A church in Cornwall. Emma.
He reached for a seraph blade on his belt and named it quickly, “Sariel.”
The demon was grinning. It lunged at Julian, and he plunged the seraph blade into it.
Nothing happened.
This can’t be. Seraph blades slew demons. They always, always worked. The demon yanked the blade from its side as Julian stared in disbelief. It lunged for him, Sariel outstretched. Unprepared for the attack, Julian raised an arm to ward off the blow—
A dark shape slid between them. A kelpie, all razor-sharp, pawing hooves and fanged, glassy teeth. The faerie horse reared into the air between Julian and the Eidolon, and Julian recognized the kelpie: It was the one he had saved from Dane Larkspear.
It slammed a hoof into the Eidolon’s chest, and the demon flew backward, the seraph blade skidding from its hand. The kelpie glanced over its shoulder at Julian and winked, then gave chase as the Eidolon got to its feet and began to run.
Julian began to follow. He had gone only a few steps when pain went through him, sudden, searing.
He doubled over. The pain was all through him. His back, his chest. There was no reason for it except—
Emma.
He turned around.
It was all happening again.
Emma was on the ground, somehow, the front of her gear wet with blood. Zara knelt over her—it seemed as if they were struggling. Julian was already running, pushing past the pain, every stride a mile, every breath an hour. All that mattered was getting to Emma.
As he got closer, he saw that Zara was crouched beside Emma, trying to wrest Cortana from her red-streaked hand, but Emma’s grip was too fierce. Her throat, her hair, were wet with blood, but her fingers on Cortana’s hilt were unyielding.
Zara glanced up and saw Julian. He must have looked like death in human form, because she scrambled to her feet and ran, vanishing into the crowd.
No one else seemed to have noticed what had happened yet. A howl was building in Julian’s chest. He skidded to his kn
ees beside Emma and lifted her into his arms.
She was limp in his grasp, heavy the way Livvy had been heavy. The way people felt weighted when they had stopped holding themselves up. He curled Emma in toward him and her head fell against his chest.
The grass all around them was wet. There was so much blood.
It was all happening again.
“Livvy, Livvy, my Livvy,” he whispered, cradling her, feverishly stroking her blood-wet hair away from her face. There was so much blood. He was covered in it in seconds; it had soaked through Livvy’s clothes, even her shoes were drenched in it. “Livia.” His hands shook; he fumbled out his stele, put it to her arm.
His sword had fallen. His stele was in his hand; the iratze was a muscle memory, his body acting even without his mind’s ability to comprehend what was happening.
Emma’s eyes opened. Julian’s heart lurched. Was it working? Maybe it was working. Livvy had never even looked at him. She’d been dead when he lifted her from the dais.
Emma’s gaze fixed on his. Her dark brown eyes held his gaze like a caress. “It’s all right,” she whispered.
He reached to draw another iratze. The first had vanished without a trace. “Help me,” he rasped. “Emma, we need to use it. The parabatai bond. We can heal you—”
“No,” she said. She reached up to touch his cheek. He felt her blood against his skin. She was still warm, still breathing in his arms. “I’d rather die like this than be separated from you forever.”
“Please don’t leave me, Emma,” Julian said. His voice broke. “Please don’t leave me in this world without you.”
She managed to smile at him. “You were the best part of my life,” she said.
Her hand fell slack into her lap, her eyes slipping closed.
Through the crowd now Julian could see people running toward them. They seemed to be moving slowly, as if in a dream. Helen, calling his name; Mark, running desperately; Cristina beside him, crying out to Emma—but none of them would reach him in time, and besides, there was nothing they could do.
He seized Emma’s hand and clutched it tightly, so tightly he could feel the small bones grind under his grip. Emma. Emma, come back. Emma, we can do this. We’ve melted stone. You saved my life. We can do anything.
He reached deep into his memories: Emma on the beach, looking back over her shoulder at him, laughing. Emma clinging to the iron bar of the Ferris wheel at Pacific Park. Emma handing him a bunch of limp wildflowers she’d picked on the day of his mother’s funeral. His arms around Emma as they rode a motorcycle through Thule. Emma in her pale dress at the Midnight Theater. Emma lying in front of the fire in Malcolm’s cottage.
Emma.
Her eyes flew open. They were full of flame, golden and bronze and copper. Her lips moved. “I remember,” she said.
Her voice sounded distant, almost inhuman, like the ringing of a bell. Something deep inside Julian went cold with fear and exultation.
“Should I stop?” he said.
“No.” Emma had begun to smile. Her eyes were all fire now. “Let us burn.”
He put his arms around her, the parabatai connection burning between them, shimmering gold and white. The ends of her hair had begun to burn, and the tips of his fingers. There was no heat and no pain. Only the fire. It rose up to consume them in a fiery cascade.
* * *
Diego flung Zara into the Malachi Configuration. There were quite a few other Cohort members in there and she staggered, nearly tripping in her effort to avoid bumping into them. Most of them were looking at her with deep dislike. Diego didn’t imagine that Horace’s daughter would be very popular right now.
She whipped around to glare at him. There was no need for him to slam a prison door—the Configuration held whoever was inside, door or no door—but he wished he could.
“I would regard this an announcement that our engagement is over,” he said.
Her face screwed up in rage. Before she could reply, a pillar of white fire rose from the east, hurtling up toward the sky. Screams echoed across the battlefield.
Diego whirled to take off running. A redcap loomed up in front of him, steel-tipped pike a shining arc across the sky. Agonizing pain exploded in his head before he tumbled into darkness.
* * *
Mark caught Cristina’s wrist and pulled her back just as white flame exploded like a tower from the place where Julian and Emma had been moments before.
She knew she screamed Emma’s name. Mark was pulling her back against himself; she could feel him gasping for breath. Julian, she thought. Oh God, no, not Julian.
And then: This must be the curse. To burn them alive . . . it’s too cruel. . . .
Mark breathed, “Look.”
Shining figures were emerging from the fire. Not Julian and Emma, or at least, not Julian and Emma as they had been.
The flames had risen at least thirty feet in the air, and the figures that emerged from them were at least that tall. It was as if Julian and Emma had been carved from shining light. . . . The details of them were there, their features and expressions, even Cortana at Emma’s side, a blade of heavenly fire the size of a tree.
“They’re giants,” Cristina heard someone say. It was Aline, staring upward, awestruck. Helen had her hand over her mouth.
“Not giants,” said Cristina. “Nephilim.” There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when angels came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. She took a shuddering breath. “They were—the first.”
More people were crowding forward, from both sides of the battle. As the flames subsided around Emma and Julian, the sky above roiled and snapped—it was as if the heavenly fire had burned away the darkness Magnus had brought down. The shadowy clouds began to break apart and disintegrate.
Terrified, the vampires began to flee the field, racing toward the forest. They ran past Magnus, who was on his knees, Ragnor beside him, blue sparks ringing his hands as if they were torn electrical wires. Cristina saw Alec running across the field; he reached Magnus just as the warlock slumped back, exhausted, into his arms.
Emma—or what Emma had become, a great, shining creature—took a hesitant step forward. Cristina could hardly breathe. She had never seen an angel, but she imagined this was what it might be like to be near one. They were meant to be beautiful, terrible and awful as Heaven was awful: a light too bright for mortal eyes.
No one could survive this, she thought. Not even Emma.
Julian was alongside Emma; they seemed to be gaining confidence as they moved. They didn’t stomp as giants might: They seemed to drift, their gestures trailed by sweeps of light.
Cristina could hear the Cohort screaming as Julian bent down and picked up Horace, like a giant child plucking up a doll. Horace, who had escaped the whole battle by hiding behind his followers, was kicking and struggling, his voice a thin wail. Cristina had only a second to feel almost sorry for him before Julian caught Horace in both hands and snapped his spine in half.
He tossed him aside like a broken plaything. The silence that had gripped the field was broken as people began to scream.
* * *
Horace Dearborn’s body hit the ground with a sickening thud, only a few feet from Manuel.
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. Manuel, already on the ground, began to scramble backward. The Cohort who were trapped in the Malachi Configuration were screaming. He wished they would shut up. He desperately needed to think.
Religious training from his childhood, ruthlessly quashed before now, stirred inside him. What shone above him was the power of angels—not fluffy white-winged angels, but the blood-dark angels of vengeance who had given their power to make the Shadowhunters.
And it came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the Lord went out, and killed in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand; and when people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses—all dead.
But it made no sense. Wha
t was happening was impossible. People did not turn into enormous shining giants and stride around battlefields dispatching their enemies. This could not possibly have been a plan that the Blackthorns and their allies had. No mortal human had access to power like that.
The great shining thing that had been Emma Carstairs reached down one of its hands. Manuel shrank against the ground, but she was not looking for him. She seized hold of the crouching Eidolon demon that had been Horace’s great trick and clamped her fist around it.
The Eidolon demon cried out, a howl that seemed to come from the abyss between worlds. The touch of Emma’s shining hand acted on it like acid. Its skin began to burn and melt; it shrieked and dissolved and slid away between her fingers like thin soup.
And when people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses—all dead.
Terrified, Manuel crawled toward Horace’s body, still dripping with blood, and dragged it over himself. Horace had failed to protect anyone while he was alive. Perhaps things would be different now that he was dead.
* * *
But how can they possibly live through this?
Mark still held Cristina; neither of them seemed able to move. Aline and Helen were nearby; many other Shadowhunters were still on the field. Mark couldn’t tear his eyes away from Julian and Emma.
He was terrified. Not of them. He was terrified for them. They were great and shining and magnificent, and they were blank-eyed as statues. Emma straightened up from destroying the Eidolon, and Mark could see a great fissure running along her arm, where once her scar from Cortana had been. Flames leaped inside it, as if she were full of fire.
Emma raised her head. Her hair flew around her like golden lightning. “RIDERS OF MANNAN!” she called, and her voice wasn’t a human voice at all. It was the sound of trumpets, of thunderclaps echoing through empty valleys. “RIDERS OF MANNAN! COME AND FACE US!”
“They can talk,” Cristina whispered.
Good. Maybe they can listen to reason.
Maybe.
“Emma!” Mark called. “Julian! We’re here! Listen to us, we’re here!”
Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices #3) Page 73