Lady Midnight (58 page)

“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 drown
ing, 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 dead. “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.

There was a searing, crackling noise as the seraph blade met flesh and the Follower began to burn. He staggered away, clawing at his burning flesh, before tumbling to the ground.

“Seraph blades!” Emma called. “Everyone! Use your seraph blades!”

Lights blazed up through the cavern and Emma heard the murmur of voices calling the names of angels. Jophiel, Remiel, Duma. Through the haze of light she saw Malcolm with the bent copper knife. He ran a hand along the blade and it sprang back under his fingers, as sharp as it had been originally. He placed the tip of it against Tavvy’s throat and sliced downward, slitting open the little boy’s Batman T-shirt. The worn cotton curled open, revealing his thin, vulnerable chest.

Emma’s world seemed to drop away. In the chaos of the room, she was still fighting, her seraph blade flaming as she plunged it into one Follower, then two, then three. Their bodies crumpled all around her.

She tried to push through them, toward Tavvy, just as she heard Julian’s voice. She whirled around but couldn’t see him—and yet his voice had been clear in her ears, saying,
Emma, Emma, move aside, away from the tunnel.

She jumped aside, skirting the body of a fallen Follower, just as she heard a new noise: the thunder of hooves. A sound pierced the room, something between a howl and the crash of an enormous
bell. It bounced off the walls, a brutal echo, and even Malcolm looked up.

Windspear exploded from the mouth of the tunnel. Julian sat astride him, his hands buried in the horse’s mane. Mark was behind him, gripping his brother’s belt. They seemed to blur almost into one person as Windspear leaped.

Malcolm gaped as the horse hurtled through the air, smashing through the protective barrier. As Windspear sailed over the table, Julian flung himself from the horse’s back, falling heavily onto the flat stone surface beside Tavvy. Emma felt the bone-jarring shock of his pain go through her own body.

Mark kept his seat as Windspear swept over the table and landed on the other side of the circle. The circle itself, now pierced, began to writhe like an illuminated serpent, the runes flaring up one by one and then going out.

Julian was pulling himself up onto his knees. Malcolm snarled and reached for Tavvy—just as a figure dropped from the ceiling and knocked him to the ground.

It was Kieran. His hair shimmered blue-green and he raised a blade that was the same sea color. It plunged down toward Malcolm’s chest, but Malcolm threw his hands up. Dark purple light exploded from his palms, hurling Kieran back. Malcolm rose to his feet, his face twisted in a snarl of hate. He flung out a hand to crush Kieran into dust.

Windspear gave a scream. The horse whirled around, hooves raised, and punched them into Malcolm’s back; somehow Mark kept his seat. The warlock went flying. The horse, red eyes wide, reared and snorted. Mark, grabbing a fistful of Windspear’s mane, leaned down, his other hand outstretched toward Kieran.

“Take it,” Emma heard him say. “Kieran, take my hand.”

Kieran reached up, and Mark pulled him upright, hauling him onto Windspear’s back. They swung around and charged at a knot
of Followers, the horse scattering them, Mark and Kieran reaching down to finish off the living dead with strokes of their swords.

Malcolm was dragging himself to his feet. His once-white jacket was liberally stained now with dirt and blood. He began to move toward the table, where Julian was kneeling over Tavvy, tugging at the chains that bound him. The protection circle surrounding them was still sputtering. Emma took a deep breath and raced for the table, leaping into the air.

She felt a wavering snap of electricity as she passed through the broken circle, crouched, and flung herself upward. She landed on the table in a kneeling position, beside Julian.

“Move away!” was all she had time to gasp. “Julian, move!”

He rolled away from his brother, though she knew that letting go of Tavvy was the last thing he wanted to do. He slid to the edge of the table and rose to his knees, leaning back. Trusting Emma. Giving her space.

A blade made by Wayland the Smith can cut anything.

She swung down with Cortana, a few inches from Tavvy’s wrist. The edge of the blade sliced through the chain and it fell away, rattling. She heard Malcolm scream, and a flash of violet fire split the room.

Emma slashed down again with Cortana, severing the other chains holding Tavvy to the table. “Go!” she shouted at Julian. “Get him out of here!”

Julian caught up his little brother in his arms. Octavian hung limp, his eyes rolled back. Julian leaped down from the table.

Emma didn’t see him vanish into the tunnel; she had already whirled back around. Mark and Kieran were trapped at one end of the room by a group of Followers, Diego and Cristina at another. Malcolm was advancing on Ty and Livvy. He raised his hand again—and a small figure flew toward him, holding up a blazing seraph blade.

It was Dru.

“Stay away from them!” she shrieked, her blade shining between them. “Stay away from my brother and sister!”

Malcolm snarled, curling his finger toward her. A rope of purple light coiled around Dru’s legs, jerking her off her feet. The seraph blade rolled away, sputtering against the stone. “I still need Blackthorn blood,” Malcolm said, reaching down for her. “And yours will do as well as your little brother’s would have. In fact, you look like you’d have a lot more of it—”

“Stop!” Emma shouted.

Malcolm looked up at her—and froze. Emma was standing upright on the stone table. One hand clutched Cortana. The other held the candelabra of Hands of Glory.

“It took you a long time to collect these, didn’t it?” she said in a cold voice. “The hands of thirteen murderers. Not so easy.”

Malcolm released Dru and she scuttled away toward the far side of the room, scrabbling at her belt for another weapon. Malcolm’s face contorted. “Give it back.”

“Call them off,” Emma said. “Call off your Followers, and I’ll give you back your Hands of Glory.”

“Deprive me of my chance to regain Annabel, and you will pay with agony,” he snarled.

“Can’t be worse than the agony of hearing you talk,” Emma said. “Call them off or I’ll cut these disgusting things into tiny pieces.” She tightened her grip on Cortana. “Let’s see if you can do a magic spell with those.”

Malcolm’s gaze swept the room. The bodies of Followers littered the cavern, but some of them were still on their feet, pinning Diego and Cristina in the corner of the room. Mark and Kieran were astride Windspear, both laying about themselves with blades. The horse’s hooves were stained red-brown with blood.