The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (269 page)

Emma rolled off Julian and brushed at her clothes. She had stopped laughing. Julian sat up, propping himself on his hands, his eyes curious. “Everything okay?” he said.

“Banged my elbow,” she lied, and looked over at the others. Livvy was letting Katerina show her how to hold the knife, and Ty was shaking his head at Mark.
Ty.
She’d been the one to give Tiberius his nickname when he was born, because at eighteen months old she hadn’t been able to say “Tiberius” and had called him “Ty-Ty” instead. Sometimes she wondered if he remembered. It was strange, the things that mattered to Ty and the things that didn’t. You couldn’t predict them.

“Emma?” Julian leaned forward, and everything seemed to explode around them. There was a sudden enormous flash of light, and the world outside the windows turned white-gold and red, as if the Institute had caught on fire. At the same time the floor under them rocked like the deck of a ship. Emma slid forward just as a terrible screaming rose from downstairs—a horrible unrecognizable scream.

Livvy gasped and went for Ty, wrapped her arms around him as if she could encircle and protect his body with her own. Livvy was one of the very few people Ty didn’t mind touching him; he stood with his eyes wide, one of his hands caught in the sleeve of his sister’s shirt. Mark had risen to his feet already; Katerina was pale under her coils of dark hair.

“You stay here,” she said to Emma and Julian, drawing her sword from the sheath at her waist. “Watch the twins. Mark, come with me.”

“No!” Julian said, scrambling to his feet. “Mark—”

“I’ll be fine, Jules,” Mark said with a reassuring smile; he already had a dagger in each hand. He was quick and fast with knives, his aim unerring. “Stay with Emma,” he said, nodding toward both of them, and then he vanished after Katerina, the door of the training room shutting behind them.

Jules edged closer to Emma, slipped his hand into hers, and helped her to her feet; she wanted to point out to him that she was just fine and could stand on her own, but she let it go. She understood the urge to feel as if you were doing something, anything to help. Another scream suddenly rose from downstairs; there was the sound of glass shattering. Emma hurried across the room toward the twins; they were deadly still, like little statues. Livvy was ashen; Ty was clutching her shirt with a death grip.

“It’s going to be okay,” Jules said, putting his hand between his brother’s thin shoulder blades. “Whatever it is—”

“You have no idea what it is,” Ty said in a clipped voice. “You can’t say it’s going to be okay. You don’t
know
.”

There was another noise then. It was worse than the sound of a scream. It was a terrible howl, feral and vicious.
Werewolves?
Emma thought with bewilderment, but she’d heard a werewolf’s cry before; this was something much darker and crueler.

Livvy huddled against Ty’s shoulder. He raised his little white face, his eyes tracking from Emma to rest on Julian. “If we hide here,” Ty said, “and whatever it is finds us, and they
hurt our sister, then it’s your fault.”

Livvy’s face was hidden against Ty; he had spoken softly, but Emma had no doubt he meant it. For all Ty’s frightening intellect, for all his strangeness and indifference to other people, he was inseparable from his twin. If Livvy was sick, Ty slept at the foot of her bed; if she got a scratch, he panicked, and it was the same the other way around.

Emma saw the conflicting emotions chase themselves across Julian’s face—his eyes sought hers, and she nodded minutely. The idea of staying in the training room and waiting for whatever had made that sound to come to them made her skin feel as if it were peeling off her bones.

Julian strode across the room and then returned with a recurve crossbow and two daggers. “You have to let go of Livvy now, Ty,” he said, and after a moment the twins separated. Jules handed Livvy a dagger and offered the other one to Tiberius, who stared at it as if it were an alien thing. “Ty,” Jules said, dropping his hand. “Why did you have the bees in your room? What is it you like about them?”

Ty said nothing.

“You like the way they work together, right?” Julian said. “Well, we have to work together now. We’re going to get to the office and make a call out to the Clave, okay? A distress call. So they’ll send backup to protect us.”

Ty held his hand out for the dagger with a curt nod. “That’s what I would have suggested if Mark and Katerina had listened to me.”

“He would have,” Livvy said. She had taken the dagger with more confidence than Ty, and held it as if she knew what she was doing with the blade. “It’s what he was thinking about.”

“We’re going to have to be very quiet now,” Jules said. “You two are going to follow me to the office.” He raised his eyes; his gaze met Emma’s. “Emma’s going to get Tavvy and Dru and meet us there. Okay?”

Emma’s heart swooped and plummeted like a seabird. Octavius—Tavvy, the baby, only two years old. And Dru, eight, too young to start physical training. Of course someone was going to have to get them both. And Jules’s eyes were pleading.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Cortana was strapped to Emma’s back, a throwing knife in her hand. She thought she could feel the metal pulsing through her veins like a heartbeat as she slipped down the Institute corridor, her back to the wall. Every once in a while the hallway would open out into windows, and the sight of the blue sea and the green mountains and the peaceful white clouds would tease her. She thought of her parents, somewhere out on the beach, having no idea what was happening at the Institute. She wished they were here, and at the same time was glad they weren’t. At least they were safe.

She was in the part of the Institute that was most familiar to her now: the family quarters. She slipped past Helen’s empty bedroom, clothes packed up and her coverlet dusty. Past Julian’s room, familiar from a million sleepovers, and Mark’s, door firmly shut. The next room was Mr. Blackthorn’s, and just beside it was the nursery. Emma took a deep breath and shouldered the door open.

The sight that met her eyes in the little blue-painted room made them widen. Tavvy was in his crib, his small hands clutching the bars, cheeks bright red from screaming. Drusilla stood
in front of the crib, a sword—Angel knew where she’d gotten it—clutched in her hand; it was pointed directly at Emma. Dru’s hand was shaking enough that the point of the sword was dancing around; her braids stuck out on either side of her plump face, but the look in her Blackthorn eyes was one of steely determination:
Don’t you dare touch my brother.

“Dru,” Emma said as softly as she could. “Dru, it’s me. Jules sent me to get you.”

Dru dropped the sword with a clatter and burst into tears. Emma swept past her and seized the baby out of his crib with her free arm, heaving him up onto her hip. Tavvy was small for his age but still weighed a good twenty-five pounds; she winced as he clutched onto her hair.

“Memma,” he said.

“Shush.” She kissed the top of his head. He smelled like baby powder and tears. “Dru, grab onto my belt, okay? We’re going to the office. We’ll be safe there.”

Dru took hold of Emma’s weapons belt with her small hands; she’d already stopped crying. Shadowhunters didn’t cry much, even when they were eight.

Emma led the way out into the hall. The sounds from below were worse now. The screams were still going on, the deep howling, the sounds of glass breaking and wood ripping. Emma inched forward, clutching Tavvy, murmuring over and over that everything was all right, he’d be all right. And there were more windows, and the sun slashed through them viciously, almost blinding her.

She
was
blinded, by panic and the sun; it was the only explanation for the wrong turn she took next. She turned down a corridor, and instead of finding herself in the hallway that she
expected, she found herself standing atop the wide staircase that led down to the foyer and the large double doors that were the building’s entrance.

The foyer was filled with Shadowhunters. Some, familiar to her as the Nephilim of the Los Angeles Conclave, in black, others in red gear. There were rows of statuary, now toppled over, in pieces and powder on the ground. The picture window that opened onto the sea had been smashed, and broken glass and blood were everywhere.

Emma felt a sick lurch in her stomach. In the middle of the foyer stood a tall figure in scarlet. He was pale blond, almost white-haired, and his face looked like the carved marble face of Raziel, only entirely without mercy. His eyes were coal black, and in one hand he carried a sword stamped with a pattern of stars; in the other, a goblet made of shimmering
adamas
.

The sight of the cup triggered something in Emma’s mind. The adults didn’t like to talk about politics around the younger Shadowhunters, but she knew that Valentine Morgenstern’s son had taken on a different name and sworn vengeance against the Clave. She knew that he had made a cup that was the reverse of the Angel’s Cup, that changed Shadowhunters into evil, demonic creatures. She had heard Mr. Blackthorn call the evil Shadowhunters the Endarkened Ones; he had said he’d rather die than be one.

This was him, then. Jonathan Morgenstern, whom everyone called Sebastian—a figure out of a fairy tale, a story told to frighten children, come to life.
Valentine’s son.

Emma put a hand to the back of Tavvy’s head, pressing his face into her shoulder. She couldn’t move. She felt as if lead weights were attached to her feet. All around Sebastian were
Shadowhunters in black and red, and figures in dark cloaks—were they Shadowhunters, too? She couldn’t tell—their faces were hidden, and there was Mark, his hands being held behind his back by a Shadowhunter in red gear. His daggers lay at his feet, and there was blood on his training clothes.

Sebastian raised a hand and crooked a long white finger. “Bring her,” he said; there was a rustle in the crowd, and Mr. Blackthorn stepped forward, dragging Katerina with him. She was fighting, beating at him with her hands, but he was too strong. Emma watched in disbelieving horror as Mr. Blackthorn pushed her to her knees.

“Now,” said Sebastian in a voice like silk, “drink of the Infernal Cup,” and he forced the rim of the cup between Katerina’s teeth.

That was when Emma found out what the terrible howling noise she had heard before was. Katerina tried to fight free, but Sebastian was too strong; he jammed the cup past her lips, and Emma saw her gasp and swallow. She wrenched away, and this time Mr. Blackthorn let her; he was laughing, and so was Sebastian. Katerina fell to the ground, her body spasming, and from her throat came a single scream—worse than a scream, a howl of pain as if her soul were being torn out of her body.

A laugh went around the room; Sebastian smiled, and there was something horrible and beautiful about him, the way there was something horrible and beautiful about poisonous snakes and great white sharks. He was flanked by two companions, Emma realized: a woman with graying brown hair, an axe in her hands, and a tall figure wrapped entirely in a black cloak. No part of him was visible except the dark boots that showed beneath the hem of his robe. Only his height and
breadth made her think he was a man at all.

“Is that the last of the Shadowhunters here?” Sebastian asked.

“There is the boy, Mark Blackthorn,” said the woman standing beside him, raising a finger and pointing at Mark. “He ought to be old enough.”

Sebastian looked down at Katerina, who had stopped spasming and lay still, her dark hair tangled across her face. “Get up, sister Katerina,” he said. “Go and bring Mark Blackthorn to me.”

Emma watched, rooted to the spot, as Katerina rose slowly to her feet. Katerina had been the tutor at the Institute for as long as Emma could remember; she had been their teacher when Tavvy had been born, when Jules’s mother had died, when Emma had first started physical training. She had taught them languages and bound up cuts and soothed scrapes and given them their first weapons; she had been like family, and now she stepped, blank-eyed, across the mess on the floor and reached out to seize Mark.

Dru gave a gasp, snapping Emma back to consciousness. Emma whirled, and placed Tavvy in Dru’s arms; Dru staggered a little and then recovered, clutching her baby brother tight. “Run,” Emma said. “Run to the office. Tell Julian I’ll be right there.”

Something of the urgency in Emma’s voice communicated itself; Drusilla didn’t argue, just clutched Tavvy more tightly and fled, her bare little feet soundless on the corridor floors. Emma spun back to stare down at the unfolding horror. Katerina was behind Mark, pushing him ahead, a dagger pressed to the space between his shoulder blades. He staggered and nearly stumbled in front of Sebastian; Mark was closer to
the steps now, and Emma could see that he had been fighting. There were defensive wounds on his wrists and hands, cuts on his face, and there had doubtless been no time for healing runes. There was blood all over his right cheek; Sebastian looked at him, lip curling in annoyance.

“This one is not all Nephilim,” he said. “Part faerie, am I correct? Why was I not informed?”