Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

The water in the bowl blurred. Julian almost reached for the image before checking himself and jerking his hand back. “Where are they?” he said, in a harsh voice. “What are they doing?”

“Patience. There is a place they must go. Malcolm will take your uncle there.” The Seelie Queen gloated. She thought she had Julian in the palm of her hand now, he thought, and hated her. She dipped her long fingers into the water, and Julian saw a brief swirl of images—the doors of the New York Institute, Jace and Clary asleep in a green field, Jem and Tessa in a dark, shadowy place—and then the images resolved again.

Arthur and Malcolm were inside a church, an old-fashioned one with stained-glass windows and carved pew-ends. Something covered in a black cloth lay on the altar. Something that moved ever so slightly, restlessly, like an animal waking from sleep.

Malcolm stood watching Arthur, with a smile playing on his ruined face. He looked like something dragged up from some watery Hell dimension. Cracks and runnels in his skin leaked seawater. His eyes were milky and opaque; half his white hair was gone, and his bald skin was patchy and scabbed. He wore a white suit, and the raw fissures in his skin disappeared incongruously under expensive collar and cuffs.

“For any blood ritual, willing blood is better than unwilling,” said Arthur. He stood in his usual slumped posture, hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I’ll give you mine willingly if you’ll swear to leave my family alone.”

Malcolm licked his lips; his tongue was bluish. “That’s all you want? That promise?”

Arthur nodded.

“You don’t want the Black Volume?” Malcolm said in a taunting voice, tapping the book tucked into the waistband of his trousers. “You don’t want assurance I’ll never harm a single Nephilim?”

“Your revenge only matters to me inasmuch as my family remains unharmed,” said Arthur, and relief weakened Julian’s knees. “The Blackthorn blood I give you should slake your thirst for it, warlock.”

Malcolm smiled. His teeth were twisted and sharp, like a shark’s. “Now, if I make this agreement, am I taking advantage of you, given that you are a madman?” he mused aloud. “Has your shaky mind mistaken the situation? Are you confused? Bewildered? Do you know who I am?” Arthur winced, and Julian felt a pang of sympathy for his uncle, and a flash of hate for Malcolm.

Kill him, he thought. Tell me you brought a seraph blade, Uncle, and run him through.

“Your uncle will not be armed,” said the Queen. “Fade would have seen to that.” She was watching with an almost avaricious delight. “The mad Nephilim and the mad warlock,” she said. “It is like a storybook.”

“You are Malcolm Fade, betrayer and murderer,” said Arthur.

“Quite an ungrateful thing to say to someone who’s been providing you with your cures all these years,” Malcolm murmured.

“Cures? More like temporary lies. You did what you had to do to continue to deceive Julian,” said Arthur, and Julian started to hear his own name. “You gave him medicine for me because it made him trust you. My family loved you. More than they ever did me. You twisted a knife in their hearts.”

“Oh,” Malcolm murmured. “If only.”

“I would rather be mad my way than yours,” said Arthur. “You had so much. Love once, and power, and immortal life, and you have thrown it away as if it were trash by the side of the road.” He glanced toward the twitching thing on the altar. “I wonder if she will still love you, the way you are now.”

Malcolm’s face contorted. “Enough,” he said, and a quick look of triumph passed over Arthur’s tired, battered features. He had outwitted Malcolm, in his own way. “I agree to your promise. Come here.”

Arthur stepped forward. Malcolm seized him and began to propel him toward the altar. Arthur’s witchlight was gone, but candles burned in brackets fastened to the walls, casting a flickering, yellowish light.

Malcolm held Arthur with one hand, bending him over the altar; with the other he drew the dark covering away from the altar. Annabel’s body was revealed.

“Oh,” breathed the Queen. “She was lovely, once.”

She was not now. Annabel was a skeleton, though not the clean white down-to-the-bones type one usually saw in art and pictures. Her skin was leathery and dried, and pocked with holes where worms had crawled in and out. Nausea rose in Julian’s stomach. She was covered with white winding-sheets, but her legs were visible, and her arms: There were places the skin had peeled away, and moss grew on the bones and dried tendons.

Brittle dark hair spilled from her skull. Her jaw worked as she saw Malcolm, and a moan issued from her destroyed throat. She seemed to be shaking her head.

“Don’t worry, darling,” said Malcolm. “I’ve brought you what you need.”

“No!” Julian cried, but it was as he had feared: He could not halt the events unfolding before him. Malcolm snatched up the blade from beside Annabel and sliced open Arthur’s throat.