PROLOGUE: Hell is empty

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"HELL IS EMPTY AND ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE."

-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

FAIRCHILD MANOR, 2003

The night lay cold and silent, the shadows of the moon dancing across the walls of the manor. The thin layer of dust lay undisturbed, settling after a free-floating day of chaos. These dark and dusty halls made the perfect setting for a horror story, but no ghosts or ghouls disturbed the night's silence—only the footsteps of a girl as she hurried silently and gracefully along the hallway, already haunted by the future she would soon live.

12-year-old Clarissa Morgenstern slid into the kitchen, switching the light on and whipping her head around with bared teeth, lest anyone dare ambush her. But the kitchen lay empty, silent and undisturbed, as it had since the family had finished their evening meal, 3 hours earlier. She closed the door quietly, heading for the drawer in the corner of the room. Sliding it open, she took out what she needed and nothing more, before shutting it again, and exiting the kitchen with equal stealth and grace, heading down the passage she'd come from and up the stairs, turning left down the corridor that was home to her parents' bedroom.

Her mother was alone tonight; her father was out with members of the Circle of Raziel, a ridiculous organisation he'd created in his school days and carried on to this very day. Since the failed Accords, just months before she was born, the relationship between Shadowhunters and Downworlders had become violent, and the Clave were still trying to clean up the mess. Clarissa's father and the Circle members were clearing a werewolf pack out of Brocelind forest; the same pack, incidentally, that had turned her father's parabatai, Lucian Graymark, into a werewolf. Again, this was before her birth.

Either way, it meant that Clarissa's mother, Jocelyn Fairchild, was all alone tonight, which made her job infinitely easier.

Pausing outside the bedroom, she laid her hand carelessly on the doorknob, remembering what had led her to this point.

Her father's journal.

She turned the doorknob silently.

The secret. She was part demon.

She glided over to the bed where her mother lay sleeping, exhaustion smoothing away the creases in her face.

Her brother, Jonathan, was part angel.

She raised the blade high.

And the final secret. The one that filled her with fury, taking over her very being. The one that rotted the remainder of her soul, until she was only hatred, only revenge.

She brought the blade down in a shining arc, teeth bared.

She was revenge

She was Clarissa, the dark Nephilim.

She tasted her mother's blood, and her soul smiled.

Thousands of miles away, Jonathan Fairchild woke up screaming.

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