Shadowveil

The Necromancer

Warning: Some descriptions of ugly injuries. But if you read the TMI, you're used to that :D

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Clary backed away, heart hammering in her throat. 

Other Clary choked. "Dear God," she whispered, clutching her chakram. 

The captor giggled. He couldn't have been more than seventeen, all cinnamon curls and high cheekbones and a bloody smile. Clary didn't recognize him. But that wasn't the point.

The point was that his face was ruined--slashed beyond recovery, mangled into a dozen tiny pieces. He was wearing a blue sweatshirt so drenched in blood it seemed almost royal purple; tears in it showed demonic wounds, black veins spidering over his torso. His hand was marked with the Voyance rune, and a silver signet ring showed a Shadowhunter crest.

He was dead. There was no doubt about it. There was a tinge of blue to his chapped lips and the tips of his fingers, and his eyes were covered by a thin film of blood. His ruined face was turned sideways atop an unnaturally twisted neck. Clary felt the urge to throw up. There was something awful shining in those blood-slicked eyes, something old and malicious and deadly that was speaking through the mouth of a boy whose soul had long departed.

Other Clary shifted beside her and let out a hiss of breath. "That's Malakai," she said sharply. "Malakai Greybrook. I recognize the face from the posters--he went missing from the Seattle Institute years ago, back when he was thirteen or so. Went on a basic training mission and just disappeared into thin air. They never found him."

Malakai--or the thing speaking through him--laughed. "Yes, Nephilim. That was once his name." The boy reached up to touch his torn face, bloody blue fingertips dragging through the cuts. "Normally I prefer my vessels to be a little more. . .whole, but this one was terribly stubborn. I would have given up on him long ago if I could, but those with the blood of the Angel make such excellent hosts. They last a very long time, you see, made of stronger stuff than the mundanes they were bred from."

The man in the room spoke for the first time. There was no trace of the sobbing wreck he'd been half an hour before. "Who are you?" he asked harshly. "I don't know what the hell's happening here, but you're sure not the Greybrook's kid. " Malakai smiled broadly, stretching the tears in his face. Clary winced. "Always such basic, basic questions. 'Who are you?'" He leaned back. "'What do you want with me?' You know, that was exactly what this vessel said when I cornered him in that dark, nasty building the Shadowhunters sent him to."

The boy chuckled wetly, and Clary saw the flash of blood in his mouth. "If only his parents had loved their son a little more," he said, eyes widening in a look of innocence. "If only the Nephilim watched their youth better. Then there would have been no Malakai Greythorn sitting here today, no demonic attacks, no glitching wards. Your own carelessness was your undoing. But then that's the way it's always been, isn't it? You've ruled the world for far too long; you've become crueler and more complacent as the centuries went by."

Malakai stood up suddenly. His cloak billowed in a phantom breeze as his eyes turned to fire, blindingly bright, tumbling down his mutilated face. "You will pay!" he screamed, the smell of burning flesh filling the air. "You will pay for your crimes to the Sons of the Underworld! At last you will know fear; you will cower as your skies turn to fire and your water to acid and your earth to ash! You will cry for your God, for your Angel, but receive no help! You will know the pain of a dying race, of being hunted in the dark and knowing no escape."

The fire died down. Clary tightened her grip on her chakram. The shell of a boy stood looking at her, eyes charred black, beautiful in his ugliness, in the extremity of his pain. "The hunters will become the hunted," he said softly. "Predators will become prey. Such is the circle of fate. Beware, beware, O Children of the Light, for the Sons of the Underworld come to claim your souls. The Collector will have his due. On the fifth night of the second week of the month of the Blood Moon, you will be no more."

He stiffened. Cracks spread up his skin, like fine porcelain squeezed too tightly. The awful, knowing light began to leave his eyes--and four chakrams buried themselves in his chest, right over his long-silent heart. For a moment he swayed, then simply fell away into powder, like the demons who were subjected to a seraph blade. The chakrams clattered to the ground next to his ring, which spun in a blazing circle before settling. 

The room was silent except for the harsh breathing of the four Shadowhunters in the room, all with their hands still extended from their throw. The demon corpses had disappeared, along with the stains of blood on the walls and floors. Except for the Greybrook ring on the floor, there was no sign that anything had happened. It could have all been a terrible dream. 

Dazedly, the other woman in the room pushed at the doors. They opened lightly under her touch, as if they had never locked. Huddled close together, the four Shadowhunters walked down the hall. There was no sign of any demons. Clary didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed when they stumbled across the body of one of the runekeepers who'd died in the attack. 

Everything seemed very far away, sliding in and out of focus. The echoes of the boy's words sounded in her mind. Beware. The hunters will become the hunted. You will be no more. Under the sound of the boy's voice, she heard another voice, one that she had not thought of in years. Erchomai. I am coming. If I cannot move Heaven, I will raise Hell. Black eyes swam in front of her, turning green to black and back again. 

She felt her knees buckle but held herself up through sheer strength of will. Dimly, she saw Other Clary pull a stele off a dead Shadowhunter and shakily mark a rune into the floor. She walked robotically through the crackling heat of the portal, guided by someone's firm grip and holding another Shadowhunter's hand to guide them forward too.

The trip seemed to last forever. When she broke through, the lobby of the Rome Institute wavered in front of her eyes, pristine as ever. She looked vacantly at the face of the Angel on the ceiling, noticing for the first time the flaws in the paint and the cracks in the plaster. The face looked very cruel, suddenly, and no longer beautiful as she had once thought.

Shouts echoed through the halls, footsteps pounding the floor. Jace was there in an instant, dressed in full gear with both his arms around her, rocking her back and forth as he sobbed. She pressed her head into his shoulder and let her own tears slip out while he murmured her name over and over, laughing and crying at once.

She caught his hand and held it, feeling the engagement band bite into her palm. She cried for the boy Malakai, used and discarded; she cried for her brother, who had never been given the chance to be good; she cried for the Nephilim, all of them, who would face the threat of death again. She cried for the Shadowhunters already dead and those who would soon join them. 

Already she was thinking of the battles, the plans, the evacuations. She felt bone-tired thinking of how hard she would need to fight, to protect, to survive. Maybe the dead were the lucky ones. They had gone where no one could hurt them anymore. 

Then she looked over Jace's shoulder and saw Ellie give her mother a little-girl kiss, the sun sparking off her copper hair. No, she thought. No, it's better to be alive, to love and laugh and make mistakes and eventually die young. That's better than never living at all. 

She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. Whatever the challenges, the struggles, and the losses that time would bring, she would meet them head-on. 

"Jace," she said. "Do you have any more of that heavenly fire lying around?" Her fiancé pulled back and gave her a worried look, probably thinking she'd hit her head and needed an iratze. "No," he said, nose wrinkling. "Why? Did you need it for something?"

 She gave him a watery smile. "Well, apparently, some evil demonic cult called the Sons of the Underworld is going to exterminate the Shadowhunters soon and we should beware. Oh, and they can possess dead bodies."

Jace took a second to process that. 

"Oh," he said. "Oh, shite."

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So. . . there's a new villain in town. I know I haven't really written anything about them yet, but what did you think of their introduction? How was their monologuing skill (very important for a villain) on a scale from one to ten? Let me know!