The Infernal Devices Rewritten

Chapter 18 - For This Alone

Chapter 18

For This Alone

"Awake, Miss Gray. Miss Gray!"

Tessa jerked upright, her arm still around Evan's middle. They'd fallen asleep on the bed, still on top of the covers, after Mortmain's automatons injected Evan with the 'antidote'. Evan was still sleeping soundly, her features more lifelike in the dull firelight, much more healthy than she'd been their entire capture. There was a coarse blue blanket drawn up around Tessa - only Tessa - though she had not drawn it around herself.

Mortmain stood as close as he dared to the wall of magic. Beside him was a more human automaton, clothed and armed. Its eyes, glass and crystal, glowed red and seemed to be fixed on her. Tessa shifted slightly bracing her arm on the other side of Evan as if to shield her - the least she could do, she decided, since she'd been dragged into the entire mess.

"You're cold." Mortmain said without sympathy.

Exhaling, Tessa said through her puff of breath, "The warmth of your hospitality leaves something to be desired."

Smiling through thin lips, "Very amusing. Miss Gray, I do not wake you lightly. I came because I wish you to see what your kind assistance with my father's memories has allowed me to accomplish." He gestured proudly to the automaton at his side.

"Another automaton," Tessa asked without interest.

"How rude of me," Mortmain's eyes flickered with dark humor. "Introduce yourself."

In a flash of brass behind its jagged, cut mouth, it spoke. "I am Armaros. For a billion years I rode the winds of the great abysses between the worlds. I fought Jonathan Shadowhunter on the plains of the Brocelind. For a thousand years I lay trapped within the Pyxis. Now my master has freed me and I serve him."

Tessa slid off of the bed, her hand lingering by Evan's sleeping figure. The floor was cold but not any colder than the air around them; the blanket around her fell to the ground in a heap of blue.

"What is this?" Her voice was hardly above a whisper. Tessa stared into the dark eyes again, realizing now that it wasn't the faith glow of the fire reflecting in the glass and crystal, but dark intelligence and a conscious that she's never seen before.

"An automaton body animated by a demon spirit. Downworlders already have their ways of capturing demon energies and using them. I used them myself to power the automatons you've seen before. But Armaros and his brothers are different. They are demons with the carapaces of automatons. They can think and reason. They are not so easily outwitted. And they are very difficult to kill."

With the fluidity she'd only seen Shadowhunters possess, the creature reached across its body and drew a sword with runes that both Tessa and Evan had become so familiar with over the past months. The runes that were deadly to demons. Armaros should barely been able to look upon the blade, much less hold it.

Evan stirred and Tessa clasped Evan's hand from across the girl's body. A warning.

Mortmain took the sword from the demon. He spun it, swept it forward and drove it into the demon's chest. With the horrible sound of tearing metal that both girls had also become accustom to, the demon held its ground - unflinchingly.

Evan, however, jumped and sat up. Her matted silver hair falling in her face as her hands shook and she pressed herself so hard against the headboard that the wood groaned. Tessa reached for her again, but she flinched and Tessa withdrew her hand.

Savagely twisting the hilt, Mortmain jerked the sword free and the blade crumpled like ash. "You see," Mortmain said turning to face Tessa again, ignoring Evan, "They are an army designed to destroy Shadowhunters."