Queen of Air and Darkness Read online

  He pointed it at both of them. Shadowhunters didn’t use guns, but Julian could tell just by the way he held it that this Cameron Ashdown knew them well.

  If Cameron shot, Julian thought, there might be time for him to throw himself in front of Emma. He’d take the bullet, even if he hated the idea of leaving her here alone. . . .

  Cameron raised his voice. “Livia!” he called. “You’re going to want to see this.”

  Julian’s chest turned to ice. He imagined he was still breathing, he must be or he’d die, but he couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel the blood in his body or the pulse of his breath or the beat of his heart. He only saw her, appearing from between two cars: She walked toward them casually, her long dark Blackthorn hair blowing in the wind off the sea.

  Livvy.

  She looked about seventeen. She wore black leather pants with a bullet belt slung around her waist and a gray tank top with holes in it over a mesh shirt. Her boots were thick-soled with a dozen buckles. On her wrists were D-ring canvas bracelets with short throwing knives shoved under the straps. A scar—one of many—cut across her face, from the top of her left temple, across her eye, to the middle of her cheek. She carried a shotgun, and as she walked toward them, she raised it effortlessly and pointed it directly at Julian.

  “It’s them,” Cameron said. “Don’t know what they’re doing away from the other Endarkened.”

  “Who cares?” Livvy said. “I’m gonna kill them, and they’d thank me for it if they still had souls.”

  Julian threw up his hands. Joy at seeing her, uncontrollable and dizzying, warred with panic. “Livvy, it’s us—”

  “Don’t even try,” she spat. She pumped the shotgun expertly. “I’d tell you to pray, but the Angel is dead.”

  “Look—” Emma started, and Livvy began to swing the gun toward her; Julian took a step toward his sister, and then Cameron, who Julian had almost forgotten was there, said:

  “Wait.”

  Livvy froze. “This had better be good, Cam.”

  Cameron pointed at Julian. “His collar’s torn—” He shook his head impatiently. “Show her,” he said to Julian.

  “Your rune,” Emma whispered, and Julian, realization bursting brightly behind his eyes, yanked his collar down to show Livvy the rune on his chest. Though Julian’s impermanent runes—Night Vision, Stealth, Sure-Strike—had been fading to gray since they’d entered Faerie, his parabatai rune stood out black and clear.

  Livvy froze.

  “The Endarkened can’t bear Nephilim runes,” said Julian. “You know that, Livvy.”

  “I know you think we’re Emma and Julian, the Endarkened version,” said Emma. “But we’ve seen them. They’re down on the beach.” She pointed. “Seriously. Look.”

  A flicker of doubt crossed Livvy’s face. “Cameron. Go look.”

  Cameron went to the edge of the bluffs and peered down through a pair of binoculars. Julian held his breath; he could tell Emma was holding hers as well.

  “Yeah, they’re there,” Cameron said after a long pause. “And they’re making out. Gross.”

  “They were always doing that before they were Endarkened,” said Livvy. “Some things never change.”

  Emma raised her left hand to show her Voyance rune. “We’re Shadowhunters. We know you, Livvy, and we love you—”

  “Stop,” Livvy said fiercely. “Fine, maybe you’re not the Endarkened, but this could still be some kind of demonic shape-changing—”

  “These are angelic runes,” said Julian. “We’re not demons—”

  “Then who are you?” Livvy cried, and her voice echoed with an awful hopelessness, a loneliness as dark and bottomless as a well. “Who am I supposed to think you are?”

  “We’re still us,” Emma said. “Jules and Emma. We’re from another world. One where Sebastian is not in charge. One with runes.”

  Livvy stared at her blankly.

  “Liv,” said Cameron, lowering his binoculars. “The party on the beach is starting to break up. They’ll be climbing up here any second. What are we doing?”

  Livvy hesitated, but only for a second. Julian guessed that a lot of free time to make decisions wasn’t a luxury this version of his sister had. “Let’s take them back to the Bradbury,” she said. “Maybe Diana will be back. She’s seen a lot—she might have some idea what’s going on here.”

  “Diana? Diana Wrayburn?” said Emma with relief. “Yes, take us to Diana, please.”

  Cameron and Livvy exchanged a look of complete bafflement.

  “All right, fine,” Livvy said finally. She gestured toward a black Jeep Wrangler with tinted windows parked along the side of the highway. “Get in the car, both of you, backseat. And don’t even consider trying anything funny. I’ll blow your heads right off.”

  * * *

  Livvy was riding shotgun, which meant she was sitting in the passenger seat with an actual shotgun slung across her lap. Beside her, Cameron drove with a sharp efficiency that was entirely at odds with the hapless, slightly lazy Cameron Emma knew in her own world. He navigated the car effortlessly around the massive potholes that pocked the asphalt of the Pacific Coast Highway like dings in the side of an old car.

  Julian was silent, staring out his window with an appalled fascination. There was little to see, except the ruined road swept by their headlights, but the darkness itself was startling. The absence of streetlights, road signs, and illuminated windows lining the road was shocking in itself, like looking at a face missing its eyes.

  Light finally evolved out of the darkness as they reached the end of the highway, where a tunnel connected it to the 10 freeway. On their right was the Santa Monica Pier, the familiar jetty now in ruins as if a giant had hacked at it with an ax. Chunks of wood and concrete lay tumbled and jagged in the water. Only the old carousel was untouched. It was lit up, atonal music pouring from its speakers. Clinging to the backs of the old-fashioned painted ponies were shadowy, inhuman shapes, their chittering giggles carried on the night air. The faces of the ponies appeared to be twisted into tormented, shrieking masks.

  Emma looked away, glad when the car went into the tunnel, cutting off her view of the merry-go-round.

  “The pier is one of the first places that the hellbeasts staked out,” Cameron said, glancing into the backseat. “Who knew that demons liked amusement parks?”

  Emma cleared her throat. “Mad for funnel cakes?”

  Cameron laughed dryly. “Same old Emma. Sarcastic in the face of adversity.”

  Livvy darted a sharp look at him.

  “I guess we shouldn’t ask about Disneyland,” said Julian in a flat voice.

  Julian probably hadn’t expected Cameron and Livvy to laugh, but the way they both tensed suggested that something really terrible had happened at Disneyland. Emma decided not to pursue it. There were bigger questions. “When did all this happen?” she said.

  “Just after the Dark War,” said Livvy. “When Sebastian won.”

  “So he still attacked all the Institutes?” Emma asked. She hadn’t wanted to think about it, hadn’t wanted to court even the tiny possibility that her parents might be alive in this world, but she couldn’t help the catch of hope in her voice. “Los Angeles, too?”

  “Yes,” said Livvy. Her voice was flat. “Your parents were killed. Our father was Endarkened.”

  Emma flinched. She’d known there was no real hope, but it still hurt. And Julian must have wondered about his father, she knew. She wanted to reach out a hand to him, but the memory of the emotionless Julian of the past week held her back.

  “In our world, those things happened too,” said Julian, after a long pause. “But we won the war.”

  “Sebastian died,” said Emma. “Clary killed him.”

  “Clary Fairchild?” said Cameron. His voice was thick with doubt. “She was murdered by the demon Lilith at the Battle of the Burren.”

  “No,” said Emma stubbornly. “Clary and her friends won at the Battle of the Burren. There are paintings of
it. She rescued Jace with the sword Glorious and they tracked Sebastian down in Edom; he never won—”

  Livvy tapped her short fingernails on the barrel of her gun. “Nice story. So you’re claiming you come from a place where Sebastian is dead, demons aren’t roaming the streets, and Shadowhunters still have angelic power?”

  “Yes,” Emma said.

  Livvy turned to look at her. The scar that cut across her eye was an angry red in the scarlet moonlight. “Well, if it’s so great there, what are you doing here?”

  “It wasn’t a planned vacation. Not everything in our world is perfect,” Emma said. “Far from it, really.”

  She glanced at Julian and to her surprise found him looking back at her, matching her searching glance with his own. An echo of their old instant communication flared—Should we tell Livvy that she’s dead in our world?

  Emma shook her head slightly. Livvy didn’t believe them about anything yet. That piece of information wouldn’t help.

  “Gotta get off,” said Cameron. There were a few lights out here, illuminating patches of highway, and Emma could see the occasional illumination dotting the flat plain of the city beyond. It didn’t look anything like Los Angeles at night, though. The diamond chains of white light were gone, replaced by irregular spots of brightness. A fire burned somewhere on a distant hill.

  In front of them, a massive crack divided the highway, as if someone had sliced neatly through the concrete. Cameron swung away from the rift, taking the nearest off-ramp. He dimmed the headlights as they hit the streets, and cruised at a slow speed through a residential neighborhood.

  It was an unremarkable L.A. street lined with one-level ranch houses. Most of them were boarded up, the curtains pulled, only tiny glimpses of light visible within. Many were completely dark, and a few of those showed signs of forced entry—doors torn off at the hinges, bloodstains smearing the white stucco walls. Along the curb were a few abandoned cars with their trunks still open as though the people who owned them had been . . . taken away . . . while trying to make a break for it.

  Saddest of all were the signs that children had once lived here: a torn-apart jungle gym, a bent tricycle lying in the middle of a driveway. A ghostly swing set pushed by the breeze.

  A curve in the road loomed in front of them. As Cameron swung the car around, the headlights picked out a strange sight. A family—two parents and two children, a boy and a girl—were sitting at a picnic table on their lawn. They were eating in silence from plates of grilled meat, coleslaw, and potato salad. They were all deathly pale.

  Emma swung around to stare as they receded into the distance. “What is going on with them?”

  “Forsworn,” said Livvy, curling her lip with distaste. “They’re mundanes who are loyal to Sebastian. He runs the Institutes now and protects mundanes who swear allegiance to him. Half the remaining mundanes in the world are Forsworn.”

  “What about the other half?” said Julian.

  “Rebels. Freedom fighters. You can either be one or the other.”

  “You’re rebels?” Emma said.

  Cameron laughed and looked fondly at Livvy. “Livia isn’t just a rebel. She’s the baddest badass rebel of them all.”

  He stroked the back of Livvy’s neck gently. Emma hoped Julian’s head wouldn’t blow right off. Livvy clearly wasn’t fifteen anymore, but she was still Julian’s little sister, sort of. Hastily, Emma said, “Shadowhunters and mundanes are united as a rebellion? What about Downworlders?”

  “There are no Shadowhunters anymore,” Livvy said. She held up her right hand. There was no Voyance rune on the back. If Emma squinted, she thought she could glimpse the faint scar where it had once been: a shadow of a shadow. “The power of the Angel is broken. Steles don’t work, runes fade like ghosts. Sebastian Morgenstern went from Institute to Institute and killed everyone who wouldn’t pledge their loyalty to him. He opened the world to demons and they salted the earth with demon poisons and shattered the glass towers. Idris was overrun and the Adamant Citadel was destroyed. Angelic magic doesn’t work. Demonic magic is the only magic there is.” She tightened her hands on her shotgun. “Most of those who were once Shadowhunters are Endarkened now.”

  A world without Shadowhunters. A world without angels. They had left the residential neighborhood behind and were rolling down what Emma guessed might be Sunset Boulevard. It was hard to tell with the street signs gone. There were other cars on the road, finally, and even a slight slowdown in traffic. Emma glanced to the side and saw a pallid vampire behind the wheel of a Subaru in the next lane. He glanced at her and winked.

  “We’re coming to a checkpoint,” Cameron said.

  “Let us handle this,” said Livvy. “Don’t talk.”

  The car slowed to a crawl; up ahead Emma could see striped barriers. Most of the buildings along the boulevard were ruined shells. They had drawn up alongside one whose crumbling walls circled a mostly intact courtyard that had clearly once been the lobby of an office building. Demons were clustered everywhere: on piles of overturned furniture, clambering on the shattered walls, feeding from metal troughs of dark sticky stuff that might be blood. In the center of the room was a pole with a woman in a white dress tied to it, blood seeping through her dress. Her head lolled to the side as if she’d fainted.

  Emma started to undo her seat belt. “We have to do something.”

  “No!” Livvy said sharply. “You’ll get killed, and you’ll get us killed too. We can’t protect the world like that anymore.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Emma said.

  Livvy shot her a white-hot look of anger. “You should be.”

  “Checkpoint,” snapped Cameron, and the car shot forward and stopped at the barriers. Cam lowered the driver’s-side window, and Emma nearly jumped out of her seat as an eyeless demon with a wrinkled head like an old grape leaned into the car. It wore a high-collared gray uniform, and though it had no nose or eyes, it did have a mouth that stretched across its face.

  “Credentials,” it hissed.

  Cameron jerked down his sleeve and stuck out his left hand, baring his wrist. Emma caught a glimpse of a mark on his inner wrist, above his pulse point, just as the demon extruded a gray raspy tongue that looked like a long, dead worm and licked Cameron’s wrist.

  Please, Emma thought, do not let me puke in the back of this car. I remember this car. I made out with Cameron in the back of this car. Oh God, that demon licked his wrist. The whole car stinks like demon flesh.

  Something covered her hand, something warm and reassuring. She blinked. Julian had wrapped his fingers around hers. The surprise brought her back to herself sharply.

  “Ah, Mr. Ashdown,” the demon said. “I didn’t realize. Have a pleasant evening.” It drew back, and Cameron hit the gas. They had driven several blocks before anyone spoke.

  “What was that thing with—” Julian began.

  “The tongue! I know!” Emma said. “What the hell?”

  “—the demon calling you Mr. Ashdown?” Julian finished.

  “My family are Forsworn—loyal to the Fallen Star,” said Cam shortly. “They run the Institute here for Sebastian. Members of the Legion of the Star are marked with special tattoos.”

  Livvy showed them the inside of her right wrist, where a design was marked, a star inside a circle. The same sigil that had been on Sebastian’s banners earlier. “Mine is forged. That’s why Cameron is driving,” Livvy said. She glanced at him with wry fondness. “His family doesn’t know he’s not loyal to the Star.”

  “I can’t say I’m astonished Paige and Vanessa turned out to be traitors,” said Emma, and she saw Livvy flick her an odd glance. Surprise she knew who Paige and Vanessa were? Agreement? Emma wasn’t sure.

  They had reached downtown L.A., an area that had been pretty thick with demon activity even in the regular world. Here the streets were surprisingly crowded—Emma saw vampires and faeries walking around freely, and even a repurposed convenience store advertising blood milk shakes in the window. A g
roup of large cats scuttled by, and as they turned their heads Emma saw they had the faces of human babies. No one on the sidewalk gave them a second glance.

  “So Downworlders,” Julian said. “How do they fit in here?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Livvy said.

  “We do,” said Emma. “We know warlocks—we could try to get in touch with them here, get help—”

  “Warlocks?” Livvy snapped. “There are no warlocks. Once Sebastian opened the world to hellbeasts, the warlocks started to get sick. Some died, and as for the rest, their humanity degraded. They turned into demons.”

  “Into demons?” Emma said. “All the way?”

  “What about Magnus?” said Julian. “Magnus Bane?”

  Emma felt a chill run over her. So far they hadn’t asked after the welfare of anyone they knew. She suspected both of them found the prospect terrifying.

  “Magnus Bane was one of the first great tragedies,” said Livvy as if she were reciting an old story everyone knew. “Bane realized he was turning into a demon. He begged his boyfriend, Alexander Lightwood, to kill him. Alec did, and then turned the sword on himself. Their bodies were found together in the ruins of New York.”

  Julian had gone whiter than paper. Emma put her head down, feeling like she might faint.

  Magnus and Alec, who had always been a symbol of all that was good, so horribly gone.

  “So that’s warlocks,” said Livvy. “The Fair Folk are allied with Sebastian and mostly they live in the protected realms of Faerie, though some like to visit our world, do a little mischief. You know.”

  “I don’t think we do,” Julian said. “The realms of Faerie are protected?”

  “The faeries were Sebastian’s allies during the Dark War,” said Livvy. “They lost a lot of warriors. The Seelie Queen herself was killed. Sebastian rewarded them after the war by giving them what they wanted—isolation. Entrances to Faerie are walled off from this world, and any human or even Endarkened who threatens one of the few faeries remaining in Thule is severely punished.”