The Infernal Devices Series Page 5

  “It’s also rude to go about grabbing at ladies you haven’t been introduced to,” Tessa said stiffly. “Hasn’t anyone told you that?”

  The ginger-haired man whom Will had called Henry shook his bleeding hand with a rueful smile. He had a nice sort of face, Tessa thought; she almost felt guilty for having bitten him.

  “Will! Look out!” the brown-haired man shouted. Will spun as something flew through the air, narrowly missed Henry’s head, and crashed into the wall behind Tessa. It was a large brass cog, and it hit the wall with such force that it stuck there like a marble wedged into a bit of pastry. Tessa whirled—and saw Mrs. Black advancing toward them, her eyes burning like coal in her crumpled white face. Black licks of flame sprayed up around the hilt of the sword that protruded from her chest.

  “Damn—” Will reached for the hilt of another blade wedged through the belt at his waist. “I thought we’d put that thing down—”

  Baring her teeth, Mrs. Black lunged. Will leaped out of the way, but Henry wasn’t quite as fast; she struck him and knocked him backward. Clinging on like a tick, she rode him to the ground, snarling, her claws sinking into his shoulders as he yelled. Will whirled, the blade now in his hand; raising it, he shouted “Uriel!” and it flared up suddenly in his grip like a blazing torch. Tessa fell back against the wall as he whipped the blade downward. Mrs. Black reared back, her claws out, reaching for him—

  And the blade sheared neatly through her throat. Completely severed, her head struck the ground, rolling and bumping, as Henry, yelling in disgust and soaked in blackish blood, shoved the remains of her body off him and scrambled to his feet.

  A terrible scream tore through the room. “Nooooo!”

  The cry had come from Mrs. Dark. The brown-haired man holding her let go with a sudden cry as blue fire shot from her hands and eyes. Yelling in pain, he fell to the side as she tore away from him and advanced on Will and Tessa, Mrs. Dark’s eyes flaming like black torches. She was hissing words in a language that Tessa had never heard. It sounded like crackling flames. Raising a hand, the woman flung what looked like a bolt of lightning toward Tessa. With a cry Will sprang in front of her, his glowing blade extended. The lightning ricocheted off the blade and struck one of the stone walls, which glowed with a sudden strange light.

  “Henry,” Will shouted, without turning, “if you could remove Miss Gray to a place of safety—soon—”

  Henry’s bitten hand came down on Tessa’s shoulder, as Mrs. Dark flung another sheet of lightning toward her. Why is she trying to kill me? Tessa thought dizzily. Why not Will? And then, as Henry pulled her toward him, more light sheared off Will’s blade, refracting into a dozen blazing shards of brightness. For a moment Tessa stared, caught by the unlikely beauty of it—and then she heard Henry shout, telling her to drop to the floor, but it was too late. One of the blazing shards had caught her shoulder with incredible force. It was like being struck by a hurtling train. She was knocked free of Henry’s grasp, lifted, and flung backward. Her head struck the wall with blinding force. She was conscious only briefly of Mrs. Dark’s high screeching laughter, before the world went away.

  3

  THE INSTITUTE

  Love, hope, fear, faith—these make humanity;

  These are its sign and note and character

  —Robert Browning, Paracelsus

  In the dream Tessa lay once again tied to the narrow brass bed in the Dark House. The Sisters leaned over her, clacking pairs of long knitting needles and laughing in shrill high-pitched voices. As Tessa watched, their features changed, their eyes sinking into their heads, their hair falling out, and stitches appearing across their lips, sewing them shut. Tessa shrieked voicelessly, but they did not seem to hear.

  The Sisters vanished entirely then, and Aunt Harriet was standing over Tessa, her face flushed with fever as it had been during the terrible illness that had killed her. She looked at Tessa with great sadness. “I tried,” she said. “I tried to love you. But it isn’t easy to love a child that isn’t human in the least. . . .”

  “Not human?” said an unfamiliar female voice. “Well, if she isn’t human, Enoch, what is she?” The voice sharpened in impatience. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Everyone’s something. This girl can’t be nothing at all. . . .”

  Tessa woke with a cry, her eyes flying open, and found herself staring at shadows. Darkness clustered about her thickly. She could barely hear the murmur of voices through her panic, and struggled into a sitting position, kicking away blankets and pillows. Dimly, she recognized that the blanket was thick and heavy, not the thin, braided one that belonged to the Dark House.

  She was in a bed, just as she had dreamed, in a great stone room, and there was hardly any light. She heard the rasp of her own breath as she turned, and a scream forced its way out of her throat. The face from her nightmare hovered in the darkness before her—a great white moon of a face, its head shaved bald, smooth as marble. Where the eyes should have been there were only indentations in the flesh—not as if the eyes had been ripped out, but as if they had never grown there at all. The lips were banded with black stitches, the face scrawled with black marks like the ones on Will’s skin, though these looked as if they had been cut there with knives.

  She screamed again and scrabbled backward, half-falling off the bed. She hit the cold stone floor, and the fabric of the white nightdress she was wearing—someone must have put it on her while she was unconscious—ripped at the hem as she scrambled to her feet.

  “Miss Gray.” Someone was calling her name, but in her panic, she knew only that the voice was unfamiliar. The speaker was not the monster who stood staring at her from the bedside, its scarred face impassive; it had not moved when she did, and though it showed no signs of pursuing her, she began to back away, carefully, feeling behind herself for a door. The room was so dim, she could see only that it was roughly oval, the walls and floor all of stone. The ceiling was high enough to be in black shadow, and there were long windows across the opposite wall, the sort of arched windows that might have belonged in a church. Very little light filtered through them; it looked as if the sky outside was dark. “Theresa Gray—”

  She found the door, the metal handle; turning, she seized on it thankfully, and pulled. Nothing happened. A sob rose up in her throat.

  “Miss Gray!” the voice said again, and suddenly the room was flooded with light—a sharp, white-silver light that she recognized. “Miss Gray, I am sorry. It was not our intention to frighten you.” The voice was a woman’s: still unfamiliar, but youthful and concerned. “Miss Gray, please.”

  Tessa turned slowly and put her back against the door. She could see clearly now. She was in a stone room whose central focus was a large, four-poster bed, its velvet coverlet now rucked and hanging sideways where she had dragged it off the mattress. Tapestry curtains were pulled back, and there was an elegant tapestry rug on the otherwise bare floor. In fact, the room itself was fairly bare. There were no pictures or photographs hanging on the wall, no ornaments cluttering the surfaces of the dark wood furniture. Two chairs stood facing each other near the bed, with a small tea table between them. A Chinese screen in one corner of the room hid what were probably a bathtub and washstand.

  Beside the bed stood a tall man who wore robes like a monk’s, of a long, coarse, parchment-colored material. Red-brown runes circled the cuffs and hem. He carried a silver staff, its head carved in the shape of an angel and runes decorating its length. The hood of his robe was down, leaving bare his scarred, white, blinded face.

  Beside him stood a very small woman, almost child-size, with thick brown hair knotted at the nape of her neck, and a neat, clever little face with bright, dark eyes like a bird’s. She wasn’t pretty exactly, but there was a calm, kindly look on her face that made the ache of panic in Tessa’s stomach ease slightly, though she couldn’t have said exactly why. In her hand she held a glowing white stone like the one Will had held at the Dark House. Its light blazed out between her fingers, ill
uminating the room.

  “Miss Gray,” she said. “I am Charlotte Branwell, head of the London Institute, and this beside me is Brother Enoch—”

  “What kind of monster is he?” Tessa whispered.

  Brother Enoch said nothing. He was entirely expressionless.

  “I know there are monsters on this earth,” said Tessa. “You cannot tell me otherwise. I have seen them.”

  “I would not want to tell you otherwise,” said Mrs. Branwell. “If the world were not full of monsters, there would be no need for Shadowhunters.”

  Shadowhunter. What the Dark Sisters had called Will Herondale.

  Will. “I was—Will was with me,” said Tessa, her voice shaking. “In the cellars. Will said—” She broke off and cringed inwardly. She should not have called Will by his Christian name; it implied an intimacy between them that did not exist. “Where is Mr. Herondale?”

  “He’s here,” Mrs. Branwell said calmly. “In the Institute.”

  “Did he bring me here as well?” Tessa whispered.

  “Yes, but there is no need to look betrayed, Miss Gray. You had struck your head quite hard, and Will was concerned about you. Brother Enoch, though his looks might frighten you, is a skilled practitioner of medicine. He has determined that your head injury is slight, and in the main you are suffering from shock and nervous anxiety. In fact, it might be for the best if you sat down now. Hovering barefoot by the door like that will only give you a chill, and do you little good.”

  “You mean because I can’t run,” Tessa said, licking her dry lips. “I can’t get away.”

  “If you demand to get away, as you put it, after we have talked, I will let you go,” said Mrs. Branwell. “The Nephilim do not trap Downworlders under duress. The Accords forbid it.”

  “The Accords?”

  Mrs. Branwell hesitated, then turned to Brother Enoch and said something to him in a low voice. Much to Tessa’s relief, he drew up the hood of his parchment-colored robes, hiding his face. A moment later he was moving toward Tessa; she stepped back hurriedly and he opened the door, pausing only for a moment on the threshold.

  In that moment, he spoke to Tessa. Or perhaps “spoke” was not the word for it: She heard his voice inside her head, rather than outside it. You are Eidolon, Theresa Gray. Shape-changer. But not of a sort that is familiar to me. There is no demon’s mark on you.

  Shape-changer. He knew what she was. She stared at him, her heart pounding, as he went through the door and closed it behind him. Tessa knew somehow that if she were to run to the door and try the handle she would once again find it locked, but the urge to escape had left her. Her knees felt as if they had turned to water. She sank down in one of the large chairs by the bed.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Branwell asked, moving to sit in the chair opposite Tessa’s. Her dress hung so loosely on her small frame, it was impossible to tell if she wore a corset beneath it, and the bones in her small wrists were like a child’s. “What did he say to you?”

  Tessa shook her head, gripping her hands together in her lap so that Mrs. Branwell could not see her fingers trembling.

  Mrs. Branwell looked at her keenly. “First,” she said, “please call me Charlotte, Miss Gray. Everyone in the Institute does. We Shadowhunters are not so formal as most.”

  Tessa nodded, feeling her cheeks flush. It was hard to tell how old Charlotte was; she was so small that she looked quite young indeed, but her air of authority made her seem older, old enough that the idea of calling her by her Christian name seemed very odd. Still, as Aunt Harriet would have said, when in Rome . . .

  “Charlotte,” Tessa said, experimentally.

  With a smile, Mrs. Branwell—Charlotte—leaned back slightly in her chair, and Tessa saw with some surprise that she had dark tattoos. A woman with tattoos! Her marks were like the ones Will bore: visible on her wrists below the tight cuffs of her dress, with one like an eye on the back of her left hand. “Second, let me tell you what I already know about you, Theresa Gray.” She spoke in the same calm tone she’d had before, but her eyes, though still kind, were sharp as pins. “You’re American. You came here from New York City because you were following your brother, who had sent you a steamship ticket. His name is Nathaniel.”

  Tessa sat frozen. “How do you know all this?”

  “I know that Will found you in the Dark Sisters’ house,” Charlotte said. “I know that you claimed someone named the Magister was coming for you. I know that you have no idea who the Magister is. And I know that in a battle with the Dark Sisters, you were rendered unconscious and brought here.”

  Charlotte’s words were like a key unlocking a door. Suddenly Tessa remembered. Remembered running with Will down the corridor; remembered the metal doors and the room full of blood on the other side; remembered Mrs. Black, her head severed; remembered Will flinging his knife—

  “Mrs. Black,” she whispered.

  “Dead,” said Charlotte. “Very.” She settled her shoulders against the back of the chair; she was so slight that the chair rose up high above her, as if she were a child sitting in a parent’s chair.

  “And Mrs. Dark?”

  “Gone. We searched the whole house, and the nearby area, but found no trace of her.”

  “The whole house?” Tessa’s voice shook, very slightly. “And there was no one in it? No one else alive, or . . . or dead?”

  “We did not find your brother, Miss Gray,” Charlotte said. Her tone was gentle. “Not in the house, nor in any of the surrounding buildings.”

  “You—were looking for him?” Tessa was bewildered.

  “We did not find him,” Charlotte said again. “But we did find your letters.”

  “My letters?”

  “The letters you wrote to your brother and never sent,” said Charlotte. “Folded under your mattress.”

  “You read them?”

  “We had to read them,” said Charlotte in the same gentle tone. “I apologize for that. It is not often that we bring a Down-worlder into the Institute, or anyone who is not a Shadow-hunter. It represents a great risk to us. We had to know that you were not a danger.”

  Tessa turned her head to the side. There was something horribly violating about this stranger having read her inmost thoughts, all the dreams and hopes and fears she’d poured forth, not thinking anyone would ever see them. The backs of her eyes stung; tears were threatening, and she willed them back, furious with herself, with everything.

  “You’re trying not to cry,” Charlotte said. “I know that when I do that myself, it sometimes helps to look at a bright light directly. Try the witchlight.”

  Tessa moved her gaze to the stone in Charlotte’s hand and gazed at it fixedly. The glow of it swelled up in front of her eyes like an expanding sun. “So,” she said, fighting past the tightness in her throat, “you have decided I am not a danger, then?”

  “Perhaps only to yourself,” said Charlotte. “A power such as yours, the power of shape-shifting—it is no wonder the Dark Sisters wanted to get their hands on you. Others will as well.”

  “Like you do?” Tessa said. “Or are you going to pretend that you’ve let me into your precious Institute simply out of charity?”

  A look of hurt flashed across Charlotte’s face. It was brief, but it was real, and it did more to convince Tessa that she might have been wrong about Charlotte than anything the other woman could have said. “It is not charity,” she said. “It is my vocation. Our vocation.”

  Tessa simply looked at her blankly.

  “Perhaps,” Charlotte said, “it would be better if I explained to you what we are—and what we do.”

  “Nephilim,” said Tessa. “That’s what the Dark Sisters called Mr. Herondale.” She pointed at the dark markings on Charlotte’s hand. “You’re one as well, aren’t you? Is that why you have those—those markings?”

  Charlotte nodded. “I am one of the Nephilim—the Shadowhunters. We are . . . a race, if you will, of people, people with special abilities. We are stronger and sw
ifter than most humans. We are able to conceal ourselves with magics called glamours. And we are especially skilled at killing demons.”

  “Demons. You mean—like Satan?”

  “Demons are evil creatures. They travel great distances to come to this world and feed upon it. They would ravage it into ashes and destroy its inhabitants if we did not prevent it.” Her voice was intent. “As it is the job of the human police to protect the citizenry of this city from one another, it is our job to protect them from demons and other supernatural dangers. When there are crimes that affect the Shadow World, when the Law of our world is broken, we must investigate. We are bound by the Law, in fact, to make inquiries even into the rumor of Covenant Law being contravened. Will told you about the dead girl he found in the alley; she was the only body, but there have been other disappearances, dark rumors of mundane boys and girls vanishing off the city’s poorer streets. Using magic to murder human beings is against the Law, and therefore a matter for our jurisdiction.”

  “Mr. Herondale seems awfully young to be a sort of policeman.”

  “Shadowhunters grow up quickly, and Will did not investigate alone.” Charlotte didn’t sound as if she wished to elaborate. “That is not all we do. We safeguard the Covenant Law and uphold the Accords—the laws that govern peace among Downworlders.”

  Will had used that word as well. “Downworld? Is that a place?”

  “A Downworlder is a being—a person—who is part supernatural in origin. Vampires, werewolves, faeries, warlocks—they are all Downworlders.”

  Tessa stared. Faeries were a children’s tale, and vampires the stuff of penny dreadfuls. “Those creatures exist?”

  “You are a Downworlder,” Charlotte said. “Brother Enoch confirmed it. We simply don’t know of what sort. You see, the kind of magic you can do—your ability—it isn’t something an ordinary human being could do. Neither is it something one of us, a Shadowhunter, could do. Will thought you were most likely a warlock, which is what I would have guessed myself, but all warlocks have some attribute that marks them as warlocks. Wings, or hooves, or webbed toes, or, as you saw in the case of Mrs. Black, taloned hands. But you, you’re completely human in appearance. And it is clear from your letters that you know, or believe, both of your parents to be human.”