City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(28)

She hesitated, nodded. “Which one?”

“Inside jacket, right side. Take out one of the seraph blades and hand it to me.” He held still as she nervously slipped her fingers into his pocket. She was standing so close that she could smell the scent of him, sweat and soap and blood. His breath tickled the back of her neck. Her fingers closed on a tube and she drew it out, not looking at him.

“Thanks,” he said. His fingers traced it briefly before he named it: “Sanvi.” Like its predecessor, the tube grew into a wicked-looking dagger, its glow illuminating his face. “Don’t watch,” he said, going to stand over the scarred thing’s body. He raised the blade over his head and brought it down. Blood fountained from the giant’s throat, splattering Jace’s boots.

She half-expected the giant to vanish, folding in on itself the way the kid in Pandemonium had. But it didn’t. The air was full of the smell of blood: heavy and metallic. Jace made a sound low in his throat. He was white-faced, whether with pain or disgust she couldn’t tell. “I told you not to watch,” he said.

“I thought it would disappear,” she said. “Back to its own dimension—you said.”

“I said that’s what happens to demons when they die.” Wincing, he shrugged his jacket off his shoulder, baring the upper part of his left arm. “That wasn’t a demon.” With his right hand he drew something out of his belt. It was the smooth wand-shaped object he’d used to carve those overlapping circles into Clary’s skin. Looking at it, she felt her forearm begin to burn.

Jace saw her staring and grinned the ghost of a grin. “This,” he said, “is a stele.” He touched it to an inked mark just below his shoulder, a curious shape almost like a star. Two arms of the star jutted out from the rest of the mark, unconnected. “And this,” he said, “is what happens when Shadowhunters are wounded.”

With the tip of the stele, he traced a line connecting the two arms of the star. When he lowered his hand, the mark was shining as if it had been etched with phosphorescent ink. As Clary watched, it sank into his skin, like a weighted object sinking into water. It left behind a ghostly reminder: a pale, thin scar, almost invisible.

An image rose in Clary’s mind. Her mother’s back, not quite covered by her bathing suit top, the blades of her shoulders and curves of her spine dappled with narrow, white marks. It was like something she had seen in a dream—her mother’s back didn’t really look like that, she knew. But the image nagged at her.

Jace let out a sigh, the tense look of pain leaving his face. He moved the arm, slowly at first, then more easily, lifting it up and down, clenching his fist. Clearly it was no longer broken.

“That’s amazing,” Clary said. “How did you—?”

“That was an iratze—a healing rune,” Jace said. “Finishing the rune with the stele activates it.” He shoved the slim wand into his belt and shrugged his jacket back on. With the toe of his boot he prodded the giant’s corpse. “We’re going to have to report this to Hodge,” he said. “He’ll freak out,” he added, as if the thought of Hodge’s alarm gave him some satisfaction. Jace, Clary thought, was the sort of person who liked it when things were happening, even things that were bad.

“Why will he freak?” Clary said. “And I get that that thing isn’t a demon—that’s why the Sensor didn’t register it, right?”

Jace nodded. “You see the scars all over its face?”

“Yes.”

“Those were made with a stele. Like this one.” He tapped the wand in his belt. “You asked me what happens when you carve Marks onto someone who doesn’t have Shadowhunter blood. Just one Mark will only burn you, but a lot of Marks, powerful ones? Carved into the flesh of a totally ordinary human being with no trace of Shadowhunter ancestry? You get this.” He jerked his chin at the corpse. “The runes are agonizingly painful. The Marked ones go insane—the pain drives them out of their minds. They become fierce, mindless killers. They don’t sleep or eat unless you make them, and they die, usually quickly. Runes have great power and can be used to do great good—but they can be used for evil. The Forsaken are evil.”

Clary stared at him in horror. “But why would anyone do that to themselves?”

“Nobody would. It’s something that gets done to them. By a warlock, maybe, some Downworlder gone bad. The Forsaken are loyal to the one who Marked them, and they’re fierce killers. They can obey simple commands, too. It’s like having a—a slave army.” He stepped over the dead Forsaken, and glanced over his shoulder at her. “I’m going back upstairs.”

“But there’s nothing there.”

“There might be more of them,” he said, almost as if he were hoping there would be. “You should wait here.” He started up the steps.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a shrill and familiar voice. “There are more of them where the first one came from.”

Jace, who was nearly at the top of the stairs, spun and stared. So did Clary, although she knew immediately who had spoken. That gravelly accent was unmistakable.

“Madame Dorothea?”

The old woman inclined her head regally. She stood in the doorway of her apartment, dressed in what looked like a tent made of raw purple silk. Gold chains glittered on her wrists and roped her throat. Her long badger-striped hair straggled from the bun pinned to the top of her head.