City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3)(131)

Sebastian gave Jace a thoughtful look. “You have a smart mouth. You didn’t learn that from Valentine. What did you learn from him? It doesn’t seem to me that he taught you much about fighting, either.” He leaned closer. “You know what he gave me for my ninth birthday? A lesson. He taught me that there’s a place on a man’s back where, if you sink a blade in, you can pierce his heart and sever his spine, all at once. What did you get for your ninth birthday, little angel boy? A cookie?”

Ninth birthday? Jace swallowed hard. “So tell me, what hole was he keeping you in while I was growing up? Because I don’t remember seeing you around the manor.”

“I grew up in this valley.” Sebastian jerked his chin toward the cave exit. “I don’t remember seeing you around here either, come to think of it. Although I knew about you. I bet you didn’t know about me.”

Jace shook his head. “Valentine wasn’t much given to bragging about you. I can’t imagine why.”

Sebastian’s eyes flashed. It was easy to see, now, the resemblance to Valentine: the same unusual combination of silver-white hair and black eyes, the same fine bones that in another, less strongly molded face would have looked delicate. “I knew all about you,” he said. “But you don’t know anything, do you?” Sebastian got to his feet. “I wanted you alive to watch this, little brother,” he said. “So watch, and watch carefully.” With a movement so fast it was almost invisible, he drew the sword from its sheath at his waist. It had a silver hilt, and like the Mortal Sword it glowed with a dull dark light. A pattern of stars was etched into the surface of the black blade; it caught the true starlight as Sebastian turned the blade, and burned like fire.

Jace held his breath. He wondered if Sebastian merely meant to kill him; but no, Sebastian would have killed him already, while he was unconscious, if that were his intention. Jace watched as Sebastian moved toward the center of the chamber, the sword held lightly in his hand, though it looked to be quite heavy. His mind was whirling. How could Valentine have another son? Who was his mother? Someone else in the Circle? Was he older or younger than Jace?

Sebastian had reached the huge red-tinged stalagmite in the center of the room. It seemed to pulse as he approached, and the smoke inside it swirled faster. Sebastian half-closed his eyes and lifted the blade. He said something—a word in a harsh-sounding demon language—and brought the sword across, hard and fast, in a slicing arc.

The top of the stalagmite sheared away. Inside, it was hollow as a test tube, filled with a mass of black and red smoke, which swirled upward like gas escaping a punctured balloon. There was a roar—less a sound than a sort of explosive pressure. Jace felt his ears pop. It was suddenly hard to breathe. He wanted to claw at the neck of his shirt, but he couldn’t move his hands: They were tied too tightly behind him.

Sebastian was half-hidden behind the pouring column of red and black. It was coiling, swirling upward—“Watch!” he cried, his face glowing. His eyes were alight, his white hair whipping on the rising wind, and Jace wondered if his father had looked like that when he was young: terrible and yet somehow fascinating. “Watch and behold Valentine’s army!”

His voice was drowned out then by the sound. It was a sound like the tide crashing up the shore, the breaking of an enormous wave, carrying massive detritus with it, the smashed bones of whole cities, the onrush of a great and evil power. A huge column of twisting, rushing, flapping blackness poured from the smashed stalagmite, funneling up through the air, pouring toward—and through—the torn gap in the cavern roof. Demons. They rose shrieking, howling, and snarling, a boiling mass of claws and talons and teeth and burning eyes. Jace recalled standing on the deck of Valentine’s ship as the sky and earth and sea all around turned to nightmare; this was worse. It was as if the earth had torn open and hell had poured through. The demons carried a stench like a thousand rotting corpses. Jace’s hands twisted against each other, twisted until the ropes cut into his wrists and they bled. A sour taste rose in his mouth, and he choked helplessly on blood and bile as the last of the demons rose and vanished overhead, a dark flood of horror, blotting out the stars.

Jace thought he might have passed out for a minute or two. Certainly there was a period of blackness during which the shrieking and howling overhead faded and he seemed to hang in space, pinned between the earth and the sky, feeling a sense of detachment that was somehow … peaceful.

It was over too soon. Suddenly he was slammed back into his body, his wrists in agony, his shoulders straining backward, the stench of demon so heavy in the air that he turned his head aside and retched helplessly onto the ground. He heard a dry chuckle and looked up, swallowing hard against the acid in his throat. Sebastian knelt over him, his legs straddling Jace’s, his eyes shining. “It’s all right, little brother,” he said. “They’re gone.”

Jace’s eyes were streaming, his throat scraped raw. His voice came out a croak. “He said midnight. Valentine said to open the gate at midnight. It can’t be midnight yet.”

“I always figure it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission in these sorts of situations.” Sebastian glanced up at the now empty sky. “It should take them five minutes to reach Brocelind Plain from here, quite a bit less time than it will Father to reach the lake. I want to see some Nephilim blood spilled. I want them to writhe and die on the ground. They deserve shame before they get oblivion.”