City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6)(104)

“Helen can’t take care of them. Not alone,” Mark said a little desperately. “And Jules, he’s too young. He can’t take care of Ty; he doesn’t know the things he needs. He doesn’t know how to talk to him—” He took a shuddering breath. “You should let me come with you.”

“You know you can’t,” said Jace, though he couldn’t look Mark in the face; he was staring at the ground. “If you’ve sworn fealty to the Wild Hunt, you’re one of them.”

“Take me with you,” Mark repeated. He had the stunned, bewildered look of someone who had been mortally injured but didn’t yet realize the extent of the injury. “I don’t want to be one of them. I want to be with my family—”

“We’re going to Hell,” Clary said. “We couldn’t bring you with us, even if you could leave Faerie safely—”

“And you can’t,” Alec said. “If you try to leave, you’ll die.”

“I’d rather die,” Mark said, and Jace’s head whipped up. His eyes were bright gold, almost too bright, as if the fire inside him were spilling out through them.

“They took you because you have faerie blood, but also because you have Shadowhunter blood. They want to punish the Nephilim,” Jace said, his gaze intent. “Show them what a Shadowhunter is made of; show them you aren’t afraid. You can live through this.”

In the wavering illumination of the witchlight, Mark looked at Jace. Tears had made their tracks through the dirt on his face, but his eyes were dry. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “What do I do?”

“Find a way to warn the Nephilim,” Jace said. “We’re going into Hell, like Clary said. We might never come back. Someone has to tell the Shadowhunters the Fair Folk are not their allies.”

“The Hunters will catch me if I try to send a message.” The boy’s eyes flashed. “They’ll kill me.”

“Not if you’re fast and smart,” said Jace. “You can do it. I know you can.”

“Jace,” Alec said, his bow at his side. “Jace, we need to let him go before the Hunt notice he’s missing.”

“Right,” Jace said, and hesitated. Clary saw him take Mark’s hand; he pressed his witchlight into the boy’s palm, where it flickered, and then resumed its steady glow. “Take this with you,” said Jace, “for it can be dark in the land under the hill, and the years very long.”

Mark stood for a moment, the rune-stone in his hand. He looked so slight in the wavering light that Clary’s heart hammered a tattoo of disbelief—surely they could help him, they were Nephilim, they didn’t leave their own behind—and then he turned and ran, away from them, on soundless bare feet.

“Mark—” Clary whispered, and cut herself off; he was gone. The shadows swallowed him up, only the darting will-o’-the-wisp light of the rune-stone visible, until it too blended with the darkness. She looked up at Jace. “What did you mean, ‘the land under the hill’?” she asked. “Why did you say that?”

Jace didn’t answer her; he looked stunned. She wondered if Mark, brittle and orphaned and alone, reminded him somehow of himself.

“The land under the hill is Faerie,” said Alec. “An old, old name for it. He’ll be all right,” he said to Jace. “He will.”

“You gave him your witchlight,” Isabelle said. “You’ve always had that witchlight—”

“Screw the witchlight,” Jace said violently, and slammed his hand against the wall of the cave; there was a brief flare of light, and he drew his arm back. The mark of his hand was burned black into the stone of the tunnel, and his palm still glowed, as if the blood in his fingers were phosphorus. He gave an odd, choked laugh. “I don’t exactly need it, anyway.”

“Jace,” Clary said, and put her hand on his arm. He didn’t move away from her, but he didn’t react, either. She dropped her voice. “You can’t save everyone,” she said.

“Maybe not,” he said as the light in his hand dimmed. “But it would be nice to save someone for a change.”

“Guys,” Simon said. He’d been oddly quiet throughout the encounter with Mark, and Clary was startled to hear him speak now. “I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s something—something at the end of the tunnel.”

“A light?” Jace said, his voice edged with sarcasm. His eyes glittered.

“The opposite.” Simon moved forward, and after a hesitant moment Clary took her hand from Jace’s arm, and followed him. The tunnel went straight on ahead and then jogged slightly; at the curve she saw what Simon must have seen, and stopped dead.

Darkness. The tunnel ended in a whirling vortex of darkness. Something moved in it, shaping the dark like the wind shaping clouds. She could hear it too, the purr and rumble of the dark, like the sound of jet engines.

The others joined her. Together they stood in a line, watching the dark. Watching it move. A curtain of shadow, and beyond it the utter unknown.

It was Alec who spoke, staring, awed, at the moving shadows. The air that blew down the corridor was stinging hot, like pepper thrown into the heart of a fire. “This,” he said, “is the craziest thing we’ve ever done.”