Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices #3)

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 group 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.”