CITY OF ASHES

The man slid a hand into his pocket. Something hard and cold and metallic met the touch of his fingers. He smiled.

Elias had stopped walking. He was standing in front of the pentagram now, his voice rising and falling in a steady chant, blue fire crackling around him like lightning. Suddenly a plume of black smoke rose inside the pentagram; it spiraled upward, spreading and solidifying. Two eyes hung in the shadow like jewels caught in a spider’s web.

“Who has called me here across the worlds?” Agramon demanded in a voice like shattering glass. “Who summons me?”

Elias had stopped chanting. He was standing still in front of the pentagram—still except for his wings, which beat the air slowly. The air stank of corrosion and burning.

“Agramon,” the warlock said. “I am the warlock Elias. I am the one who has summoned you.”

For a moment there was silence. Then the demon laughed, if smoke can be said to laugh. The laugh itself was caustic as acid. “Foolish warlock,” Agramon wheezed. “Foolish boy.”

“You are the foolish one, if you think you can threaten me,” Elias said, but his voice trembled like his wings. “You will be a prisoner of that pentagram, Agramon, until I release you.”

“Will I?” The smoke surged forward, forming and re-forming itself. A tendril took the shape of a human hand and stroked the edge of the burning pentagram that contained it. Then, with a surge, the smoke seethed past the edge of the star, poured over the border like a wave breaching a levee. The flames guttered and died as Elias, screaming, stumbled backward. He was chanting now, in rapid Chthonian, spells of containment and banishment. Nothing happened; the black smoke-mass came on inexorably, and now it was starting to have something of a shape—a malformed, enormous, hideous shape, its glowing eyes altering, rounding to the size of saucers, spilling a dreadful light.

The man watched with impassive interest as Elias screamed again and turned to run. He never reached the door. Agramon surged forward, his dark mass crashing down over the warlock like a surge of boiling black tar. Elias struggled feebly for a moment under the onslaught—and then was still.

The black shape withdrew, leaving the warlock lying contorted on the marble floor.

“I do hope,” said the man, who had taken the cold metal object out of his pocket and was toying with it idly, “that you haven’t done anything to him that will render him useless to me. I need his blood, you see.”

Agramon turned, a black pillar with deadly diamond eyes. They took in the man in the expensive suit, his narrow, unconcerned face, the black Marks covering his skin, and the glowing object in his hand. “You paid the warlock child to summon me? And you did not tell him what I could do?”

“You guess correctly,” said the man.

Agramon spoke with grudging admiration. “That was clever.”

The man took a step toward the demon. “I am very clever. And I’m also your master now. I hold the Mortal Cup. You must obey me, or face the consequences.”

The demon was silent a moment. Then it slid to the ground in a mockery of obeisance—the closest a creature with no real body could come to kneeling. “I am at your service, my Lord…?”

The sentence ended politely, on a question.

The man smiled. “You may call me Valentine.”





I

A SEASON IN HELL


I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am.

—Arthur Rimbaud





1

VALENTINE’S ARROW


“ARE YOU STILL MAD?”

Alec, leaning against the wall of the elevator, glared across the small space at Jace. “I’m not mad.”

“Oh, yes you are.” Jace gestured accusingly at his stepbrother, then yelped as pain shot up his arm. Every part of him hurt from the thumping he’d taken that afternoon when he’d dropped three floors through rotted wood onto a pile of scrap metal. Even his fingers were bruised. Alec, who’d only recently put away the crutches he’d had to use after his fight with Abbadon, didn’t look much better than Jace felt. His clothes were covered in mud and his hair hung down in lank, sweaty strips. There was a long cut down the side of his cheek.

“I am not,” Alec said, through his teeth. “Just because you said dragon demons were extinct—”

“I said mostly extinct.”

Alec jabbed a finger toward him. “Mostly extinct,” he said, his voice trembling with rage, “is NOT EXTINCT ENOUGH.”

“I see,” said Jace. “I’ll just have them change the entry in the demonology textbook from ‘almost extinct’ to ‘not extinct enough for Alec. He prefers his monsters really, really extinct.’ Will that make you happy?”

“Boys, boys,” said Isabelle, who’d been examining her face in the elevator’s mirrored wall. “Don’t fight.” She turned away from the glass with a sunny smile. “All right, so it was a little more action than we were expecting, but I thought it was fun.”

Alec looked at her and shook his head. “How do you manage never to get mud on you?”