The Lost Herondale

Jon made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a whimper. His hand floundered at his belt, fingers stretching for the seraph blade but coming nowhere near it. His eyes were riveted on a spot just over Simon’s shoulder. “Do something!” he squeaked. “She’s going to get us!”


Simon had seen enough horror movies to get the picture. And the picture was enough to make him want to bolt for the door, slip through it into the daylight, and keep running until he was back home, doors locked, safely under the bed, where he’d once hidden from imaginary monsters.

Instead, slowly, he turned around.

The girl who melted out of the shadows looked to be about his age. Her brown hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, her glasses were dark pink and horn-rimmed vintage, and her T-shirt featured a bloody, crimson-shirted Star Trek officer and read, LIVE FAST, DIE RED. She was, in other words, exactly Simon’s type—except for the fangs glinting in his flashlight beam and the inhuman speed with which she streaked across the room and kicked Jon Cartwright in the head. He crumpled to the ground.

“And then there were two,” the girl said, and smirked.

It had never occurred to Simon that the vampire would be his age, or at least look it.

“You want to be careful with that thing, Daylighter,” she said. “I hear you’re alive again. Presumably you want to keep it that way.”

Simon looked down to realize he had taken the dagger into his hand.

“You going to let me out of here, or what?” she asked.

“You can’t go out there.”

“No?”

“Sunshine, remember? Makes vampires go poof?” Simon couldn’t believe his voice wasn’t shaking. Honestly, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t peed his pants. He was alone with a vampire. A cute, girl vampire . . . that he was supposed to kill. Somehow.

“Check your watch, Daylighter.”

“I don’t wear a watch,” Simon said. “And I’m not a Daylighter anymore.”

She stepped closer to him, close enough to stroke his face. Her finger was cold, her skin as smooth as marble. “Is it true you don’t remember?” she said, peering curiously at him. “You don’t even remember me?”

“Did I . . . do I know you?”

She brushed her fingertips across her lips. “The question is, how well did you know me, Daylighter? I’ll never tell.”

Clary and the others had said nothing about Simon having vampire friends, or . . . more-than-friends. Maybe they’d wanted to spare him the details of that part of his life, the part where he’d thirsted for blood and walked in the shadows. Maybe he’d been so embarrassed that he’d never told them.

Or maybe she was lying.

Simon hated this, the not knowing. It made him feel like he was walking on quicksand, every unanswered question, every new discovery about his past sucking him farther down into the muck.

“Let me go, Daylighter,” she whispered. “You would never have hurt one of your own.”

He’d read in the Codex that vampires had the ability to mesmerize; he knew he should be guarding himself against it. But her gaze was magnetic. He couldn’t look away.

“I can’t do that,” he said. “You broke the Law. You killed someone. Many someones.”

“How do you know?”

“Because . . .” He stopped, realizing how feeble it would sound: because someone told me so.

She guessed at the answer anyway. “You always do what you’re told, Daylighter? You never think for yourself?”

Simon’s hand tightened on the dagger. He’d been so worried about discovering he was a coward, too frightened to fight. But now that he was here, facing the supposed monster, he wasn’t afraid—he was reluctant.

Sed lex, dura lex.

Except maybe it wasn’t so simple; maybe she’d just made a mistake, or someone else had, maybe he’d gotten the wrong information. Maybe she was a cold-blooded killer—but even so, who was he to punish her?

She angled past him toward the door. Without thinking, Simon moved to block her. His dagger swung up, slicing a dangerous arc through the air and whistling past her ear. She danced backward, laughing as she lunged for him, fingers curled like claws. Simon felt it then, for the first time, the adrenaline surge he’d been promised, the clarity of battle. He stopped thinking in terms of techniques and moves, stopped thinking at all, and simply acted, blocking and ducking her attack, aiming a kick at her ankles to sweep her legs out from under her, slashing the dagger across pale skin, drawing blood, and as his mind kicked into gear again, a step behind his body, he thought, I’m doing it. I’m fighting. I’m winning.

Until she wrapped a hand around his wrist in an iron grip, flipped him over onto his back as if he were a small child, and straddled him. She’d been playing with him, he realized. Pretending to fight, until she got bored.

She lowered her face toward his, close enough that he would have felt her breath—if she’d been breathing.

He remembered, suddenly, how cold he had been, when he was dead. He remembered the stillness in his chest, where his heart no longer beat.

“I could give it all back to you, Daylighter,” she whispered. “Eternal life.”

He remembered the hunger, and the taste of blood.