“Go,” she whispered, and they exploded out of the tunnel: Ty and Livvy and Emma and Cristina, all of them, Diego rushing straight for Malcolm.
For a split second Malcolm looked surprised. He dropped the knife—it hit the floor and, made of soft copper, the blade bent. Malcolm stared down at it, then back up at the Blackthorns and their friends—and began laughing. He stood, laughing, in the center of the protection circle, as they rushed at him—and one by one were slammed backward by the force of the invisible protective wall. Diego swung his battle-ax. The ax glanced off the air as if it had struck steel and recoiled backward.
“Surround Malcolm!” Emma shouted. “He can’t stay in the protected area forever! Circle him!”
They spread out, surrounding the protective runes on the floor. Emma found herself across from Ty, knife in hand; he was looking at Malcolm with a peculiar expression on his face: half incomprehension, half hatred.
Ty understood acting, pretending. But betrayal on the scale Malcolm had practiced it was something else again. Emma couldn’t understand it herself and she’d had a clear view of just what kind of betrayal people were capable of when she’d watched the Clave exile Helen and abandon Mark.
“You’ll have to come out of there eventually,” Emma said. “And when you do—”
Malcolm bent and seized his damaged knife from the floor. When he straightened up, Emma saw that his eyes were the color of bruises. “When I do, you’ll be dead,” he spat, and whirled to reach out a hand toward the rows of the dead. “Rise!” he called. “My Followers, rise!”
There was a series of groans and creaks. Throughout the cave the dead Followers began to stand.
They moved neither unusually slowly nor unusually quickly, but they moved with steady determination. They did not seem to be armed, but as they neared the main chamber, Belinda—her eyes blank and empty, her head cocked to the side—flung herself at Cristina. Her fingers were bent into claws, and before Cristina could react, Belinda had torn bloody gashes down the side of her face.
With a cry of disgust, Cristina shoved the corpse away from her, slashing her butterfly knife across Belinda’s throat.
It made no difference. Belinda stood up again, the wound in her throat bloodless and flapping, and swung toward Cristina. Before she could take more than a single step there was a flash of silver. Diego’s ax sang out, whipping forward, severing Belinda’s head from her neck. The headless body sank to the ground. The wound still wasn’t bleeding; it looked cauterized.
“Behind you!” Cristina shouted.
Diego whirled. Behind him two other Followers were reaching to grab and claw at them. He spun in a swift arc, his ax taking both their heads with it.
There was a noise behind Emma. Instantly she calculated where the Follower behind her was; she leaped, spun, kicked, and knocked him back. It was the clarinetist with the curly hair. She stabbed downward with Cortana, severing his head from his body.
She thought of him winking at her in the Midnight Theater. I never knew his name, she thought, and then whirled back around.
The room was in chaos. Just as Malcolm must have wanted, the Shadowhunters had abandoned the perimeter of the protection circle to ward off the Followers.
Malcolm was ignoring everything that was going on around him. He had seized up the candelabra with the Hands of Glory on it and carried it to the head of the table. He set it down beside Tavvy, who slept on, a rosy flush on his cheeks.
Dru had run to Diana and was struggling to help her get to her feet. As a Follower approached them, Dru whipped around and ran the woman through with her blade. Emma saw her swallow as the body crumpled and realized it was the first time Dru had killed someone in battle—even if that someone was already dead.
Livvy was fighting gloriously, feinting and parrying with her saber, driving Followers toward Ty. He was carrying a seraph blade, one that blazed brightly in his grip. As a blond Follower lurched into him, he drove the blade into the back of the dead man’s neck.
There was a searing, crackling noise as the seraph blade met flesh and the Follower began to burn. He staggered away, clawing at his burning flesh, before tumbling to the ground.
“Seraph blades!” Emma called. “Everyone! Use your seraph blades!”
Lights blazed up through the cavern and Emma heard the murmur of voices calling the names of angels. Jophiel, Remiel, Duma. Through the haze of light she saw Malcolm with the bent copper knife. He ran a hand along the blade and it sprang back under his fingers, as sharp as it had been originally. He placed the tip of it against Tavvy’s throat and sliced downward, slitting open the little boy’s Batman T-shirt. The worn cotton curled open, revealing his thin, vulnerable chest.