CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ALEC
Rebecca slowly rose to her feet. She made no move to wipe the silent tears streaming down her face. "He's gone," she said to the others. Her voice was flat and empty. She started down the steps, but then suddenly sat down, like she couldn't hold herself upright any longer. She buried her head in her arms and began to cry - not silently, as she had been doing so far - but heartbroken sobbing.
Alec slowly walked over to his sister. He didn't fully understand how Rebecca could weep for someone who had caused so much death and destruction, but he knew he couldn't try to. Whatever she and Sebastian - Jonathan - had had between them was special, and if Rebecca wanted to cry for him, she had every right to. All Alec could do was hold her in his arms. So he did precisely that.
Isabelle brushed past the rest of the onlookers and knelt down beside her sister. Rebecca drew away from Alec for a moment and threw herself into her sister's arms.
"I'm alright," she said, after a minute, gently disentangling herself from Isabelle. She looked up at Alec and repeated, "I'm alright."
Alec gazed into his little sister's eyes. Her irises were still black. And they would remain that way. Forever.
"I wish you'd told us," Isabelle said. "About your plan."
"It wasn't my plan," Rebecca said in a hollow voice. "It was Clary's. She didn't want to tell you because she was afraid it wouldn't work." She glanced at Clary, who was standing beside her mother and Luke. Upon catching Rebecca's eye, she gave her a small, watery smile, which Rebecca returned.
"Becca," Isabelle said, "I hate to ask, but did Seb-did Jonathan say anything about how to unseal the borders?"
Rebecca swallowed. "He said it wasn't possible. That they're closed forever."
"So we're trapped here," Isabelle said, her dark eyes shocked. "Forever? That can't be. There must be a spell- Magnus- " She whirled around to face Magnus.
"He wasn't lying," Magnus said. "There's no way for us to reopen the paths from here to Idris."
There was an awful silence. Then Alec, whose gaze had been resting on Magnus, said, "No way for us?"
"That's what I said," Magnus replied. "There's no way to open the borders."
"No," said Alec, and there was a dangerous note in his voice. He walked over to stand beside Magnus. "You said there was no way for us to do it, meaning there might be someone who could."
Magnus drew away from Alec and looked around at them all. His expression was unguarded, stripped of its usual distance, and he looked both very young and very, very old. "There are worse things than death," Magnus said.
"Maybe you should let us be the judge of that," said Alec, and Magnus scrubbed a despairing hand across his face and said, "Dear God. Alexander, I have gone my whole life without ever taking recourse to this path, save once, when I learned my lesson. It is not a lesson I want the rest of you to learn."
"But you're alive," said Isabelle. "You lived through the lesson."
Magnus smiled an awful smile. "It wouldn't be much of a lesson if I hadn't," he said. "But I was duly warned. Playing dice with my own life is one thing; playing with all of yours-"
"We'll die here anyway," said Jace, who had walked over to join the conversation. "It's a rigged game. Let us take our chances."
"I agree," Rebecca said.
Magnus glanced towards the other side of the dais, where Luke and Jocelyn still stood and sighed. "Majority vote," he said. "Did you know there's an old Downworlder saying about mad dogs and Nephilim never heeding a warning?"
"Magnus-" Alec began, but Magnus only shook his head and drew himself weakly to his feet. He still wore the rags of the clothes he must have put on for that long-ago dinner at the Fair Folk's refuge in Idris: the incongruous shreds of a suit jacket and tie. Rings sparkled on his fingers as he brought his hands together, as if in prayer, and closed his eyes.
"My father," he said, and Alec sucked in a gasp. "My father, who art in Hell, unhallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in Edom as it is in Hell. Forgive not my sins, for in that fire of fires there shall be neither loving kindness, nor compassion, nor redemption. My father, who makes war in high places and low, come to me now; I call you as your son, and incur upon myself the responsibility of your summoning."
Magnus opened his eyes. He was expressionless. Five shocked faces looked back at him.
"By the Angel-" Alec started.
"No," said a voice just beyond their huddled group. "Definitely not by your Angel."
Alec stared. At first, he saw nothing, just a shifting patch of shadow, and then a figure evolved out of the darkness. A tall man, as pale as bone, in a pure white suit; silver cufflinks gleamed at his wrists, carved in the shape of flies. His face was a human face, pale skin pulled tight over bone, cheekbones sharp as blades. He didn't have hair so much as a sparkling coronet of barbed wires. His eyes were gold-green, and slit-pupiled like a cat's.
"Father," said Magnus, and the word was an exhalation of sorrow. "You came."
REBECCA
The man smiled. His front teeth were sharp, pointed like feline teeth. "My son," he said. "It has been a long time since you called on me. I was beginning to despair that you ever would again."
"I hadn't planned to," Magnus said dryly. "I called on you once, to determine that you were my father. That once was enough."
"You wound me," said the man, and he turned his pointed-tooth smile on the others. "I am Asmodeus," he said. "One of the Nine Princes of Hell. You may know my name."
"You're- Magnus's father?" said Alec in a strangled voice.
"Yes," Magnus said. He looked very tired. "I warned you, Alexander, that this was something you would not like."
"I don't see what the fuss is about. I have been the father of many warlocks," said Asmodeus. "Magnus has made me the proudest."
"Who are the others?" Rebecca asked, her dark eyes suspicious.
"What he's not saying is that they're mostly dead," Magnus said. He met his father's eyes briefly and then looked away, as if he couldn't stand prolonged eye contact. "He's also not telling you that all princes of Hell have a realm they rule; this is his."
"Since this place- Edom- is your realm," Jace said, "then you're responsible for- for what happened here?"
"It is my realm, though I am rarely here," said Asmodeus with a martyred sigh. "Used to be an exciting place. The Nephilim of this realm put up quite the fight. When they invented the skeptron, I rather thought they might win out at the last moment, but the Jonathan Shadowhunter of this world was a divider, not a uniter, and in the end, they destroyed themselves. Everyone does, you know. We demons get the blame, but we only open the door. It is humanity who steps through it."
"Don't excuse yourself," Magnus snapped. "You as much as murdered my mother-"
"She was a willing little piece, I assure you," said Asmodeus, and Magnus flushed red across his cheekbones. Rebecca felt a dull pang of shock that it was actually possible to do that to Magnus, to hurt him with barbs about his family. It had been so long, and he was so collected.
But then, perhaps your parents could always hurt you, no matter how old you were.
"Let's cut to the business part of this," said Magnus. "You can open a door, correct? Send us through to Idris, back to our world?"
"Would you like a demonstration?" Asmodeus asked, flicking his fingers toward the dais, where Luke was on his feet, looking toward them. Jocelyn was kneeling beside her dead son.
As Rebecca watched, they simply winked out of existence, along with Jonathan's body.
"Mom!" Clary cried out.
"I sent them back to your world," said Asmodeus. "Now you know." He examined his nails.
"How dare you-"
"Well, it's what you wanted, isn't it?" said Asmodeus. "There, you got the first two for free. The rest, well, it'll cost you." He sighed at the looks on the faces around him. "I'm a demon," he said pointedly. "Really, what do they teach Nephilim these days?"
"I know what you want," Magnus said in a strained voice. "And you can have it. But you must swear on the Morning Star to send all my friends back to Idris, all of them, and never to bother them again. They will owe you nothing."
Alec stepped forward. "Stop," he said. "No- Magnus, what do you mean, what he wants? Why are you talking like you're not coming back to Idris with us?"
"There is a time," said Asmodeus, "when we must all return to live in the houses of our fathers. Now is Magnus's time."
"'In my father's house are many mansions,'" Jace whispered; he looked very pale, and as if he might throw up. "Magnus. He can't mean- he doesn't want to take you back with him? Back to-"
"To Hell? Not precisely," Asmodeus said. "As Magnus said, Edom is my realm. I shared it with Lilith. Then her brat took it over and laid waste to the grounds, destroyed my keep- it's in slivers out there. And you murdered half the populace with the skeptron." The last was addressed to Jace, rather petulantly. "It takes great energy to fuel a realm. We draw from the power of what we have left behind, the great city of Pandemonium, the fire we fell into, but there is a time when life must fuel us. And immortal life is the best of all."
"You want to take his life?" Rebecca said loudly. "That's just cruel and stupid, even if you're a demon. How could you want to kill your own child-"
Asmodeus laughed. "Delightful," he said. "Look at them, Magnus, these children who love you and want to protect you! Who would ever have thought it! When you are buried, I will make sure they inscribe it on your tomb: Magnus Bane, beloved of Nephilim."
"You won't touch him," Alec said, his voice like iron. "Maybe you've forgotten what it is we do, us Nephilim, but we kill demons. Even princes of Hell."
Asmodeus rolled his eyes. "Again, I do not want to kill Magnus. That would be messy and silly, and besides, I could have had his death arranged at any time. It is his life freely given I want, for the life of an immortal has power, great power, and it will help me fuel my kingdom."
"But he's your son," Isabelle protested.
"And he will remain with me," said Asmodeus with a grin. "In spirit, you might say."
Alec whirled on Magnus, who stood with his hands in his pockets, scowling. "He wants to take your immortality?"
"Exactly," Magnus said.
"But- you'd survive? Just not be immortal anymore?" Alec looked wretched.
"My immortality would be gone," Magnus said. "All the years of my life would come on me at once. I would be unlikely to survive it. Almost four hundred years is quite a lot to take, even if you moisturize regularly."
"You can't," Alec said, and there was a plea in his voice. "He said 'a life given willingly.' Say no."
"I can't say no, Alexander," he said. "If I do, we all remain here; we'll die anyway. We'll starve, our ashes turned to dust to plague the demons of the realm."
Alec looked stricken. "We'll die together," he said. "Let me stay at least, with you."
"You have to go back. You have to go back to the world."
"I don't want the world. I want you," Alec said, and Magnus closed his eyes, as if the words almost hurt.
"You can't stay with me," Magnus said after a pause. "There will be no me; the demon will take my life force, and my body will crumble away. Four hundred years, remember."
"'The demon,' " Asmodeus said, and sniffed. "You could say my name, at least, while you're boring me."
"I have to save you, Alec," Magnus said. "You and everyone you love; it's a small price to pay, isn't it, in the end, for all of that?"
"Not everyone I love," Alec whispered, and Rebecca could feel tears pressing behind her eyes. Magnus and Alec were clinging to each other; there was tenderness even in the curve of Magnus's fingers around Alec's shoulder as he bent to kiss him. It was a kiss of desperation and clutching more than passion; Magnus held on tightly enough for his fingers to bite into Alec's arms, but in the end, he stepped away, and turned toward his father.
"All right," Magnus said, and Rebecca could tell he was bracing himself, nerving himself up as if he were about to throw his body onto a pyre. "All right, take me. I give you my life. I am-"
At that moment, Simon - Simon, who she had almost forgotten was there - stepped forward. "I am willing."