Lord of Shadows

Malcolm stood watching Arthur, with a smile playing on his ruined face. He looked like something dragged up from some watery Hell dimension. Cracks and runnels in his skin leaked seawater. His eyes were milky and opaque; half his white hair was gone, and his bald skin was patchy and scabbed. He wore a white suit, and the raw fissures in his skin disappeared incongruously under expensive collar and cuffs.

“For any blood ritual, willing blood is better than unwilling,” said Arthur. He stood in his usual slumped posture, hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I’ll give you mine willingly if you’ll swear to leave my family alone.”

Malcolm licked his lips; his tongue was bluish. “That’s all you want? That promise?”

Arthur nodded.

“You don’t want the Black Volume?” Malcolm said in a taunting voice, tapping the book tucked into the waistband of his trousers. “You don’t want assurance I’ll never harm a single Nephilim?”

“Your revenge only matters to me inasmuch as my family remains unharmed,” said Arthur, and relief weakened Julian’s knees. “The Blackthorn blood I give you should slake your thirst for it, warlock.”

Malcolm smiled. His teeth were twisted and sharp, like a shark’s. “Now, if I make this agreement, am I taking advantage of you, given that you are a madman?” he mused aloud. “Has your shaky mind mistaken the situation? Are you confused? Bewildered? Do you know who I am?” Arthur winced, and Julian felt a pang of sympathy for his uncle, and a flash of hate for Malcolm.

Kill him, he thought. Tell me you brought a seraph blade, Uncle, and run him through.

“Your uncle will not be armed,” said the Queen. “Fade would have seen to that.” She was watching with an almost avaricious delight. “The mad Nephilim and the mad warlock,” she said. “It is like a storybook.”

“You are Malcolm Fade, betrayer and murderer,” said Arthur.

“Quite an ungrateful thing to say to someone who’s been providing you with your cures all these years,” Malcolm murmured.

“Cures? More like temporary lies. You did what you had to do to continue to deceive Julian,” said Arthur, and Julian started to hear his own name. “You gave him medicine for me because it made him trust you. My family loved you. More than they ever did me. You twisted a knife in their hearts.”

“Oh,” Malcolm murmured. “If only.”

“I would rather be mad my way than yours,” said Arthur. “You had so much. Love once, and power, and immortal life, and you have thrown it away as if it were trash by the side of the road.” He glanced toward the twitching thing on the altar. “I wonder if she will still love you, the way you are now.”

Malcolm’s face contorted. “Enough,” he said, and a quick look of triumph passed over Arthur’s tired, battered features. He had outwitted Malcolm, in his own way. “I agree to your promise. Come here.”

Arthur stepped forward. Malcolm seized him and began to propel him toward the altar. Arthur’s witchlight was gone, but candles burned in brackets fastened to the walls, casting a flickering, yellowish light.

Malcolm held Arthur with one hand, bending him over the altar; with the other he drew the dark covering away from the altar. Annabel’s body was revealed.

“Oh,” breathed the Queen. “She was lovely, once.”

She was not now. Annabel was a skeleton, though not the clean white down-to-the-bones type one usually saw in art and pictures. Her skin was leathery and dried, and pocked with holes where worms had crawled in and out. Nausea rose in Julian’s stomach. She was covered with white winding-sheets, but her legs were visible, and her arms: There were places the skin had peeled away, and moss grew on the bones and dried tendons.

Brittle dark hair spilled from her skull. Her jaw worked as she saw Malcolm, and a moan issued from her destroyed throat. She seemed to be shaking her head.

“Don’t worry, darling,” said Malcolm. “I’ve brought you what you need.”

“No!” Julian cried, but it was as he had feared: He could not halt the events unfolding before him. Malcolm snatched up the blade from beside Annabel and sliced open Arthur’s throat.

Blood fountained over Annabel, over her body and the stone she lay on. Arthur groped at his neck, and Julian gagged, clutching the sides of the bowl with his fingers.

Annabel’s winding-sheets had turned crimson. Arthur’s hands dropped slowly to his sides. He was upright now only because Malcolm was holding him. Blood soaked Annabel’s brittle hair and dried skin. It turned the front of Malcolm’s white suit to a sheet of scarlet.

“Uncle Arthur,” Julian whispered. He tasted salt on his lips. For a moment he was terrified that he was crying, and in front of the Queen—but to his relief he had only bitten his lip. He swallowed the metal of his own blood as Arthur went limp in Malcolm’s grasp, and Malcolm shoved his body impatiently away. He crumpled to the ground beside the altar and lay still.

“Annabel,” Malcolm breathed.

She had begun to stir.

Her limbs moved first, her legs and arms stretching, her hands reaching for nothing. For a moment Julian thought there was something wrong with the water in the bowl, an odd reflection, before he realized that it was actually Annabel herself. A white glow was creeping over her—no, it was skin, rising to cover bare bones and stripped tendons. Her corpse seemed to swell up and out as flesh filled out the shape of her, as if a smooth, sleek glove had been drawn over her skeleton. Gray and white turned to pink: Her bare feet and her calves looked human now. There were even clear half-moons of nails at the tips of her toes.

The skin crawled up her body, slipping under the winding-sheets, rising to cover her chest and collarbones, spreading down her arms. Her hands starfished out, each finger splayed as she tested the air. Her neck arched back as black-brown hair exploded from her skull. Breasts rose under the sheets, her hollow cheeks filled, her eyes snapped open.

They were Blackthorn eyes, shimmering blue-green as the sea.

Annabel sat up, clutching the rags of her bloody winding-sheets to her. Under them she had the body of a young woman. Thick hair cascaded around a pale oval face; her lips were full and red; her eyes shimmered in wonder as she stared at Malcolm.

And Malcolm was transformed. Whatever the vicious damage done to him, it seemed to fade away, and for a moment Julian saw him as he must have been when he was a young man in love. There was a wondering sweetness about him; he seemed frozen in place, his face shining in adoration as Annabel slid down from the altar. She landed on the stone floor beside Arthur’s crumpled body.

“Annabel,” Malcolm said. “My Annabel. I have waited so long for you, done so much to bring you back to me.” He took a stumbling step toward her. “My love. My angel. Look at me.”

But Annabel was looking down at Arthur. Slowly, she bent down and picked up the knife that had fallen by his body. When she straightened up, her gaze fixed on Malcolm, tears streaked her face. Her lips formed a soundless word—Julian craned forward, but it was too faint to hear. The surface of the scrying glass had begun to roil and tremble, like the surface of the sea before a storm.

Malcolm looked stricken. “Do not weep,” he said. “My darling, my Annabel.” He reached for her. Annabel stepped toward him, her face lifting to his. He bent down as if to kiss her just as she swept her arm up, driving the knife she held into his body.

Malcolm stared at her in disbelief. Then he cried out. It was a cry of more than pain—a howl of utter, despairing betrayal and heartbreak. A howl that seemed to rip through the universe, tearing apart the stars.

He staggered back, but Annabel pursued him, a wraith of blood and terror in her white-and-scarlet grave clothes. She slashed at him again, opening his chest, and he fell to the ground.

Even then he didn’t raise a hand to fend her off as she moved to stand over him. Blood bubbled from the corner of his lips when he spoke. “Annabel,” he breathed. “Oh, my love, my love—”