The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,127

surface of the orb. At once it emitted a high-pitched shriek and began to deflate like a balloon. Alec slapped his hands over his ears and realized, no, not deflating. The six-pointed wound over Shinyun’s heart was absorbing the magic, drawing it in like a deep inhale. As they all watched, the orb grew smaller and more oblong until, with a popping noise, the entirety of it disappeared into Shinyun.

“Uh-oh,” muttered Sammael.

Shinyun hovered motionless where the magic had been, glowing with crimson fire. After a moment, she began to emit a strange shaking sound. After another moment, she threw back her head and Alec realized: she was laughing. A dreadful laugh, a cackle of rage and mockery.

Her face began to crack.

Lines appeared, spreading from her mouth into her cheeks, fissures opening around her eyes and on her forehead and down her chin. The planes of her face began to separate, and Alec felt his stomach drop. Shinyun’s features separated, broke, snapped like something behind the mask of her face was punching its way out.

With a great roar of triumph, inhuman and ancient, she burst, in a shattering of limbs and lines and eyes and wings and teeth…

Her eyes were now twice the size they had been, and Shinyun herself twice the height. Her limbs spread like a great water insect’s, and her wings, now a dark blood-red, flapped slowly behind her. Her face, no longer frozen in place by the arbitrary maledictions of the warlock mark, twisted in glee. Her teeth were bright and sharp, with a pair of fangs, like a tarantula’s. At her back was a long, whiplike tail, and at the end of the tail, a nasty-looking iron barb. The Svefnthorn itself.

Alec watched in horrified fascination. Shinyun had become the thing she loved most—a demon. A Greater Demon, Alec was sure.

She screamed that unearthly scream again, and the ground of Avici began to shake below their feet.

“Shinyun!” Sammael called. “Marvelous new look! I think maybe we’ve gotten a little off task, though. If you’ll just come down and we can decide what to do with—”

In a flash of motion Shinyun was hovering above Sammael and Magnus, her tail flicking dangerously back and forth.

“I thought you were the ultimate power,” she said to Sammael. Her voice was still recognizably her own, though it was slashed through with high-pitched scratches and a kind of skittering that Alec realized was her breathing. “But you aren’t.”

Sammael looked offended. “If you know of a demon more powerful than me, feel free to let me know so I may pay him homage.”

“You may be the greatest of the Princes of Hell,” Shinyun spat, “but you’re so much weaker than I realized. You’re as dependent on others as these idiot humans.” She gestured with a clawed hand at the others. “You’re dependent on Diyu. You’re dependent on souls being tormented to give you power. You’re dependent on me.”

“If you’ve decided that Sammael, of all people, is not powerful enough for you…” Magnus shook his head. “You’re one hard-to-please lady, you know that?”

“Apparently, of all the beings here,” Shinyun said, “I’m the only one who understands true power. True power is to depend on no one, on nothing. If I cannot trust anyone else to rule over me, then I will rule myself. And I will rule alone.”

With that, she circled upward, away from them. She opened her mouth and exhaled a wide cone of crimson light into the dark. When the glare cleared, it formed a Portal, the surface a silver mirror whose destination Alec couldn’t make out. With a last scream, Shinyun flew through the Portal, which closed around her, and was gone.

The ground was rumbling even harder now. Alec noticed that at some point he’d fallen and was crouched on the ground. Magnus was making his way over to join him, moving carefully on the suddenly uneven terrain.

Sammael looked around with some disappointment. “Well, that’s it for Diyu, I guess. She’s going to bring the whole place down around us.” He sighed. “That’s how the cookie crumbles, I suppose.”

Magnus had reached Alec. He was helping him up. Alec was only dimly aware. The whole world was shaking around him, shaking and wobbling. Or possibly he was shaking and wobbling?

He looked up to see that Sammael had come over to join them for some reason. “Magnus, I’m sorry we aren’t going to be working together. And I’m sorry you both are going to die in the deepest pit in Diyu when miles and