The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,93

that he was leaving two trails of blood on the hall rug.

At least I still bleed normal blood, he thought.

“Alec?” he said, and Alec came around the corner with Max, now in the front carrier that they’d used to carry him around the streets of Brooklyn in their first few months with him. Max had outgrown the carrier a month or so ago, and they’d been meaning to get a new one. Maybe this was the new one? It looked like the old one.

Also, Max definitely didn’t fit. But that was because he had changed. His horns, just adorable little nubs only a few minutes ago, were now jagged spikes, black and shiny like Magnus’s talons. A whiplike tail emerged from behind him, hairless like a rat’s. It swayed back and forth dangerously, like the tail of a cat preparing to strike.

And his eyes. Magnus couldn’t quite describe what was going on with Max’s eyes. When he tried to look at them, it was like scratches formed on the inside of his retinas. He had to look away.

“Something’s wrong,” said Alec.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Magnus said desperately. “It’s just… warlocks… sometimes you don’t know…”

“You didn’t tell me,” said Alec. He sounded flat.

“I didn’t know,” said Magnus. He began to back away down the hall, stepping again on the shards he’d left behind when he’d approached Alec and Max just now. New jabs of pain arced through his feet.

Alec lifted Max out of the carrier and held him up to look into his face. “I can deal with the claws, and the horns, and the fangs,” he said. “But I don’t know how to deal with this.”

He turned Max back around to show Magnus. Max’s face was a frozen mask, expressionless, vacant. But that isn’t his warlock mark, Magnus thought. He looks like… like…

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Lady of Edom

ALEC WONDERED FOR A MOMENT if he was dreaming, as Shinyun descended through the space where once a rose window had been set.

He had seen her floating, arms extended, framed in the empty circle, and thought she was a statue for a moment. There was a statue outside the rose window of the real cathedral in the real Shanghai, he remembered.

But then she came floating in and Jace let out a long, frustrated groan. Alec knew how he felt. Had their escape, their daring fall from the bridge, been pointless, if Shinyun could just casually meet them shortly after they arrived?

Sometime during their descent from the bridge, Magnus’s eyes had fluttered back in his head and closed. The three Shadowhunters had panicked, preparing to plummet freely downward, but luckily the spell had held. As the tenebrous shapes of Diyu’s mirror of Shanghai grew more distinct below them, they had seen the cathedral. It was exactly St. Ignatius’s shadow: every detail the same but with all color drained out of it, a picture in washes of dark grays and blacks. It was, thankfully, not literally upside down.

Magnus’s protective cloud had brought them to a landing on the church grounds next to one of the transepts, the side arms of the massive cross that formed the overall shape of the building. There was a small side door there, and they helped Magnus inside and arranged him on one of the carved wooden benches they found. Once he was at rest, the magic faded from his palms, and he breathed steadily, as though asleep.

They hadn’t been inside the real cathedral, but the interior of the shadow cathedral was sufficiently cathedral-like that Alec thought it was probably laid out the same way. It was strange to go from the eerie inhumanity of Diyu to the very distinct humanity of a Catholic church; at first glance they could have been in France or Italy, or even New York. Only once they walked around, and saw the elaborate wood carving of the pews, the distinctly Chinese tile running down the middle of the nave, did the unique character of Xujiahui come across. Except, Alec realized, for any holy symbol, or saint, or angel, which were missing. There were empty niches and picture rails all over where such things must have been in the original cathedral, but here they had been wiped away. Apparently Yanluo hadn’t been a fan. Alec supposed Sammael wouldn’t be either.

Returning to Magnus, Alec found him still breathing steadily and, to all appearances, napping. He put his hand on Magnus’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. When Magnus didn’t react, he gave him a slightly harder shake.