Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices #1)(12)
Author: Cassandra Clare

“Henry,” Will shouted, without turning, “if you could remove Miss Gray to a place of safety—soon—”

Henry’s bitten hand came down on Tessa’s shoulder, as Mrs. Dark flung another sheet of lightning toward her. Why is she trying to kill me? Tessa thought dizzily. Why not Will? And then, as Henry pulled her toward him, more light sheared off Will’s blade, refracting into a dozen blazing shards of brightness. For a moment Tessa stared, caught by the unlikely beauty of it—and then she heard Henry shout, telling her to drop to the floor, but it was too late. One of the blazing shards had caught her shoulder with incredible force. It was like being struck by a hurtling train. She was knocked free of Henry’s grasp, lifted, and flung backward. Her head struck the wall with blinding force. She was conscious only briefly of Mrs. Dark’s high screeching laughter, before the world went away.

3

THE INSTITUTE

Love, hope, fear, faith—these make humanity;

These are its sign and note and character

—Robert Browning, Paracelsus

In the dream Tessa lay once again tied to the narrow brass bed in the Dark House. The Sisters leaned over her, clacking pairs of long knitting needles and laughing in shrill high-pitched voices. As Tessa watched, their features changed, their eyes sinking into their heads, their hair falling out, and stitches appearing across their lips, sewing them shut. Tessa shrieked voicelessly, but they did not seem to hear.

The Sisters vanished entirely then, and Aunt Harriet was standing over Tessa, her face flushed with fever as it had been during the terrible illness that had killed her. She looked at Tessa with great sadness. “I tried,” she said. “I tried to love you. But it isn’t easy to love a child that isn’t human in the least… .”

“Not human?” said an unfamiliar female voice. “Well, if she isn’t human, Enoch, what is she?” The voice sharpened in impatience. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Everyone’s something. This girl can’t be nothing at all… .”

Tessa woke with a cry, her eyes flying open, and found herself staring at shadows. Darkness clustered about her thickly. She could barely hear the murmur of voices through her panic, and struggled into a sitting position, kicking away blankets and pillows. Dimly, she recognized that the blanket was thick and heavy, not the thin, braided one that belonged to the Dark House.

She was in a bed, just as she had dreamed, in a great stone room, and there was hardly any light. She heard the rasp of her own breath as she turned, and a scream forced its way out of her throat. The face from her nightmare hovered in the darkness before her—a great white moon of a face, its head shaved bald, smooth as marble. Where the eyes should have been there were only indentations in the flesh—not as if the eyes had been ripped out, but as if they had never grown there at all. The lips were banded with black stitches, the face scrawled with black marks like the ones on Will’s skin, though these looked as if they had been cut there with knives.

She screamed again and scrabbled backward, half-falling off the bed. She hit the cold stone floor, and the fabric of the white nightdress she was wearing—someone must have put it on her while she was unconscious—ripped at the hem as she scrambled to her feet.

“Miss Gray.” Someone was calling her name, but in her panic, she knew only that the voice was unfamiliar. The speaker was not the monster who stood staring at her from the bedside, its scarred face impassive; it had not moved when she did, and though it showed no signs of pursuing her, she began to back away, carefully, feeling behind herself for a door. The room was so dim, she could see only that it was roughly oval, the walls and floor all of stone. The ceiling was high enough to be in black shadow, and there were long windows across the opposite wall, the sort of arched windows that might have belonged in a church. Very little light filtered through them; it looked as if the sky outside was dark. “Theresa Gray—”

She found the door, the metal handle; turning, she seized on it thankfully, and pulled. Nothing happened. A sob rose up in her throat.

“Miss Gray!” the voice said again, and suddenly the room was flooded with light—a sharp, white-silver light that she recognized. “Miss Gray, I am sorry. It was not our intention to frighten you.” The voice was a woman’s: still unfamiliar, but youthful and concerned. “Miss Gray, please.”

Tessa turned slowly and put her back against the door. She could see clearly now. She was in a stone room whose central focus was a large, four-poster bed, its velvet coverlet now rucked and hanging sideways where she had dragged it off the mattress. Tapestry curtains were pulled back, and there was an elegant tapestry rug on the otherwise bare floor. In fact, the room itself was fairly bare. There were no pictures or photographs hanging on the wall, no ornaments cluttering the surfaces of the dark wood furniture. Two chairs stood facing each other near the bed, with a small tea table between them. A Chinese screen in one corner of the room hid what were probably a bathtub and washstand.

Beside the bed stood a tall man who wore robes like a monk’s, of a long, coarse, parchment-colored material. Red-brown runes circled the cuffs and hem. He carried a silver staff, its head carved in the shape of an angel and runes decorating its length. The hood of his robe was down, leaving bare his scarred, white, blinded face.

Beside him stood a very small woman, almost child-size, with thick brown hair knotted at the nape of her neck, and a neat, clever little face with bright, dark eyes like a bird’s. She wasn’t pretty exactly, but there was a calm, kindly look on her face that made the ache of panic in Tessa’s stomach ease slightly, though she couldn’t have said exactly why. In her hand she held a glowing white stone like the one Will had held at the Dark House. Its light blazed out between her fingers, illuminating the room.

“Miss Gray,” she said. “I am Charlotte Branwell, head of the London Institute, and this beside me is Brother Enoch—”

“What kind of monster is he?” Tessa whispered.

Brother Enoch said nothing. He was entirely expressionless.

“I know there are monsters on this earth,” said Tessa. “You cannot tell me otherwise. I have seen them.”

“I would not want to tell you otherwise,” said Mrs. Branwell. “If the world were not full of monsters, there would be no need for Shadowhunters.”

Shadowhunter. What the Dark Sisters had called Will Herondale.

Will. “I was—Will was with me,” said Tessa, her voice shaking. “In the cellars. Will said—” She broke off and cringed inwardly. She should not have called Will by his Christian name; it implied an intimacy between them that did not exist. “Where is Mr. Herondale?”