The Wicked Ones by Cassandra Clare

Author:Cassandra Clare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shadow Market Enterprises
Published: 2018-07-22T18:00:41+00:00

Céline was at home in the dark, slumbering streets. She wandered for hours. Through the Marais and past the hulking Pompidou, crossing from the Right Bank to the Left and back again. She visited with the gargoyles of Notre Dame, those hideous stone demons clinging to gothic spires, awaiting their chance to devour the faithful. It seemed unfair that the city was so full of stone creatures who could feel nothing, and here she was, feeling so unbearably much.

She was in the Tuileries—more bloody ghosts, more creatures carved of stone—when she spotted the trail of ichor. She was still a Shadowhunter, and she was a Shadowhunter in desperate need of distraction, so she followed it. She caught up with the Shax demon in the Opera district, but stayed in the shadows, wanting to see what it was up to. Shax demons were trackers, used to hunt people who didn’t want to be found. And this demon was definitely tracking something.

Céline tracked it, in turn.

She tracked it through the slumbering courtyards of the Louvre. It was oozing ichor from a wound, but it wasn’t moving like a creature slinking off to nurse its wounds. Its giant pincers skittered at the cobblestones as it hesitated at corners, deciding which way to turn. This was a predator, tracking its prey.

The demon paused in the archway of the Louvre, at the foot of the Pont des Arts. The small pedestrian bridge stretched across the Seine, its railings crowded with lovers’ locks. It was said that if a couple attached a lock to the Pont des Arts, their love would last forever. The bridge was almost deserted at this hour, except for one young couple, locked in an embrace. Completely oblivious to the Shax demon slithering out of the shadows, pincers clicking together in eager anticipation.

Céline always carried a misericorde blade. Its narrow point was exactly what she needed to penetrate the insectoid demon’s carapace.

She hoped.

“Gadreel,” Céline whispered, naming a seraph blade. She crept behind the Shax demon, as steady and silent as it was. She too could be a predator. In one smooth, sure motion, she stabbed the misericorde straight through the carapace, then slid the seraph blade into the wound she’d opened.

The demon dissolved.

It had all happened so swiftly, so quietly, that the couple on the bridge didn’t even break from their embrace. They were too intent on each other to realize how close they’d come to being a demon’s late-night snack. Céline lingered, trying to imagine it: standing on the bridge with someone who loved her, a man gazing so intently into her eyes that he wouldn’t have noticed the world ending.

But Céline’s imagination gave out. Reality had caged her in. As long she thought Stephen hadn’t noticed her, she could fantasize about what might happen if he ever did.

Now she knew. She could not un-know.

Céline wiped and sheathed her blade, then crept closer to the couple, close enough to hear what they were saying. She was glamoured, after all, so there was no danger in doing a little eavesdropping.

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