5
Sera sighed impatiently. If Mark Blackthorn is alive, he's a goddamn ghost, she thought to herself paradoxically.
She had started making cautious phone calls almost immediately after she had Portaled back from Prague, stepping from the early hours of the morning in Europe to the early hours of the afternoon of North America in a second. This was Hell. Portal-lag was officially her own personal version of Hell.
It was one thing for Andrej to give her a name and say this guy lived somewhere near Los Angeles, but she hadn't really appreciated how hard it might be to find him. Shadowhunters were pretty good at staying off the Mundane grid, and it wasn't like she could just waltz into the Los Angeles Institute and ask. Or can I? She contemplated fabricating a false identity and taking a stab at it, but something in Andrej's words made her pause. Your Clave may have tried to forget him, he had said. Sounds like Mark Blackthorn was a touchy issue with the Clave. Big surprise. In her honest opinion, the Clave needed to find some chill.
It wasn't until she was making faces in the mirror of her washroom as she peeled away the prosthetics with one hand while juggling her phone in the other that she finally had a spark of inspiration, wracking her Mnemosyne-enhanced memory. A warlock in Ojai had been close friends with the Blackthorn's tutor years ago at the L.A. Institute. Maybe it would be worth asking her? What was her name...? Ophelia? Ophelia Moore.
Excited, Sera scrolled through her contacts until she found the entry. The phone rang three times before a lilting voice answered, "Hello?"
"Ophelia Moore?"
"Speaking," the warlock answered.
"I'm so sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but I was really hoping you could help me track down an old Shadowhunter friend of mine. I can make it worth your while." Sera nervously scratched at the bits of dried glue on the tips of her ears.
"Do you have something of theirs to use as a focus for the tracking spell?" Ophelia sounded bored. Business as usual.
"No, but I was hoping you actually might just know the person I'm looking for. Mark Blackthorn?" She held her breath.
On the other end of the line, Ophelia went silent for a moment before her voice ventured hesitantly, "You mean Julian Blackthorn?"
"No."
"Tiberius?"
"No."
"Octavian?"
"No! How many Blackthorn Shadowhunters are there in your area?" Sera was aghast.
"Well..." Ophelia trailed off thoughtfully. But then her voice hardened, "If Mark Blackthorn was truly a friend of yours, you would have known about his family."
Well, shit.
"Alright, I don't know him. But I do know that he was raised in the Los Angeles Institute until the Wild Hunt claimed him during the Dark War. After that, there's nothing to find. Your friend Diana worked there as a tutor, surely you know something?"
"There's nothing else to know," Ophelia replied coldly. "As you said, Mark Blackthorn was claimed by the Hunt."
Sera nodded to herself. The warlock knew something. Time to blow some smoke. Initiate bullshit mode.
"I have it on good authority," she said as her fingers brushed her throat unconsciously, "That he's alive and living in hiding near you. If you're worried about spilling Clave secrets, don't be. I already know. I don't mean him any harm, but he might have valuable information about an investigation I'm working on. Just give me an address, and I will completely leave your name out of my report. No one needs to know we ever spoke." Sera could almost see the warlock teetering on the edge of telling her, so she added, "The Clave appreciates your loyalty."
Ophelia sighed and gave her an address in Santa Barbara. Sera cheered inwardly, but stayed smooth as she thanked the warlock for her cooperation. She was about to end the phone call when Ophelia cut in over her, "Whoever you are, I can only assume that you're going to ask that boy about the Hunt."
'That boy'? He's gotta be in his forties by now. She didn't get a chance to respond before Ophelia said in a voice that shook a little bit. "I hope it's worth it."
The line went dead and Sera looked down at her phone in confusion. What the hell does that mean?
She rustled up her favourite jeans and a tank top, added her leather jacket, dug her boots out of Rayce's pack with a pang, and then tied her hair back. The closest she was going to be able to get was her flat in Los Angeles; she would have to take a more conventional mode of transportation from there to Santa Barbara, having never been there before.
Her Portal sent her to a tiny living room that smelled like Heaven, if Heaven was an incredibly stuffy apartment over top of a Chinese restaurant. She let the Portal fall closed behind her and crossed the dimly-lit room to the kitchenette, where she rifled through the top drawer for a set of keys. The flat didn't have much of her in it; she rarely spent time in L.A., preferring her place in Las Vegas instead. But there were perks to owning this place, as she was about to demonstrate. She blazed a glamour rune onto the back of her left shoulder and took on the appearance of a pretty Chinese lady in her mid-thirties, straight dark hair cut to chin-length.
Sera slipped out the door and re-locked it behind her, stepping gingerly around the stacks of take-out cartons for the restaurant on the narrow back stairs. The smell of Heaven was much stronger down here, and she poked her head into the kitchen to check for witnesses. Seeing none, she swiped what looked like an order of moo shu pork from the back counter where the deliveries were put together. It wasn't stealing if she owned the place, was it?
The battered screen door banged shut behind her as she took her pilfered dinner outside to sit on the curb in the alley around the back of the restaurant. She wolfed it down in a hurry, heedless of how hot it was, and tried not to count how many meals she had missed recently. It just added another depressing ring to her circle of Portal-lag Hell.
Sera licked the last bit of sauce off her fingers and tossed the carton into one of the bins lined up like sentinels across the back of the building. A narrow, corrugated metal door was rolled down and securely padlocked to left of the exit she had used. She used one of the keys on the ring she had taken from upstairs to open the padlock and then she shoved the protesting door upward.
A gleaming black Ducati Monster 1521 Dark motorcycle leaned casually on its kickstand and Sera sighed with pleasure. No Portal-lag. Just sweet, glorious open highway and the wind. She had never bothered to acquire a car in Los Angeles because it was such a nightmare to finding parking, but this... She pulled on her helmet and rolled the bike out of the storage locker before gunning it to life with a satisfying roar. This was going to be great.
It was an hour later, when she was still glumly guiding her bike along a few feet at a time in the rush-hour traffic and sweating half to death, that she remembered why she hated L.A., moo shu pork notwithstanding. I'm glad it's only a hundred miles to Santa Barbara, she thought sarcastically, I should get there some time next week at this rate.
The congestion eased a bit as she got further away from the city and she was really able to get the bike purring, but just after she passed Ventura on the 101 North there was some sort of accident blocking off the lanes ahead. She shot a withering glance north in the general direction of Ojai and silently wondered if a certain warlock was behind this.
As she waited impatiently for a lane to be cleared, she thought about what it meant to be stuck like this. Not just in traffic, but in her situation. All of these sheep, just idling and waiting obediently, inching ahead in their air-conditioned cars as hours of their lives bled away. Sera revved her engine a bit and ground her teeth. She could take the bike onto the shoulder and get around this, laws be damned. In fact, a quick mendelin would take care of any cops. Find a way or make one. Whatever it takes. But what did that make her?
Before she could worry herself any deeper into an existential crisis, the cars ahead of her started to move again. She felt a flash of fear cut through her as she passed the accident scene a few minutes later. A motorcycle was crushed under the back wheels of a transport truck. She shivered once and then kept the speedometer under 70mph the rest of the way to Santa Barbara. Maybe following the rules was a good idea sometimes.
It was after 9pm when she finally rolled to a stop at the curb in front of a small bungalow done in the Spanish revival style. Red clay terracotta tiles glowed in the sunset and shadows played across the rough, white stucco walls. Painted black shutters stood open on either side of the wide front window on the left side of the house, and a matching black garage door stood closed on the right. Between the two was a path done in interlocking brick under a covered archway that led to a wooden door set back through a small patio. The tiny patch of lawn looked like it could use some water in the summer heat, but it was neatly kept, just like the gardens hemmed in by natural sandstone rocks.
Sera engaged the kickstand on her motorcycle and stood, stretching some stiff muscles in her lower back as she pulled off her helmet. Her glamour had faded somewhere between here and Ventura, and she went for a more conservative image as she reapplied a much stronger rune to once again look much as she had before heading out on the town in Las Vegas, except this time she left her Marks visible. It would hold up against someone with the Sight for a little while, at least. She took a deep breath and stepped onto the interlocking bricks.
This wasn't really what she had been expecting when she had pictured a Shadowhunter's home. Not a single gargoyle in sight. She was surprised to see a kiddie pool, complete with a few floaties, on the patio as she followed the path to the front door. An assorted collection of child- and adult-sized flip flops were kicked into a haphazard heap next to a doormat that offered its welcome. I don't think I've ever gone hunting in flip flops.
She pressed the doorbell and heard it chime inside cheerfully.
The door was opened by a striking Latina woman who looked to be in her late thirties with her long, lush black hair swept over her shoulder loosely. Sharp, dark brown eyes took in the visitor's runes in an instant and Sera saw her tense.
"May I help you?" she woman asked politely. Who was she? Had Ophelia given her the wrong address? But it couldn't be wrong; this woman had runes as plain as day.
"I hope so," Sera said uncertainly. "I'm looking for Mark Blackthorn."
The Latina's lips compressed into a thin line. "You must be mistaken. He was claimed by the Hunt a long time ago." The woman started to close the door, but Sera's hand shot out to catch it.
"Yeah, but you got him back, didn't you?" Even as she said it, she knew she was right. "I just need to talk to him. Please." Her eyes must have betrayed some of her desperation because the door stopped pushing against her hand.
Sera got a long, hard look, but the woman nodded and opened the door with a warning in her eyes. Don't make me regret this, they seemed to say.
The inside of the house was comfortable the way that homes were supposed to be. Brightly-coloured woven rugs covered worn wooden floors and there were yet more shoes in a pile by the door. The walls were painted a warm ochre colour that brought out the earthy feeling of the painted tiles and wooden furniture, and framed pictures showed a trio of children at various ages laughing for the camera, sometimes with the woman at Sera's side.
They turned through an open, arched doorway and found a tall, thin boy with a mane of pale white-gold hair in his late teens leaning over a chocolate cake with a piping bag held carefully in his right hand. He was just finishing, and Sera could read the slightly wobbly, uneven blue letters upside down, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY. Was this their son?
Without looking up, he asked cheerfully in a melodious voice, "Who was at the door, Tina?"
"We have a guest from the Clave," she answered tightly.
The boy's head whipped up and the Y skewed. One gold eye and one blue-green eye fixed Sera with an intense look that spoke of fear. She took a step back from that gaze, from eyes that shone with a wildness that couldn't be contained even when shadowed with worry. She was speechless. The boy had the same slight point to his ears that Rayce did, the same delicate bone structure.
"The Clave swore not to interfere with our lives so long as we held faith with the bargain," he cursed. "We have done nothing to betray that trust." His fingers tightened on the piping bag, but he didn't notice the new line of icing on the counter top.
Sera's mind reeled. What the hell is going on? "Mark... Blackthorn?" she breathed.
"Why have you come?" he asked by way of answering.
"I'm not from the Clave," Sera said. "And what bargain?"
The woman he had called Tina swept past her and went to boy's side, slipping an arm around his shoulders protectively. "If you are not from the Clave, I think you need to explain who you are and how you found us."
She gave them her true name, trusting her instincts on this, and told them why she had come, though she left out Ophelia's name. A deal was a deal. Mark shook visibly when she mentioned the Wild Hunt and dropped the piping bag before any more of the granite counter turned blue. Doubt twisted in her stomach as guilt wormed its way through her. She shouldn't have come.
Her voice unconsciously lowered, the way one would speak to a frightened animal, as she finished. "But I thought the Hunt released you?"
A bitter smile crossed his lips. "The Fair Folk don't give back what they take." He pushed away from the counter and left the kitchen, the cake forgotten.
Tina grabbed Sera's wrist before the younger Shadowhunter could move to follow him.
"You need to understand something, Sera," she said in a low voice. "The Fey love to toy with mortals. When they made that deal with the Blackthorns over twenty years ago, they were very careful to word it so that Mark could choose to return to the Hunt or to his family." She closed her eyes, remembering the betrayal they had felt. "They said nothing about freeing him."
"I don't understand," Sera whispered. "He's here, isn't he?"
Tina shook her head sadly. "Part of him is." She gestured to the long wooden table. "Sit. Sometimes he just needs a little bit of time."
Sera sat. This was more than she had bargained for.
"Mark is..." Cristina searched for the right words. "Unbound, from the Hunt, I suppose. One of the emissaries from the Unseelie, Iarlath, released him from the call of the horns so that he could aid in our investigation. But that was all."
"But his eyes...?" Sera asked.
"It's not just his eyes, novia. The Hunters are neither alive nor dead. You can see – he looks no older now than he was then. Half of his soul is still shackled to the Hunt." Tears welled up in her dark eyes but did not fall. "He is cursed to hear the rush of the wild winds, the baying of the horns, to feel the endless pull of the next world, but he is no longer bound to answer. Some nights he still wakes, screaming."
Sera felt sick. Twenty years.
"When Robert Lightwood came to the Institute after everything happened, we thought it was over. But the Clave could see that Mark still belonged to the Hunt, no matter what choice he had made. They looked at him, half-starved and fearful of the touch of a stele, and said that he would never survive as one of the Nephilim. But he had committed no crime but the crime of his birth – they had no grounds to Strip his Marks."
Sera looked around at the home they had built together. "So they turned him out?"
"Yes. They said he should consider it an 'honourable discharge', but we understood. They needed to bury him. His heritage was still far too political in those days, and they didn't think he was worth the effort just to restore a broken Shadowhunter to their ranks." She cursed quietly in Spanish. "The Clave swore to secrecy everyone who knew of his return and warned him to keep his head down. They would let him live like an exile, a life like the one led by Jocelyn Fairchild, save that they would know about him, and he would stay hidden."
"And he agreed to this?" Sera said incredulously.
"They didn't give him much of a choice."
"But what about you?"
Cristina looked sideways at where the cake rested on the counter. "When I went to Los Angeles all those years ago, it was because I was young and filled with the idea that I could broker a better truce than the Cold Peace. I had heard about Mark Blackthorn, and I wanted to learn more. I thought I could save the Fey." She shook her head. "I couldn't. But if I could just save one... just one... it would be him." Her dark brown eyes were filled with sadness.
"I held him together when nothing else could. I gathered up all the broken pieces of that boy and held them to my heart. I prayed to the Angel that it would be enough." Her hand drifted down to a medallion that hung at her neck and she fingered its worn face.
"And it was," Mark said from the arched doorway. He crossed the kitchen gracefully to take the chair next to Tina and then folded her hands together gently. He lifted them to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to the back of her fingers with his eyes closed. "Mi roca."
Tina's lips curved up into a smile. "I hate when you call me your rock. It sounds so unromantic."
"Mi amor," he corrected in a whisper.
"That's better," she said. They both seemed to remember at the same time that they had a guest, and Sera fought down the wrench in her heart as she looked at them together.
Mark bowed his head slightly in her direction. "My apologies, Sera. I did not mean to give offense with my abrupt leave-taking."
"None taken," she answered faintly. He was like Rayce, but different, too. She prayed that she wasn't looking at what she would get back from the Hunt when she found a way to free her prince.
"You came to ask me of the Hunt. I am ready now. I may have been sworn to secrecy once, but no more." His eyes blazed with defiance at those last words.
She took a deep breath and considered where to start before she began explaining what had led up to Rayce's ensnarement as the new Lord of the Hunt. At the mention of a manipulative bastard with blue-black hair, Mark's posture stiffened.
"Kieran," he whispered.
"Is that his name? You have no idea what I -" Sera broke off when she saw Mark start to shake again. Cristina covered one of his hands with her own and squeezed.
"I'm sorry," Sera apologized. How does he live like this?
"It's alright," Mark replied, controlling his voice. "It has been many years since last I thought of Kieran. You were right to call him manipulative; that is the form his gift of magic takes through his Unseelie heritage." The broken Shadowhunter looked down at this hands in shame where Tina still held on to him. "Ever did he enjoy preying upon those made vulnerable by their hearts."
Sera's heart sank as she thought of Rayce being trapped with Hunters like Kieran. How long did he have before they began turning on him?
"Please, Mark. I've been trying to find anything that can help – how the Hunt was started, or how to free someone. I thought..." she trailed off, not wanting to embarrass him, but he finished her thought for her.
"You thought that I would be more useful, that I would have the answers because I had been freed?"
Sera looked down awkwardly.
"I am only Unbound, Sera. I do not believe that even the Hunt knows how to reunite the two halves of a Hunter's soul from beyond the veil."
Sera fought back a wave of disappointment as Cristina broke in, "But can't someone just unbind Rayce, too? At least until they can figure this out?"
Mark shook his head at her. "He wears the cloak, mi corazon. The Unseelie King and the Queen of the Seelie Court may still summon him at their pleasure. He is more tightly bound than I ever was." He turned back to Sera and continued, "But I may yet be of some use to you for your other query."
She looked back up into his strange eyes, not daring to hope.
"Some nights," he said slowly, "When we camped in the loneliest reaches of this world and the night sky sparkled with a thousand, thousand stars, I could hear Gwyn whisper to himself. A name. Veralysia, he would sigh.
"Some of the oldest Hunters knew who she was, and so I came to know as well. Gwyn's love, from his life before the Hunt. So, too, did I learn where she dwells. She once faced the same burden you now bear, Sera. I can think of no other, save the Unseelie King himself, who would know more of Gwyn's transformation, or what could be done to reverse it. If she essayed an attempt at freeing him, then, at the very least, she may be able to share with you what was tried. If not, she was alive at the birth of the Hunt, and may have answers to your questions."
Sera allowed a glimmer of hope to return. "Where can I find her?"
Mark stood to retrieve a tablet from the counter, where it had avoided being iced earlier, and quickly brought up a topographical map of the Arizona desert. Of course, Sera thought to herself, he would recognize landmarks this way.
He zoomed in over an area on the north rim of the Grand Canyon and recited softly, "Under the Eye at the Unseelie Gates, the Watcher Watches, and the Waiter Waits." He pointed one delicate finger with its nail bitten down to the quick at the map. "There is an unusual rock formation here that resembles an eye. It will mark the place where you will find a cavern that leads down into the earth, and if you follow it far enough, into the realm of the Unseelie." He looked up at her, his polychrome eyes serious. "I have heard that it is a strange place, Sera. You should have care if you decide to pursue Veralysia."
She reached across and took his free hand, the one not held by Tina. "Thank you," she whispered. Gratitude welled up inside her, and she suddenly felt fiercely protective of him. She understood what had compelled Tina to hold him together, as she had put it. Mark had such a terrible vulnerability, but he had faced down the ghosts of his past to help her anyway. She swore that she would find a way to repay him.
The shrill ring of a phone cut through the silence and Mark jumped up reflexively, the moment broken. He scooped up the handset from its cradle and answered steadily, though. His face broke out into a wide smile, so genuine and radiant that Sera's heart ached to see it.
"Ah, mi niña bonita, is it time for a bedtime story?" he asked delightedly, carrying the phone away toward the back of the house when Sera heard a little girl squeal in excitement on the other end of the line. Mark grinned apologetically at Sera, laughing as he disappeared through a door at the back of the house.
She looked back to Tina, who had turned to watch Mark with a wistful smile. The woman smiled gently and rose from the table as well, picking up the tablet and offering it to Sera so the she could email herself the link.
"The girls are sleeping over at a friend's house tonight, and our son is staying with friends in Montecito. But Esmeralda won't sleep until Mark tells her a story."
Sera was tactful enough to connect the significance of the clumsily-iced cake and a couple clearing out their children for the night. "Ah... I'm sorry I kind of ruined your anniversary night."
She laughed and threw a telling look back over her shoulder toward the bedroom. "There's still plenty of night left, chica."
Cristina led her guest back out to the curb where her bike was waiting. Sera saw again the heap of flip-flops, the kiddie pool, and she gathered up a bit of courage to address the formidable Latina.
"Your kids aren't Shadowhunters, are they?"
Tina shook her head ruefully. "No. Mark..." A flush rose to her cheeks, and she tried again. "I told you that Hunters are neither dead nor truly alive... He cannot have children of his own."
"I'm so sorry," Sera started to apologize, her own face starting to blush. "You don't have to-"
"No," she lifted a finger to gently touch Sera's lips. "I want you to understand." Her dark eyes shone in the glow of the streetlights that had come to life while Sera had been inside, and traces of light danced in her hair like stars in the darkness.
"When we first got together, I thought I could be enough for him. Raziel knows I tried. But the Hunt... it seduces them, Sera. The freedom, the endless night sky, the wildness... some part of every heart craves it. The lands of deep Faerie nearly broke his mind, and the Hunters did their very best to break his body and spirit. But even with all of that... he said it himself – one half of his soul is still chained to the Hunt. The horns were loud, and he could feel the wind on his face.
"After a few years, I could feel him slipping away. I thought for certain that's what the Faeries had always intended; a poisoned gift that would eventually return to them no matter what he had chosen. Ophelia Moore," she looked up at Sera knowingly, "Was a friend of Diana Wrayburn's. She cast the misdirection spell on Mark so that the Mundanes don't realize that he's not aging. We live as Jocelyn once did, our Marks glamoured from the eyes of those without the Sight. We took a chance and adopted our son, Lucas. A Mundane."
She couldn't keep the smile off her face as her memories slid backwards through the years. "If you could have seen Mark with Lucas in his arms, you would never have been able to see the shadow of the Hunt on his face. A few years later we found Micaela, and then Esmeralda." She sniffed, and this time she didn't hold back the pair of tears that slipped down her cheeks as her eyes burned with pride.
"Our children are his life now. They have taught him to live for more, Sera, and now the call of the Hunt is quieter, the winds gentler." She lifted the medallion on its chain and kissed it. "I thank the Angel every day for Mark and for our family, for giving me the strength to leave the Clave. I would defend them to my last breath to keep them safe."
Sera was fighting not to cry as well when Tina embraced her tightly and whispered, "I hope you save your love, too, Sera." After a moment's hesitation, she added. "But please don't come back."
**Author's note: Holds up hands defensively Put down your pitchforks! I know that Mark is a fan-favourite. I pulled together the threads of his future from Lady Midnight, so don't kill me! We'll have to wait until Lord of Shadows comes out to see if I'm reading it correctly. See Lady Midnight, page 136, to see Kieran explain the deal. You'll find various characters throughout Lady Midnight have the same thought, that Faeries don't give back what they've taken (pages 139, 141, 151, 613 just to give you a few), and the last reference to Mark's appearance on page 610 cites his eyes as "polychrome". I chose to interpret Iarlath's intervention from page 136-137 as him "unbinding" Mark from the Hunt for the duration of the investigation. To the best of our knowledge, that was not restored.
Don't kill me!
Thanks Tara for naming Ophelia and the Rosales kids! NAME ALL THE THINGS!
Thanks Ana Morgenstern and Beccimon for helping me out with some Spanish, I'll be relying on them again soon because the second half of this chapter had to be moved once it became clear that Santa Barbara was going to occupy more time than originally planned.