City of Bones mi-1

by Cassandra Clare

  "Let me guess," said Luke. "It's 'Don't kill me,' isn't it?"

  Valentine laughed, a sound without any humor in it. "I would hardly lower myself to ask you for my life," he said.

  "Good," said Luke, nudging the other man's chin with his blade. "I'm not going to kill you unless you force my hand, Valentine. I draw the line at murdering you in front of your own children. What I want is the Cup."

  The roaring downstairs was louder now. Clary could hear what sounded like footsteps in the corridor outside. "Luke—"

  "I hear it," he snapped.

  "The Cup's in Idris, I told you," said Valentine, his eyes shifting past Luke.

  Luke was sweating. "If it's in Idris, you used the Portal to bring it there. I'll go with you. Bring it back." Luke's eyes were darting. There was more movement in the corridor outside now, sounds of shouting, of something shattering. "Clary, stay with your brother. After we go through, you use the Portal to take you to a safe place."

  "I won't leave here," said Jace.

  "Yes, you will." Something thudded against the door. Luke raised his voice, "Valentine, the Portal. Move."

  "Or what?" Valentine's eyes were fixed on the door with a considering look.

  "I'll kill you if you force my hand," Luke said. "In front of them, or not. The Portal, Valentine. Now."

  Valentine spread his hands wide. "If you wish."

  He stepped lightly backward, just as the door exploded inward, hinges scattering across the floor. Luke ducked out of the way to avoid being crushed by the falling door, turning as he did so, the sword still in his hand.

  A wolf stood in the doorway, a mountain of growling, brindled fur, shoulders hunched forward, lips curled back over snarling teeth. Blood ran from innumerable gashes in his pelt.

  Jace was swearing softly, a seraph blade already in his hand. Clary caught at his wrist. "Don't—he's a friend."

  Jace shot her an incredulous glance, but lowered his arm.

  "Alaric—" Luke shouted something then, in a language Clary didn't understand. Alaric snarled again, crouching closer to the floor, and for a confused moment she thought he was going to hurl himself at Luke. Then she saw Valentine's hand at his belt, the flash of red jewels, and realized that she had forgotten that he still had Jace's dagger.

  She heard a voice shout Luke's name, thought it was her own—then realized that her throat seemed glued shut, and that it was Jace who had shouted.

  Luke slewed around, excruciatingly slowly, it seemed, as the knife left Valentine's hand and flew toward him like a silver butterfly, turning over and over in the air. Luke raised his blade—and something huge and tawny gray hurtled between him and Valentine. She heard Alaric's howl, rising, suddenly cut off; heard the sound as the blade struck. She gasped and tried to run forward, but Jace pulled her back.

  The wolf crumpled at Luke's feet, blood spattering his fur. Feebly, with his paws, Alaric clawed at the hilt of the knife protruding from his chest.

  Valentine laughed. "And this is how you repay the unquestioning loyalty you bought so cheaply, Lucian," he said. "By letting them die for you." He was backing up, his eyes still on Luke.

  Luke, white-faced, looked at him, and then down at Alaric; shook his head once, and dropped to his knees, leaning over the fallen werewolf. Jace, still holding Clary by the shoulders, hissed, "Stay here, you hear me? Stay here," and set off after Valentine, who was hurrying, inexplicably, toward the far wall. Did he plan to throw himself out the window? Clary could see his reflection in the big, gold-framed mirror as he neared it, and the expression on his face—a sort of sneering relief—filled her with a murderous rage.

  "Like hell I will," she muttered, moving to follow Jace. She paused only to grab the blue-hilted kindjal from the floor beneath the table, where Valentine had kicked it. The weapon in her hand felt comfortable now, reassuring, as she pushed a fallen chair out of her way and approached the mirror.

  Jace had the seraph blade out, its light casting a hard illumination upward, darkening the circles under his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks. Valentine had turned and stood outlined in its light, his back against the mirror. In its surface Clary could also see Luke behind them; he had set his sword down, and was pulling the red-hilted kindjal out of Alaric's chest, gently and carefully. She felt sick and gripped her own blade more tightly. "Jace—" she began.

  He didn't turn to look at her, though of course he could see her in the mirror's reflection. "Clary, I told you to wait."

  "She's like her mother," said Valentine. One of his hands was behind him; he was running it along the edge of the mirror's heavy gilt frame. "Doesn't like to do what she's told."

  Jace wasn't shaking as he had been earlier, but Clary could sense how thin his control had been stretched, like the skin over a drum. "I'll go with him to Idris, Clary. I'll bring the Cup back."

  "No, you can't," Clary began, and saw, in the mirror, how his face twisted.

  "Do you have a better idea?" he demanded.

  "But Luke—"

  "Lucian," said Valentine in a voice like silk, "is attending to a fallen comrade. As for the Cup, and Idris, they are not far. Through the looking glass, one might say."

  Jace's eyes narrowed. "The mirror is the Portal?"

  Valentine's lips thinned and he dropped his hand, moving back from the mirror as the image in it swirled and changed like watercolors running in a painting. Instead of the room with its dark wood and candles, now Clary could see green fields, the thick emerald leaves of trees, and a wide meadow sweeping down to a large stone house in the distance. She could hear the buzzing sound of bees and the rustle of leaves in wind, and smell the honeysuckle carried on the wind.

  "I told you it was not far." Valentine stood in what was now a gilt-arched doorway, his hair stirring in the same wind that ruffled the leaves on the distant trees. "Is it as you remember it, Jonathan? Has nothing changed?"

  Clary's heart clenched inside her chest. She had no doubt this was Jace's childhood home, presented to tempt him as you might tempt a child with candy or a toy. She looked toward Jace, but he didn't seem to see her at all. He was staring at the Portal, and the view beyond it of the green fields and the manor house. She saw his face soften, the wistful curve of his mouth, as if he were looking at someone he loved.

  "You can still come home," said his father. The light from the seraph blade that Jace held threw his shadow backward so it seemed to move across the Portal, darkening the bright fields, the meadow beyond.

  The smile faded from Jace's mouth. "That's not my home," he said. "This is my home now."

  A spasm of fury twisting his features, Valentine looked at his son. She would never forget that look—it made her feel a sudden wild longing for her mother. Because no matter how angry her mother had been with her, Jocelyn had never looked at her like that. She had always looked at her with love.

  If she could have felt more pity for Jace than she already did, she would have felt it then.

  "Very well," said Valentine, and took a swift step back through the Portal so that his feet struck the earth of Idris. His lips curved into a smile. "Ah," he said, "home."

  Jace stumbled to the edge of the Portal before stopping, a hand against the gilt frame. A strange hesitation seemed to have taken hold of him, even as Idris shimmered before his eyes like a mirage in the desert. It would only take a step—

  "Jace, don't," Clary said quickly. "Don't go after him."

  "But the Cup," said Jace. She could not tell what he was thinking, but the blade in his hand was shaking violently as his hand shook.

  "Let the Clave get it! Jace, please." If you go through that Portal, you might never come back. Valentine will kill you. You don't want to believe it, but he will.

  "Your sister is right." Valentine was standing amid green grass and wildflowers, the blades waving around his feet, and Clary realized that though he and they were inches away from each other, they stood in different countries. "Do you really think you can win this? Though you have a seraph blade a
nd I am unarmed? Not only am I stronger than you, but I doubt you have it in you to kill me. And you will have to kill me, Jonathan, before I'll give the Cup to you."

  Jace tightened his grip on the angel blade. "I can—"

  "No, you can't." Valentine reached out, through the Portal, and seized Jace's wrist in his hand, dragging it forward until the tip of the seraph blade touched his chest. Where Jace's hand and wrist passed through the Portal, they seemed to shimmer as if they had been cast in water. "Do it, then," said Valentine. "Drive the blade in. Three inches—maybe four." He jerked the blade forward, the dagger's tip slicing the fabric of his shirt. A red circle like a poppy bloomed just over his heart. Jace, with a gasp, yanked his arm free and staggered back.

  "As I thought," said Valentine. "Too softhearted." And with a shocking suddenness he swung his fist toward Jace. Clary cried out, but the blow never connected: instead it struck the surface of the Portal between them with a sound like a thousand fragile shattering things. Spiderwebbing cracks fissured the glass-that-was-not-glass; the last thing Clary heard before the Portal dissolved into a deluge of ragged shards was Valentine's derisive laughter.

  Glass surged across the floor like a shower of ice, a strangely beautiful cascade of silver shards. Clary stepped back, but Jace stood very still as the glass rained around him, staring at the empty frame of the mirror.

  Clary had expected him to swear, to shout or curse at his father, but instead he only waited for the shards to stop falling. When they did, he knelt down silently and carefully in the welter of broken glass and picked up one of the larger pieces, turning it over in his hands.

  "Don't." Clary knelt down next to him, setting down the knife she'd been holding. Its presence no longer comforted her. "There wasn't anything you could have done."

  "Yes, there was." He was still looking down at the glass. Broken slivers of it powdered his hair. "I could have killed him." He turned the shard toward her. "Look," he said.

  She looked. In the bit of glass she could still see a piece of Idris—a bit of blue sky, the shadow of green leaves. She exhaled painfully. "Jace—"

  "Are you all right?"

  Clary looked up. It was Luke, standing over them. He was weaponless, his eyes sunk into blue circles of exhaustion. "We're fine," she said. She could see a crumpled figure on the ground behind him, half-covered in Valentine's long coat. A hand protruded from beneath the fabric's edge; it was tipped with claws. "Alaric… ?"

  "Is dead," said Luke. There was a wealth of controlled pain in his voice; though he had barely known Alaric, Clary knew the crushing weight of guilt would stay with him forever. And this is how you repay the unquestioning loyalty you bought so cheaply, Lucian. By letting them die for you.

  "My father got away," said Jace. "With the Cup." His voice was dull. "We delivered it right to him. I failed."

  Luke let one of his hands fall on Jace's head, brushing the glass from his hair. His claws were still out, his fingers stained with blood, but Jace suffered his touch as if he didn't mind it, and said nothing at all. "It's not your fault," Luke said, looking down at Clary. His blue eyes were steady. They said: Your brother needs you; stay with him.

  She nodded, and Luke left them and went to the window. He threw it open, sending a draft of air through the room that guttered the candles. Clary could hear him shouting, calling down to the wolves below.

  She knelt down next to Jace. "It's all right," she said haltingly, though clearly it wasn't, and might never be again, and she put her hand on his shoulder. The cloth of his shirt was rough under her fingertips, damp with sweat, strangely comforting. "We have my mom back. We have you. We have everything that matters."

  "He was right. That's why I couldn't make myself go through the Portal," Jace whispered. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill him."

  "The only way you would have failed," she said, "is if you had."

  He said nothing, only whispered something under his breath. She couldn't quite hear the words, but she reached out and took the bit of glass out of his hand. He was bleeding where he'd held it, from two fine and narrow gashes. She put the shard down and took his hand, closing his fingers over the injured palm. "Honestly, Jace," she said, as gently as she'd touched him, "don't you know better than to play with broken glass?"

  He made a sound like a choked laugh before he reached out and pulled her into his arms. She was aware of Luke watching them from the window, but she shut her eyes resolutely and buried her face against Jace's shoulder. He smelled of salt and blood, and only when his mouth came close to her ear did she understand what he was saying, what he had been whispering before, and it was the simplest litany of all: her name, just her name.

  Epilogue

  The Ascent Beckons

  The hospital hallway was blindingly white. After so many days living by torchlight, gaslight, and eerie witchlight, the fluorescent lighting made things look sallow and unnatural. When Clary signed herself in at the front desk, she noticed that the nurse handing her the clipboard had skin that looked strangely yellowish under the bright lights. Maybe she's a demon, Clary thought, handing the clipboard back. "Last door at the end of the hall," said the nurse, flashing a kind smile. Or I could be going crazy.

  "I know," said Clary. "I was here yesterday." And the day before, and the day before that. It was early evening, and the hallway wasn't crowded. An old man shuffled along in carpet slippers and a robe, dragging a mobile oxygen unit behind him. Two doctors in green surgical scrubs carried Styrofoam cups of coffee, steam rising from the surface of the liquid into the frigid air. Inside the hospital it was aggressively air-conditioned, though outside the weather had finally begun to turn toward fall.

  Clary found the door at the end of the hall. It was open. She peered inside, not wanting to wake Luke up if he was asleep in the chair by the bed, as he had been the last two times she'd come. But he was up and conferring with a tall man in the parchment-colored robes of the Silent Brothers. He turned, as if sensing Clary's arrival, and she saw that it was Brother Jeremiah.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. "What's going on?"

  Luke looked exhausted, with three days' worth of scruffy beard growth, his glasses pushed up to the top of his head. She could see the bulk of the bandages that still wrapped his upper chest under his loose flannel shirt. "Brother Jeremiah was just leaving," he said.

  Raising his hood, Jeremiah moved toward the door, but Clary blocked his way. "So?" she challenged him. "Are you going to help my mother?"

  Jeremiah came closer to her. She could feel the cold that wafted off his body, like the steam from an iceberg. You cannot save others until you first save yourself, said the voice in her mind.

  "This fortune-cookie stuff is getting really old," Clary said. "What's wrong with my mother? Do you know? Can the Silent Brothers help her like you helped Alec?"

  We helped no one, said Jeremiah. Nor is it our place to assist those who have willingly separated themselves from the Clave.

  She drew back as Jeremiah moved past her into the hallway. She watched him walk away, mingling with the crowd, none of whom gave him a second glance. When she let her own eyes fall half-shut, she saw the shimmering aura of glamour that surrounded him, and wondered what they were seeing: Another patient? A doctor hurrying along in surgical scrubs? A grieving visitor?

  "He was telling the truth," said Luke from behind her. "He didn't cure Alec; that was Magnus Bane. And he doesn't know what's wrong with your mother either."

  "I know," said Clary, turning back into the room. She approached the bed warily. It was hard to connect the small white figure in the bed, snaked over and under by a nest of tubes, with her vibrant flame-haired mother. Of course, her hair was still red, spread out across the pillow like a shawl of coppery thread, but her skin was so pale that she reminded Clary of the wax Sleeping Beauty in Madame Tussauds, whose chest rose and fell only because it was animated by clockwork.

  She took her mother's thin hand and held it, as she'd done yesterday and the day bef
ore. She could feel the pulse beating in Jocelyn's wrist, steady and insistent. She wants to wake up, Clary thought. I know she does.

  "Of course she does," said Luke, and Clary started in the realization that she had spoken aloud. "She has everything to get better for, even more than she could know."

  Clary laid her mother's hand gently back down on the bed. "You mean Jace."

  "Of course I mean Jace," said Luke. "She's mourned him for seventeen years. If I could tell her that she no longer needed to mourn—" he broke off.

  "They say people in comas can sometimes hear you," Clary offered. Of course, the doctors had also said that this was no ordinary coma—no injury, no lack of oxygen, no sudden failure of heart or brain had caused it. It was as if she were simply asleep, and could not be woken up.

  "I know," said Luke. "I've been talking to her. Almost nonstop." He flashed a tired smile. "I've told her how brave you've been. How she'd be proud of you. Her warrior daughter."

  Something sharp and painful rose up the back of her throat. She swallowed it down, looking away from Luke toward the window. Through it she could see the blank brick wall of the building opposite. No pretty views of trees or river here. "I did the shopping you asked," she said. "I got peanut butter and milk and cereal and bread from Fortunato Brothers." She dug into her jeans pocket. "I've got change—"

  "Keep it," said Luke. "You can use it for cab fare back."

  "Simon's driving me back," said Clary. She checked the butterfly watch dangling from her key chain. "In fact, he's probably downstairs now."

  "Good, I'm glad you'll be spending some time with him." Luke looked relieved. "Keep the money anyway. Get some takeout tonight."

  She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Luke was, as her mother had always said, a rock in times of trouble—solid, dependable, and totally immovable. "Come home eventually, okay? You need to sleep too."

  "Sleep? Who needs sleep?" he scoffed, but she saw the tiredness in his face as he went back to sit down by her mother's bed. Gently he reached to brush a strand of hair away from Jocelyn's face. Clary turned away, her eyes stinging.