City of Heavenly Fire

Clary had covered herself with healing runes, but they weren’t enough to keep her lungs from aching from the constant dust. She remembered what Jace had said about the two of them suffering more than the others because of their higher concentration of angel blood. She stopped to cough now and turned away, spitting up black. She wiped her hand across her mouth quickly, before Jace could turn and see.

Jace’s drawing skills might have been poor, but his strategy was faultless. They were making their way upward in a sort of zigzag formation, darting from one heap of blackened stone to another. With the foliage all gone, the stone was the only cover the hill provided. The hill was mostly stripped of trees, only a few dead stumps here and there. They had met only a single Endarkened, quickly dispatched, their blood soaking into the ashy earth. Clary remembered the path up to the Gard in Alicante, green and lovely, and looked with hatred at the wasteland around her.

The air was heavy and hot, as if the burned-orange sun were pressing down on them. Clary joined the others behind a high cairn. They had refilled their bottles that morning from the lake in the cave, and Alec was sharing around some water, his grim face streaked with black dust. “This is the last of it,” he said, and handed it to Isabelle. She took a tiny sip and passed it to Simon, who shook his head—he didn’t need water—and passed it on to Clary.

Jace looked at Clary. She could see herself reflected in his eyes, looking small and pale and dirty. She wondered if she looked different to him after last night. She had almost expected him to look different to her, when she woke up in the morning by the cold remains of the fire, with his hand in hers. But he was the same Jace, the Jace she had always loved. And he looked at her as he always had, as if she were a small miracle, the kind you kept close to your heart.

Clary took a mouthful of water and passed the thermos to Jace, who tipped his head back and swallowed. She watched the muscles move in his throat with a brief fascination and then looked away before she could blush—okay, maybe some things had changed, but this really wasn’t the time to be thinking about it.

“That’s it,” Jace said, and dropped the now empty thermos. They all watched it roll among the rocks. No more water. “One less thing to carry,” he added, trying to sound light, but his voice came out sounding as dry as the dust around them.

His lips were cracked and bleeding slightly despite his iratzes. Alec had shadows under his eyes, and a nervous twitch in his left hand. Isabelle’s eyes were red with dust, and she blinked and rubbed at them when she thought no one was watching. They all looked pretty terrible, Clary thought, with the possible exception of Simon, who mostly looked the same. He was standing close to the cairn, his fingers resting lightly on a ledge of stone. “These are graves,” he said suddenly.

Jace looked up. “What?”

“These rock piles. They’re graves. Old ones. People fell in battle and they buried them by covering their bodies with stones.”

“Shadowhunters,” Alec said. “Who else would die defending Gard Hill?”

Jace touched the stones with a leather-gloved hand, and frowned. “We burn our dead.”

“Maybe not in this world,” Isabelle said. “Things are different. Maybe they didn’t have time. Maybe it was their last stand—”

“Stop,” Simon said. He had frozen, a look of intense concentration on his face. “Someone’s coming. Someone human.”

“How do you know they’re human?” Clary dropped her voice.

“Blood,” he said succinctly. “Demon blood smells different. These are people—Nephilim, but not.”

Jace made a quick, quieting gesture with his hand, and they all fell silent. He pressed his back to the cairn and peered around the side. Clary saw his jaw tighten. “Endarkened,” he said in a low voice. “Five of them.”

“Perfect number,” said Alec with a surprisingly wolfish grin. His bow was in his hands almost before Clary could see the movement, and he stepped sideways, out of the shelter of the rocks, and let his arrow fly.

She saw Jace’s surprised expression—he hadn’t been expecting Alec to move first—and then he caught hold of one of the rocks of the cairn and flung himself up and over. Isabelle sprang after him like a cat, and Simon followed, fast and unerring, his hands bare. It was as if this world had been made for those who were already dead, Clary thought, and then she heard a long gurgling cry, cut abruptly short.