City of Lost Souls

“Jace,” Clary whispered. “Jace, anyone could come in and see us.”


His hands didn’t stop what they were doing. “They won’t.” He trailed a path of kisses down her neck, effectively scattering her thoughts. It was hard to hold on to what was real, with his hands on her, and her mind and memories in a whirl, and her fingers were so tightly bunched in Jace’s shirt that she was sure she was going to rip the material.

The stone wall was cold against her back, but Jace was kissing her shoulder, easing the strap of her dress down. She was hot and cold and shivering. The world had fractured into bits, like the bright pieces inside a kaleidoscope. She was going to come apart under his hands.

“Jace—” She clung to his shirt. It was sticky, viscous. She glanced down at her hands and for a moment didn’t comprehend what she saw there. Silver fluid, mixed with red.

Blood.

She looked up. Hanging upside-down from the ceiling above them, like a grisly pi?ata, was a human body, rope binding its ankles. Blood dripped from its cut throat.

Clary screamed, but the scream made no sound. She pushed at Jace, who stumbled back; there was blood in his hair, on his shirt, on her bare skin. She pulled up the straps of her dress and stumbled to the curtain that hid the alcove, yanking it open.

The statue of the angel was no longer quite as it had been. The black wings were bat’s wings, the lovely, benevolent face twisted into a sneer. Dangling from the ceiling on twisted ropes were the slaughtered bodies of men, women, animals—slashed open, their blood dripping down like rain. The fountains pulsed blood, and what floated on top of the liquid was not flowers but open severed hands. The writhing, clawing dancers on the floor were drenched in blood. As Clary watched, a couple spun by, the man tall and pale, the woman limp in his arms, her throat torn, obviously dead. The man licked his lips and bent down for another bite, but before he did, he glanced at Clary and grinned, and his face was streaked with blood and silver. She felt Jace’s hand on her arm, tugging her back, but she fought free of him. She was staring at the glass tanks along the wall that she had thought held brilliant fish. The water was not clear but blackish and sludgy, and drowned human bodies floated in it, their hair spinning around them like the filaments of luminous jellyfish. She thought of Sebastian floating in his glass coffin. A scream rose in her throat, but she choked it back as silence and darkness overwhelmed her.





14

AS ASHES



Clary came back to consciousness slowly, with the dizzy sensation she recalled from that first morning in the Institute, when she had woken with no idea of where she was. Her whole body ached, and her head felt as if someone had smashed an iron barbell into it. She was lying on her side, her head pillowed on something rough, and there was a weight around her shoulder. Glancing down, she saw a slim hand, pressed protectively against her sternum. She recognized the Marks, the faint white scars, even the blue mapping of veins across his forearm. The weight inside her chest eased, and she sat up carefully, slipping out from under Jace’s arm.

They were in his bedroom. She recognized the incredible neatness, the carefully made bed with its hospital corners. It still wasn’t disarranged. Jace was asleep, propped up against the headboard, still in the same clothes he’d worn the night before. He even had his shoes on. He had clearly fallen asleep holding her, though she had no recollection of it. He was still splattered with the odd silvery substance from the club.

He stirred slightly, as if sensing that she was gone, and wrapped his free arm around himself. He didn’t look injured or hurt, she thought, just exhausted, his long dark gold eyelashes curled in the hollow of the shadows beneath his eyes. He looked vulnerable asleep—a little boy. He could have been her Jace.

But he wasn’t. She remembered the nightclub, his hands on her in the dark, the bodies and blood. Her stomach churned, and she put a hand over her mouth, swallowing down nausea. She felt sickened by what she remembered, and underneath the sickness was a nagging prickle, the sense that she was missing something.

Something important.

“Clary.”

She turned. Jace’s eyes were half-open; he was looking at her through his lashes, the gold of his eyes dulled with exhaustion. “Why are you awake?” he said. “It’s barely dawn.”

Her hands bunched in the tangle of blankets. “Last night,” she said, her voice uneven. “The bodies—the blood—”

“The what?”

“That’s what I saw.”

“I didn’t.” He shook his head. “Faerie drugs,” he said. “You knew…”

“It seemed so real.”

“I’m sorry.” His eyes closed. “I wanted to have fun. It’s supposed to make you happy. Make you see pretty things. I thought we would have fun together.”

“I saw blood,” she said. “And dead people floating in tanks—”