City of Lost Souls

With a wrench Simon turned himself around and plunged back into the battle. The tight line of red-clad Shadowhunters had started to come undone. The wolves were darting here and there, herding the Shadowhunters away from one another. Jocelyn was sword to sword with a snarling man whose free arm dripped blood—and Simon realized something bizarre as he staggered forward, pushing his way through the narrow gaps between skirmishes: None of the red-clad Nephilim were Marked. Their skin was bare of decoration.

They were also, he realized—seeing out of the corner of his eye one of the enemy Shadowhunters lunging for Aline with a swinging mace, only to be gutted by Helen, darting in from the side—much faster than any Nephilim he had seen before, other than Jace and Sebastian. They moved with the swiftness of vampires, he thought, as one of them slashed at a leaping wolf, slitting its belly open. The dead werewolf crashed to the ground, now the corpse of a stocky man with curling fair hair. Not Maia or Jordan. Relief swamped him, and then guilt; he staggered forward, the smell of blood thick around him, and again he missed the Mark of Cain. If he had still borne it, he thought, he could have burned all these enemy Nephilim to the ground where they stood—

One of the dark Nephilim rose up in front of him, swinging a single-edged broadsword. Simon ducked, but he didn’t need to. The man was barely halfway through the swing when an arrow caught him in the neck and he went down, gurgling blood. Simon’s head jerked up, and he saw Alec, still atop the tomb; his face was a stony mask, and he was firing off arrows with machinelike precision, his hand reaching back mechanically to grasp one, fit it to the bow, and let fly. Each one struck a target, but Alec barely seemed to notice. By the time the arrow was flying, he was reaching for another one. Simon heard another one whistle by him and slam into a body as he darted forward, making for a cleared section of the battlefield—

He froze. There she was. Clary, a tiny figure fighting her way through the crowd bare-handed, kicking and pushing to get past. She wore a torn red dress, and her hair was a tangled mass and when she saw him, a look of incredulous amazement crossed her face. Her lips shaped his name.

Just behind her was Jace. His face was bloody. The crowd parted as he plunged through it, letting him by. Behind him, in the gap left by his passing, Simon could see a shimmer of red and silver—a familiar figure, topped now with white-gilt hair like Valentine’s.

Sebastian. Still hiding behind the last line of defense of dark Shadowhunters. Seeing him, Simon reached over his shoulder and hauled Glorious from its sheath. A moment later a surge in the crowd hurled Clary toward him. Her eyes were nearly black with adrenaline, but her joy at seeing him was plain. Relief spilled through Simon, and he realized he’d been wondering if she was still herself, or changed, as Amatis had been.

“Give me the sword!” she cried, her voice almost drowned out by the clang of metal on metal. She thrust her arm forward to take it, and in that moment she was no longer Clary, his friend since childhood, but a Shadowhunter, an avenging angel who belonged with that sword in her hand.

He held it out to her, hilt first.

Battle was like a whirlpool, Jocelyn thought, cutting her way through the pressing crowd, slashing out with Luke’s kindjal at any spot of red that she saw. Things came at you and then surged away so quickly that all one was really aware of was a sense of uncontrollable danger, the struggle to stay alive and not drown.

Her eyes flicked frantically through the mass of fighters, searching for her daughter, for a glimpse of red hair—or even for a sight of Jace, because where he was, Clary would be too. There were boulders strewn across the plain, like icebergs in an unmoving sea. She scrambled up the rough edge of one, trying to get a better view of the battlefield, but she could make out only close-pressed bodies, the flash of weapons, and the dark, low-running shapes of wolves among the fighters.

She turned to scramble back down the boulder—

Only to find someone waiting for her at the bottom. Jocelyn came up short, staring.

He wore scarlet robes, and there was a livid scar along one of his cheeks, a relic of some battle unknown to her. His face was pinched and no longer young, but there was no mistaking him. “Jeremy,” she said slowly, her voice barely audible over the clamor of the fighting. “Jeremy Pontmercy.”

The man who had once been the youngest member of the Circle looked at her out of bloodshot eyes. “Jocelyn Morgenstern. Have you come to join us?”

“Join you? Jeremy, no—”

“You were in the Circle once,” he said, stepping closer to her. A long dagger with an edge like a straight razor hung from his right hand. “You were one of us. And now we follow your son.”

“I broke with you when you followed my husband,” said Jocelyn. “Why do you think I’d follow you now that my son leads you?”

“Either you stand with us or against us, Jocelyn.” His face hardened. “You cannot stand against your own son.”