Maia raced along the rocky ground, starlight raking its cool fingers through her coat, the strong scents of battle assailing her sensitive nose—blood, sweat, and the burned-rubber stench of dark magic.
The pack had spread out widely over the field, leaping and killing with deadly teeth and claws. Maia kept close to Jordan’s side, not because she needed his protection but because she had discovered that side by side they fought better and more effectively. She had been in only one battle before, on Brocelind Plain, and that had been a chaotic whirl of demons and Downworlders. There were many fewer combatants here on the Burren, but the dark Shadowhunters were formidable, swinging their swords and daggers with a swift, frightening force. Maia had seen one slender man use a short-bladed dagger to whip the head off a wolf who’d been in midleap; what had collapsed to the ground was a headless human body, bloody and unrecognizable.
Even as she thought it, one of the scarlet-robed Nephilim loomed up in front of them, a double-edged sword gripped in his hands. The blade was stained red-black under the moonlight. Jordan, beside Maia, snarled, but she was the one who launched herself at the man. He ducked away, slashing out with his sword. She felt a sharp pain in her shoulder and hit the ground on all four paws, pain stabbing through her. There was a clatter, and she knew she had knocked the man’s sword from his hand. She growled in satisfaction and spun around, but Jordan was already leaping for the Nephilim’s throat—
And the man caught him by the neck, out of the air, as if he were catching hold of a rebellious puppy. “Downworlder scum,” he spat, and though it wasn’t the first time Maia had heard such insults, something about the icy hatred of his tone made her shudder. “You should be a coat. I should be wearing you.”
Maia sank her teeth into his leg. Coppery blood exploded into her mouth as the man shouted in pain and staggered back, kicking at her, his hold on Jordan slipping. Maia gripped him tight as Jordan lunged again, and this time the Shadowhunter’s shout of rage was cut short as the werewolf’s claws tore his throat open.
Amatis drove the knife toward Magnus’s heart—just as an arrow whistled through the air and thumped into her shoulder, knocking her aside with such force that she spun halfway around and fell face-forward to the rocky ground. She was screaming, a noise quickly drowned out by the clash of weapons all around them. Isabelle knelt down by Magnus’s side; Simon, glancing up, saw Alec on the stone tomb, standing frozen with the bow in his hands. He was probably too far away to see Magnus clearly; Isabelle had her hands against the warlock’s chest, but Magnus—Magnus, who was always so kinetic, so bursting with energy—was utterly still under Isabelle’s ministrations. She looked up and saw Simon staring at them; her hands were red with blood, but she shook her head at him violently.
“Keep going!” she shouted. “Find Sebastian!”
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.”
“Jonathan,” she said softly. “He is the greatest evil Valentine ever committed. I could never stand with him. In the end, I never stood with Valentine. So what hope do you have of convincing me now?”
He shook his head. “You misunderstand me,” he said. “I mean you cannot stand against him. Against us. The Clave cannot. They are not prepared. Not for what we can do. Are willing to do. Blood will run in the streets of every city. The world will burn. Everything you know will be destroyed. And we will rise from the ashes of your defeat, the phoenix triumphant. This is your only chance. I doubt your son will give you another.”
“Jeremy,” she said. “You were so young when Valentine recruited you. You could come back, come back even to the Clave. They would be lenient—”
“I can never come back to the Clave,” he said with a hard satisfaction. “Don’t you understand? Those of us who stand with your son, we are Nephilim no longer.”
Nephilim no longer. Jocelyn began to reply, but before she could speak, blood burst from his mouth. He crumpled, and as he did, Jocelyn saw, standing behind him bearing a broadsword, Maryse.
The two women looked at each other for a moment over Jeremy’s body. Then Maryse turned and walked back toward the battle.