Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

The Watchers didn’t move, but one of the mundanes stepped forward. She was a young woman, freckle-faced, wearing a servant’s black dress with a white apron over it. Her hair was tucked up under a cap. She could have been a maid in any fine house in London.

Like the rest of the mundanes, she wasn’t wearing a coat, but she didn’t appear to be cold. Her eyes stared into space, unfocused, even as she began to speak.

“Greetings, Nephilim,” she said, and the voice that rumbled from her chest was deep and fiery and familiar. Belial’s. “I speak to you from the void between the worlds, from the fiery pits of Edom. You may know me as the eater of souls, the eldest of the nine Princes of Hell, the commander of countless armies. I am Belial, and London is under my control now.”

“But Belial can’t possess humans,” Cordelia whispered. “Their bodies can’t sustain it.”

“That is why I have gathered so many together,” Belial said, and as he spoke, black pits, like scorch marks edged in flame, began to spread across the woman’s skin. A streak ran up her jaw, another along her cheekbone. It was like watching acid eat away a photograph. As the rents in her skin widened, her jawbone, exposed to the air, flashed white. “It will take more than one mundane to get—”

Her voice—Belial’s voice—choked off in a rush of blood and black, tar-like sludge. She melted like a candle, her body dissolving, until all that was left was a wet, blackened lump of fabric, and the charred edge of a once-white apron.

The second mundane stepped forward. This one was the man in the striped business suit, black hair slick with pomade, his pale eyes wide and dead as marbles. “To get my message across,” he finished smoothly, in Belial’s voice.

“Oh, this is awful,” Lucie whispered, her teeth chattering. “Make it stop.”

“I will stop when I am given what I want, child,” said Belial. Surely the mundane man’s hair had been black a moment ago, Cordelia thought. It was turning white as Belial spoke, the color of dead ash. “The form I am in now will not last long. The fire of a Prince of Hell burns away such clay as this.” He raised one of the mundane’s hands. The tips of the man’s fingers were already beginning to blacken and char.

“Enough,” James snapped. “Belial. What do you want?”

The mundane’s face twisted into a smirk. Belial’s smirk. “James, my grandson,” he said, “we have come to the end of our long dance.” The char was spreading down the man’s hand, to his wrist, and more black patches were visible on his neck, edging up toward his chin. “Tatiana Blackthorn is dead,” Belial went on. “She had come to the end of her usefulness, and now she is gone.” The mundane man jerked, and green-black fluid spilled from the corners of his mouth. It dripped onto the cobblestones, where it sizzled against the snow. When Belial spoke again, his voice was thick and wet, almost too distorted to understand. “Therefore I have come to tell you as directly as is possible that it… is… over.”

The man gave a low grunt, and his body collapsed in on itself, blackening and curling sickeningly. The man’s clothes fell empty to the ground, followed by a trickle of black ash. There was nothing else left.

Cordelia saw Tatiana’s body, burning away to ashes as Lilith laughed. It seemed a thousand years ago, yet it was hideously clear in her mind’s eye, as if it were still happening now.

“Stop!” It was Thomas, his kind face white with strain. “There must be some other way you can communicate with us. Let the mundanes go. Let one of the Silent Brothers speak to us instead.”

James, who knew Belial better than any of them, closed his eyes in pain.

“But that would be much less fun.” Belial giggled. A third mundane had stepped forward, with the same wooden, jerky gait as the others. This one was an older woman—someone’s grandmother, Cordelia thought, a gray-haired woman in a pale, much-washed flowered dress. She could picture the woman reading aloud by a fire, a grandchild on her lap.

“I have taken the Silent City,” Belial said, and it was alien and strange to hear his voice issue from the old woman’s lips. “I have taken the bodies of your Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters, and I have made of them an army and marched them down the Path of the Dead into your City of Bones. It was quite thoughtful of you, to keep a whole horde of Shadowhunters around whose bodies do not degrade, but who are no longer protected by your Nephilim spells—”

“Congratulations,” said James, looking sick. “You are very clever. But we know all this, and I know what it is you want.”

“You can stop this,” Belial hissed. “Give yourself up to me—”

“No. If you possess me, you will only wreak more destruction and more ruin.”

Augustus, Rosamund, Piers, and the others were staring in amazement. At least they would see now, Cordelia thought. They would all see that James was not in league with Belial; far from it. That he hated Belial, and Belial wished only to possess and destroy him.

“No,” Belial snarled. As Cordelia watched, the woman’s skin began to sift away like flour, revealing the white bones of her skull. “There can be… negotiation. I—”

But the old woman had no more ability to speak. Her skin had crumbled away from her neck, revealing her bare spine and trachea. There was no blood, only ash, as if her body had burned from the inside out. Her empty dress fell to the ground, covered in the gray-white powder of what had once been her bones.

“We have to stop this,” Lucie whispered. “There must be something we can do.” But Jesse was holding her arm tightly; Cordelia could not blame him.

A fourth mundane stepped forward—a thin young man wearing spectacles and a waistcoat. A student at King’s College, perhaps; he looked as if he had once been studious, thoughtful.

“Negotiation?” said James. “You know I will not negotiate with you.”

“But perhaps,” Belial mused, “you do not yet understand your situation. London is cut off from the rest of the world. A sigil of fire blocks the borders of the city, and none may enter or leave, by means magical or mundane, save at my whim. I have sealed every entrance, every exit, from the Portal in your crypt to the roads that lead out of London. Nor will any telephone or telegraph or other such nonsense function. I control the minds of all within these borders, from the meanest mundane to the most powerful Downworlder. London is locked away from the rest of the world. No help can come for you.”

Rosamund gave a little shriek and covered her mouth with her hands. The others were staring. Belial was clearly enjoying himself to the hilt, Cordelia thought; it was sickening, and she resolved to show no emotion. Not even when black lines began to appear on the student’s skin, ragged seamlike cuts, as if he were a rag doll that had been stitched together and was now coming undone. “If,” Belial said, “you will come with me, James, and listen to my proposition, I will give the Shadowhunters of London a chance to escape.”

“Escape?” snapped Charles. “What do you mean, escape?”

A seam split in the student’s cheek. It gaped wide, and black flies began to crawl out of the wound. “There is a gate called York,” Belial hissed, “down by your River Thames, a gate that comes from nowhere and goes to nowhere. I will give the Shadowhunters of London thirty-six hours to depart London through that gate. No tricks,” he said, holding up his hands as James began to protest. The student’s hands were seamed with black lines, several of his fingers dangling as if held on by threads. “The Portal will take any who pass through it safely to a spot just outside Idris. It is only London I want, and only London I will take; I have no interest in Nephilim. But the lives of any who remain will be forfeit.”

“You will let the other inhabitants of London live?” Jesse asked. “The mundanes, the Downworlders…”

“Indeed.” Belial grinned, and the student’s face split apart and hung in flaps of skin. His hands were peeling away from the wrists, like bloody gloves. “I wish to rule an inhabited city. It amuses me to have them go about their normal lives, knowing nothing—”

There was a wet, squelching noise. Cordelia forced herself not to look away as the student toppled over. What was left of him resembled a raw side of beef stuffed into a suit of clothes. She wanted badly to be sick.

And then the last of the mundanes stepped forward. Cordelia heard Matthew swear softly. It was the little girl, her blank face innocent and clear, her wide eyes a shade of blue that reminded Cordelia of Lucie. “James,” Belial said, and the force of his voice seemed to shake the little girl’s body.

“Stop,” James said. Cordelia could sense him trembling beside her. She felt a cold terror. They were watching murder, murder after murder happening before their eyes, and James would blame himself. “Leave the girl alone—”

Blood flecked the child’s lips as she spoke with the voice of a Prince of Hell. “Not unless you will come with me to Edom.”