Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

James was on his knees, his bloody hands locked around the hilt of Cortana. His head hung down; Cordelia couldn’t see his face. His grip on the weapon tightened, his knuckles whitening. As Cordelia flung herself against the barrier that separated them, he wrenched savagely at the sword, and she could feel the blade shear against bone again as he pulled it free.

He gazed for a moment at the blade, slick with blood, before opening his hand to let it clatter to the floor. He raised his head and stared at Cordelia as the blood pulsed slowly from the wound in his chest.

His eyes were silver. As he spoke, blood bubbled to his lips; his voice was thick, but recognizable. Belial’s voice.

“What,” he said, his gaze flicking incredulously from the blade to his own bloody hands, “is this?”

“You’re dying,” said Cordelia. She found that she was no longer afraid of Belial. She was no longer afraid of anything. The worst that could happen had happened. Belial would die, and James with him.

“It’s impossible,” he said.

“It’s not impossible,” Cordelia said. “It’s three wounds from Cortana.”

There was a roaring sound in the distance, growing louder and louder. Cordelia could feel a trembling in the earth deep beneath her feet; off to the side, with a soft rattling sound, the dead archbishop collapsed into a dusty pile of rotted vestments and bones.

“A human soul could not overpower my will,” Belial hissed. Blood ran down his chin. “My will is immutable. I am an instrument of God.”

“No,” said Cordelia. “You were an instrument of God.”

Belial’s whole face shook, his mouth trembling, and in that moment, Cordelia seemed to see through the illusion of James, to the angel that Belial had once been, before he had chosen power and war and the Fall. His silver eyes were wide and confused and full of a fear so complete it was nearly innocence. “I cannot die,” he said, wiping the blood from his mouth. “I don’t know how to die.”

“Nor does anyone living,” said Cordelia. “I suppose you will learn like the rest.”

Belial slumped forward. And the roof of the abbey came off, or seemed to—it had been there, and now it was not, though there had been no sound of it ripping away, no breaking of stone. It was simply gone, and Cordelia stared up at a sky like a whirlpool—it had been black with opaque clouds, mazed with dark lightning, but the clouds were parting. She could see the gleam of blue, a clear cold sky, and then a shimmer—a ray of sunlight. It pierced the windows of the abbey and laid a shining golden bar across the stone floor.

Belial threw his head back. Above him, white clouds parted, illuminated by ice-bright winter sun, and with the light on his face he looked as if he were caught between agony and joy, a martyr’s look. As he got to his feet, he seemed to step out of James’s body, like a snake shedding its skin. James slid soundlessly to the floor of the altar, and Belial rose and stepped away, now unrecognizable. He was a burning dark light in the shape of a man, lifting his hands up, up toward the sky, toward the Heaven he had turned away from so very long ago.

“Father?” he said.

A spear of light broke through the clouds. It shot downward like lightning, like a flaming arrow, and plunged into Belial. He seemed to catch alight, his shadow burning, and he howled aloud in agony, “Father, no!”

But his cry was unheeded. As Cordelia stared in dazed shock, Belial was lifted into the air—he was writhing, struggling, his deep cries like thunder rolling—and carried thrashing into the sky.

The barrier that had been holding Cordelia back from the altar vanished. She raced up the crimson-slicked steps and flung herself down beside James.

He lay on his back, in a spreading pool of his own blood, his face very white. Her hand flew to his throat, her fingers pressing hard. She gasped.

He had a pulse.



* * *



Jesse slid to the ground, still holding Lucie. It had all happened suddenly: one moment he had been kissing her, her hand warm and familiar on the back of his neck.

The next, she had stiffened as if shot—and gone limp, a dead weight in his arms. He kept hold of her now, her head against his shoulder, his back pressed to the interior wall of the archway. She was alive, at least. Her breathing was shallow, and her pulse beat rapidly in her throat. Dust streaked her pale face. She felt fragile in his arms, light-boned as a bird.

“Luce,” he whispered. With his free hand, he fumbled for his stele—one of the instruments Grace had adjusted so that fire-messages could be written with it—and scrawled a healing rune on Lucie’s arm.

Nothing happened. The rune did not fade, but neither did Lucie’s eyes open. Her blue eyes, that had haunted him as he walked the dark streets of London alone, a ghost who could not speak or be spoken to, who could not feel warmth or cold or pain. Lucie had brought feeling back into his existence: she had touched him and brought him to life. I would give it all up, he thought, staring desperately into her face, just to make you all right.

“Jesse.” It was Grace, slipping into the darkness of the archway. “I’m—oh! Is she all right?”

“I don’t know.” Jesse looked up at his sister; it was strange to see her in gear, her white-blond hair twisted in a tight knot behind her head. “I don’t…”

“Let me take her.” Grace knelt down and held out her arms for Lucie. “I’m out of explosives. I’ll watch Lucie; you’d better hold off any Watchers.” There was something officious, almost doctorlike, in Grace’s attitude; it reminded Jesse of Christopher, and he found himself gently easing Lucie over, so that she leaned against Grace, who took out her stele. “It’s all right,” she said, starting to draw another iratze on Lucie’s arm. “I’ll look after her.”

Leaving Lucie was the last thing Jesse wanted to do, but Grace was right—without her explosives, the Watchers would find them here soon enough. He scrambled upright and caught up the Blackthorn sword.

The thick stone walls of the archway had muffled some of the noise of battle. It exploded into Jesse’s ears the moment he stepped into the courtyard. The clang of weapons, the mixture of shouts and howls of pain and grief. Among the chaos of the fighting, he thought he glimpsed Will Herondale, and Tessa with him, battling Watchers, though he could not be sure—had they arrived in the last wave of Shadowhunters? Or was he seeing things? He could tell there were bodies on the ground: mostly Nephilim, a few Watchers. They were too hard to kill, he thought with a wave of despair.

He thought suddenly of Oscar. They had left Oscar at the Institute, safely locked in, though his howls of disappointment at being left behind had followed them to the gates. If they all died here, Jesse thought, who would take care of Oscar? Who would set him free?

Stop it, he told himself. He knew his thoughts were scattering with exhaustion and panic over Lucie. He had to focus on the battle in front of him, on the Watchers; one of them was turning toward him, an Iron Sister with a blank, unwavering stare—

Who went rigid, her eyes rolling back. As Jesse watched, sword in hand, she crumpled, her back arching even as the rest of her sprawled on the bloodstained ground. Her mouth gaped open, and a Chimera began to crawl out, pulling itself free with its feelers.

Someone shouted hoarsely. Jesse tore his gaze away from the fallen Watcher and realized—it was happening everywhere. One by one, the Watchers were toppling. One by one, the Chimera demons were emerging from their bodies, crawling and slithering and hissing, clearly furious to be so unceremoniously evicted from their hosts.

In the surge of the melee, Jesse could hear Shadowhunters shouting with joy—he saw the silver flash of seraph blades as the Nephilim attacked the Chimera demons; the stench of ichor was sour on the air. As the last Watcher fell, Jesse realized something else—a knot of the Chimera demons had gathered together and were headed straight for the gatehouse.

Lucie, he thought. He knew this was her doing: she had gone into the darkness, had called on the souls of the wandering Iron Sisters and Silent Brothers whose earthly forms had been possessed. And, it was clear, they had heard her. They had pushed back, tearing the Chimera demons out of their bodies, hurling them free to be slain by swords and seraph blades.

As the slavering Chimeras drew closer, Jesse saw the fury in their burning green eyes and thought: They know. That Lucie was to blame, that she had done this to them—he raised his sword, knowing that even though the Chimeras were relatively easy to defeat, he could not hope to dispatch a dozen of them at once—

“Throw me the sword, Blackthorn!”

Jesse wrenched his gaze away from the Chimeras—and stared in amazement. Halfway up the War Memorial was Bridget, wearing a flowered dress and an apron, her red curls flying, her face blazing with fury.

“I knew it!” Jesse yelled, “I knew you were still in London! But how? How did you escape Belial’s enchantment?”