Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“Not before—” Jesse broke off, but Thomas could guess at what he had almost said. Not before she kills Alexander. “Not immediately,” Jesse said. “I doubt anyone is going to look there first, other than us.”


They were on High Holborn; it was quiet at this hour, though no street in London was ever entirely deserted, no matter how late it became. At night, the damp patches on the pavement froze, and their boots crunched on ice as they walked. Hansom cabs rolled by, spraying them with filthy gutter-ice; they tried to stay well back from the curbs, since they were invisible to drivers.

Jesse said, “My mother will want to inflict the most hurt possible. She’ll want her revenge symbolic and visible.”

“So she’s going to bring Alexander to his own house?” Lucie said.

“Everything that happened to me when I was a child,” said Jesse, “happened in my own house. That was where my mother gave me to Belial. Where the rune ceremony almost killed me. She spoke often to me of how she had been violated in her own home, my father and grandfather killed on the grounds of the house she grew up in. It will seem, to her, to have a certain awful kind of balance.”

Thomas’s grip on the Zweih?nder he held had grown damp. He felt sick to his stomach. I am so sorry, he wanted to say. I am sorry for anything my family, or any of our families, may have done to cause this.

But he did not say it; nearly all of them there came from families that Tatiana believed had authored her misery, and while he could assume guilt on his own part, he could not assume it on theirs. He knew, logically, that James—walking ahead of them all, bareheaded, determined—could not be blamed for this, nor Anna, nor Matthew or Cordelia or—

“It is not your fault,” said Alastair. He was walking beside Thomas; Thomas wondered how long he had been there. Alastair had not bothered to change into gear, though he wore gauntlets on his hands, and his favorite spears were secured inside his coat. “None of this is your fault. Benedict Lightwood brought down vileness upon his own family, and Tatiana could not accept either his culpability or her own.”

“You sound very wise,” Thomas said. For a moment, it was as if he and Alastair were alone on the street, surrounded by the icy sheen of London in winter, the cold itself a sort of protective circle around the two of them.

“Guilt is one of the most sickening feelings there is,” Alastair said. “Most people will do anything to avoid feeling it. I know I—” He took a deep breath. “One can either refuse to accept it, push it away and blame others, or one can take responsibility. One can bear the unbearable weight.”

He sounded exhausted.

“I have always wanted to bear it with you,” said Thomas quietly.

“Yes,” Alastair said. His eyes were bright with cold. “Raziel knows, perhaps that is the reason I have not become like Tatiana myself. You keep me human, Tom.”



* * *



“Matthew,” James said, softly. “Math. Come here.”

They were nearing the Lightwoods’ house, passing darkened mundane homes whose doors were brightened with wreaths of holly and yew. James could see Bedford Square up ahead; most of the houses had curtains pulled across the windows, and the small park in the center, its winter greenery surrounded by an iron fence, was dark and unlit.

Matthew had been walking on his own, silent. He had shucked off his brocade coat and put on a gear jacket and leather fighting gloves. A half-dozen chalikars were looped over his forearm like bracelets, gleaming in the icy moonlight.

Still. As they had all prepared in the weapons room, James had watched his parabatai. Had watched as he stumbled against the table, holding himself there by gripping its edge, breathing hard as if he were trying not to be sick or to faint.

And he had watched Matthew as they left the Institute. He had kept himself a little away from the group, even from Lucie and Thomas. James could not help but feel that this was because he did not want anyone to see that he was walking too carefully, every step deliberate to the point of exaggeration.

Matthew drew close to him. And James knew—knew from his own observations, and also simply from the feeling in his chest. It was as if a tiny barometer had been inserted there during their parabatai ceremony, one that measured Matthew’s state of being.

“James,” Matthew said, a little warily.

“You’re drunk,” James said. He said it without accusation or blame; Matthew started to protest, but James only shook his head. “I am not going to be angry at you, or blame you, Matthew.”

“You could if you wanted,” Matthew said bitterly. “You thought I’d have trouble with the party, and I waved it away.”

James did not, could not, say what he was thinking. I did not know what would happen with Cordelia. I know you were sober when you spoke to her. But if she had said to me what she said to you, and I had afterward found myself thrust into a party surrounded by alcoholic merriment, I doubt I could have held back either.

“If I’d known I’d have to fight,” Matthew said, “I would never—”

“I know. Math, it’s not a question of being perfect. What you are trying to do is incredibly difficult. You may falter at times. But I do not believe a moment of weakness is failure. Not as long as you keep trying. In the meantime—let me help you.”

Matthew exhaled a soft white cloud. “What do you mean?”

“We may be about to go into battle together,” James said. He showed Matthew his right hand, in which he held his stele. “I am your parabatai; it is my duty to protect you, and yours to protect me. Now give me your hand. While we’re walking—I don’t want to stop and have the others staring.”

Matthew made a choked noise and pulled the glove off his left hand. He thrust the hand at James, who slashed an iratze across Matthew’s palm, followed by two Energy runes. He would not normally give Matthew, or anyone, more than one, but they would act as knives, cutting through any fog in Matthew’s brain.

Matthew swore under his breath, but kept his hand steady. When James was done, he wrung it out as if it had been scalded by hot water. He was breathing hard. “I feel like I might be sick,” he said.

“That’s what city pavement is for,” said James unrepentantly, putting the stele back in his pocket. “And you’re already steadier on your feet.”

“I really do not know why people say you are the nicer one of the two of us,” said Matthew. “It is clearly untrue.”

Under other circumstances, James would have smiled. He almost smiled now, despite everything, at hearing Matthew sound like himself. “No one says that. What they say is that I am the handsomer one.”

“That,” said Matthew, “is also clearly untrue.”

“And the better dancer.”

“James, this terrible habit of lying seems to have come on you suddenly. I am concerned, very concerned—”

Behind them, Anna called out. James whirled to see her standing with her hand at her chest; her Lightwood pendant was pulsing in flashes of bright red, like intermittent fire.

It could mean only one thing. Demons.





21 UNDER A DRAGON MOON




Do you remember when we went

Under a dragon moon,

And ’mid volcanic tints of night

Walked where they fought the unknown fight

And saw black trees on the battle-height,

Black thorn on Ethandune?

—G. K. Chesterton, Ballad of the White Horse



Mantid demons, Cordelia saw, seven or eight of them, chittering as they sprang over the metal fence surrounding the square’s central garden. They kept their jagged forelegs folded against their chests, though Cordelia knew they could whip out with shocking speed, slashing anything in their path like straight razors. Their heads were triangular, with long mandibles clicking to either side, their eyes blank, ovoid and white.

James slid his pistol from his belt. Cocked and aimed it. “Cordelia, Jesse, Anna,” he said in a low, calm voice. “Get to the house. We’ll deal with these.”

Cordelia hesitated. Part of her suspected James was just trying to get her out of the way of the fight. She’d been the only person in the weapons room at the Institute not to pick up equipment. She knew she couldn’t risk it, couldn’t risk summoning Lilith, however much she hated to duck away from a fight.

And Jesse, of course, for all that he was armed, wasn’t trained. He didn’t seem bothered, though. He glanced once at Lucie, already swinging her axe, before he turned and ran silently alongside Cordelia and Anna toward the Lightwoods’ house.

At first it seemed that all the windows were dark, but a faint glow showed around one side of the house, like a spark of reflected moonlight. Anna tensed, and gestured for Jesse and Cordelia to follow her quietly.