Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)

“None of the mundanes we passed reacted to any of it,” said Charles. “Not the storm, not the fires. They were wandering around in a daze.”


“We saw a woman crushed by a runaway milk cart and no one stopped to help,” Esme said in a wobbly voice. “I ran to her but—it was too late.”

“Alastair and I saw the same kind of thing,” said Thomas, “when we were out in the carriage. Davies suddenly just—stopped driving. He didn’t respond when we called to him. We saw other mundanes too—children, old people—just staring into space. It was as if their bodies were here, but their minds were somewhere else.”

Charles frowned. “What on earth were you doing, going for a carriage ride?”

Alastair crossed his arms over his chest. “It was just after we talked to you in the office,” he said, a sharp note in his voice. “We didn’t know anything had gone wrong.”

“So before Grace arrived,” said Charles. “We thought Tatiana…” He looked around, as if truly seeing the courtyard—the spatters of blood, the discarded weapons—for the first time. And as if he were seeing them—Cordelia, James, and the others—for the first time. How miserable they must look, Cordelia thought; miserable and bloody and dazed. “What happened here?”

Rosamund looked uneasy. “Maybe we should go inside the Institute,” she said. “We can send a few riders to summon the rest of the Enclave. It clearly isn’t safe out here—”

“It isn’t safe inside, either,” James said. “Tatiana Blackthorn escaped from the Silent City. She tried to take the Institute. She killed Christopher. She had warriors with her, Belial’s warriors. Possessed Silent Brothers—”

Charles looked stunned. “Christopher is dead? Little Kit?” and for that moment he sounded not like the temporary head of the Institute, or Bridgestock’s pawn. He sounded a bit like Alastair did sometimes, as if he still thought of his little sibling as a child. As if Matthew’s friends too were children in his mind, Christopher only a little boy, looking up at him with bright and trusting eyes.

“Yes,” Matthew said, not ungently. “He’s dead, Charles. As is Tatiana. But it is all very far from over.” He glanced at Rosamund. “We can summon the Enclave,” he said. “But these creatures of Belial’s—they’re nearly impossible to defeat.”

“Nonsense,” said Augustus. “Any demon can be defeated—”

“Shut up, Augustus.” James had gone rigid; he was staring at the Institute gates. He put a hand to the pistol in his belt. “They’re here. Have a look.”

And indeed, pouring through the gates were more Watchers in the form of Silent Brothers; they were joined by Iron Sisters this time, with Death runes the color of flame edging their white robes. They were in two files, walking at a steady stride.

“They’re not alone,” Jesse said. He had drawn his sword and was staring with narrowed eyes. “Are those—mundanes with them?”

They were walking between one group of Watchers and another, prodded along by the points of sharpened staffs without seeming to notice. A ragtag group of five mundanes, seemingly chosen at random, from a man in a striped business suit to a little girl whose pigtails were tied with bright ribbons. They could have been gathered up from any London street.

Cordelia felt a cold spike of horror, sharp in her chest. The mundanes stumbled as they walked, blank-eyed and helpless as cattle being led to the slaughter. “James…,” she whispered.

“I know.” She could feel him beside her, his presence solid, reassuring. “We’ll just have to see what they want.”

The strange parade made their way into the courtyard and came to a stop in front of the assembled Shadowhunters. The Watchers were impassive, holding their staffs level, pointed at the mundanes. Dull-eyed, wordless, the mundanes simply stood where they were, gazing off in different directions.

Charles cleared his throat. “What is this?” he demanded. “What is going on?”

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?”