Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,176

since it had grown cold now that it was evening.

He was not looking at Matthew or Cordelia, but at something in the distance. His expression was stark, his eyes ringed with darkness. He looked ill, Cordelia realized with dismay. As if, just as Matthew had said, there was something very wrong.

Matthew cupped his hands around his mouth. “James!”

James turned slowly, dropping his jacket to the ground. He was moving mechanically, like an automaton.

Cordelia’s unease mounted. She went toward James, slowly, as if she were approaching a startled deer in the forest. He watched her with restless gold eyes; there was color in his cheeks, a high consumptive flush. She heard Matthew curse under his breath.

“James,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

He rolled up the left sleeve of his shirt. On the back of his wrist, just above where the cuff of his shirt would have ended, were four small, bloody crescents, surrounded by a tracery of darkening veins.

Nail marks.

“Christopher,” said James, and Cordelia remembered with horror the way Christopher had clutched at James in the sickroom, gripping his wrist. “I know he didn’t mean to.” His mouth twisted into a painful smile. “No one tell him. He’d be so upset.”

Oh, James, no. Please, no. She thought of Oliver Hayward, dead because Barbara had clawed him in her last agonies. Not James.

Matthew’s voice shook. “We have to go back to the Silent City. We have to get you to Jem—”

“No,” Cordelia whispered. “It isn’t safe for James there. If we went to the Institute—or brought Jem there—”

“Absolutely not,” said James very calmly. “I’m not going anywhere. Not anywhere in London, at least.”

“Bloody hell, he’s hallucinating,” said Matthew with a groan.

But Cordelia didn’t think he was. In a low voice, she said, “James. What do you see?”

James raised his hand and pointed. “There. Between those two trees.”

And he was right—suddenly Cordelia, and Matthew as well, could see what James had been staring at all this time. Between two cedar trees was a large archway. It seemed to be made of dark light; it curved with Gothic flourishes, as though it were part of the cemetery, but Cordelia knew it was not. Through it, she could glimpse a swirl of dark chaos, as if she were looking through a Portal into the vastness of black space itself.

“A gateway,” said Matthew slowly.

“Like Ariadne said,” whispered Cordelia. “James—your blood—” She shook her head. “Don’t. Don’t do it, whatever it is. Everything about this feels wrong.”

But James only turned and went over toward the archway. He stretched out his arm toward it—the one with the wounds where Christopher’s nails had punctured his skin—and made a fist.

The muscles of his arm swelled, and blood ran from the cuts on his wrist—they looked slight, but fat drops of red rose up along his arm and dripped onto the ground. The view through the archway seemed to solidify and clear itself, and now Cordelia could glimpse the world she’d seen on the bridge: a place with earth and sky like ashes, and trees like protrusions of bone.

“James,” Matthew said, closing the gap between himself and his friend. “Stop.”

“I have to do this.” James lowered his bleeding arm. His eyes were feverish, whether from determination or the poison now in his veins, Cordelia wasn’t sure. “Math—you shouldn’t touch me. It’s not safe.”

Matthew, who had been reaching for James, stopped abruptly and flung his arms wide. “James—”

“Is that why you’re going?” Cordelia demanded. She could taste tears in the back of her throat. She wanted to break something, to take Cortana and smash the blade against the granite sides of the tombs. “Because you think you’re going to die? Thomas and Lucie are getting the malos root right now. We could have an antidote in a day. In hours.”

“It’s not that.” James shook his head. “Whether I’d been infected or not, I’d have to go, and you would have to let me.”

“Why?” Matthew demanded. “Tell us why, Jamie.”

“Because Christopher was right,” said James. “So was Ariadne. Only my going through the gateway can stop all this. It’s about me. It’s always been about me. I have no other choice.”

19 ALL PLACES HELL

When all the world dissolves,

And every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be hell that is not heaven.

—Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

By the time Lucie and Thomas reached Chiswick House, it was near dark. The sun had set, and the mansion was tarnished silver against the dying light. Leaving the carriage at the curb, they made their way in silence up the long