Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,205

set far back from a spreading green lawn. The lawn was overgrown, the black iron gates before the manor thick with twisting briars. They were thrown open, and through the gap Cordelia could see the blank stone face of the house, inset with a dozen windows.

As she stared, one of the windows went up in orange flames. Then another. The sky above the manor house turned a dark, foreboding red.

Matthew swore.

“He’s burning the house down, isn’t he?” said Cordelia.

“Bloody Herondales,” said Matthew, with a sort of epic despair. “I’ll go through—”

“Not alone, you won’t,” said Cordelia, and picking up the skirts of her blue frock, she leaped through the open Portal.

* * *

Though Grace and Tatiana had left it only recently, Blackthorn Manor had the air of a place long abandoned. One of the side doors was unlocked, and James found himself in an empty front hall, lit only by the moonlight pouring in through the great windows. The floor was covered in a thick, feathery dust, and above him hung a chandelier, so roped about with spiderwebs it resembled a ball of gray yarn.

He passed through the empty hall in the quiet of the moonlight and up the sweeping curve of the staircase. As he reached the second floor an oily film of blackness dropped before him: the upstairs windows had been covered with thick black curtains, and no light escaped around their edges.

He lit his witchlight rune-stone; it illuminated the long-dusty passage stretching before him. As he made his way down it, his boots crunched unpleasantly on the floor, and he imagined himself crushing the dried bones of tiny animals as he walked.

At the end of the corridor, in front of a curved wall of covered windows, stood the metal creature: a towering monster of steel and copper. On the wall beside it, as he had recalled, hung a knight’s sword with a wheel pommel, a rusty antique.

James took the sword down and, without a moment’s hesitation, swung it.

It sheared through the torso of the clockwork monster, slicing it in half. The upper part of the body clanged to the ground. James drove down with the sword again, decapitating the creature; he felt half ridiculous, as if he were hacking an enormous tin can to pieces. But the other half of him was full of rage: rage against the meaningless bitterness that had consumed Tatiana Blackthorn, that had turned this house into a prison for Grace, that had turned Tatiana viciously against her own family and all the world.

He broke off, breathing heavily. The clockwork suit was a pile of scrap metal at his feet.

Stop, he told himself, and oddly, he saw Cordelia in his mind, felt her hand on his arm, steadying him. Stop.

He tossed the sword to the ground and turned to go; as he did, he heard a soft explosion.

The pile of shredded metal had caught fire and gone up as if it were tinder. James took a step back, staring, as the fire leaped up to catch at the spiderwebs stretched across the walls: they caught alight like burning lace. James jammed his witchlight back into his pocket; the corridor was already alive with gold and crimson, strange shadows shuddering against the walls. The smoke that rose from the smoldering drapes was thick and choking, emitting an acrid and terrible scent.

There was something hypnotic about the flames as they leaped from one set of drapes to another, like a bouquet being tossed down the corridor. If James stayed here, he would die on his knees, choking on the ashes of Tatiana Blackthorn’s bitterness. He spun and made for the stairs.

* * *

Matthew didn’t bother with an Open rune, just kicked the front door in and raced inside, Cordelia on his heels. The entryway was full of seething smoke.

Cordelia looked around in horror. She could see into a parlor with a high chimneypiece: it had probably once been a grand room but now was covered in dust and mold. A table hung with spiderwebs stood in the middle, still with plates set out: they were covered in rotted food, and mice and blackbeetles ran freely over the surface.

The floor was thickly coated in gray dust; a set of footprints wound up the stairs. Cordelia pointed and jostled Matthew’s shoulder: “That way.”

They started toward the steps: at the top they could see a roaring inferno. Cordelia gasped as James appeared from the heart of the flames, racing down the stairs. He flung himself over the banister