Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,43

was blood on him, too. She reached him among the chaos, breathless.

“Alastair—”

There was a stunned look on his face. Her voice shook him awake: he caught at her free arm and pulled her toward the grass. “Cordelia, get back—”

She looked around wildly. Shadowhunters were running everywhere, knocking over hampers and trampling picnic food underfoot. “What happened, Alastair? What was it?”

He shook his head, his expression bleak. “I have absolutely no idea.”

* * *

James raced down the slope of the green hill toward the lake. The sky had darkened, stained everywhere with clouds: in the distance he could see mundanes hurrying away from the park, wary of approaching rain. The water of the lake had turned from silver to gray, rippled with strong wind. A small crowd had formed at the lake’s edge. The picnic had been abandoned: bottles and hampers had been kicked over, and everywhere Shadowhunters were seizing up weapons. James caught sight of Matthew and Lucie among the throng: Matthew was handing Lucie an unlit seraph blade from his own belt. He thought he caught sight of Cordelia’s red hair, close to the lakeside, just as Barbara came racing up to him.

Her eyes were wide and terrified; Oliver was racing behind her, determined to catch her up. She reached James first. “Jamie—Jamie—” She caught at his sleeve. “It was a demon. I saw it attack Piers.”

“Piers is hurt?” James craned his neck to see better. He had never liked Piers Wentworth, but that didn’t mean he wanted anything to happen to him.

“Barbara.” Oliver reached them, out of breath from lack of training. “Darling. Demons cannot withstand sunlight. You know that.”

Barbara ignored her suitor. “James,” she whispered, dropping her voice. “You can see things other people can’t, sometimes. Did you see anything last night?”

He looked at her in surprise. How did she know he’d fallen briefly into the shadow realm? “Barbara, I don’t—”

“I did,” she whispered. “I saw—shapes—ragged black shapes—and I saw something catch hold of me and drag me down.”

James’s heart began to pound.

“I saw one again, just now—it leaped on Piers, and it disappeared, but it was there—”

Oliver shot James an irritable look. “Barbara, don’t overexcite yourself,” he began, just as Matthew appeared, making a beeline for James. Behind Matthew, the crowd was parting: James could see Anna with Ariadne and Thomas, all kneeling around the body of Piers on the ground. Thomas had torn off his jacket and pressed it against Piers’s throat; even from here, James could see the blood.

“Where’s Charles?” James said, as Matthew approached: Charles was, after all, the closest thing to the Consul that they had here.

“Went to put up wards to keep the mundanes away,” Matthew said. The wind was rising, skirling the leaves on the ground into minor cyclones. “Right now, someone needs to get Piers to the infirmary.”

“Piers is alive?” James asked.

“Yes, but it doesn’t look good,” said Matthew, raising his voice to be heard over the wind. “They’re putting iratzes on him, but they’re not working.”

James met Matthew’s gaze with his own. There were only a few kinds of wounds that healing runes couldn’t help. Wounds infected by demon poison were among them.

“I told you,” Barbara cried. “The demon clawed at his throat—” She broke off, staring toward the far edge of the grassy area, where trees bordered the lake.

James followed her gaze and stiffened in horror. The park was a gray landscape through which the wind rushed: the lake was black, and the boats on it twisted and sagged strangely. Clouds the color of bruises scudded across a steel-colored sky. The only brightness he could see was a clear golden light in the distance, but it was trapped among the crowd of Nephilim like a firefly trapped in a jar; he couldn’t identify what it was.

The boughs of the trees whipped back and forth in the rising wind. They were full of shapes—ragged and black, just as Barbara had said. Clawed shadows torn from a greater darkness. How many, James couldn’t tell. Dozens, at least.

Matthew was staring, his face white. He can see what I see, James realized. He can see them too.

Springing down from the trees, the demons rushed at them.

* * *

The demons raced like hellhounds across the grass, leaping and surging, utterly silent. Their skin was rough and corrugated, the color of onyx; their eyes flaming black. They tore through the park under the dark, cloud-blackened sky.

Beside Cordelia, Alastair ripped a seraph blade from the pocket of his jacket and held it up. “Micah!”