The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,81

from my perspective you handled things perfectly. I’m not angry at you.” He sighed. “I’m kind of angry at Isabelle, so let’s go rescue her before something terrible happens to her.”

“No pressure,” said Magnus.

“Yeah,” said Alec. “That’s why I’m kind of angry at her. Because I hate worrying about someone I love. But I’m not angry at you,” he said again. “Clary’s right and Jace is right. I’m your partner. They’re your friends. We’ve followed you into Hell before, and we’re doing it again, and we would do it a third time.

“Besides,” he added with a smile, “a Prince of Hell trying to break through to our world is absolutely our jurisdiction.”

He leaned forward and kissed Magnus, gently, slowly, the way he would on a Sunday morning in bed. It was totally at odds with their situation, totally at odds with how either of them felt in that moment. It was wonderful.

“Not the time!” Jace yelled from a little ways ahead of them.

“Always the time,” Alec murmured against Magnus’s mouth. He called back to Jace, “Just working to keep up morale!”

They hurried to catch up with the others. Magnus felt a little better about Alec, but the uncertainty of where they were going and what they would do there remained in the bottom of his gut like a jagged stone.

And then they saw the pit of Mount Tai.

As they came around a wide curve in the passage, the walls fell away and suddenly they were walking through a wasteland. From their passage, a wide, black ribbon of road jutted off to one side, winding through a blasted wilderness of rock and ruin. In the distance, it glittered darkly—an upside-down mountain, just as Tian had said. Stark, black even against the constant gray background of Diyu, a yawning chasm in the distance that seemed to split open the land.

Magnus could see why Tian had suggested it. No matter how mazelike Diyu’s layout might be, this was hard to miss. And it definitely seemed to go a long way down.

Tian led them off the stone and onto the new path, which turned out to be of solid iron. The surface glittered like the scales of a snake, and lining each side of the roadway, twisting loops of wrought iron formed low barriers like thornbushes. Magnus leaned over to take a closer look and realized that these were iron weapons—swords, spears, pikes—melted and bent and re-formed. It must have been an intimidating sight in its heyday, but now, as the path arced back and forth in front of them, huge patches of rust marred the surface, and in many places, pieces of the barrier of weapons had broken off and lay by the side of the road.

They walked slowly and curiously. Magnus could see that once upon a time this had been a real road, signposted, its grounds tended, but now it was just ruination, blasted landscape on all sides. And then there were the demons.

None were nearby yet, but from here they could see a long stretch of the road ahead, and all over were clusters of demons, milling about: the Baigujing skeleton warriors, Ala, and Xiangliu they had fought in Shanghai, plus more of the Jiangshi. There were others whose names Magnus didn’t know: huge leopards with horns and five tails, herds of faceless goats with eyes all over their bodies, many-headed bird creatures.

“So many,” Clary said quietly.

Tian said, “They used to be responsible for torturing the souls who found their way here. But now there are no new souls coming, and most of them have nothing to do.”

“Nothing to do except fight us,” said Jace, twirling his spear in his hand. Alec drew his sword, and Clary her dagger. Tian fingered the silver cord of his rope dart, wrapped around his body like a ceremonial sash.

But as they made their way down the path, the demons ignored them. Many of them were a good distance away—the emptiness of the landscape made it difficult to judge how far, and clusters that seemed like they would plainly block the group’s way turned out to be hundreds of yards into the wastes. Even when they passed close by, the demons showed little interest in them. In fact, the demons were more interested in attacking one another. Magnus and the others watched as two of the bird demons descended on a pack of Baigujing and tore them apart, flinging human bones away as they feasted. Ala smashed into one another in the sky, creating