Chapter 33: A Fortress Foiled

33A FORTRESS FOILED

A fortress foiled, which reason did defend,

A siren song, a fever of the mind,

A maze wherein affection finds no end,

A raging cloud that runs before the wind,

A substance like the shadow of the sun,

A goal of grief for which the wisest run.

—Sir Walter Raleigh, “A Farewell to False Love”

To Ari’s surprise, she andAnna reached the heart of the Silent City without seeing a single Watcher. They had started out keeping to the shadows, checking doors and archways before passing from one room to another, and communicating only in hand gestures. But as their map led them up from the prisons through the living quarters and on past the libraries and the Ossuarium, they exchanged puzzled glances. They had seen not a soul, nor heard so much as a mouse scrabbling behind a wall since their arrival.

“Where are they all?” Anna murmured. They were passing through a tunnel, which widened out into a large square. At each cardinal point of the square rose a spire of carved bone. Alternating squares of red and bronze, like a checkerboard, made up the floor. Their witchlights gave the only illumination; the torches set in brackets along the walls had long burned out.

“Perhaps out in London,” Ari said. Her witchlight danced over a pattern of silver stars set into the floor. “They have no real need to occupy the Silent City, I suppose.”

“I would have thought they would at least be on guard against anyone entering,” said Anna. “Let me see the map again.”

They bent their heads over it. “We are in the Pavilion of Truth, here,” Ari said, pointing. “Usually the Mortal Sword would be on the wall—”

“But it’s in Idris, thankfully,” said Anna. “Here—through these rows of mausoleums—it’s marked on the map. Path of the Dead.”

Ari nodded slowly. As she fell into step beside Anna, she thought it seemed as if she’d barely taken a real breath since they’d entered the Silent City. The scent on the air—ashes and stone—was a cold reminder of the previous time she’d been here, when she had nearly died from the poison of a Mandikhor demon. The experience had not given her any desire to return.

They continued through stone halls that led them to a vaulted room filled with mausoleums, many with Shadowhunter names or symbols carved above their stone doors. They cut down a narrow path between CROSSKILL and RAVENSCROFT and ducked through a narrow dark archway like a keyhole—

And found themselves in a long corridor. Long was barely enough of a descriptor: witchlight sconces on both sides of the tunnel formed an arrow of light that receded until the distance was too far for human eyes. Something about it made Ari shudder. Maybe it was only that the rest of the Silent City’s tunnels had a more organic quality, often following unusual paths that Ari had assumed were accidents of geology. But this one felt alien and strange, as if a vein of peculiar magic ran beneath its floor of stone.

As they made their way down it, they passed runes carved into the walls: runes of death and mourning, but also runes of transformation and change. There were other runes too, bearing the sort of odd patterning that Ari saw when a Portal was made. They seemed to flare up as Anna and Ari neared them, before receding into the shadows. These, Ari suspected, were the runes that made the tunnel what it was: a telescoped version of real distance, a peculiar shortcut through time and space that would allow them to—at least, as they would perceive it—walk from London to Iceland in less than a day.

Every once in a while they would pass a door with a rune carved into it, or a narrow passageway that snaked off into the dark. There was no sound but their footsteps until Anna said, “You know, when I was a child, I thought I would be an Iron Sister.”

“Really?” said Ari. “It seems like quite a lot of routine, for you. And a lot of taking orders.”

“Sometimes I like taking orders,” said Anna, sounding amused.

“No flirting in the Silent City,” Ari said, though she felt a little shiver down her spine, as she always did when Anna teased her. “I am fairly sure that there is a Law about it.”

“I thought I would like to make weapons,” Anna said. “It seemed the opposite of wearing dresses and going to parties. In any case, it only lasted until I found out I would have to go live on a lava plain. I asked my mother if I would still be able to get my favorite chocolates there, and she said she doubted it very much. So that was enough for me.” She paused, all lightness gone from her voice. “Do you hear that?”

Ari nodded grimly. The sound of footsteps came from up ahead—many footsteps, marching in a regular tread. She narrowed her eyes but could see only shadows—and then a flash of something white. Watchers’ robes.

“Quick,” Ari whispered. They were near one of the narrow passageways leading off the tunnel; she caught hold of Anna’s sleeve and ducked into it, pulling Anna after her.

The passage was barely wide enough for both of them to stand facing each other. Ari could hear the sound of marching feet getting louder, an odd reminder that though the Chimera demons possessed the bodies of Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters, they were not them; they did not have their powers or skills.

She crouched down and peered into the corridor. There they were—a large group of Watchers, fifty or more, their death-white robes swirling around their feet as if they had been born out of smoke. They moved down the passage with blind determination, their jagged staffs in hand.

“Let me go,” Anna said, and tried to push past Ari. “We know how to kill them now—”

“No!” Ari didn’t think; she caught hold of Anna and yanked her back, nearly flinging her up against the wall. They had both doused their witchlights, and there was little illumination in the passage, but Ari could still see the fury in Anna’s blue eyes.

“We can’t just let them go,” Anna said. “We can’t just let them—”

“Anna. Please. There are far too many of them. And only two of us.”

“Not you.” Anna shook her head violently. “You need to get to the Iron Tombs. One of us does. I cannot kill them all, but think how many I could take before—”

“Before you die?” Ari hissed. “Is this a way to honor Christopher?”

Rage flashed across Anna’s face—rage directed at herself, Ari guessed. “I couldn’t protect him. I wasn’t ready for an attack. But at least I can stand against these creatures now—”

“No,”Ari said. “The responsibility for Christopher’s death is Belial’s. They are a horror, the Watchers, because of whose bodies have been possessed. But Chimeras are just demons. Like any other demons. They are the instruments of Belial, and it is Belial we must defeat.”

“Let me go, Ari,” Anna said, her eyes burning. If Ari turned her head just a little bit, she could see the Watchers, a white flood passing by the narrow mouth of the passageway. “It will not be my hand that slays Belial, if he can even be slain. Let me do this, at least—”

“No.” The determination in Ari’s voice surprised even her. “It may be Cordelia’s sword that kills Belial. But all of us stand behind her. Everything we have done, everything we have accomplished, has made us part of the force that drives her blade. Nor is our task done. We are still needed, Anna. You are still needed.”

Very slowly, Anna nodded.

Carefully, Ari let go of Anna, praying she was right about the look in Anna’s eyes. Praying that Anna would not bolt. And Anna didn’t—only remained very still, her back flat against the wall, her eyes fixed on Ari, as the sound of the Watchers receded into the distance.

---

A cracked road, the remains of a once-impressive boulevard lined by shade trees, led Cordelia and Lucie to the base of the hill that loomed over Idumea. Before they started up, Cordelia glanced over at Lucie a last time. This was it—their final push, the final approach to Lilith’s palace. Edom and Idumea had already taken such a toll on Lucie. Did she have the strength for this?

Cordelia decided in that moment that if she didn’t, she would carry Lucie up the hill herself. They had come too far, and Lucie had pushed herself too hard, for Cordelia to abandon her now.

Lucie looked pale, strained, smudged with dirt. The encounter with the cursed ghosts seemed to have stretched her even thinner: her eyes looked huge in her face, and her expression was tight with pain. But when Cordelia glanced up the hill, a question in her eyes, Lucie only nodded and started up the uneven, zigzag path that led to the top.

The hill was steeper than it looked at first, and the terrain much rougher. It had been a long time since the path had been tended to, and petrified tree roots bulged through the dry scree that covered the hillside. Low stone cairns dotted the edges of the path. Markers of graves long forgotten? Had this been the last stand of the Nephilim in this world? Had they died protecting their fortress? Cordelia could only guess.

As they rose up the hill, the clouds thinned, and she could see what seemed like all of Edom laid out before her; she could see the plains where she and Lucie had taken shelter, and even the long line of the Wall of Kadesh in the distance. She wondered if it had once been a border with another country; she wondered what had happened to the Forest of Brocelind, with its deep wooded dells and faerie groves. She wondered, as the black clouds fell away below them, if Lilith had lied and they would find no way back to their own world from here.

She wondered where Belial was. In fact, not just Belial, but the demons who must surely serve him. She kept her hand on Cortana, but all was silent: only the sounds of the wind and Lucie’s ragged breathing accompanied their ascent.

At last the slope began to level out and they could catch their breath. Before them, black in the red glow of the sun, rose the high walls that encircled the fortress. A pair of massive gates was set into them.

“There aren’t even any guards,” Cordelia said as they approached the gates together. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Lucie was silent. She was staring at the gates with an odd look on her face. They were a dark mirror of the Gard gates in Alicante, gold and iron carved with swirling runes, though these were not the runes from the Gray Book, but a demonic language, ancient and disquieting. Stone statues of angels—decapitated and acid-eaten, only their spreading wings giving a hint of what they’d once been—stood watch at either side of the gates.

The gates had no handles, nothing to grasp. Cordelia put her hand against one—the metal was icy cold—and pushed; it was like pushing against a massive boulder. Nothing happened. “No guards,” she said again. “But no way to get in, either.” She tipped her head back. “Maybe we can try to climb the walls—”

“Let me,” Lucie said quietly. She stepped past Cordelia. “I saw this in a vision,” she said, sounding very unlike herself. “I think—it was Belial that I saw. And I heard him speak.”

She laid a dusty hand against the gate’s surface. “Kaal ssha ktar,” she said.

The words sounded like stone scraping against metal. Cordelia shuddered—and stared incredulously as the gates swung open noiselessly. Beyond them she could see a moat, filled with black, oily water, and a bridge that crossed it, leading directly into the fortress.

Before them lay the heart of Lilith’s palace.

---

After a very long minute and a half of listening to the Watchers tromp past their hiding spot, the marching had receded into the distance and silence had returned. Cautiously Ari poked her head out from the alcove and gestured to Anna.

“Where do you think they’re going? The Watchers, I mean,” Anna said.

Ari bit her lip. “I don’t know, but I can’t help but fear we’re running out of time.”

They walked on. And on. It was very hard to tell how much time was passing, as the corridor extended in either direction for as far as they could see now, disappearing to vanishing points ahead and behind. Ari was peering back over her shoulder, hoping they hadn’t been meant to turn where they had seen the Watchers, when Anna let out a quickly muffled yelp of recognition. “Look!”

Ari hurried to join her and looked where she was pointing. There, leading off the corridor, was a pair of barred gates wrought in gold; they hung half-open, darkness visible beyond them. These, she knew, must be the gates through which Tatiana Blackthorn had let Belial and his army pass from the Iron Tombs into the Silent City.

“Who could do such a thing?” Ari whispered. She glanced over at Anna. “Do you think anyone will be there? Waiting for us?”

Anna didn’t answer, only strode through the doorway. Ari followed her.

They had been passing through caverns of inhuman scale since they arrived, so another one did not have quite the same impact as the first had. Even so, the sheer scale of the Iron Tombs intimidated her. She supposed that a thousand years of Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters added up to a very large number of tombs. Whose inhabitants, she reminded herself, were now rampaging around London.

Before them was a tiled floor, easily a hundred yards in each direction, describing a huge circular chamber. Around the perimeter, dozens of stone staircases were set into the walls; these led to landings, and then more staircases, a riot of staircases stretching above them, crossing one another, forming a kind of massive, vaulted ceiling where the stairs were absent. On each of the landings, at least the ones they could see, were stone tables—no. Sarcophagi. Even from here on the ground, Ari could see that the lids had been disturbed, thrown off entirely or at least shifted from their places.

It was not as dark as it had seemed from outside. The walls were lined with witchlights, all the way up, casting everything in a gentle blue glow. The witchlights were placed regularly, but the intersecting, apparently random placement of all the staircases made them shimmer down from above like a field of stars. It was almost impossible to tell how high the staircases rose, as they disappeared into a ceiling that could have been the sky.

They crossed the crypt, the tapping of their shoes echoing through the cavernous space. The center was empty, but the floor, Ari realized, was a huge mosaic whose image she could not initially understand. She studied it as she crossed it, and realized eventually that it was of an Iron Sister and a Silent Brother, and an angel rising over them.

At the end of the mosaic was a long double staircase rising straight ahead of them to a simple door set in the wall. The way out, Ari thought. It had to be; it was large enough, and there were no other doors in sight except the ones they had entered through.

“Well,” said Anna, and Ari realized she was nervous. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” said Ari properly. She reached out and took Anna’s hand in hers, as if to lead her to a dance floor. “We’ll go together.”

The actual opening of the door, once they reached it, was a bit of an anticlimax after all the buildup. There was a large iron key in the door, and, after another glance at Ari, Anna turned it and simply pushed the door open.

On the other side was the night sky, and a rocky volcanic plain, and silence.

Into the silence, Anna called, “Hello?”

No sound came.

They looked at one another in horror, and Ari felt a terrible fatigue. No fire-messages, it seemed. No Shadowhunter army to meet them.

Anna took a long, deep breath. “It’s good to breathe clean air, at least.”

“And,” said Ari, “it’s good we had a backup plan.”

“Yes, but it’s an exhausting one,” Anna said, eyeing the rocky terrain rolling away from where they stood. “How long do you think it will take to get to the Adamant Citadel?”

But then Ari’s eye was caught by a flash of light on the horizon. She looked, and the light became a steady glow.

“Is that a… Portal?” Anna said, as though saying it out loud would cause it not to be so.

As they watched, a line of figures appeared, carrying lamps that gave out their own glow. Like fireflies they danced across the lava plain, but then they grew closer, and the Shadowhunters had come, and Grace and Jesse had made fire-messages work, and perhaps there was still such a thing as hope in the world.

Anna put her arms above her head and waved. “Here! We’re here!”

As they got closer, Ari could see their faces. She recognized Gideon and Sophie and Eugenia Lightwood, Piers Wentworth and Rosamund and Thoby, but most were strangers, not members of the London Enclave but Shadowhunters from elsewhere who had come to fight. She couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed, but it was a rather silly fantasy, she thought, to have imagined that they would be met by the families she knew best.

And then she froze, as she saw her mother.

Her mother was in battle gear, her gray-brown hair swept up in a practical plait at the back of her neck, a weapons belt around her waist. Ari couldn’t remember the last time Flora Bridgestock had actually put on gear.

As though she knew her daughter was looking at her, Flora’s gaze came to rest directly on Ari, and they locked eyes. For a moment, Flora seemed expressionless, and Ari felt a terrible anxiety go through her.

And then, slowly, Flora smiled. There was hope in that smile, and pain and sorrow. She reached out her hand—not commandingly, but hopefully, as if to say, Come here, please, and Ari went to join her.

---

Cordelia and Lucie hurried across the bridge, the black water in the moat below surging and swirling as if something were alive inside it. It was nothing Cordelia wanted to look at too closely, though, and besides, she was more worried about demons pouring out of the fortress, ready to attack.

But the place was quiet. At first glance, as they ducked into the vast entryway, the fortress appeared abandoned. Dust blew across the bare stone floors. Spiderwebs—far too large and thick for Cordelia’s peace of mind—coated the ceiling and hung from the corners. A double spiral staircase, beautifully constructed, soared to the second floor, but there was no motion or sound from above, any more than there was around them.

“I don’t know what I expected,” said Lucie, looking perplexed, “but it wasn’t this. Where’s the throne of skulls? The decapitated Lilith statues? The tapestries with Belial’s face on them?”

“This place feels utterly dead.” Cordelia felt sick to her stomach. “Lilith and Filomena both said Belial had taken it over, that he was using it, but what if Lilith was lying? Or if they were just—wrong?”

“We won’t know until we search,” Lucie said, with grim determination.

They headed up the curving stairs—it was two sets of spiral staircases, weaving in and out of each other, never touching—until they reached the second floor. Here there was a long stone corridor; they followed it carefully, weapons at the ready, but it was just as empty as the entryway. At the corridor’s end were a pair of metal doors. Cordelia looked at Lucie, who shrugged and pushed one of them open.

Inside was another large room, semicircular in shape, with a floor of marble, badly cracked. There was a kind of bare stone platform rising against one of the walls; behind it were two huge windows. One gazed out over the bleak plains of Edom. The second was a Portal.

The surface of it swirled and danced with color, like oil on the surface of water. Through that movement, Cordelia could see what was unmistakably London. A London whose skies were gray and black, the clouds overhead riven with heat lightning. In the foreground, a bridge over a dark river; beyond it, a Gothic structure rising against the sky, a familiar clock tower—

“It’s Westminster Bridge,” said Lucie, in surprise. “And the Houses of Parliament.”

Cordelia blinked. “Why would Belial want to go there?”

“I don’t know, but—look at this.” Cordelia glanced over and saw Lucie on her tiptoes, examining a heavy iron lever that emerged from the wall just to the left of the doors. Thick chains rose from it, disappearing into the ceiling.

“Don’t—” Cordelia started, but it was already too late; Lucie had pulled the lever down. The chain began to move; they could hear it grinding in the walls and ceilings.

Abruptly, a circular piece of the floor sank out of sight, forming what looked like a well. Rushing to the edge of it, Cordelia saw stairs leading down, and at the bottom of the stairs—light.

She started down the steps. The walls on either side were polished stone, engraved with more designs and words, but this time Cordelia could read them: they were not in a demonic language, but in Aramaic. And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’?”

“This must have been written here by the Shadowhunters,” said Lucie, following carefully after Cordelia. “I suppose because the stairs lead to—”

“A garden,” Cordelia said, for she had reached the foot of the steps, where a blank stone wall stood before them—but with another iron lever emerging from the wall at one side. She looked at Lucie, who shrugged. Cordelia pulled, and again the grinding of stone upon stone, and a portion of the wall rolled away, revealing a doorway. She ducked through it and found herself outside the fortress, in a walled garden—or what had once been a garden. It was withered and blackened now, studded with the stumps of dead trees, the dry, cracked ground covered in broken bits of black rock.

Standing in the middle of the ruined garden, looking filthy and half-starved but very definitely alive, was Matthew.

---

While Grace and Jesse remained in the library, sending fire-messages to every Institute on a very long list, Thomas had volunteered to join Alastair on the roof to keep watch. The roof gave them the best view over the widest area: they could see if Watchers were approaching or even—and Thomas knew this was a desperate hope—if the fire-messages had reached their target, and reinforcements of Shadowhunters might be arriving in London.

It was hard to have hope that anything would change. It was the earliest hours of the morning, and under normal circumstances, the sky would have started to lighten by now. But it looked exactly as it had for the past days—the sky a boiling black cauldron, the air full of the scent of ash and burning, the water of the Thames a lightless green-black. There weren’t even any Watchers to spot, for the moment.

Thomas leaned on his elbows next to Alastair, who wore an unreadable expression.

“It’s so odd to see the Thames without any boats,” Thomas said. “And no sounds of voices, no trains… it’s like the city is sleeping. Behind a hedge of thorns, like in a fairy tale.”

Alastair looked over at him. His eyes were dark and held a tenderness that was new. When Thomas thought of the night before, in the infirmary with Alastair, he blushed hard enough to feel it. He quickly went back to staring at London.

“I actually feel a bit hopeful,” said Alastair. “Is that mad?”

“Not necessarily,” said Thomas. “It could just be light-headedness, since we’re running out of food.”

Normally Alastair would have smiled at that, but his expression stayed serious, inward. “When I decided to stay in London,” he said, “it was partly because it seemed the right thing to do, not to take Belial’s offer. And partly because of Cordelia. But it was also that I didn’t want…”

“What?” said Thomas.

“To leave you,” Alastair said. Now Thomas did look at him. Alastair was leaning against the iron railing. Despite the cold, the top button of his shirt was undone. Thomas could see the wings of his collarbone, the hollow of his throat where Thomas had kissed him. Alastair’s hair, usually neat, was windblown, his cheeks flushed. Thomas wanted to touch him so badly, he shoved his hands into his pockets.

“What you said to me in the library, when we were there with Christopher,” Thomas said. “It sounded a bit like poetry. What did it mean?”

Alastair’s eyes flicked toward the horizon. “‘Ey pesar, nik ze hadd mibebari kar-e jamal. Ba conin hosn ze to sabr konam?’ It is poetry. Or at least, a song. A Persian ghazal. Boy, your beauty is beyond all description. How can I wait, when you are so beautiful?” His mouth quirked up at the corner. “I always knew the words. I can’t remember when it fully struck me what they meant. It is men who sing ghazals, you know; it occurred to me only then that there were others who felt as I did. Men who wrote freely about how beautiful other men were, and that they loved them.”

Thomas tightened his hands in his pockets. “I don’t think anyone has ever thought I was beautiful, except for you.”

“That’s not true,” Alastair said decidedly. “You don’t see how people look at you. I do. It used to make me grind my teeth—I was so jealous—I thought surely you’d choose anyone in the world who wasn’t me.” He reached up, cupped a hand around the back of Thomas’s neck. He was biting at his lower lip, which made Thomas’s skin burn. He knew what it was like to kiss Alastair now. It wasn’t just a flight of imagination; it was real, and he wanted it again more than he would have thought possible. “If last night was just the once, tell me,” Alastair said in a low voice. “I’d rather know.”

Thomas yanked his hands out of his pockets. Taking hold of the lapels of Alastair’s coat, he pulled the other boy toward him. “You,” he said, brushing his lips against Alastair’s, “are so aggravating.”

“Oh?” Alastair looked up at Thomas through his lashes.

“You have to know I care about you,” Thomas said, and the movement of his lips against Alastair’s was making Alastair’s eyes darken. He felt Alastair’s hands burrowing under his coat, circling his waist. “You have to know—”

Alastair sighed. “That was the sort of thing Charles always said. ‘I care for you, I have feelings for you.’ Never just ‘I love you—’?” Alastair stiffened and jerked away, and for a moment Thomas thought it was because of him, but Alastair was staring past him, the expression on his face grim. “Look.” He moved down the roof, trying to get a better angle on whatever he’d spotted. He pointed. “There.”

Thomas looked, and his breath caught in his throat.

They were marching as an army might march, looking neither to the right nor the left, one single column of white-robed figures making its way steadily westward, toward the heart of London.

Alastair ran an agitated hand through his hair. “They’ve never done this before,” he said. “Usually they’re just aimlessly patrolling. I’ve never seen more than two or three together since—”

Thomas shivered. He had been warm, cuddled up with Alastair; now he was freezing. “Since the fight with Tatiana. I know. Where can they be going?”

“They’re under Belial’s command,” Alastair said levelly. “They can only be going where he’s commanded them to go.”

He and Thomas exchanged a look, before diving for the trapdoor that led back down into the Institute. They hurried to the library, where they found that Jesse had fallen asleep on the table, his cheek on a pile of blank papers, a modified stele in his hand. Beside him, Grace sat at the same table, scribbling fire-messages in the light from a single witchlight stone. She held her finger to her lips when she saw them approaching. “Jesse’s just taking a nap,” she said. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her pale hair hung limply. “We’ve been at this all night.”

“The Watchers are on the move,” Thomas said, keeping his voice low. “A lot of them, maybe all of them. They were making their way down the Strand, all going the same direction.”

“As if they’ve been summoned,” said Alastair, checking his weapons belt as he spoke. “Thomas and I will go see what’s going on.”

Grace set her stele down. “Is that wise? Just the two of you?”

Thomas exchanged a look with Alastair. Alastair said carefully, “We don’t have much choice—”

“Wait,” Jesse said, sitting up. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes. “I…” He yawned. “Sorry. I just thought—what if the fire-messages worked? If the Clave found the entrance to the Iron Tombs, and made it to London, the Watchers could be marching to battle with them.” He looked at Thomas’s and Alastair’s dubious expressions. “We’ve never seen them in a large group like this, and what’s changed since yesterday? Only that we’ve sent fire-messages out. What else could it be?”

“It could be the fire-messages,” said Alastair slowly. “Or it might be that Belial… has gotten what he wanted.”

James.Thomas felt the suggestion like a punch to the stomach. “I thought you were feeling optimistic.”

“It passed,” said Alastair.

“Well, whatever it is,” said Jesse, standing up, “we’re going with you to find out.”

“No,” said Alastair flatly. “You’re not trained enough.”

Both Grace and Jesse looked offended; in fact, their expressions of annoyance were so similar that it reminded Thomas that whether or not they were blood related, they were siblings nonetheless.

“What Alastair means,” Thomas said quickly, “is it’s not safe, and you’ve both been up all night. And we have no idea what we’ll be facing out there.”

“And?” said Jesse, his tone rather sharp. “What do you expect us to do? We’ve sent a hundred fire-messages; we can’t just huddle here in the Institute, waiting to see if you ever come back.”

“I see I am not the only one who has abandoned optimism,” noted Alastair.

“He’s just being realistic,” said Grace, reaching down below the table where she’d been working and pulling out a canvas sack.

“What do you have there?” said Alastair.

“Explosives,” she said. “From Christopher’s lab. We are ready.”

“The time for hiding and protecting ourselves and saving our energy is over,” Jesse said. “I can feel it. Can’t you?”

Thomas could not deny that it was true. Cordelia and Lucie had gone; Anna and Ariadne were trekking through the Silent City, hoping to meet the Clave at the entrance to the Iron Tombs. They were nearly out of food. And the Watchers were on the march.

“Besides,” Grace said. “We’re the only ones who can send fire-messages. What if we need to reach Anna and Ari, or the Clave, and tell them what the Watchers are doing? Where they’ve gathered? You can’t say that wouldn’t be helpful.”

And indeed, Thomas couldn’t.

“One way or another, it’s going to end today,” Jesse said, going to fetch the Blackthorn sword from where it leaned against the wall. “All of it. Better that we’re together for whatever comes.”

Thomas and Alastair exchanged a look.

“And if you don’t let us come with you,” added Jesse, “you’ll have to lock us up in the Institute. We won’t stay here otherwise.”

Grace nodded in agreement.

Thomas shook his head. “You’re Nephilim. We’re not locking you up. If you really want to come—”

“We can die together,” Alastair said. “Now, get your gear on. I don’t think we have much more time.”

---

“Matthew,”Cordelia breathed.

Matthew took a step back. He was staring at Cordelia as if she were an apparition, a ghost that had appeared out of nowhere. “James,” he said raggedly, “James was right—you came—”

Lucie passed through the doorway into the courtyard. The red-orange sun beat down on her, and on Cordelia, who had already looked, already seen that the garden was empty of anyone but Matthew. And though Cordelia was desperately glad to see Matthew, the look on his face made her feel as if a fist were crushing her heart.

“He’s gone,” she said. “Isn’t he? James is gone.”

“He’s gone?” Lucie whispered. “You don’t mean—”

“He’s alive.” Matthew’s face crumpled. “But possessed. I’m sorry—I couldn’t stop it happening—”

“Math,” Lucie said softly, and then she and Cordelia were running across the courtyard. They threw their arms around him, embraced him tightly, and after a moment he put his arms around them awkwardly and hugged them both back. “I am so sorry,” he said, over and over. “So sorry—”

Cordelia drew back first. Lucie, she could see, had tears streaking her face, but Cordelia had none to shed; what she felt was too terrible for her to cry. “Don’t apologize,” she said fiercely. “You didn’t let this happen; Belial is a Prince of Hell. He does what he wants. Just—where did he take James? Where have they gone?”

“London,” Matthew said. “He’s obsessed with it. A place on Earth where he rules.” His voice was bitter. “Now that he has so much power over the city—he as much as swore he would murder every living person in London until James broke down and let him do what he wanted.”

“Oh, poor James,” Lucie said miserably. “To have such an awful choice—”

“But he would have thought of it already,” Cordelia said. Think like James, she told herself. She had come to know him so well over the past half year, come to know the intricate, winding way he considered and schemed. The kind of plans he made; what he was willing to risk, and what he was not. “That Belial would make a threat he could not withstand. It could not have surprised him.”

“It didn’t,” Matthew said. “Last night, James told me he had a plan. Letting Belial possess him was part of it.”

“A plan?” Lucie said, urgency in her voice. “What kind of plan?”

“I’ll tell you. But we must start back to London. I don’t think we have much time to lose.” There was dust in Matthew’s bright hair, and smears of dirt on his face. But he looked more alert, more resolute and clear-eyed, than Cordelia had ever seen him.

Lucie and Cordelia exchanged a quick look. “The Portal,” said Lucie. “Matthew, are you well enough—?”

“To fight?” Matthew nodded. “As long as someone has a weapon I can use.” He put his hand to his belt. “James gave me his pistol last night, to hold for him. I think he didn’t want Belial to be able to make use of it in our world. But of course, it won’t work for me.”

“Here.” Lucie drew a seraph blade from her weapons belt and handed it to him. Matthew took it with a look of grim conviction.

“All right,” Cordelia said, turning back toward the archway that led into the fortress. “Matthew—tell us everything that happened.”

Matthew did. As they headed up the stairs, he spoke of his and James’s imprisonment, sparing nothing, not his own sickness, nor his stunned surprise when a door had opened in the blank wall of the courtyard and Lucie and Cordelia had appeared from nowhere. He told them of the threats Belial had made before that, and James’s decision, and of the moment Belial had possessed James.

“I’ve never seen anything more horrible,” he said as they emerged into the room with the Portal inside it. “Belial walked toward him, grinning this terrible grin, and James stood his ground, but Belial just passed into him. Like a ghost walking through a wall. He vanished into James, and James’s eyes turned a kind of dead silver color. And when he looked at me again, it was James’s face, but with Belial’s expression. Contempt and loathing and—inhumanity.” He shuddered. “I can’t explain it better than that.”

Cordelia thought he’d explained it quite well enough. The thought of a James who was not James anymore made her feel sick. “There has to be more,” she said. “For James to let this happen the way he did—”

“He’d already accepted that Belial would possess him,” Matthew said. “He was concerned with what would happen after. He said that we needed to get Cordelia as near to Belial as possible—”

“So I can deal him his third wound?” Cordelia demanded. “But Belial is part of James now. I cannot mortally wound him without killing James, too.”

“Besides,” said Lucie, “Belial knows you’re a threat. He won’t let you anywhere near him. And now that he’s possessed James—he’ll be so powerful—”

“He is powerful,” said Matthew. “He is also in pain. Those two wounds Cordelia dealt him already still cause him agony. But you can heal them, with Cortana—”

“Heal Belial?” Cordelia flinched. “I would never.”

“James believes the idea will tempt Belial,” said Matthew. “He is not used to pain. Demons normally don’t feel it. If you tell him you’re willing to make a deal—”

“A deal?” Cordelia’s voice rose incredulously. “What kind of deal?”

Matthew shook his head. “I’m not sure it matters. James only said you had to get close, and that you would know the right moment to act.”

“The right moment to act?” Cordelia echoed faintly.

Matthew nodded. Cordelia felt a quiet panic; she’d no idea what James intended. She’d told herself to think like him, but she felt as if she were missing the integral pieces of a puzzle, the key bits that would allow it to be solved.

Yet she couldn’t bear to show her doubt in front of Lucie and Matthew, both of whom were looking at her with a desperate hope. She only nodded, as if what Matthew had said made sense to her. “How did he know?” she said instead. “That you’d see us again, or be able to tell us anything?”

“He never gave up,” said Matthew. “He said none of you would take Belial’s offer, or leave London—”

“He was right about that,” said Lucie. “Cordelia and I came here, but we never went through the York Gate to Alicante. We stayed in the Institute with the others. Thomas, Anna…”

“James guessed all that.” Matthew was looking at the Portal, at its stormy view of London. “He said you’d come for us. Both of you. He believed in you.”

“Then we must believe in him,” said Lucie. “We can’t delay any longer. We have to get to London.”

She started toward the Portal; as she reached out for it, Cordelia saw the image within the enchanted door change from Westminster Bridge to the abbey, with its Gothic spires reaching toward the storm-struck sky.

A moment later Lucie went into the Portal and was gone. Then it was Matthew’s turn, and then Cordelia’s. As she stepped into the whirling darkness, letting it spin her away from Edom, she thought, What on earth did James mean by “the right moment to act”? And what if I don’t figure it out in time?