The Mortal Instruments City Of Bones novel Chapter 44

She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. The good things you do don’t cancel out the bad ones. But—” She bit her lip. “If you told me where Valentine was—”

“No.” He breathed the word. “It is said that the Nephilim are the children of men and angels. All that this angelic heritage has given to us is a longer distance to fall.” He touched the invisible surface of the wall with his fingertips. “You were not raised as one of us. You have no part of this life of scars and killing. You can still get away. Leave the Institute, Clary, as soon as you can. Leave, and never come back.”

She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do that.”

“Then you have my condolences,” he said, and walked out of the room.

The door closed behind Hodge, leaving Clary in silence. There was only her own harsh breathing and the scrabble of her fingertips against the ungiving transparent barrier between her and the door. She did exactly what she’d told herself she wouldn’t do, and flung herself against it, again and again, until she was exhausted and her sides ached. Then she sank to the floor and tried not to cry.

Somewhere on the other side of this barrier Alec was dying, while Isabelle waited for Hodge to come and save him. Somewhere beyond this room Jace was being shaken roughly awake by Valentine. Somewhere her mother’s chances were ebbing away, moment by moment, second by second. And she was trapped here, as useless and helpless as the child she was.

She sat bolt upright then, remembering the moment at Madame Dorothea’s when Jace had pressed the stele into her hand. Had she ever given it back to him? Holding her breath, she felt in her left jacket pocket; it was empty. Slowly her hand crept into the right pocket, her sweaty fingers picking up lint and then skidding across something hard, smooth, and round—the stele.

She bounded to her feet, her heart pounding, and felt with her left hand for the invisible wall. Finding it, she braced herself, inching the tip of the stele forward with her other hand until it rested against the smooth, level air. Already an image was forming in her mind, like a fish rising up through cloudy water, the pattern of its scales growing clearer and clearer as it neared the surface. Slowly at first, and then more confidently, she moved the stele across the wall, leaving searingly bright ash-white lines hovering in the air before her.

She felt when the rune was done, and lowered her hand, breathing hard. For a moment everything was motionless and silent and the rune hung like glowing neon, burning her eyes. Then came a sound like the loudest shattering she had ever heard, as if she were standing under a waterfall of stones listening to them crash to the ground all around her. The rune she had drawn turned black and sifted away like ash; the floor trembled under her feet; then it was over, and she knew, without a doubt, that she was free.

Still holding the stele, she raced to the window and pushed the curtain aside. Twilight was falling and the streets below were bathed in a reddish-purple glow. She caught a clear glimpse of Hodge crossing a street, his gray head bobbing above the crowd.

She dashed out of the library and down the stairs, pausing only to shove the stele back into her jacket pocket. She took the stairs running and hit the street with a stitch already forming in her side. People walking their dogs in the humid twilight jumped aside as she barreled down the walkway alongside the East River. She caught sight of herself in the darkened window of an apartment building as she careened around a corner. Her sweaty hair was plastered to her forehead, her face crusted with dried blood.

She reached the intersection where she had seen Hodge. For a moment she thought she’d lost him. She darted through the crowd near the subway entrance, shouldering people aside, using her knees and elbows as weapons. Sweaty and bruised, Clary pulled free of the crowd just in time to see a flash of tweed suit disappear around the corner of a narrow service alley between two buildings.

She wriggled around a Dumpster and into the mouth of the alley. The back of her throat felt like it was burning every time she breathed. Though it had been twilight on the street, here in the alley it was as dark as nightfall. She could just see Hodge, standing at the far end of the alley, where it dead-ended into the back of a fast-food restaurant. Restaurant trash was piled outside: heaping bags of food, dirty paper plates, and plastic cutlery that crunched unpleasantly under his boots as he turned to look at her. She remembered a poem she’d read in English class: I think we are in rats’ alley / Where the dead men lost their bones.

“You followed me,” he said. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I’ll leave you alone if you just tell me where Valentine is.”

“I can’t do that,” he said. “He’ll know I told you, and my freedom will be as short as my life.”

“It will be anyway when the Clave finds out that you gave the Mortal Cup to Valentine,” Clary pointed out. “After tricking us into finding it for you. How can you live with yourself, knowing what he plans to do with it?”

He cut her off with a short laugh. “I fear Valentine more than the Clave, and so would you, if you were wise,” he said. “He would have found the Cup eventually, whether I helped him or not.”

“And you don’t care that he’s going to use it to kill children?”

A spasm crossed his face as he took a step forward; she saw something shine in his hand. “Does all this really matter to you this much?”

“I told you before,” she said. “I can’t just walk away.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, and she saw him raise his arm—and remembered suddenly Jace saying that Hodge’s weapon had been the chakram, the flying disk. She ducked even before she saw the bright circle of metal spin singing toward her head; it passed, humming, inches from her face and embedded itself in the metal fire escape on her left.

She looked up. Hodge was gazing at her, the second metal disk held lightly in his right hand. “You can still run,” he said.

Instinctively she raised her hands, though logic told her the chakram would just slice them to pieces. “Hodge—”

Something hurtled in front of her, something big, gray-black, and alive. She heard Hodge shout in horror. Stumbling backward, Clary saw the thing more clearly as it paced between her and Hodge. It was a wolf, six feet in length, with a jet-black coat shot through with a single stripe of gray.

Hodge, the metal disk gripped in his hand, was white as a bone. “You,” he breathed, and with a sense of distant astonishment Clary realized he was talking to the wolf. “I thought that you had fled—”

The wolf’s lips drew back from its teeth, and she saw its lolling red tongue. There was hatred in its eyes as it looked at Hodge, a pure and human hatred.

“Did you come for me, or for the girl?” said Hodge. Sweat streamed from his temples, but his hand was steady.

The wolf paced toward him, growling low in its throat.

“There’s still time,” said Hodge. “Valentine would take you back—”

With a howl the wolf sprang. Hodge cried out again, then there was a flash of silver, and a sickening noise as the chakram embedded itself in the wolf’s side. The wolf reared back on its hind legs, and Clary saw the disk’s edge jutting from the wolf’s fur, blood streaming, just as it struck Hodge.

Hodge screamed once as he went down, the wolf’s jaws clamping shut over his shoulder. Blood flew into the air like the spray of paint from a broken can, splattering the cement wall with red. The wolf lifted its head from the tutor’s limp body and turned its gray, lupine gaze on Clary, teeth dripping scarlet.

She didn’t scream. There was no air in her lungs that she could have dragged up to make a sound; she scrambled to her feet and ran, ran for the mouth of the alley and the familiar neon lights of the street, ran for the safety of the real world. She could hear the wolf growling behind her, feel its hot breath on the bare backs of her legs. She put on one last burst of speed, flinging herself toward the street—

The wolf’s jaws closed on her leg, jerking her backward. Just before her head struck the hard pavement, plunging her into blackness, she discovered that she did have enough air to scream, after all.

The sound of dripping water woke her. Slowly Clary peeled her eyes open. There wasn’t much to see. She lay on a wide cot that had been placed on the floor of a small dingy-walled room. There was a rickety table propped against one wall. On it was a cheap-looking brass candleholder sporting a fat red candle that cast the only light in the room. The ceiling was cracked and damp, wetness seeping down through the fissures in the stone. Clary felt a vague sense that something was missing from the room, but this concern was overwhelmed by the strong smell of wet dog.

She sat up and immediately wished she hadn’t. Hot pain drove through her head like a spike, followed by a racking wave of nausea. If there had been anything in her stomach, she would have thrown it up.