City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(87)

She hit hard, agony screaming up her arm. Something splashed up in her face, and she was coughing as she flipped over, rolling onto her back. She grabbed for her pocket. It was empty. She tried to say Simon’s name, but the breath had been knocked out of her. She wheezed as she gasped in air. Her face was wet and dampness was running down into her collar.

Is that blood? She opened her eyes hazily. Her face felt like one big bruise, her arms, aching and stinging, like raw meat. She had rolled onto her side and was lying half-in and half-out of a puddle of filthy water. Dawn had truly come—she could see the remains of the bike, subsiding into a heap of unrecognizable ash as the sun’s rays struck it.

And there was Jace, getting painfully to his feet. He started to hurry toward her, then slowed as he approached. The sleeve of his shirt had been torn away and there was a long bloody graze along his left arm. His face, under the cap of dark gold curls matted with sweat, dust, and blood, was white as a sheet. She wondered why he looked like that. Was her torn-off leg lying across the parking lot somewhere in a pool of blood?

She started to struggle up and felt a hand on her shoulder. “Clary?”

“Simon!”

He was kneeling next to her, blinking as if he couldn’t quite believe it either. His clothes were crumpled and grimy, and he had lost his glasses somewhere, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. Without the glasses he looked younger, defenseless, and a little dazed. He reached to touch her face, but she flinched back. “Ow!”

“Are you okay? You look great,” he said, with a catch in his voice. “The best thing I’ve ever seen—”

“That’s because you don’t have your glasses on,” she said weakly, but if she’d expected a smart-aleck response, she didn’t get one. Instead he threw his arms around her, holding her tightly to him. His clothes smelled of blood and sweat and dirt, and his heart was beating a mile a minute and he was pressing on her bruises, but it was a relief nevertheless to be held by him and to know, really know, that he was all right.

“Clary,” he said roughly. “I thought—I thought you—”

“Wouldn’t come back for you? But of course I did,” she said. “Of course I did.”

She put her arms around him. Everything about him was familiar, from the overwashed fabric of his T-shirt to the sharp angle of the collarbone that rested just under her chin. He said her name, and she stroked his back reassuringly. When she glanced back just for a moment, she saw Jace turning away as if the brightness of the rising sun hurt his eyes.





16

FALLING ANGELS


HODGE WAS ENRAGED. HE HAD BEEN STANDING IN THE FOYER, Isabelle and Alec lurking behind him, when Clary and the boys limped in, filthy and covered in blood, and had immediately launched into a lecture that would have done Clary’s mother proud. He didn’t forget to include the part about lying to him about where they were going—which Jace, apparently, had—or the part about never trusting Jace again, and even added extra embellishments, like some bits about breaking the Law, getting tossed out of the Clave, and bringing shame on the proud and ancient name of Wayland. Winding down, he fixed Jace with a glare. “You’ve endangered other people with your willfulness. This is one incident I will not allow you to shrug off!”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Jace said. “I can’t shrug anything off. My shoulder’s dislocated.”

“If only I thought physical pain was actually a deterrent for you,” said Hodge with grim fury. “But you’ll just spend the next few days in the infirmary with Alec and Isabelle fussing around you. You’ll probably even enjoy it.”

Hodge had been two-thirds right; Jace and Simon both wound up in the infirmary, but only Isabelle was fussing over either of them when Clary—who’d gone to clean herself up—came in a few hours later. Hodge had fixed the swelling bruise on her arm, and twenty minutes in the shower had gotten most of the ground-in asphalt out of her skin, but she still felt raw and aching.

Alec, sitting on the windowsill and looking like a thundercloud, scowled as the door shut behind her. “Oh. It’s you.”

She ignored him. “Hodge says he’s on his way and he hopes you can both manage to cling to your flickering sparks of life until he gets here,” she told Simon and Jace. “Or something like that.”

“I wish he’d hurry,” Jace said crossly. He was sitting up in bed against a pair of fluffed white pillows, still wearing his filthy clothes.

“Why? Does it hurt?” Clary asked.

“No. I have a high pain threshold. In fact, it’s less of a threshold and more of a large and tastefully decorated foyer. But I do get easily bored.” He squinted at her. “Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you’d get dressed up in a nurse’s outfit and give me a sponge bath?”

“Actually, I think you misheard,” Clary said. “It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath.”

Jace looked involuntarily over at Simon, who smiled at him widely. “As soon as I’m back on my feet, handsome.”

“I knew we should have left you a rat,” said Jace.

Clary laughed and went over to Simon, who seemed acutely uncomfortable surrounded by dozens of pillows and with blankets heaped over his legs.

Clary sat down on the edge of Simon’s bed. “How are you feeling?”