City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6)(141)

Alec put his stele to the skin of her knee and drew an iratze, and then another an inch farther down. His shoulders were shaking, but his hand was steady. Clary wrapped her hand around Jace’s and squeezed. His was ice-cold.

“Izzy,” Alec whispered as the iratzes faded and sank into her skin, leaving white remnants behind. Clary remembered Hodge, how they had drawn healing rune after healing rune on him, but his wounds had been too great: the runes had faded, and he had bled out and died despite the runes’ power.

Alec looked up. The shape of his face was awkward, twisted; there was blood on his cheek: Isabelle’s, Clary thought. “Clary,” he said. “Maybe if you try—”

Simon suddenly stiffened. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “I can hear wings. There’s going to be more of them.”

Isabelle was no longer gasping. The bleeding from the slash in her leg had slowed, but Clary could see, with a sinking heart, that the wounds were still there, a puffed and angry red.

Alec rose, cradling his sister’s limp body in his arms, her black hair hanging down like a flag. “Go where?” he said harshly. “If we run, they’ll be on us—”

Jace whirled around. “Clary—”

His eyes were full of pleading. Clary’s heart broke for him. Jace, who hardly ever pleaded for anything. For Isabelle, the bravest of them all.

Alec looked from the statue to Jace, to the pale face of his unconscious sister. “Someone,” he said, his voice cracking, “do something—”

Clary spun on her heel and ran for the wall. She half-flung herself against it, yanking her stele free from her boot, and went for the stone. The contact of the instrument’s tip with the marble sent a shock wave up her arm, but she pressed on, her fingers vibrating as she drew. Black lines fissured out across the stone, cracking into the shape of a door; the edges of the lines began to shimmer. Behind her Clary could hear the demons: the bellow of their voices, the flap of taloned wings, their hissing calls rising to shrieks as the door blazed up with light.

It was a silvery rectangle, as depthless as water but not water, framed with fiery runes. A Portal. Clary reached out with one hand, touched the surface. Every part of her mind concentrated on visualizing a single place. “Come on!” she screamed, her eyes fixed on it, not moving as Alec, carrying his sister, darted past her and disappeared into it, vanishing utterly. Simon followed him, and then Jace, catching at her free hand as he went. Clary only had a moment to turn and look behind her—a great black wing swept across her vision, a terrifying glimpse of teeth dripping poison—before the storm of the Portal took her and whirled her away into chaos.

Clary slammed into the ground hard, bruising her knees. The Portal had torn her away from Jace; she rolled to her feet quickly and looked around, breathing hard—what if the Portal hadn’t worked? What if it had taken them to the wrong place?

But the cave roof rose above, familiar and towering, marked with runes. There was the fire pit, the scuff marks on the floor where they had all slept the night before. Jace, rising to his feet, Alec’s bow falling from his hand, Simon—

And Alec, on his knees beside Isabelle. Any satisfaction Clary felt at her success with the Portal popped like a balloon. Isabelle lay still and drained-looking, gasping shallow breaths. Jace dropped down beside Alec and touched Isabelle’s hair gently.

Clary felt Simon clasp her wrist. His voice was ragged. “If you can do anything—”

She moved forward as if in a dream, and knelt down on the other side of Isabelle, opposite Jace, stele slipping in her bloody fingers. She put the tip to Izzy’s wrist, remembering what she had done outside the Adamant Citadel, how she had poured herself into healing Jace. Heal, heal, heal, she prayed, and finally the stele jerked to life and the black lines began to spiral sluggishly across Izzy’s forearm. Izzy moaned and jerked in Alec’s arms. He had his head down, his face buried against his sister’s hair. “Izzy, please,” he whispered. “Not after Max. Izzy, please, stay with me.”

Isabelle gasped, her eyelids fluttering. She arched up—and then sank back as the iratze vanished from her skin. A dull pulse of blood oozed sluggishly from the wound in her leg: the blood looked tinted black. Clary’s hand tightened so hard on her stele, she felt it bend in her hand. “I can’t do it,” she whispered. “I can’t make one strong enough.”

“It’s not you; it’s the poison,” Jace said. “Demon poison. In her blood. Sometimes runes can’t help.”

“Try again,” Alec said to Clary; his eyes were dry, but with a terrible brightness. “With the iratze. Or with a new rune; you could create a rune—”

Clary’s mouth was dry. Never had she wanted to create a rune more, but the stele no longer felt like an extension of her arm; it felt like a dead thing in her hand. She had never felt more helpless.

Isabelle was taking rasping breaths. “Something has to help!” Simon shouted suddenly, his voice echoing off the walls. “You’re Shadowhunters; you fight demons all the time. You have to be able to do something—”

“And we die all the time!” Jace shouted back at him, and then suddenly crumpled over Isabelle’s body, doubling up as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Isabelle, God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“Move,” Simon said, and suddenly he was on his knees next to Isabelle, all of them grouped around her, and Clary was reminded of the horrible tableau in the Accords Hall when the Lightwoods had gathered around Max’s dead body, and it couldn’t be happening again, it couldn’t—