A fire-message.
The paper felt warm to the touch as she unfolded it with a sense of amazement—it was one thing to hear that the fire-messages had worked, and another to see it happen for herself. She didn’t recognize the spiky handwriting but suspected it was Grace’s. She had written only a few lines:
Anna. The moment you return to London, come immediately to Westminster Abbey. Belial is here, and the Watchers have gathered. The battle has begun.
Cordelia had braced herself for a terrible trip through the Portal between worlds: a whirlwind of darkness stealing her breath, as it had been when Lilith had sent her through to Edom.
But it was far more ordinary; she was caught and carried through a brief darkness, as if on a current of air, before being deposited onto the familiar pavement of her beloved London. Of course, she thought, straightening up and looking around for Lucie and Matthew. This was how Belial himself traveled. It was a reminder how much more power he had in Edom than Lilith, now.
She saw Lucie first, gazing around at their surroundings. They had arrived in the deserted street, looking across at St. James’s Park. Shadows clustered thick under the trees, and the frozen hedgerows moved with something that was not wind. Cordelia shuddered and turned to look for Matthew: he was staring at his surroundings in horror.
“This,” he said in a strangled voice, “is what Belial’s done to London?”
Cordelia had nearly forgotten. Neither James nor Matthew had seen this dark version of London before. Neither had seen the abandoned carriages in the street, the dense, murky clouds that churned the air like foul water, the dead-looking sky ripped through with scarlet wounds of lightning.
“It’s been like this since you left,” said Cordelia. “The mundanes and Downworlders are all under some kind of enchantment. The streets have been mostly empty—except for the Watchers.”
Lucie was frowning. “Listen—do you hear that?”
Cordelia listened. Her hearing felt sharper, better than it had, and she realized with relief: her runes were working again. She could hear the surge of incipient thunder overhead, the sough of the wind, and over them, the unmistakable sound of battle—of human cries and the crash of metal striking metal.
She ran toward the noise, Matthew and Lucie beside her. They raced down Great George Street and turned onto Parliament Square. Before them rose the great cathedral of Westminster. Though Cordelia had never been inside, she knew its outlines from a thousand history books, photographs, and drawings: there was no mistaking the honeycombed front window, framed by thin Gothic towers and spires connected by soaring stone arches.
In front of the cathedral’s Great West Door, sprawling across the empty courtyard north of the Dean’s Yard Gatehouse, a battle was taking place. White-robed Watchers with their vicious black staffs battled back and forth with at least three dozen Shadowhunters. As they raced across the empty street, Cordelia searched the roiling crowd, her heart leaping as she saw the friends she and Lucie had left behind—Anna and Ari cutting through a knot of Watchers near the abbey entrance, Thomas and Alastair flanking a single Watcher by the fence—and there were Grace and Jesse near the gatehouse. Jesse was holding off a Watcher with the Blackthorn sword; as Cordelia watched, Grace reached into a large bag and threw something that exploded at the Watcher’s feet. Smoke and sparks occluded her view after that, but she heard Lucie mutter, “Oh, good work,” and thought, with some amazement—
They were all still alive. They were all still fighting. And not just them, but others—Eugenia, Piers, Rosamund, even Flora Bridgestock and Martin Wentworth. Whatever else had happened, their friends had made contact with the Clave. They had successfully led Shadowhunters to London to fight. It was nothing short of a miracle.
It would all be for nothing, of course, if Belial could wield the power he had claimed he would have in James’s body. If James could not be saved.
“But what are they doing?” Lucie wondered aloud as they drew closer to the battle. Cordelia understood her confusion. The Shadowhunters were clearly more precise fighters than the Watchers, but they were moving oddly, dancing around the Watchers rather than attacking head-on. Thomas swung a broadsword—not the blade edge, but the flat of it, knocking a Watcher to the ground. She craned her head to see what happened next, but the battle surged like a wave, blocking off her view.
“Let me see,” Matthew said, and began to clamber up the side of a tall granite pillar in the courtyard’s center—a war memorial. He peered out, shading his eyes with one hand, and shouted down to Lucie and Cordelia, but the wind had come up again and all Cordelia heard was the word “Chimeras.”
“Cordelia!” It was Alastair, who turned to start toward them then swung around as a Watcher made a beeline for Rosamund. She plunged a seraph blade into its chest, sending it staggering back; Alastair, behind it, whipped his shamshir in a cutting blow across the back of its neck, slicing away its hood.
The Watcher fell to its knees. Cordelia reached for Cortana, then stopped herself; it would do no good to summon Lilith now. She had to find Belial first. She was forced to do no more than stare as the Watcher shuddered, its body twisting as something with long, arachnoid legs began to emerge from the back of its neck.
A Chimera demon. It burst free of the Silent Brother’s body, hissing as it scuttled past Alastair—and was impaled immediately by Thomas’s sword. As it spasmed, Rosamund hopped over its dying body, her eyes shining.
“There you are!” she cried, as if wondering where Lucie, Cordelia, and Matthew were had been taking up all her spare time. “I was so surprised when none of you came through the York Gate! Have you really been hiding out in London this whole time? How frightfully exciting!”
Matthew sprang down from the memorial, landing lightly on the balls of his feet. “We’re looking for James.” She looked surprised. Matthew said, more slowly, “Have you seen James?”
“Well,” Rosamund said cautiously, “Piers said he’s gone into Westminster Abbey and apparently he’s trying to crown himself king of England. I really don’t know what’s gotten into him.”
“Rosamund!” It was Thomas. He was in gear, his sandy hair disheveled, a bruise rising on his cheek. “We need you by the door. The Watchers are clustering around Eugenia.” Rosamund gave a tiny shriek and, without another word, ran off. “Eugenia is fine,” Thomas said the moment Rosamund was out of earshot. “She won’t mind the help, I’m sure, but—you’re back!” He gazed back and forth between the three of them as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “You’re all back! And you’re safe.” He grasped Matthew by the arm. “I thought we’d lost you, Math. We all thought we’d lost you.”
“What’s going on?” Lucie said, staring after Rosamund. “How did you get everyone here? I mean, not everyone, it’s rather an odd group, but still—”
“Grace and Jesse managed to make the fire-messages work,” Thomas said, looking anxiously back over his shoulder at the fighting. “They sent them to Idris—I gather this was the group in the Council Room at the time, so they got the messages first. They came in through the Iron Tombs, the same way the Watchers did. More are on the way. Shadowhunters, I mean, not Watchers.”
“What are they doing?” Matthew said. “It’s a strange manner of fighting they’ve chosen.”
“There’s only one way we’ve found to defeat the Watchers. There’s a symbol on the backs of their necks that binds the Chimera demon to them. You can’t see it with the hoods of their robes up. If you destroy it, the Chimera is forced out. So you have to try to get behind them—which isn’t easy.” Thomas thrust his hand out. “Here’s the symbol. I wanted to be able to show people what it looked like.”
Cordelia looked at the scrawl on his open palm. It resembled the sigil of Belial that she had come to know well, but with a kind of hook protruding from it.
To Cordelia’s surprise, Lucie’s eyes went wide. “I have to get to Jesse,” she said. “There’s something I must tell him.” She began to back away, drawing the axe from the belt at her waist.