Belial was not the only demon in the shadows. Surrounding him—crawling about at his feet, pawing at the foot of his throne—were a swarm of piglet-sized demons: wormlike, humped and creeping, their skin gray and almost featureless save for a pair of glowing green eyes.
Chimera demons.
Belial rose and came down the steps of his throne. It seemed he could not tell James was watching—he winced as he walked, his hand pressed over his left side, where the wounds Cortana had dealt him still bled. Raising a hand stained with his own blackish blood, Belial sketched an archway on the air.
It was as if he had sliced a piece out of the night. Dim light shone through the arch, and the Chimera demons leaped and frolicked excitedly. James could hear no sound, only a sort of roaring in his ears like the crash of waves, but he saw Belial’s lips move, saw Belial ordering the demons through the open arch, and then Belial turned, a frowning sneer on his face, and looked toward James—
Darkness swallowed him. He was falling, though he could still feel Matthew’s grip. He was caught in a whirlwind of unfamiliar stars, the air ripped from his throat, tearing away his voice. He was no longer in silence. He could hear screaming—the terrible screaming of someone, something, that was being invaded, taken over—
James gasped for breath. He would lose his mind soon, he knew, if he did not break free of the shadows: he forced himself to concentrate, to think of Jem’s lessons, Jem’s voice, calm and steady, training him to regain control of himself. You must find the place within that nothing outside can reach. The place beyond senses, beyond even thought. You don’t need to learn how to get there; you are already there, always. You only need to learn to remember you are there. You are within yourself. You are James Herondale, fully and only.
And with a wrench that seemed to tear at every muscle in his body, James hit the ground. The floor, in fact, of the Devil Tavern. He gasped, taking gulps of familiar, musty air as though he’d been rescued from drowning. He tried to move, to sit up, but he was wrung out: his shirt was plastered to him with sweat, and his hands—
“Are you bleeding?” Christopher demanded. They were all around him, he realized: Thomas and Jesse, Christopher and Matthew, surrounding him, their faces stunned and disbelieving.
“The mirror,” Jesse said. James glanced down to see that the glass had fragmented into a thousand pieces, and his hands were snowflaked with tiny cuts like spiky red lines.
“Just scratches,” he said breathlessly. Through sheer exhaustion he was aware of Matthew at his side, of Matthew taking his arm, of the touch of Matthew’s stele. “I saw…”
“It’s all right, James,” Jesse said, working to undo the cuff around James’s left wrist. “You don’t have to talk. Just breathe.”
But the pain was fading, energy surging back into James’s veins as Matthew drew rune after rune on his skin. He let his head fall back against the wall and said, “I saw Belial. He was—surrounded by demons. Chimera demons. He was giving them orders, sending them through some kind of Portal. I couldn’t tell where.”
He closed his eyes, as Christopher said, in a puzzled tone, “But Chimera demons are symbiotic. They need to possess someone in order to come into their full power.”
“They’re easy to defeat on their own,” said Thomas. “Why create an army of them?”
James thought of the screaming he had heard in the void: the agony of it, the terrible sense of invasion. “I think he is sending them to possess someone,” he said. “It felt like a great many someones.” He looked up at his friends. “But who could they be?”
It had been a whole day since the Silent Brother had arrived, and Letty Nance couldn’t sleep.
Her room was a small one, up under the eaves of the Institute, and when the wind blew, she could hear it whistle through the broken roof tiles. Her small fireplace was often choked with soot, and smoke puffed into the room like dragon’s breath.
But none of that was the reason she was awake. Every time she shut her eyes, she heard the voices she had discerned through the Sanctuary door. The soft, sibilant, pulsing words she didn’t understand. Ssha ngil ahrzat. Bhemot abliq ahlel. Belial niquaram.
She rolled over, pressing her hands over her eyes. Her head throbbed.
Belial niquaram.
The floor under her feet was cold. She found herself walking to the door, turning the handle. It creaked open, and the cold air from the corridor hit her.
She didn’t feel it. She went down the stairs, which curved in a circle. Down and down, into the dark and unlit nave of the old church. Down the steps to the crypt.
Belial niquaram. Letty niquaram. Kaal ssha ktar.
Come, Letty. I call you, Letty. The door is open.
And indeed, the door of the Sanctuary was unlocked. Letty swung it wide and stepped inside.
A strange tableau met her eyes. The Silent Brother stood below the light of a tallow lamp, his head tilted back at an unnatural angle. His mouth was as open as it could be, straining against the threads that held it sewed shut, and from it emanated more of those words, those grating, terrible words that stuck and pulled her closer, as if she were imprisoned in tar.
Ssha ngil ahrzat. Bhemot abliq ahlel. Belial niquaram. Eidolon.
At his feet lay the body of Albert Pangborn. He had died in his nightclothes, the front of his shirt torn open, showing red flesh and white bone, like a gaping mouth. Blood pooled beneath him.
And still Letty could not run.
On the metal bed sat the old woman, Tatiana Blackthorn. Her eyes, gone dark as ink, fixed on Letty, and she began to grin. Letty watched as Tatiana’s mouth opened—and opened, distending well beyond any human jaw.