Alastair.
They half collapsed onto each other as the end of the tentacle smashed into the front of the Institute; when it dragged itself back into the water, a chunk of the wall came with it. Brick dust puffed into the air as Gabriel Lightwood leaped down from a teetering stack of flagstones, sword raised.
The tentacle whipped back and curled around Gabriel, wrapping his torso, pinning his arms to his sides. The sword flew out of Gabriel’s hand, its blade smeared with ichor, the cross guard with blood.
Gabriel struggled, but the thing held him fast. Christopher shouted hoarsely and ran toward his father as shilling-size drops of scarlet blood pattered down around him. Thomas scrambled to his feet and dashed after Christopher, hurling himself at the massive tentacle. He plunged his seraph blade into the rubbery green-black flesh, over and over, dimly aware that beside him, Alastair Carstairs was doing the same.
* * *
Cordelia, Matthew, and James arrived at Mount Street Gardens at a run. The gate was open, the garden itself seemingly deserted. Cordelia slowed to a walk as they passed onto the footpaths that ran beneath the plane trees. She told herself that the silence—despite the red Jacobean primary school building looming up on the right—was due to the earliness of the morning. The schoolchildren wouldn’t have arrived yet, and it was chilly weather for a walk.
And yet, she could not shake her feeling of prickly unease, as if someone were watching them. But the raked footpaths were bare. James ranged restlessly across the park, hatless, his dark hair whipping in the wind as he searched. They were all glamoured—they would certainly have alarmed the pedestrians on South Audley Street otherwise—but it seemed no one was here to see them. She was wondering if they were too late—or too early—when James gave a hoarse bark of alarm.
“Matthew! Come quickly!”
Matthew and Cordelia exchanged a quick look of puzzlement; James was over by a bronze statue in the middle of the garden, waving furiously. Matthew ran to him, and after a moment, Cordelia followed.
She saw immediately why James had called Matthew to him first. The statue surmounted a now-dry bronze fountain; slumped behind the fountain was the body of a Shadowhunter—a man in gear, with dark red hair. Not far away, an object glittered on the pathway, as if it had fallen or been tossed aside. The pithos.
Nearing the fountain, Matthew froze. He had gone an awful color, like chalk.
“Charles,” he whispered.
He seemed unable to move. Cordelia caught hold of his hand and half dragged him to where James was kneeling by the body—no, not a body, she realized with relief. Charles was alive, if barely. James had rolled him onto his back, and his blood-soaked chest rose and fell unevenly.
James had his stele out and was frantically drawing iratzes on Charles’s skin, where a torn and bloody sleeve exposed his forearm. Cordelia heard Matthew suck in a ragged breath. He was staring intently at the runes, and Cordelia knew why: when a wound was fatal, iratzes would not hold their place on skin. They would vanish, overwhelmed by a level of damage they could not heal.
“They’re staying,” she whispered, though she knew it was not a guarantee. She squeezed Matthew’s hand hard. “Go—Matthew, you’ll hate yourself if you don’t.”
With a stiff nod, Matthew drew away and fell to his knees beside James. He laid his hand, long and slender, glittering with his signet ring, on his brother’s cheek. “Charles,” he said breathlessly. “Hang on, Charlie. We’ll get you help. We’ll—”
He broke off and sat motionless, one hand on his brother’s face, the other arrested in the motion of reaching for his stele. The slow rise and fall of Charles’s shallow breathing seemed to have stopped as well. They were frozen, like statues. Cordelia looked wildly at James, who was staring around them in amazement. The park was utterly silent, utterly still. Where were the sounds of birds—city starlings and sparrows? The sounds of London awakening: the cries of costermongers, the tread of pedestrians on their way to work? The rustle of leaves in the wind? The world felt still and frozen, as if pressed under glass.
But James—James could move too. Pocketing the pithos, he rose to his feet, seeking out Cordelia with his gaze. His golden eyes were burning. “Cordelia,” he said. “Turn around.”
She whirled to face the park gates and nearly jumped out of her skin: a young man was strolling toward them, whistling softly. The tune carried through the silent park like music in a church. The boy seemed familiar, though Cordelia couldn’t have said why; he was dark-haired and smiling, carrying a heavy sword with an etched crosspiece in one hand. He was dressed in a pure white suit as if it were summer, his shirt and jacket spattered with bright red blood. He was handsome—striking, really, with dark green eyes the color of new leaves. Yet something about him made her skin crawl. There was something feral about his smile, like the grin of the Cheshire cat.