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“And the better dancer.”
“James, this terrible habit of lying seems to have come on you suddenly. I am concerned, very concerned—”
Behind them, Anna called out. James whirled to see her standing with her hand at her chest; her Lightwood pendant was pulsing in flashes of bright red, like intermittent fire.
It could mean only one thing. Demons.
21 UNDER A DRAGON MOON
Do you remember when we went
Under a dragon moon,
And ’mid volcanic tints of night
Walked where they fought the unknown fight
And saw black trees on the battle-height,
Black thorn on Ethandune?
—G. K. Chesterton, Ballad of the White Horse
Mantid demons, Cordelia saw, seven or eight of them, chittering as they sprang over the metal fence surrounding the square’s central garden. They kept their jagged forelegs folded against their chests, though Cordelia knew they could whip out with shocking speed, slashing anything in their path like straight razors. Their heads were triangular, with long mandibles clicking to either side, their eyes blank, ovoid and white.
James slid his pistol from his belt. Cocked and aimed it. “Cordelia, Jesse, Anna,” he said in a low, calm voice. “Get to the house. We’ll deal with these.”
Cordelia hesitated. Part of her suspected James was just trying to get her out of the way of the fight. She’d been the only person in the weapons room at the Institute not to pick up equipment. She knew she couldn’t risk it, couldn’t risk summoning Lilith, however much she hated to duck away from a fight.
And Jesse, of course, for all that he was armed, wasn’t trained. He didn’t seem bothered, though. He glanced once at Lucie, already swinging her axe, before he turned and ran silently alongside Cordelia and Anna toward the Lightwoods’ house.
At first it seemed that all the windows were dark, but a faint glow showed around one side of the house, like a spark of reflected moonlight. Anna tensed, and gestured for Jesse and Cordelia to follow her quietly.
As they slipped around the house, keeping to the shadow of the wall, Cordelia could hear the noises of fighting from the square. Metal scraping stone, grunts and hisses, the thick sound of a blade colliding with demon flesh, all of it punctuated every few minutes by the sharp report of a gun.
They turned a corner. They were behind the house now, almost up against the fence that divided the Lightwoods’ property from the one next door. An arched window here was lit with a soft radiance; in its glow, Cordelia could see the harsh fury on Anna’s face. Her parents’ home, the place she had grown up, had been invaded.
The three Shadowhunters gathered at the edge of the window and peered inside. There was Gabriel and Cecily’s sitting room, as it always was, with blankets folded in a basket near the comfortable-looking couch, and a Tiffany lamp casting a warm glow over the room.
Before the cold fireplace, Tatiana sat in an armchair, Alexander cradled in her arms. Her lips were moving. Cordelia’s stomach turned. Was she singing to him?
Alexander was struggling, but feebly; Tatiana’s grip on him seemed to be iron-hard. With one hand, she pulled up the jacket of his little suit, and then his shirt, while with the other—with the other, gripping a stele, she began to draw a rune on his bare chest.
Cordelia stifled a moan of horror. You simply couldn’t put runes on a three-year-old; it would be traumatic, painful, very likely dangerous to the child’s survival. It was an act of brutal cruelty: pain for the sake of its own infliction.
Alexander screamed. He twisted and thrashed in Tatiana’s grasp, but Tatiana held him down, her stele slicing like a scalpel across his skin, and Cordelia, without thinking, formed her gloved hand into a fist and punched the window with every bit of her strength.
Her hand slammed into the glass, which cracked and spiderwebbed, a few shards splintering outward. Pain shot up her arm, and Jesse caught hold of her, yanking her aside as Anna, her face like stone, bashed the rest of the window out with her elbow. Cracked as it was, it fell apart in enormous shards; Anna swung herself up onto the sill and dove through the jagged hole.
Jesse followed, turning to pull Cordelia up after him. He caught at her hands, lifting her, and she bit her lip to keep from screaming out in pain. Her glove had not been designed to withstand being driven through a pane of glass; it had torn wide open across her knuckles, and her lacerated hand was bleeding freely.
She landed on a worn Persian carpet. In front of her was Anna, swinging a long blade. She struck Tatiana in the shoulder, and Tatiana cried out, flinging the screaming Alexander away from her.
Anna dropped her sword, diving to catch her little brother. Tatiana bared her teeth, turned, and fled through the nearest open door.
Anna, on her knees, cradled the sobbing Alexander against her chest, frantically stroking his hair. “Baby, baby boy,” she soothed, before turning a wild look on Jesse and Cordelia. “Go after Tatiana! Stop her!”
Cordelia raced through the house with Jesse. It was nearly too dark to see; she fumbled a witchlight from her coat pocket, letting its white glow illuminate the space. Jesse followed her in a mad dash down hallways, past an empty kitchen, and into a library. He stopped to peer into the shadows while Cordelia raced through the next doorway and into a dimly lit music room—where she found Tatiana sitting blank-faced on the bench in front of the piano.
