Blood of the Hunt

Blood of the Hunt - Chapter 7

Carstairs. Would he one day lie within those cold stone walls? Who would be there to close his eyes when death came for him?

His tired feet stopped in the grass. They knew the way well.

Herondale.

The sun peeked over the natural crest that rose along the eastern side of the necropolis and Jem turned his back on it. He slipped inside the tomb and out of the light.

Silence folded around him like a shroud, the thick walls of the crypt blocking out the quiet sounds of the world coming awake outside. He followed the gentle slope downward toward the vaulted archway that led to the main chamber. Carved angels guided his way and welcomed him back, his constant companions through the decades he had spent visiting his parabatai's final resting place both as a Silent Brother and later as a mortal man once more. Stone herons adorned the walls, their graceful forms frozen in flight for all time.

A long, low, alabaster slab rested in the centre of the circular vault, and Jem gently laid Tessa down upon it with a heavy heart. A pool of diffuse light filtered down through the delicate lattice work above and gave her a soft glow that almost made her seem alive once more. The walls were lined with small, square doors that masked the ossuaries hidden behind them, and each was marked with the names of the Herondales who had given their lives in service to the Clave over the centuries. Though the majority of their ashes would have been used to strength the Silent City, every Shadowhunter's family was given a small portion to honour as they saw fit, and many Herondales had found their way here.

William Owen Herondale, 1861-1937. The marker had stood for nearly a century, and it never got easier to see it. Jem drew in an unsteady breath as he gathered his strength for what was to come. He could not allow anyone else to do it.

"Watch over her, Will," he whispered to his parabatai. "I won't be gone long."

Near the beginning of Shadowhunter history, David the Silent had founded the original city of bones in a subterranean cave nearby, and it had grown over the course of four centuries to become the Silent City. Passages known only to the Brotherhood still existed between the graveyard used by regular Shadowhunters and the catacombs below, and Jem made his way toward one of the entrances as he replayed his last moments with Tessa over and over in his mind.

We'll be together again soon, she said again and again, not knowing that it was a lie.

Jem passed into the tunnels below Idris that led back to his old life as he struggled to face the reality of his new one. What was left to him now?

James... Lucie... they were resting above.

Cordelia... Alastair... faded into the past.

His place had never been here, not now, not a century after he should have passed from this life. His body had been suspended in time, but his heart had remained behind. Tessa was all that he had had left.

James Carstairs, a man's deep voice echoed in his mind with a faint note of surprise.

Jem looked up tiredly and saw that he had missed the point at which the walls had changed to the familiar dark stone of the Silent City. A hooded figure had drawn up short under an ancient torch bracket outside one of the many archive rooms on the uppermost level of the city.

"Brother Enoch," Jem whispered in a strangled rasp. He felt the familiar touch of a Brother on his mind and he opened himself to it, grateful that he did not need to find words to explain his need. It was gone moments later, and Enoch laid his runed and scarred hand on Jem's shoulder in quiet sympathy.