Cassandra Clare - City of Ashes

"Everything," Isabelle said. "Clary, maybe we should have just let him go—"

"Let him die, you mean." Clary jerked her arm out of Isabelle's grip. "Of course that's what you think. You think everyone who isn't just like you is better off dead anyway."

Isabelle's face was the picture of misery. "That isn't—"

A sound tore through the clearing, a sound unlike any Clary had ever heard before—a sort of pounding rhythm coming from deep underground, as if suddenly the heartbeat of the world had become audible.

What's happening ? Clary thought, and then the ground buckled and heaved under her. She fell to her knees. The grave was roiling like the surface of an unsteady ocean. Ripples appeared in its surface. Suddenly it burst apart, clods of dirt flying. A small mountain of dirt, like an anthill, heaved itself upward. At the center of the mountain was a hand, fingers splayed, clawing at the dirt.

" Simon !" Clary tried to rush forward, but Raphael yanked her back.

"Let me go!" She tried to pull herself free, but Raphael's grip was like steel. "Can't you see he needs our help?"

"He should do this himself," Raphael said, without loosening his hold on her. "It is better that way."

"It's your way! It's not mine!" She jerked herself out of his grip and ran toward the grave, just as it heaved upward, hurling her back to the ground. A hunched shape was forcing itself out of the hastily dug grave, fingers like filthy claws sunk deep into the earth. Its bare arms were streaked black with dirt and blood. It tore itself free of the sucking earth, crawled a few feet, and collapsed onto the ground.

"Simon," she whispered. Because of course it was Simon, Simon , not an it . She scrambled to her feet and ran toward him, her sneakers sinking deep into the churned earth.

"Clary!" Jace shouted. "What are you doing?"

She stumbled, her ankle twisting as her leg sank into the dirt. She fell onto her knees next to Simon, who lay as still as if he really were dead. His hair was filthy and matted with clots of dirt, his glasses gone, his T-shirt torn down the side, blood on the skin that showed under it. "Simon," she said, and reached to touch his shoulder. "Simon, are you—"

His body tensed under her fingers, every muscle tightening, his skin hard as iron.

"—all right?" she finished.

He turned his head, and she saw his eyes. They were blank, lifeless. With a sharp cry he rolled over and sprang at her, swift as a striking snake. He struck her squarely, knocking her back into the dirt. "Simon!" she shouted, but he didn't seem to hear. His face was twisted, unrecognizable as he loomed up over her, his lips curling back, and she saw his sharp canines, the fang-teeth, gleam in the moonlight like white bone needles. Suddenly terrified, she kicked out at him, but he grabbed her shoulders and forced her back down into the dirt. His hands were bloody, the nails broken, but he was incredibly strong, stronger even than her own Shadowhunter muscles. The bones in her shoulders ground together painfully as he bent down over her—

And was plucked away and sent flying as if he weighed no more than a pebble. Clary shot to her feet, gasping, and met Raphael's grim gaze. "I told you to stay away from him," he said, and turned to kneel down by Simon, who had landed a short distance away and was curled, twitching, on the ground.

Clary sucked in a breath. It sounded like a sob. "He doesn't know me."

"He knows you. He doesn't care." Raphael looked over his shoulder at Jace. "He is starving. He needs blood."

Jace, who had been standing white-faced and frozen at the grave's edge, stepped forward and held out the plastic bag mutely, like an offering. Raphael snatched it and tore it open. A number of plastic packets of red fluid fell out. He seized one, muttering, and tore it open with sharp nails, spattering blood down the front of his dirt-stained white shirt.

Simon, as if scenting the blood, curled up and let out a piteous wail. He was still twitching; his broken-nailed hands gouged at the dirt and his eyes were rolled back to the whites. Raphael held out the blood packet, letting some of the red fluid drip onto Simon's face, streaking the white skin with scarlet. "There you go," he said, almost in a croon. "Drink, little fledgling. Drink."

And Simon, who had been a vegetarian since he was ten years old, who wouldn't drink milk that wasn't organic, who fainted at the sight of needles—Simon snatched the packet of blood out of Raphael's thin brown hand and tore into it with his teeth. He swallowed the blood in a few gulps and tossed the packet aside with another wail; Raphael was ready with a second one, and pressed it into his hand. "Do not drink too fast," he cautioned. "You will make yourself sick." Simon, of course, ignored him; he had managed to get the second packet open without help and was gulping greedily at the contents. Blood ran from the corners of his mouth, down his throat, and spattered his hands with fat red drops. His eyes were closed.

Raphael turned to look at Clary. She could feel Jace staring at her too, and the others, all with identical expressions of horror and disgust. "Next time he feeds," Raphael said calmly, "it will not be quite so messy."

Messy . Clary turned away and stumbled out of the clearing, hearing Jace call out for her but ignoring him, starting to run when she reached the trees. She was halfway down the hill when the pain hit. She went to her knees, gagging, as everything in her stomach came up in a wrenching flood. When it was over, she crawled a short distance away and collapsed against the ground. She knew she was probably lying on someone's grave, but she didn't care. She rested her hot face against the cool dirt and thought, for the first time, that maybe the dead weren't so unlucky after all.

The critical care unit of Beth Israel hospital alwaysreminded Clary of photos she'd seen of Antarctica: It was cold and remote-feeling, and everything was either gray, white, or pale blue. The walls of her mother's room were white, the tubes that snaked around her head and the endless beeping banks of instruments around the bed were gray, and the blanket pulled up around her chest was pale blue. Her face was white. The only color in the room was her red hair, flaring across the snowy expanse of pillow like a bright, incongruous flag planted at the south pole.

Clary wondered how Luke was managing to pay for this private room, where the money had come from and how he'd gotten it. She supposed she could ask him when he got back from buying vending machine coffee in the ugly little café on the third floor. The coffee from the machine down there looked like tar and tasted like it too, but Luke seemed addicted to the stuff.

The metal legs of the bedside chair squeaked across the floor as Clary pulled it out and sat down slowly, smoothing her skirt down over her legs. Whenever she came to see her mother in the hospital she felt nervous and dry-mouthed, as if she were about to get in trouble for something. Maybe because the only times she'd ever seen her mother's face like this, flat and without animation, was when her mother was about to explode with rage.

"Mom," she said. She reached out and took her mother's left hand; there was a puncture mark on the wrist still, where Valentine had shoved one end of a tube. The skin of her mother's hand—always rough and chapped, spattered with paint and turpentine—felt like the dry bark of a tree. Clary folded her fingers around Jocelyn's, feeling a hard lump come into her throat. "Mom, I…" She cleared her throat. "Luke says you can hear me. I don't know if that's true or not. Anyway, I came because I needed to talk to you. It's okay if you can't say anything back. See, the thing is, it's…" She swallowed again and looked toward the window, the strip of blue sky visible at the edge of the brick wall that faced the hospital. "It's Simon. Something's happened to him. Something that was my fault."