City of Ashes: Mortal Instruments, Book 2 (The Mortal Instruments, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Cassandra Clare is the author of the #1 New York Times, USA TODAY, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestselling Shadowhunter Chronicles. She is also the coauthor of the bestselling fantasy series Magisterium with Holly Black. The Shadowhunter Chronicles have been adapted as both a major motion picture and a television series. Her books have more than fifty million copies in print worldwide and have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Cassandra lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and three fearsome cats. Visit her at CassandraClare.com. Learn more about the world of the Shadowhunters at Shadowhunters.com.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Now with a gorgeous new cover, a map, a new foreword, and exclusive bonus content!

Clary and Jace must ask themselves if love is worth betraying everything in the “so good, it’s dangerous” (Holly Black) second book in the New York Times and internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series. City of Ashes is a Shadowhunters novel.

Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what’s normal when you’re a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? If Clary left the world of the Shadowhunters behind, it would mean more time with her best friend, Simon, who’s becoming more than a friend. But the Shadowhunting world isn’t ready to let her go―especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound brother, Jace. And Clary’s only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil―and also her father.

To complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings―and if he is, what is he trying to do? When the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor arrives to investigate and zooms right in on Jace. How can Clary stop Valentine if Jace is willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father?

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1: Valentine’s Arrow

1 VALENTINE’S ARROW

“Are you still mad?”

Alec, leaning against the wall of the elevator, glared across the small space at Jace. “I’m not mad.”

“Oh, yes you are.” Jace gestured accusingly at his stepbrother, then yelped as pain shot up his arm. Every part of him hurt from the thumping he’d taken that afternoon when he’d dropped three floors through rotted wood onto a pile of scrap metal. Even his fingers were bruised. Alec, who’d only recently put away the crutches he’d had to use after his fight with Abbadon, didn’t look much better than Jace felt. His clothes were covered in mud and his hair hung down in lank, sweaty strips. There was a long cut down the side of his cheek.

“I am not,” Alec said, through his teeth. “Just because you said dragon demons were extinct—”

“I said mostly extinct.”

Alec jabbed a finger toward him. “Mostly extinct,” he said, his voice trembling with rage, “is NOT EXTINCT ENOUGH.”

“I see,” said Jace. “I’ll just have them change the entry in the demonology textbook from ‘almost extinct’ to ‘not extinct enough for Alec. He prefers his monsters really, really extinct.’ Will that make you happy?”

“Boys, boys,” said Isabelle, who’d been examining her face in the elevator’s mirrored wall. “Don’t fight.” She turned away from the glass with a sunny smile. “All right, so it was a little more action than we were expecting, but I thought it was fun.”

Alec looked at her and shook his head. “How do you manage never to get mud on you?”

Isabelle shrugged philosophically. “I’m pure at heart. It repels the dirt.”

Jace snorted so loudly that she turned on him with a frown. He wiggled his mud-caked fingers at her. His nails were black crescents. “Filthy inside and out.”

Isabelle was about to reply when the elevator ground to a halt with the sound of screeching brakes. “Time to get this thing fixed,” she said, yanking the door open. Jace followed her out into the entryway, already looking forward to shucking his armor and weapons and stepping into a hot shower. He’d convinced his siblings to come hunting with him despite the fact that neither of them was entirely comfortable going out on their own now that Hodge wasn’t there to give them instructions. But Jace had wanted the oblivion of fighting, the harsh diversion of killing, and the distraction of injuries. And knowing he wanted it, they’d gone along with it, crawling through filthy deserted subway tunnels until they’d found the Draconidae demon and killed it. The three of them working together in perfect unison, the way they always had. Like family.

He unzipped his jacket and slung it over one of the pegs hanging on the wall. Alec was sitting on the low wooden bench next to him, kicking off his muck-covered boots. He was humming tunelessly under his breath, letting Jace know he wasn’t that annoyed. Isabelle was pulling the pins out of her long dark hair, allowing it to shower down around her. “Now I’m hungry,” she said. “I wish Mom were here to cook us something.”

“Better that she isn’t,” said Jace, unbuckling his weapons belt. “She’d already be shrieking about the rugs.”

“You’re right about that,” said a cool voice, and Jace swung around, his hands still at his belt, and saw Maryse Lightwood, her arms folded, standing in the doorway. She wore a stiff black traveling suit and her hair, black as Isabelle’s, was drawn back into a thick rope that hung halfway down her back. Her eyes, a glacial blue, swept over the three of them like a tracking searchlight.

“Mom!” Isabelle, recovering her composure, ran to her mother for a hug. Alec got to his feet and joined them, trying to hide the fact that he was still limping.

Jace stood where he was. There had been something in Maryse’s eyes as her gaze had passed over him that froze him in place. Surely what he had said wasn’t that bad. They joked about her obsession with the antique rugs all the time—

“Where’s Dad?” Isabelle asked, stepping back from her mother. “And Max?”

There was an almost imperceptible pause. Then Maryse said, “Max is in his room. And your father, unfortunately, is still in Alicante. There was some business there that required his attention.”

Alec, generally more sensitive to moods than his sister, seemed to hesitate. “Is something wrong?”

“I could ask you that.” His mother’s tone was dry. “Are you limping?”

“I…”

Alec was a terrible liar. Isabelle picked up for him, smoothly:

“We had a run-in with a Draconidae demon in the subway tunnels. But it was nothing.”

“And I suppose that Greater Demon you fought last week, that was nothing too?”

Even Isabelle was silenced by that. She looked to Jace, who wished she hadn’t.

“That wasn’t planned for.” Jace was having a hard time concentrating. Maryse hadn’t greeted him yet, hadn’t said so much as hello, and she was still looking at him with eyes like blue daggers. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach that was beginning to spread. She’d never looked at him like this before, no matter what he’d done. “It was a mistake—”

“Jace!” Max, the youngest Lightwood, squeezed his way around Maryse and darted into the room, evading his mother’s reaching hand. “You’re back! You’re all back.” He turned in a circle, grinning at Alec and Isabelle in triumph. “I thought I heard the elevator.”

“And I thought I told you to stay in your room,” said Maryse.

“I don’t remember that,” said Max, with a seriousness that made even Alec smile. Max was small for his age—he looked about seven—but he had a self-contained gravity that, combined with his oversize glasses, gave him the air of someone older. Alec reached over and ruffled his brother’s hair, but Max was still looking at Jace, his eyes shining. Jace felt the cold fist clenched in his stomach relax ever so slightly. Max had always hero-worshiped him in a way that he didn’t worship his own older brother, probably because Jace was far more tolerant of Max’s presence. “I heard you fought a Greater Demon,” he said. “Was it awesome?”

“It was… different,” Jace hedged. “How was Alicante?”

“It was awesome. We saw the coolest stuff. There’s this huge armory in Alicante and they took me to some of the places where they make the weapons. They showed me a new way to make seraph blades too, so they last longer, and I’m going to try to get Hodge to show me—”

Jace couldn’t help it; his eyes flicked instantly to Maryse, his expression incredulous. So Max didn’t know about Hodge? Hadn’t she told him?

Maryse saw his look and her lips thinned into a knifelike line. “That’s enough, Max.” She took her youngest son by the arm.
...