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| Simon & Schuster |
We’re only WEEKS away from the release of the final book in Cassie Clare‘s hit young adult series, The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire. (May 27, where are you??) While we
There are some loose lips (and fingertips) over at Simon & Shuster, so we got our hands on a LEAKED excerpt from the jaw-dropping final chapter of CoHF entitled, “The Reaping of Alicante.” And when we say ‘jaw-dropping,’ we mean literal mouths opening, eyes bugging out, hands jittering status. So, without further ado, welcome to the reaping…
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The sky was on fire. Clary never imagined that Jonathan could wreak such havoc. The demon towers of Alicante were cracking, sparking, as though all of Idris could not bear to hold the forces of the Dark Shadowhunters. The city was weeping, screaming in fury at the blood running through the streets.
Brother fought brother. Sister fought sister. Shadowhunter fought Shadowhunter.
No one knew that Jonathan had invaded the Topeka Institute. Oh sure, they heard the building was flattened, but they had thought it was just a tornado, like in The Wizard of Oz. They’d never thought that the Dark Shadowhunters had… upgraded. Or that they would bring their new weaponry to Idris.
”Dive, Clary!” Simon called, and she leapt out of the way of an oncoming tractor. The Endarkened Topeka warriors had might on their side. Bulldozers plowed through the streets of Alicante. Tillers left the mangled bodies of Shadowhunters in their wake. And up above, crop dusters dive bombed the crowds, dropping powdered electrum — lethal to Shadowhunters when inhaled. Clary noticed Jace, Alec, and Izzy wheezing a bit from the electrum’s influence, but they were truly too hardy to take down.
Alec stood back to back with Magnus, slinging his arrows while Magnus struck the planes down from the heavens. Dark Shadowhunters fell at their feet. But one of the crop dusters was proving evasive, and it swung low overhead, pouring something thicker than powder out the side. Clary screamed as Alec and Magnus dove too late, and were covered with molten electrum. Holding hands, their fate together was now sealed for all eternity.
Clary tried to reach Isabelle, who was shrieking for her brother. Izzy attacked the tractors, trying to gain leverage. Her whip snapped around the neck of a Dark Shadowhunter, and she screamed “That’s for my brother, you bastard!” as he fell off the side.
Clary turned back to Jace, glorious, resplendent Jace, more at home on the battlefield than anywhere else. He spun, seraph blades dancing, slicing into everything in his path. Limbs flew, heads rolled, as he made his way to Jonathan, who was standing atop a giant combine harvester.
”If it isn’t my friend Jace,” called Jonathan, laughing from atop the machine. “If only you Shadowhunters had learned about proper agricultural machinery, you would have been able to stop me. If only you hadn’t maligned the Topeka Institute for so long. They begged to join me. And you should too.”
”I’ll never join you. Clary will never join you. I will die protecting her from you, and with my very last breath, I will defy you.”
Jonathan sighed. “Oh well, I only ask once. Dance before these blades, little Shadowhunter.” The harvester started. The blades whirled. Jace tried to run, but the machine was too fast. He screamed as he got sucked into the blades.
”Stop, Jonathan!” Clary and Simon sat side by side on a tractor. She glared at her brother’s quirked eyebrow. “Don’t you remember?” she asks. “I spent every summer on Luke’s farm!”
And then she gunned the engine, and rammed the combine harvester. It came to a crashing halt. Simon leaped off and attacked Jonathan, biting his neck. Jonathan’s blood soaked the ground. Clary flew off the tractor and found Jace, who was lying between the harvester’s blades and tires, coughing up blood.
”It wasn’t supposed to end like this!” she cried. “We were going to be together forever.”
”We will be together forever,” Jace sputtered. “I’ll just be waiting on the other side for you.” She wept into his wounds, her flame red hair cover his chest. “Clary?” he asked.
”Yes, Jace?”
”When I’m gone… promise me… you won’t date Simon.” And he died in her arms.
Clary wept. She wept for the injustices of the world, and for her beloved boyfriend Jace.
She looked around the field and realized the day was not lost. Isabelle and Simon were still fighting. Isabelle tackled the last tractor, but Clary watched as her whip got caught in the machinery. Clary dropped Jace and raced to help Izzy, but she reached her too late. Isabelle was pulled under the tractor, screaming, and flattened.
As the machine reached her neck, the ruby pendant snapped off and flew at Clary, soaring through her open mouth and lodging in her throat. She sputtered, choking — heaving — but was unable to dislodge it. Her breathing was shallow, and she rasped out a final cry: “Simon!” before she died, mere feet from Jace’s broken body.
At her call, Simon ran over to her, forgetting the final crop duster, circling above. As he knelt before Clary and cried “Nooooo!” to the heavens, he saw his doom fast approaching. The last, listing plane, had dropped a piano. Not even Simon, with his vampire reflexes, could dodge it.
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And there you have it, folks. For more from The Mortal Instruments: City of Heavenly Fire, you’ll have to wait until May 27. Are you surprised by the ending? Talk about it in the comments below!
Source: teen
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