Nora was lying on the ground, blood making her shirt stick to her torso. She wasn't sure if it was hers, or someone—or something—else's.
She could smell demon on the air. It was unlike any scent she had ever come across: a rotten stench, all sulfur and garbage and dirt. She lifted her head, and a horrible, stabbing pain lanced through her temple, causing her stomach to twist.
She couldn't see much in front of her. Her vision was blurry, and just moving her head had made it worse. She felt bile rise up in the back of her throat.
I am going to die here, she thought.
She couldn't tell where her stele was. Her quiver of arrows was gone from her back. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes. The reek of the demon was growing stronger, only further increasing Nora's sense of nausea. She knew she needed to find something—anything—that would protect her.
Where was help when she needed it? She had been thrust into this strange new world without a choice, but she'd had others by her side, there to teach her how to survive. She'd always had a guiding hand close by. Now, she had nothing. She figured that was what training as a Shadowhunter was meant to do: to prepare you for the moments when you were alone, to see if you were really good enough.
Nora knew she wouldn't be able to fight the demon off. She waited to be struck by a pang of fear, or hopelessness, or possibly desperation. But instead, a cold sort of calm swept over her, turning her limbs numb. Soon, she was like a statue on the earth, motionless and unfeeling.
A gurgling sound flooded her ears. She peered up through hazy vision at the monster standing before her.
It was a long, scaled demon with a cluster of eyes set dead center in the front of its domed skull. It was something like a cross between an alligator, centipede and scorpion with a thick flat snout and a barbed tail. Its multiple legs were all bent as it crouched down, preparing to spring, to feed on her body. Its ropelike, black tongue dripped with green fluid, and, as Nora watched, it unsheathed several sets of wicked, bladelike claws.
Nora closed her eyes.