The Bane Chronicles

by Cassandra Clare

  More disturbing was the silence from all the vampires in the room who watched him being led along by Dolly to the hallway. And then there was the sofa full of unmoving humans—subjugates, no doubt, all dazed and slumped, their mouths hanging open, the bruises and wounds on their necks and arms and hands looking quite ugly. The glass table in front of them had a fine coating of white powder and a few razor blades. The only noise was the muted music and a low rumble of thunder outside.

  “This way,” Dolly said, taking Magnus by the sleeve.

  The hall was dark, and there were clothes and shoes all over the floor. Muffled noises came from the three doors along the hall. Dolly walked right to the end, to a double door. She rapped on this once and pushed it open.

  “Go ahead,” she said, still smiling her weird little smile.

  In stark contrast to the whiteness of everything in the living room, this room was the dark side of the apartment. The carpet was an indigo black, like a nighttime sea. The walls were covered in deep silver wallpaper. The lamp shades were all covered by gold and silver shawls and throws. The tables were all mirrored, reflecting the view back and forth again. And in the middle of it all was a massive black lacquer bed with black sheets and a heavy gold cover. And on it was Camille, in a peach silk kimono.

  And a hundred years seemed to vanish. Magnus felt himself unable to speak for a moment. It might as well have been London again, the whole twentieth century rolled up into a ball and tossed aside.

  But then the present moment came crashing back when Camille began an ungainly crawl in his direction, slipping on the satin sheets.

  “Magnus! Magnus! Magnus! Come here! Come! Sit down!”

  Her silver-blond hair was long and down, looking wild. She patted the end of the bed. This was not the greeting he’d been expecting. This was not the Camille he remembered, or even the one he had seen in passing.

  As he made to step over what he thought was a lump of clothing, he realized there was a human on the floor, facedown. He bent down and gently reached into the mass of long black hair to turn the person’s face upward. It was a woman, and there was still some warmth in her, and a faint pulse beating in her neck.

  “That’s Sarah,” Camille said, flopping onto the bed and hanging her head off the end to watch.

  “You’ve been feeding from her,” Magnus said. “Is she a willing donor?”

  “Oh, she loves it. Now, Magnus . . . You look marvelous, by the way. Is that Halston? . . . We’re just about to go out. And you are coming with us.”

  She slid from the bed and tripped her way into a massive closet. Magnus heard hangers being scraped along rails. Magnus examined the girl on the floor again. She had punctures all over her neck—and now she was smiling weakly at Magnus and pushing back her hair, offering him a bite.

  “I’m not a vampire,” he said, resting her head gently on the floor again. “And you should get out of here. Do you want my help?”

  The girl made a sound that was just between a laugh and a whimper.

  “Which one of these?” Camille said as she came stumbling back out of the closet, holding two almost identical black evening dresses.

  “This girl is weak,” he said. “Camille, you’ve taken too much blood from her. She needs a hospital.”

  “She’s fine. Leave her alone. Help me pick a dress.”

  Everything about this exchange was wrong. This was not how the reunion should have gone. It should have been coy; it should have had many strange pauses and moments of double meaning. Instead Camille was acting like she’d just seen Magnus yesterday. Like they were simply friends. It was enough of an entry to allow him to get to the point.

  “I’m here because there’s a problem, Camille. Your vampires are killing people and leaving bodies on the street. They’re overfeeding.”

  “Oh, Magnus.” Camille shook her head. “I may be in charge, but I don’t control them. You have to allow for a certain amount of freedom.”

  “This includes killing mundanes and leaving their bodies out on the sidewalk?”

  Camille was no longer listening. She had dropped the dresses onto the bed and was picking though a pile of earrings. Meanwhile Sarah was attempting to crawl in Camille’s direction. Without even looking at her, Camille set a mirror full of white powder down on the floor. Sarah went right for it and began sniffing it up.

  And then Magnus understood.

  While human drugs didn’t quite work on Downworlders, there was no telling what would happen when that drug was run through a human circulatory system and then ingested through the human blood.

  It all made sense. The disarray. The confused behavior. The frenzied feeding in the clubs. The fact that they all looked so ill, that their personalities seemed to have changed. He’d seen this a thousand times in mundanes.

  Camille was looking at him now, her gaze unwavering.

  “Come out with us tonight, Magnus,” she cooed. “You are a man who knows a good time. I am a woman who provides a good time. Come out with us.”

  “Camille, you have to stop. You have to know how dangerous this is.”

  “It’s not going to kill me, Magnus. That’s quite impossible. And you don’t understand how it feels.”

  “The drug can’t kill you, but other things can. If you continue like this, you know there are people out there who can’t let you go on murdering mundanes. Someone will act.”

  “Let them try,” she said. “I could take on ten Shadowhunters once I’ve had some of this.”

  “It may not be—”

  Camille dropped to the floor before he could finish and buried her face into Sarah’s neck. Sarah flailed once and groaned, then became silent and motionless. He heard the sickening sound of the drinking, the sucking. Camille lifted her head, blood all around her mouth, running down her chin.

  “Are you coming or not?” she said. “I would simply love to take you to Studio 54. You’ve never had a night out like one of our nights out.”

  Magnus had to force himself to keep looking at her like this.

  “Let me help you. A few hours, a few days—I could get this out of your system.”

  Camille dragged the back of her hand across her mouth, smearing the blood onto her cheek.

  “If you’re not coming along, then stay out of our way. Consider this a polite warning, Magnus. Dolly!”

  Dolly was already at the door. “Think you’re done here,” she said.

  Magnus watched Camille sink her teeth into Sarah again.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think I am.”

  Outside, a downpour was in progress. The doorman held an umbrella over Magnus’s head and hailed him a cab. The incongruity of the civility downstairs and what he’d seen upstairs was . . .

  It wasn’t to be thought about. Magnus got into the cab, gave his destination, and closed his eyes. The rain drummed onto the cab. It felt like the rain was beating directly onto his brain.

  Magnus wasn’t surprised to find Lincoln sitting on the steps by his door. Wearily he waved him inside.

  “Well?” Lincoln said.

  “It’s not good,” Magnus replied, pulling off his wet jacket. “It’s the drugs. They’re feeding on the blood of people who are taking drugs. It must be escalating their need and lowering their impulse control.”

  “You’re right,” Lincoln said. “That isn’t good. I thought it might have something to do with the drugs, but I thought they were immune to things like addiction.”

  Magnus poured them each a glass of wine, and they sat and listened to the rain for a moment.

  “Can you help her?” Lincoln asked.

  “If she lets me. But you can’t cure an addict who doesn’t want to be cured.”

  “No,” Lincoln said. “I’ve seen that myself with our own. But you understand . . . we can’t let this behavior continue.”

  “I know you c
an’t.”

  Lincoln finished his wine and set the glass down gently.

  “I’m sorry, Magnus. I really am. But if it happens again, you need to leave it to us.”

  Magnus nodded. Lincoln gave him a squeeze on the shoulder, then let himself out.

  For the next several days Magnus kept to himself. The weather was brutal, flicking between heat and storm. He tried to forget about the scene in Camille’s apartment, and the best way to forget was to keep busy. He hadn’t really kept up with his work for the last two years. There were clients to call. There were spells to study and translations to do. Books to read. The apartment needed redecorating. There were new restaurants and new bars and new people. . . .

  Every time he stopped, he flashed back to the sight of Camille squatting on the carpet, the girl limp in her arms, the mirror full of drugs, Camille’s face covered in blood. The mess. The stink. The horror. The blank looks.

  When you lost someone to addiction—and he had lost many—you lost something very precious. You watched them fall. You waited for them to hit the bottom. It was a terrible wait. He would have nothing to do with it. What happened now was not his problem. He had no doubt that Lincoln and the werewolves would take care of things, and the less he knew the better.

  It kept him awake at night. That, and the thunder.

  Sleeping alone was Hell, so he decided not to sleep alone.

  He still woke up.

  It was the night of July thirteenth—lucky thirteen. The thunderstorm outside was incredibly loud, louder than the air conditioner, louder than the radio. Magnus was just finishing up a translation and was about to go out to dinner, when the lights flickered. The radio faded in and out. Then everything went very bright as power surged through the wires. Then . . .

  Out. Air conditioner, lights, radio, everything. Magnus flicked his hand absently and lit a candle on his desk. Power outages were not uncommon. It was a moment before he realized that things had grown very quiet and very dark indeed, and there were voices shouting outside. He went to the window and opened it.

  Everything was dark. The streetlights. Every building. Everything except the headlights of the cars. He took the candle and carefully walked down the two flights to the street and joined the excited masses of people. The rain had stopped—it was just thunder grumbling in the background.

  New York . . . was off. Everything was off. There was no skyline. There was no glow of the Empire State Building. It was utterly, utterly dark. And one word was being yelled from window to window, from street to car to doorway . . .

  “BLACKOUT.”

  The parties started almost at once. It was the ice cream shop on the corner that kicked it off, selling anything they had for a dime a cone, and then just giving away the ice cream to anyone who came by with a bowl or a cup. Then the bars started passing around cocktails in paper cups to passersby. Everyone poured out onto the streets. People propped battery-powered radios in the windows, so there was a mix of music and news reports. The outage had been caused by a lightning strike. All of New York was down. It would be hours—days?—before service was restored.

  Magnus returned to his apartment, got a bottle of champagne from his refrigerator, and returned to his front stoop to drink it, sharing it with a few people who walked past. It was too hot to stay inside, and the outside was far too interesting to miss. People started dancing on the sidewalk, and he joined in for a while. He accepted a martini from a nice young man with a beautiful smile.

  Then there was a hissing. People gathered around one of the radios, one playing news. Magnus and his new friend, who was named David, joined them.

  “. . . fires throughout the five boroughs. More than a hundred fires have been reported in the last hour. And we have multiple reports of lootings. Gunfire is being exchanged. Please—if you are out tonight, use extreme caution. Though all police have been called in to duty, there are not enough officers to . . .”

  Another radio a few yards away, on a different station, gave a similar report.

  “. . . hundreds of stores have been broken into. There are reports of total breakdowns in some areas. You are strongly advised to stay indoors. If you cannot get home, seek shelter in a . . .”

  In the short silence, Magnus could hear sirens in the distance. The Village was a tight community, so it celebrated. But clearly this was not the case all over the city.

  “Magnus!”

  Magnus turned to find Greg breaking through the group. He pulled Magnus away from the crowd, into a quiet space between two parked cars.

  “I thought that was you,” he said. “It’s all happening. They’ve gone nuts. The blackout. . . . The vampires are going crazy at this club. I can’t even explain it. It’s on Tenth Ave and down a block. No cabs in this blackout. You have to run.”

  Now that Magnus was trying to get somewhere, he realized the pure madness of the blacked-out streets. Since there were no traffic lights, normal people were trying to guide traffic. Cars were either frozen in place or moving far too fast. Some were parked and turned inward, their headlights being used to illuminate stores and restaurants. Everyone was out—the Village had poured out of every building, and there was no room anywhere. Magnus and Greg had to weave through the people, through the cars, tripping in the dark.

  The crowds thinned somewhat the closer they got to the river. The club was in one of the old meatpacking warehouses. The brick industrial facade had been painted silver, and the word ELECTRICA, along with a lightning bolt, was above the old service doors. Two werewolves stood by these, holding flashlights, and Lincoln waited off to the side. He was deep in conversation with Consuela, who was his second-in-command. When they saw Magnus, Consuela stepped aside to a waiting van, and Lincoln came over.

  “This is what we feared,” Lincoln said. “We waited too long.”

  The werewolves guarding the entrance parted, and Lincoln pushed open the doors. Inside the club it was entirely pitch black, save for the beams from the werewolves’ flashlights. There was a strong smell of spilled, mixed liquor and something unpleasantly tangy and sharp.

  Magnus raised his hands. The neon lights around the room buzzed and glowed. The overhead work lights—unflattering fluorescents—sputtered on. And the disco ball crept to life, slowly spinning, sending a thousand points of colored reflected light around the room. The dance floor, made of large squares of colored plastic, was also illuminated from below.

  Which made the scene all the more terrible.

  There were four bodies, three women and one man. All looked like they had been running for various points of exit. Their skin was the color of ash, marked everywhere with greenish-­purple bruises and dozens of marks, and garishly lit by the red, yellow, and blue lights below them. There was very little blood. Just a few small puddles here and there. Not nearly as much blood as there should have been.

  One of the dead women, Magnus noticed, had familiar long blond hair. He’d last seen her on the plane, handing him the passes . . .

  Magnus had to turn away quickly.

  “They were all drained,” Lincoln said. “The club hadn’t opened for the night yet. They were having trouble with their sound system even before the power went out, so the only ­people here were the employees. Two there. . . .”

  He pointed to the raised DJ platform with its piles of turntables and speakers. Some werewolves were up there examining the scene.

  “Two behind the bar,” he continued. “Another one ran and hid in the bathroom, but the door was broken down. And these four. Nine total.”

  Magnus sat down on one of the nearby chairs and put his head in his hands for a moment to gather himself. No matter how long you lived, you never got used to seeing terrible things. Lincoln gave him a moment to collect himself.

  “This is my fault. When I went to see Camille, one of them took the passes to this place from my pocket.”

  Lincoln p
ulled over a chair and sat next to Magnus.

  “That doesn’t make it your fault. I asked you to speak to Camille. If Camille came here because of you . . . it doesn’t put the blame on either of us, Magnus. But you can see now, it can’t go on.”

  “What do you plan on doing?” Magnus said.

  “There are fires tonight. All over the city. We take this opportunity. We burn this place down. I think it would spare the victims’ families for them to think their loved ones died in a fire, rather than . . .”

  He indicated the terrible scene just behind them.

  “You’re right,” Magnus said. “No good could come of anyone seeing their loved one like that.”

  “No. And no good would come of the police seeing this. It would send the city into a complete panic, and the Shadowhunters would be forced to come down here. We keep this quiet. We deal with it.”

  “And the vampires?”

  “We’re going to go and get them, and lock them in here while it burns. We have permission from the Praetor Lupus. The entire clan is to be treated as infected, but we’ll try to be judicious. The first one we’ll be getting, though, is Camille.”

  Magnus exhaled slowly.

  “Magnus,” Lincoln said, “what else can we do? She’s the clan leader. We need this to end now.”

  “Give me an hour,” Magnus said. “One hour. If I can get them off the streets in an hour—”

  “There’s already a group headed up to Camille’s apartment. Another will go to the Hotel Dumont.”

  “How long ago did they leave?”

  “About a half hour.”

  “Then I’m going now.” Magnus stood. “I have to try to do something.”

  “Magnus,” Lincoln said, “if you stand in the way, the pack will remove you from the situation. Do you understand that?”

  Magnus nodded.