“I am Magnus Bane. And you are trespassing in my city.”
That got a little laugh. “Your city?” said Lucian.
“You need to let these people go.”
“Those creatures,” said Lucian, “are part of a wolf pack that killed my parabatai’s parents. We tracked them down here. We can now exact Shadowhunter justice, as is our right.”
“We didn’t kill any Shadowhunters!” the only woman among the werewolves said. “And my children are innocent. Killing my children would be murder. Bane, you have to make him let my children go. He has my—”
“I would hear no more of your whining like a mongrel dog,” said the young man with the hawklike face, the one standing beside the black-haired woman. They looked like a matched set, and the expressions on their faces were identically ferocious.
Valentine was not famed for his mercy, and Magnus did not have any confidence in his Circle’s sparing the children.
The werewolves might have been partially shifted from human to wolf form, but they did not look ready to fight, and Magnus did not know why. There were too many Shadowhunters for Magnus to be sure he could fight them off successfully on his own. The best he could hope for was to stall them with conversation, and hope that he could inspire doubt in some of the Circle, or that Catarina would come or that the Whitelaws would come, and that they might stand with Downworlders and not their own kind.
It seemed a very slim hope, but it was all he had.
Magnus could not help but look again toward the golden-haired youth at the front of the group. There was something terribly familiar about him, as well as a suggestion of tenderness about his mouth, and hurt in the deep blue wells of his eyes. There was something that made Magnus look toward him as the one chance to get the Circle to turn from their purpose.
“What’s your name?” Magnus asked.
Those blue eyes narrowed. “Stephen Herondale.”
“I used to know the Herondales very well, once upon a time,” said Magnus, and he saw it was a mistake by the way Stephen Herondale flinched. The Shadowhunter knew something, had heard some dark whisper about his family tree, then, and was desperate to prove it was not true. Magnus did not know how desperate Stephen Herondale might be, and he had no wish to find out. Magnus went on, genially addressing them all: “I have always been a friend to Shadowhunters. I know many of your families, going back for hundreds of years.”
“There is nothing we can do to correct the questionable judgments of our ancestors,” Lucian said.
Magnus hated this guy.
“Also,” Magnus went on, pointedly ignoring Lucian Graymark, “I find your story suspect. Valentine is ready to hunt down any Downworlder on any vague pretext. What had the vampires he killed in Harlem done to him?”
Stephen Herondale frowned, and glanced at Lucian, who looked troubled in turn, but said, “Valentine told me he went hunting some vampires who broke the Accords there.”
“Oh, the Downworlders are all so guilty. And that is so very convenient for you, isn’t it? What about their children? The boy who came to collect me was about nine. Has he been dining on Shadowhunter flesh?”
“The pups gnaw on whatever bones their elders drag in,” muttered the black-haired woman, and the man beside her nodded.
“Maryse, Robert, please. Valentine is a noble man!” Lucian said, his voice rising as he turned to address Magnus. “He would not hurt a child. Valentine is my parabatai, my best beloved swordbrother. His fight is mine. His family has been destroyed, the Accords have been broken, and he deserves and will have his vengeance. Stand aside, warlock.”
Lucian Graymark did not have his hand on his weapon, but Magnus saw that the black-haired woman, Maryse, behind him had a blade shining between her fingers. Magnus looked again at Stephen and realized exactly why his face was so familiar. Gold hair and blue eyes—he was a more ethereal and slender version of a young Edmund Herondale, as though Edmund had come back from heaven, twice as angelic. Magnus had not known Edmund for long, but Edmund had been the father of Will Herondale, who had been one of the very few Shadowhunters that Magnus had ever thought of as a friend.
Stephen saw Magnus looking. Stephen’s eyes had narrowed so much now that the sweet blue of them was lost, and they seemed black.
“Enough of this byplay with demonspawn!” said Stephen. He sounded as if he were quoting somebody, and Magnus bet that he knew who.
“Stephen, don’t—” Lucian ordered, but golden-haired Stephen had already flung a knife in the direction of one werewolf.
Magnus flicked his hand and sent the knife dropping to the ground. He glared at the werewolves. The woman who had spoken before stared intensely back at him, as if trying to convey a message with her eyes alone.
“This is what the modern young Shadowhunter has become, is it?” Magnus asked. “Let me see, how does your little bedtime story about how super-duper extra special you all are go again? . . . Ah, yes. Through the ages your mandate has been to protect mankind, to fight against evil forces until they are finally vanquished and the world can live in peace. You don’t seem terribly interested in peace or protecting anybody. What is it that you’re fighting for, exactly?”
“I am fighting for a better world for myself and my son,” said the woman called Maryse.
“I have no interest in the world you want,” Magnus told her. “Or in your doubtless repellent brat, I might add.”
Robert drew a dagger from his sleeve. Magnus was not prepared to waste all his magic deflecting daggers. He lifted a hand into the air, and all the light in the room was quenched. Only the noise and neon glow of the city spilled in, not providing enough illumination to see by, but Robert threw the dagger just the same. That was when the glass of the windows broke and dark forms came flooding in: young Rachel Whitelaw landed in a roll on the floor in front of Magnus, and took the blade meant for him in her shoulder.
Magnus could see better in the dark than most. He saw that, past all hope, the Whitelaws had come. Marian Whitelaw, the head of the Institute; her husband, Adam; and Adam’s brother; and the young Whitelaw cousins whom Marian and Adam had taken in after their parents’ deaths. The Whitelaws had already been fighting tonight. Their gear was bloodstained and torn, and Rachel Whitelaw was clearly wounded. There was blood in Marian’s gray bob of hair, but Magnus did not think it was hers. Marian and Adam Whitelaw, Magnus happened to know, had not been able to have their own children. The word was that they adored the young cousins who lived with them, that they always made a fuss over any young Shadowhunters who came to their Institute. The Circle members must have been peers of the Whitelaw cousins, brought up together in Idris. The Circle was exactly designed to win the Whitelaws’ sympathy.
The Circle was, however, in a panic. They could not see as Magnus could. They did not know who was attacking them, only that somebody had come to Magnus’s aid. Magnus saw the swing and heard the clash of blades meeting, so loud it was almost impossible to hear Marian Whitelaw’s shouted commands for the Circle to stop and drop their weapons. He wondered which of the Circle even realized who they were fighting. He conjured a small light in his palm and searched for the werewolf woman. He had to know why the werewolves would not attack.
Someone knocked into him. Magnus stared into the eyes of Stephen Herondale.
“Do you never have doubts about all this?” Magnus breathed.
“No,” Stephen panted. “I have lost too much—I have sacrificed too much to this great cause ever to turn my back on it now.”
As he spoke, he swung his knife up toward Magnus’s throat. Magnus turned the hilt hot in the young man’s hand until he dropped it.
Magnus suddenly did not care what Stephen had sacrificed, or about the pain in his blue eyes. He wanted Stephen gone from this earth. Magnus wanted to forget he had ever seen Stephen Herondale’s face, so full of hate and so reminiscent of faces Magnus had loved. The war
lock summoned a new spell into his hand and was about to hurl it at Stephen, when a thought arrested him. He did not know how he could face Tessa again if he killed one of her descendants.
Then Marian Whitelaw stepped into the light from the spell shimmering in Magnus’s palm, and Stephen’s face went blank with surprise.
“Ma’am, it’s you! We shouldn’t— We’re Shadowhunters. We shouldn’t be fighting over them. They are Downworlders,” Stephen hissed. “They will turn on you like the treacherous dogs they are. That’s their nature. They are not worth fighting for. What do you say?”
“I don’t have any proof these werewolves broke the Accords.”
“Valentine said,” began Stephen, but Magnus heard the uncertainty in his voice. Lucian Graymark might believe they only hunted Downworlders who had broken the Accords, but Stephen at least knew they were acting as vigilantes rather than Law-abiding Shadowhunters. Stephen had been doing it, just the same.
“I do not care what Valentine Morgenstern says. I say that the Law is hard,” Marian Whitelaw replied. She drew her blade, swung, and met Stephen’s.
Their eyes met, glittering, over their blades.
Marian continued softly, “But it is the Law. You will not touch these Downworlders while I or any of my blood live.”
Chaos erupted, but Magnus’s darkest imaginings had been proved wrong. When the fight was joined, there were Shadowhunters on his side, fighting with him against Shadowhunters, fighting for Downworlders and the Accords of peace they had all agreed to.
The first fatality was the youngest Whitelaw. Rachel Whitelaw lunged at the woman called Maryse, and the sheer ferocity of the attack took Maryse aback so much that Rachel almost had her. Maryse stumbled and collected herself, fumbling for a new blade. Then the black-haired man, Robert, who Magnus thought was her husband, lunged at Rachel in his turn, and ran her through.
Rachel sagged, the point of the man’s blade like a pin piercing her, as if she were a butterfly.
“Robert!” said Maryse softly, as if she could not believe this was happening.
Robert unsheathed his sword from Rachel’s chest, and Rachel tumbled to the floor.
“Rachel Whitelaw was just killed by a Shadowhunter,” shouted Magnus, and even then he thought Robert might cry out that he had been defending his wife. Magnus thought that the Whitelaws might put away their blades rather than spill more Nephilim blood.
But Rachel had been the baby of the family, everyone’s special pet. The Whitelaws as one roared a challenge and hurled themselves into the fray with redoubled ferocity. Adam Whitelaw, a stolid white-haired old man who had always seemed to simply follow his wife’s lead, charged at Valentine’s Circle, whirling a shining axe over his head, and cut down all those who stood before him.
Magnus edged toward the werewolves, to the woman who was the only one who remained human, even though her teeth and claws were growing apace.
“Why aren’t you fighting?” he demanded.
The werewolf woman glared at him as if he were impossibly stupid.
“Because Valentine’s here,” she snapped. “Because he has my daughter. He took her through there, and they said if we moved to follow her, they would kill her.”
Magnus did not have an instant to reflect on what Valentine might do to a helpless Downworlder child. He lifted a hand and blasted from his feet the stocky Shadowhunter at the single door at the far end of the room, and then Magnus ran toward the door.
He heard the cries behind him, of the Whitelaws demanding, “Bane, where are you—” and a shout, Magnus thought from Stephen, saying, “He’s going after Valentine! Kill him!”
Behind the door Magnus heard a low, awful sound. He pushed the door open.
On the other side of the door was a small ordinary room, the size of a bedroom, though there was no bed, only two people and a single chair. There was a tall man with a fall of white-blond hair, wearing Shadowhunter black. He was stooped over a girl who looked about twelve. She was fastened to the chair with silver cord, and was making a terrible low sound, a cross between a whine and a moan.
Her eyes were shining, Magnus thought for a moment, the moonlight turning them into mirrors.
His mistake lasted for the briefest of instants. Then Valentine moved slightly and the gleam of the girl’s eyes resolved in Magnus’s vision. The gleam was not her eyes. The moonlit shine was silver coins pressed to the girl’s eyes, tiny wisps of smoke escaping from beneath the bright discs as the tiny sounds escaped from between her lips. She was trying to suppress the sound of her pain, because she was so scared of what Valentine would do to her next.
“Where did your brother go?” demanded Valentine, and the girl’s sobbing continued, but she said nothing.
Magnus felt for a moment as if he had become a storm, black curling clouds, the slam of thunder and slash of lightning, and all the storm wanted was to leap at Valentine’s throat. Magnus’s magic lashed out almost of its own volition, leaped from both hands. It looked like lightning, burning so blue that it was almost white. It knocked Valentine off his feet and into a wall. Valentine hit the wall so hard that a crack rang out, and he slid to the floor.
That one act also used up far too much of Magnus’s power, but he could not think of that now. He ran over to the girl’s chair and wrenched the chain off her, then touched her face with painful gentleness.
She was crying now, more freely, shuddering and sobbing beneath his hands.
“Hush, hush. Your brother sent me. I’m a warlock; you’re safe,” he murmured, and clasped the back of her neck.
The coins were hurting her. They had to come off. But would removing them do more damage? Magnus could heal, but it had never been his specialty as it was Catarina’s, and he had not had to heal werewolves often. They were so resilient. He could only hope she would be resilient now.
He lifted the coins as gently as he could, and threw them against the wall.
It was too late. It had been too late before he’d ever entered the room. She was blind.
Her lips parted. She said, “Is my brother safe?”
“As safe as can be, sweetheart,” said Magnus. “I’ll take you to him.”
No sooner had he said the word “him” than he felt the cold blade sink into his back and his mouth fill with hot blood.
“Oh, will you?” asked Valentine’s voice in his ear.
The blade slid free, hurting as much on the way out as it had on the way in. Magnus gritted his teeth and gripped the back of the chair harder, kept himself arched over and protecting the child, and turned his head to face Valentine. The white-haired man looked older than the other leaders, but Magnus was not sure if he was actually older or if cold purpose simply made his face seem carved from marble. Magnus wanted to smash it.
Valentine’s hand moved, and Magnus only just managed to catch Valentine’s wrist before he found Valentine’s blade in his heart.
Magnus concentrated and made the clasp of his hand burn, blue electricity circling his fingers. He made the contact burn as the touch of silver had burned the girl, and he grinned as he heard Valentine’s hiss of pain.
Valentine did not ask his name as the others had, did not treat Magnus as that much of a person. Valentine simply stared at Magnus with cold eyes, the same way anyone might stare at a loathsome animal in their path and impeding their progress. “You are interfering in my business, warlock.”
Magnus spat blood into his face. “You are torturing a child in my city. Shadowhunter.”
Valentine used his free hand to deal Magnus a blow that sent Magnus staggering back. Valentine wheeled and followed him, and Magnus thought, Good. It meant that he was moving away from the girl.
She was blind, but she was a werewolf, smell and sound as important to her as sight. She could run, and find her way back to her family.
“I thought we were playing a game where we said wha
t the other person was and what we were doing,” Magnus told him. “Did I get it wrong? Can I guess again? Are you breaking your own sacred Laws, asshole?”
He glanced at the girl, hoping she would run, but she seemed frozen to the spot with terror. Magnus did not dare call out to her in case it attracted Valentine’s attention.
Magnus lifted a hand, sketching a spell in the air, but Valentine saw the spell coming and dodged it. He leaped into the air and then bounded off the wall, Nephilim-swift, to lunge at Magnus. He scythed Magnus’s legs out from under him, and when Magnus landed, Valentine kicked him brutally hard. He drew a sword and brought it down. Magnus rolled so that it caught him a glancing blow along the ribs, cutting through shirt and skin but not hitting vital organs. Not this time.
Magnus dearly hoped he was not going to die here, in this cold warehouse, far from anyone he loved. He tried to rise from the floor, but it was slippery with his own blood, and the scraps of magic he had were not enough to heal or fight, let alone both.
Marian Whitelaw stood in front of him, her blades drawn and new runes shining on her arms. Her hair shone silver in his blurred vision.
Valentine swung his sword, and cut her almost in half.
Magnus gasped, salvation lost as quickly as it had been found, then turned his head toward the sound of more footsteps on the stone.
He was a fool to have hoped for another rescue. He saw one of Valentine’s Circle, standing in the doorway with his eyes fixed on the werewolf girl.
“Valentine!” Lucian Graymark shouted. He ran for the girl, and Magnus tensed, coiled himself for a leap, and then froze as he saw Lucian pick the girl up and wheel on his master. “How could you do this? She’s a child!”
“No, Lucian. She’s a monster in the shape of a child.”
Lucian was holding the girl, his hand in her hair, soothing and stroking. Magnus was starting to think he might have really misjudged Lucian Graymark. Valentine’s face was as white as bone. He resembled a statue more than ever.
The Bane Chronicles Page 33