The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (127 page)

Alec, alone of all the Lightwood children, remembered Alicante. He’d been a toddler when they’d left, yet he still carried recollections of the shimmering towers, the streets full of snow in winter, chains of witchlight wreathing the shops and houses, water splashing in the mermaid fountain in the Hall. He had always felt an odd tug at his heart at the thought of Alicante, the half-painful hope that his family would return one day to the place where they belonged. To see the city like this was like the death of all joy. Turning onto a wider boulevard, one of the streets that led down to the Accords Hall, he saw a pack of Belial demons ducking through an archway, hissing and howling. They dragged something behind them—something that twitched and spasmed as it slid over the cobbled street. He darted down the street, but the demons were already gone. Crumpled against the base of a pillar was a limp shape leaking a spidery trail of blood. Broken glass crunched like pebbles under Alec’s boots as he knelt to turn the body over. After a single glance at the purple, distorted face, he shuddered and drew away, grateful that it was no one he knew.

A noise made him scramble to his feet. He smelled the stench before he saw it: the shadow of something humped and huge slithering toward him from the far end of the street. A Greater Demon? Alec didn’t wait to find out. He darted across the street toward one of the taller houses, leaping up onto a sill whose window glass had been smashed in. A few minutes later he was pulling himself onto the roof, his hands aching, his knees scraped. He got to his feet, brushing grit from his hands, and looked out over Alicante.

The ruined demon towers cast their dull, dead light down onto the moving streets of the city, where
things
loped and crawled and slunk in the shadows between buildings, like roaches skittering through a dark apartment. The air carried cries and shouts, the sound of screaming, names called on the wind—and there were the cries of demons as well, howls of mayhem and delight, shrieks that pierced the human ear like pain. Smoke rose above the honey-colored stone houses in a haze, wreathing the spires of the Hall of Accords. Glancing up toward the Gard, Alec saw a flood of Shadowhunters racing down the path from the hill, illuminated by the witchlights they carried. The Clave were coming down to battle.

He moved to the edge of the roof. The buildings here were very close together, their eaves almost touching. It was easy to jump from this roof to the next, and then to the one after that. He found himself running lightly along the rooftops, jumping the slight distances between houses. It was good to have the cold wind in his face, overpowering the stench of demons.

He’d been running for a few minutes before he realized two things: One, he was running toward the white spires of the Accords Hall. And two, there was something up ahead, in a square between two alleys, something that looked like a shower of rising sparks—except that they were blue, a dark gas-flame blue. Alec had seen blue sparks like that before. He stared for a moment before he began to run.

The roof closest to the square was steeply pitched. Alec skidded down the side of it, his boots knocking against loose shingles. Poised precariously at the edge, he looked down.

Cistern Square was below him, and his view was partly blocked by a massive metal pole that jutted out midway down the face of the building he was standing on. A wooden shop sign dangled from it, swaying in the breeze. The square beneath was full of Iblis demons—human-shaped but formed of a substance like coiling black smoke, each with a pair of burning yellow eyes. They had formed a line and were moving slowly toward the lone figure of a man in a sweeping gray coat, forcing him to retreat against a wall. Alec could only stare. Everything about the man was familiar—the lean curve of his back, the wild tangle of his dark hair, and the way that blue fire sprang from his fingertips like darting cyanotic fireflies.

Magnus.
The warlock was hurling spears of blue fire at the Iblis demons; one spear struck an advancing demon in the chest. With a sound like a pail of water poured onto flames, it shuddered and vanished in a burst of ash. The others moved to fill his place—Iblis demons weren’t very bright—and Magnus hurled another spate of fiery spears. Several Iblis fell, but now another demon, more cunning than the others, had drifted
around
Magnus and was coalescing behind him, ready to strike—

Alec didn’t stop to think. Instead he jumped, catching the edge of the roof as he fell, and then dropped straight down to seize the metal pole and swing himself up and around it, slowing his fall. He released it and dropped lightly to the ground. The demon, startled, began to turn, its yellow eyes like flaming jewels; Alec had time only to reflect that if he were Jace, he would have had something clever to say before he snatched the seraph blade from his belt and ran it through the demon. With a dusty shriek the demon vanished, the violence of its exit from this dimension splattering Alec with a fine rain of ash.

“Alec?”
Magnus was staring at him. He had dispatched the remaining Iblis demons, and the square was empty but for the two of them. “Did you just—did you just save my life?”

Alec knew he ought to say something like,
Of course, because I’m a Shadowhunter and that’s what we do
, or
That’s my job.
Jace would have said something like that. Jace always knew the right thing to say. But the words that actually came out of Alec’s mouth were quite different—and sounded petulant, even to his own ears. “You never called me back,” he said. “I called you so many times and you never called me back.”

Magnus looked at Alec as if he’d lost his mind. “Your city is under attack,” he said. “The wards have broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven’t
called you
?”

Alec set his jaw in a stubborn line. “I want to know why you haven’t called me
back
.”

Magnus threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of utter exasperation. Alec noted with interest that when he did it, a few sparks escaped from his fingertips, like fireflies escaping from a jar. “You’re an idiot.”

“Is
that
why you didn’t call me? Because I’m an idiot?”

“No.” Magnus strode toward him. “I didn’t call you because I’m tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I’m tired of watching you be in love with someone else—someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do.”

“You
love
me?”

“You stupid Nephilim,” Magnus said patiently. “Why else am I here? Why else would I have spent the past few weeks patching up all your moronic friends every time they got hurt? And getting you out of every ridiculous situation you found yourself in? Not to mention helping you win a battle against Valentine. And all completely free of charge!”

“I hadn’t looked at it that way,” Alec admitted.

“Of course not. You never looked at it in any way.” Magnus’s cat eyes shone with anger. “I’m seven hundred years old, Alexander. I know when something isn’t going to work. You won’t even admit I exist to your parents.”

Alec stared at him. “I thought you were three hundred! You’re
seven hundred years old
?”

“Well,” Magnus amended, “eight hundred. But I don’t look it. Anyway, you’re missing the point. The point is—”

But Alec never found out what the point was, because at that moment a dozen more Iblis demons flooded into the square. He felt his jaw drop. “Damn it.”

Magnus followed his gaze. The demons were already fanning out into a half circle around them, their yellow eyes glowing. “Way to change the subject, Lightwood.”

“Tell you what.” Alec reached for a second seraph blade. “We live through this, and I promise I’ll introduce you to my whole family.”

Magnus raised his hands, his fingers shining with individual azure flames. They lit his grin with a fiery blue glow. “It’s a deal.”

“V
ALENTINE,” JACE BREATHED. HIS FACE WAS WHITE AS HE
stared down at the city. Through the layers of smoke, Clary thought she could almost glimpse the narrow warren of city streets, choked with running figures, tiny black ants darting desperately to and fro—but she looked again and there was nothing, nothing but the thick clouds of black vapor and the stench of flame and smoke.

“You think Valentine did this?” The smoke was bitter in Clary’s throat. “It looks like a fire. Maybe it started on its own—”

“The North Gate is open.” Jace pointed toward something Clary could barely make out, given the distance and the distorting smoke. “It’s never left open. And the demon towers have lost their light. The wards must be down.” He drew a seraph blade from his belt, clutching it so tightly his knuckles turned the color of ivory. “I have to get over there.”

A knot of dread tightened Clary’s throat. “Simon—”

“They’ll have evacuated him from the Gard. Don’t worry, Clary. He’s probably better off than most down there. The demons aren’t likely to bother him. They tend to leave Downworlders alone.”

“I’m sorry,” Clary whispered. “The Lightwoods—Alec—Isabelle—”

“Jahoel,”
Jace said, and the angel blade flared up, bright as daylight in his bandaged left hand. “Clary, I want you to stay here. I’ll come back for you.” The anger that had been in his eyes since they’d left the manor had evaporated. He was all soldier now.

She shook her head. “No. I want to go with you.”

“Clary—” He broke off, stiffening all over. A moment later Clary heard it too—a heavy, rhythmic pounding, and laid over that, a sound like the crackling of an enormous bonfire. It took Clary several long moments to deconstruct the sound in her mind, to break it down as one might break down a piece of music into its component notes. “It’s—”

“Werewolves.”
Jace was staring past her. Following his gaze, she saw them, streaming over the nearest hill like a spreading shadow, illuminated here and there with fierce bright eyes. A pack of wolves—more than a pack; there must have been hundreds of them, even a thousand. Their barking and baying had been the sound she’d thought was a fire, and it rose up into the night, brittle and harsh.

Clary’s stomach turned over. She knew werewolves. She had fought beside werewolves. But these were not Luke’s wolves, not wolves who’d been instructed to look after her and not to harm her. She thought of the terrible killing power of Luke’s pack when it was unleashed, and suddenly she was afraid.

Beside her Jace swore once, fiercely. There was no time to reach for another weapon; he pulled her tightly against him, his free arm wrapped around her, and with his other hand he raised Jahoel high over their heads. The light of the blade was blinding. Clary gritted her teeth—

And the wolves were on them. It was like a wave crashing—a sudden blast of deafening noise, and a rush of air as the first wolves in the pack broke forward and
leaped
. There were burning eyes and gaping jaws; Jace dug his fingers into Clary’s side—

And the wolves sailed by on either side of them, clearing the space where they stood by a good two feet. Clary whipped her head around in disbelief as two wolves—one sleek and brindled, the other huge and steely gray—hit the ground softly behind them, paused, and kept running, without even a backward glance. There were wolves all around them, and yet not a single wolf touched them. They raced past, a flood of shadows, their coats reflecting moonlight in flashes of silver so that they almost seemed to be a single, moving river of shapes thundering toward Jace and Clary—and then parting around them like water around a stone. The two Shadowhunters might as well have been statues for all the attention the lycanthropes paid them as they hurtled by, their jaws gaping, their eyes fixed on the road ahead of them.

And then they were gone. Jace turned to watch the last of the wolves pass by and race to catch up with its companions. There was silence again now, only the very faint sounds of the city in the distance.

Jace let go of Clary, lowering Jahoel as he did so. “Are you all right?”

“What happened?” she whispered. “Those werewolves—they just went right by us—”

“They’re going to the city. To Alicante.” He took a second seraph blade from his belt and held it out to her. “You’ll need this.”

“You’re not leaving me here, then?”

“No point. It’s not safe anywhere. But—” He hesitated. “You’ll be careful?”

“I’ll be careful,” Clary said. “What do we do now?”

Jace looked down at Alicante, burning below them. “Now we run.”

*   *   *

It was never easy to keep up with Jace, and now, when he was running nearly flat out, it was almost impossible. Clary sensed that he was in fact restraining himself, cutting back his speed to let her catch up, and that it cost him something to do it.

The road flattened out at the base of the hill and curved through a stand of high, thickly branched trees, creating the illusion of a tunnel. When Clary came out the other side, she found herself standing before the North Gate. Through the arch Clary could see a confusion of smoke and leaping flames. Jace stood in the gateway, waiting for her. He was holding Jahoel in one hand and another seraph blade in the other, but even their combined light was lost against the greater brightness of the burning city behind him.

“The guards,” she panted, racing up to him. “Why aren’t they here?”

“At least one of them is over in that stand of trees.” Jace jerked his chin in the direction they’d come from. “In pieces. No, don’t look.” He glanced down. “You’re holding your seraph blade wrong. Hold it like this.” He showed her. “And you need to name it. Cassiel would be a good one.”

“Cassiel,”
Clary repeated, and the light of the blade flared up.

Jace looked at her soberly. “I wish I’d had time to train you for this. Of course, by all rights, no one with as little training as you should be able to use a seraph blade at all. It surprised me before, but now that we know what Valentine did—”

Clary very much did not want to talk about what Valentine had done. “Or maybe you were just worried that if you did train me properly, I’d turn out to be better than you,” she said.