Then another light sliced through the orange wires of magic, pearly gray, cutting through all darkness. Tessa Gray, daughter of a Prince of Hell, stood at the foot of the stairs with her hands glowing.
Tessa’s magic was all around him. Alec had learned how to sense magic, over the years, learned to move with it and fight with it as another weapon on his side. This wasn’t the singing power he was used to, well-known and well-beloved as his bow, but it felt friendly. He let Tessa’s magic wrap around him, cooling and protecting, as he ducked through the fiery spars of power back to the warlock.
“The most powerful warlock I’ve ever seen?” Alec snarled. “She cut through your wards like tissue paper. And my man would eat you for breakfast.”
He made a mistake, because he was overconfident. He didn’t hear Tessa’s stifled sound, and he didn’t see the shadow moving as he swept his blade toward the warlock.
Clive Breakspear’s seraph blade met his. Alec met Breakspear’s furious eyes. He looked to Tessa, struggling with three Shadowhunters with Jem coming to help her, Lily with another Shadowhunter prowling toward her, and he glanced toward the warlock, who was making every torch fall. Alec was used to being able to see the whole battle, fighting at a distance.
Too late, he saw the blade in Clive Breakspear’s free hand, aimed for his heart.
Rafael barreled out of the shadows and sank his teeth deep into Breakspear’s wrist. The blade dropped to the stone.
The man roared, and with all the Nephilim strength that should be used to shield the defenseless, he hurled Rafael’s body into the cage bars. There was a sickening crack.
Alec shouted: “No!”
He backhanded Clive Breakspear in the face. The warlock dashed a torch at his feet, and Alec stepped over the flames and seized him by the throat, then lifted him like a doll and smashed the warlock’s skull against Breakspear’s forehead. The warlock’s eyes rolled back, but Breakspear screamed in outrage and charged at Alec. There was still a seraph blade shining in his hand, so Alec broke that hand, then used his hold on it to force the corrupt Shadowhunter to his knees. Alec stood over them, panting so hard his chest felt as if it would split apart. He wanted to kill them both.
Only Rafael was here. Magnus and Max were at home, waiting for him. Tessa, Jem, and Lily had made short work of the Shadowhunters attacking them. Alec turned to Tessa now.
“Will you enchant ropes to hold them?” he asked. “They have to stand trial.”
Tessa moved forward. So did Lily. Alec knew the situation was desperate because Lily didn’t make a joke about murdering them. Alec was too close to the edge. He was afraid he would have taken her up on it.
He went to the place where Rafael lay, his body a small wretched shape thrown into the dirt. Alec pulled Rafe into his arms, feeling his throat close up. He understood now what he had found here in Buenos Aires. He understood now that it might be too late.
Rafael’s grubby face was still. He was barely breathing. Jem came to kneel beside them.
“I’m so sorry. He slipped the rope, and I came in for him, but—but—”
“It isn’t your fault,” Alec said numbly.
Jem said: “Give him to me.”
Alec stared at Jem, then bundled Rafe into his arms.
“Take care of him,” he said. “Please.”
Jem took Rafe and ran toward Tessa, and together they rushed up the stone steps. There was still orange magic in the air, and the flames had caught in earnest. Smoke was rising fast, in a thick choking cloud.
One of the werewolf women reached out a thin hand and clutched the bars.
“Help us!”
Alec took an axe with an electrum head from his belt and struck open the lock on her cage. “That’s what I’m here to do.” He paused. “Um, Lily, are there keys on that warlock?”
“Yep,” said Lily. “Just grabbed them. I’ll open the doors with the keys, and you can keep doing your cool dramatic axe thing.”
“Fine,” said Alec.
The werewolf woman who had spoken to him bolted out the door as soon as she was free. The woman in the next cage couldn’t walk. Alec walked into the cage and knelt beside her, and that was when he heard the sounds of a fight breaking out at the top of the stairs.
He picked the woman up and ran for the stairs.
Tessa and Jem were in the hall, almost at the doors. The burning house was crawling with Shadowhunters. Jem couldn’t fight, because he was holding Rafael. Tessa was doing her best to clear a way for them, but Rafael needed Tessa’s help too.
One man shouted: “Where’s our leader?”
“You call that a leader?” Alec shouted back. He looked at the woman in his arms, then held her out so the Shadowhunters of the Buenos Aires Institute could see. “He helped a warlock do this. He crushed a child’s body against a wall. Is that what you want to lead you? Is that what you want to be?”
Several Shadowhunters turned to him in total puzzlement. Lily quickly shouted out a translation.
Joaquín stepped forward.
Lily said quietly: “He told them to stand down.”
The man who’d shouted for his leader hit Joaquín across the mouth. Another Shadowhunter shouted in startled fury and produced a whip, defending Joaquín.
Alec ran his eyes over the crowd. Some of the Shadowhunters looked uncertain, but Shadowhunters were soldiers. Too many of them were intent on following whatever orders they had been given, fighting Joaquín and Alec and whoever else stood in their way, to get to an unworthy leader. They were blocking Jem and Tessa’s way. They were keeping Rafe from help.
The doors of the burning house burst open. The Queen of the Shadow Market stood outlined against the smoke.
“Get to Alec!” Juliette shouted, and a dozen werewolves and vampires sprang.
Juliette cleared a path. Jem and Tessa slipped out the door. Rafe was out of this place of filth and smoke. Alec fought toward Juliette.
“Mon Dieu,” she breathed when she saw the woman in Alec’s arms.
She made a gesture, and a warlock jumped to take the unconscious werewolf out into the night.
“There are more women down there,” Alec said. “I’ll get them. Some of the Shadowhunters are on our side.”
Juliette nodded. “Which ones?”
Alec turned to see Joaquín, fighting two Shadowhunters at once. The man with the whip who’d come to help him was down.
“That one,” said Alec. “And whoever else he tells you.”
Juliette set her jaw and strode across the green-quartz floor to Joaquín’s side. She tapped one of the men fighting him on the shoulder. When he turned, she ripped out his throat with one clawed hand.
“Maybe take them alive!” said Alec. “Not that guy, obviously.”
Joaquín was staring at Juliette with eyes gone enormous. Alec remembered that Joaquín had heard tales of horror about the Queen of the Shadow Market. Juliette, with blood on her hands and firelight in her snarled hair, might not be doing a lot to dispel that image.
“Don’t hurt her!” Alec cried. “She’s with us.”
“Oh good,” said Joaquín.
Juliette squinted at him suspiciously through the smoke. “You’re not evil?”
“Trying not to be,” said Joaquín.
“Bien,” said Juliette. “Show me who to kill. I mean . . . take alive if possible.”
Alec left them to it. He spun around and raced back down the stairs, Lily at his heels. The smoke was thick in the passage below by now. Alec saw there were Shadowhunters there already, getting Clive Breakspear and his warlock confederate out. Alec’s lip curled. “If your loyalty is to the Clave, put a watch on them. They’re going to stand trial.”
He and Lily opened the remaining doors. The women who could move on their own did. Too many could not. Alec picked up one woman after another and carried the
m out. Lily helped women who needed support to walk. Alec gave the women to the Downworlders of the Shadow Market whenever he could, so he was able to get back to the basement faster. Alec reached the top of the stairs with another woman and saw the hall was deserted, taken over by smoke and falling masonry. Everyone had fled the death trap this building had become.
Alec bundled the woman into Lily’s arms. Lily was small enough that it was difficult, but she was strong enough to bear her weight.
“Take her. I have to get the others.”
“I don’t want to go!” Lily shouted over the crackling fire. “I don’t ever want to abandon anybody again!”
“You won’t. Lily, go.”
Lily stumbled for the door under her heavy burden, sobbing. Alec turned back. The smoke had turned the whole world into a gray hell. He couldn’t see, or breathe.
A hand caught his shoulder. Joaquín stood behind him.
“You can’t go down there!” he panted. “I’m so sorry about those women, but they’re—”
Alec said, icily: “Downworlders?”
“It’s too dangerous. And you—you have a lot to go back to.”
Magnus, and Max. If Alec closed his eyes, he could see them with absolute clarity. But he knew he had to be worthy of going back to them.
Joaquín was still holding on to him. Alec shrugged him off, and not gently.
“I will not leave one woman down there, abused and forgotten,” he said. “Not one. No real Shadowhunter would.”
He looked over his shoulder at Joaquín, as he was going down the steps into hell.
“You can leave,” said Alec. “If you do, you can still call yourself a Shadowhunter. But will you be one?”
Rafael lay on the cobbled street as Jem and Tessa hovered over him. Jem used every silent enchantment he had learned among the Silent Brothers. Tessa whispered every healing spell she had learned in the Spiral Labyrinth. Jem could tell, from long, bitter experience, that there was too much broken and bruised within that small body.
There was a fire burning and a battle raging. Jem could not pay attention to any of it, could not bring himself to care about anything but the child under his hands.
“Dittany, Jem,” Tessa whispered desperately. “I need dittany.”
Jem climbed to his feet, searching the crowd. There were so many from the Shadow Market here, there was surely one who could help. His gaze fell on Mother Hawthorn, with starlight on her dandelion hair.
She met his eyes and made to run. Jem was fast as a Shadowhunter still, when he had to be. He was at her side in a moment, catching her wrist.
“Do you have dittany?”
“If I do,” snarled Mother Hawthorn, “why should I give it to you?”
“I know what you did, more than a century ago,” he said. “I know better than you do. The trick you played, causing one Shadowhunter to poison another? It poisoned an unborn child. Does that amuse you?”
The faerie’s mouth went slack.
“That child died, because of you,” said Jem. “Now there is another child who needs help. I could take the herb from you. I will, if I have to. But I’m giving you the chance to make another choice.”
“It’s too late!” said Mother Hawthorn, and Jem knew she was thinking of Auraline.
“Yes,” said Jem, merciless. “It’s too late to save the ones we lost. But this child is not lost yet. This choice is not lost yet. Choose.”
Mother Hawthorn turned her face away, her mouth set in bitter lines. But she reached inside the worn pouch at her belt and put the herb into his hand.
Jem took it and raced back to Tessa. Rafael’s body was arching under her hands. The dittany flared to life at her touch, and Jem joined his hands with Tessa’s, joined his voice with hers as they spoke in all the languages they had ever taught each other. Their words were a song, their linked hands magic, and they poured everything they knew, together, into the child.
Rafael’s eyes opened. There was a flash of Tessa’s pearlescent magic in his dark irises, then it was lost. The child sat up, looking perfectly all right, well and whole and somewhat annoyed. He gazed into their distraught faces and asked, in clipped Spanish: “Where is he?”
“He’s in there,” Lily answered.
The narrow cobbled street was full of members of the Shadow Market seeing to the werewolf victims or herding Shadowhunters, with some different, deeply nervous-looking Shadowhunters tentatively assisting, or trying to put out the flames. Lily was not doing any of that. She stared at the house with her arms crossed, and her eyes dark with tears.
As they watched, part of the roof collapsed. Rafe started forward. Tessa lunged and seized him, holding him as he strained against her grip. Jem stood.
“No, Jem,” said Tessa. “Take the child. Let me go in.”
Jem tried to take Rafe, but he was fighting them both. Then Rafe went still. Jem twisted around to see what the child was looking at.
What everybody was looking at. There was a ripple in the crowd, then a hush. Jem did not think any of the Shadow Market or the Institute would forget what had happened here tonight.
From the swirling smoke, out of the collapsing building, came two Shadowhunters with werewolves in their arms. They walked tall, their faces grim, and people parted to let them pass.
The women had been saved, and the child. Jem felt new resolution rise in him. Tessa was right. If Rosemary could be saved, he would save her. If there was a child, he and Tessa would stand between that child and the Riders and the King.
Alec carried the werewolf he bore to Tessa, who immediately began enchanting the smoke from her lungs. Then he dropped to his knees in front of Rafe.
“Hey, my baby,” said Alec. “Are you all right?”
Rafael might not entirely understand the language, but anyone could have understood the message of Alec on his knees in the rubble, the love and concern on his face. Rafael nodded, dust drifting from his curly hair, and walked into Alec’s open arms. Alec folded the little boy against his chest.
“Thank you both,” Alec said to Tessa and Jem. “You’re heroes.”
“You’re welcome,” said Jem.
“You’re a moron,” said Lily, and put her face in her hands.
Alec rose and patted her awkwardly on the back, Rafe held in the circle of his other arm. He turned to Juliette, who had called one of her warlocks over to see to the werewolf in Joaquín’s arms.
“You got them all out.” Juliette smiled at them both, her expression wondering, as if she was young as Rafe and seeing magic for the first time. “You did it.”
“The werewolf woman who was looking after Rafe,” said Alec. “Is she—here?”
Juliette looked at the ashes drifting on the cobbled streets. The fire was dying, now that Tessa could spare magic to cool the flames, but the house was a ruin.
“No,” said Juliette. “My girls tell me she was one of the first to die.”
“I’m sorry,” Alec told her, then his voice changed, as he addressed Rafe. “Rafe, I have to ask you something,” he said. “Solomillo—”
“Steak?” Lily smirked.
“Dammit,” said Alec. “Sorry, Rafe. But will you come back with me to New York? You can—I have to talk to—if you don’t like it there, you don’t have to—”
Rafe watched him stumble over his words.
“I can’t understand you, fool,” he said sweetly in Spanish, and tucked his head down under Alec’s chin, his arms going around Alec’s neck.
“OK,” said Alec. “Good. I think.”
Tessa walked away from the burned-out building. There were several warlocks in the crowd watching her with awe, Jem noted proudly. She strode over to the bound warlock and the Head of the Buenos Aires Institute.
“Shall we ask Magnus to open a Portal for them?” she asked.
“Not just yet,” sai
d Alec.
There was a change in his demeanor, his shoulders going back, his face stern. If it weren’t for the child in his arms, he might have been fearsome.
Alec Lightwood, leader of the Alliance, said: “First, I want a word.”
Alec looked around at the assembled faces. His breathing felt as if it were tearing his throat and his eyes were still stinging, but he was holding Rafe, so everything was perfectly all right.
Except for the fact he had no idea what to say. He couldn’t know how many of the Shadowhunters had cooperated with the capture and torture of these women. He suspected most of them had gone along with their leader’s orders, but he didn’t know how responsible that made them. If he arrested everybody, then the Institute would be left an empty ruin. The people here were owed protection.
“Clive Breakspear, the Head of the Buenos Aires Institute, broke the Accords and will pay for it,” he said at last, and paused. “Lily, can you translate for me?”
“Absolutely, yes,” Lily said promptly, and began to do so.
Alec listened to her talk, watched the faces of the people listening, and saw a few smirks. Alec listened more intently, and picked up a word.
“Boludo,” Alec said to Jem. “What does that mean?”
Jem coughed. “It’s not—a polite word.”
“I knew it,” Alec said. “Lily, stop translating! Sorry, Jem, could you translate instead?”
Jem nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
“The Head of your Institute has brought shame on us all,” Alec told the Shadowhunters. “I could bring everybody here to Alicante. I could have every one of you put to the trial of the Sword. I know you were left after the war, to rebuild as best you could, and instead of leading you, this man brought more ruin. But the Law says that I should make each of you pay.”
Alec thought of Helen and Mark Blackthorn, cut off from their family by the Cold Peace. He thought of the way Magnus had sunk his face into his hands, despairing, when the Cold Peace was passed. Alec never wanted to see that despair again. Every day since that day, he’d tried to work out ways that they could all live united.
The Land I Lost (Ghosts of the Shadow Market Book 7) Page 9
