Chapter 33
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He began to half-pull her, half-push her, to the edge of
the crowd. The vampires winced away from the light of
the seraph de as it swept over them, all of them
hissing like scalded cats.
“Enough standing around!” It was Raphael. His arm was
streaming blood, his lips curled back from his pointed
incisors. He red at the teeming mass of vampires
milling in confusion. “Seize the trespassers,” he
shouted. “Kill them both—the rat as well!”
The vampires started toward Jace and ry, some of
them walking, others gliding, others swooping down
from the balconies above like pping ck bats. Jace
increased his pace as they broke free of the crowd,
heading toward the far wall. ry squirmed, half-turning
to look up at him. “Shouldn’t we stand back to back or
something?”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. In movies that’s what they do in this kind
of … situation.”
She felt him shake. Was he frightened? No, he was
laughing. “You,” he breathed. “You are the most—”
“The most what?” she demanded indignantly. They were
still backing up, stepping carefully to avoid the broken
bits of furniture and smashed marble that littered the
floor. Jace held the angel de high above both their
heads. She could see how the vampires circled around
the edges of the glimmering circle it cast. She wondered
how long it would hold them off.
“Nothing,” he said. “This isn’t a situation, okay? I save
that word for when things get really bad.”
“Really bad? This isn’t really bad? What do you want, a
nuclear—”
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She broke off with a scream as Lily, braving the light,
launched herself at Jace, her teeth bared in a searing
snarl. Jace seized the second de from his belt and
hurled it through the air; Lily fell back screeching, a long
gash sizzling down her arm. As she staggered, the other
vampires surged forward around her. There were so
many of them, ry thought, so many—
She fumbled at her belt, her fingers closing around the
hilt of the dagger. It felt cold and foreign in her hand.
She didn’t know how to use a knife. She’d never hit
anyone, let alone stabbed them. She’d even skipped
gym ss the day they’d learned how to ward off
muggers and rapists with ordinary objects like car keys
and pencils. She pulled the knife free, raised it in a
shaking hand—
The windows exploded inward in a shower of broken
ss. She heard herself cry out, saw the vampires—
barely an arm’s length from her and Jace—whirl in
astonishment, shock mingling with terror on their faces.
Through the shattered windows came dozens of sleek
shapes, four-footed and low to the ground, their coats
scattering moonlight and broken bits of ss. Their
eyes were blue fire, and from their throats came a
combined low growl that sounded like the roiling crash
of a waterfall.
Wolves.
“Now this,” said Jace, “is a situation.”
15
HIGH AND DRY
THE WOLVES CROUCHED, LOW AND SNARLING,
AND THE vampires, looking stunned, backed away.
Only Raphael held his ground. He still clutched his
wounded arm, his shirt a smeared mess of blood and
dirt. “Los Ni?os de Luna,” he hissed. Even ry,
whose Spanish was almost nonexistent, knew what he
had said. The Moon’s Children—werewolves. “I thought
they hated each other,” she whispered to Jace.
“Vampires and werewolves.”
“They do. They nevere to each other’sirs. Never.
The Covenant forbids it.” He sounded almost indignant.
“Something must have happened. This is bad. Very
bad.”
“How can it be worse than it was before?”
“Because,” he said, “we’re about to be in the middle of a
war.”
“HOW DARE YOU ENTER OUR PLACE?” Raphael
screamed. His face was scarlet, suffused with blood.
Thergest of the wolves, a brindled gray monster with
teeth like a shark’s, gave a panting doglike chuckle. As
he moved forward, between one step and the next he
seemed to shift and change like a wave rising and
curling. Now he was a tall heavily muscled man with
long hair that hung in gray ropelike tangles. He wore
jeans and a thick leather jacket, and there was still
something wolfish in the cast of his lean, weathered
face. “We didn’te for a blooding,” he said. “We
came for the girl.”
Raphael managed to look furious and astounded at
once. “Who?”
“The human girl.” The werewolf flung out a stiff arm,
pointing at ry.
She was too shocked to move. Simon, who had been
squirming in her grasp, went still. Behind her Jace
muttered something that sounded distinctly
sphemous. “You didn’t tell me you knew any
werewolves.” She could hear the slight catch under his
t tone—he was as surprised as she was.
“I don’t,” she said.
“This is bad,” said Jace.
“You said that before.”
“It seemed worth repeating.”
“Well, it wasn’t.” ry shrank back against him. “Jace.
They’re all looking at me.”
Every face was turned to her; most looked astonished.
Raphael’s eyes were narrowed. He turned back to the
werewolf, slowly. “You can’t have her,” he said. “She
trespassed on our ground; therefore she’s ours.”
The werewolfughed. “I’m so d you said that,” he
said, andunched himself forward. In midair his body
rippled, and he was again a wolf, coat bristling, jaws
gaping, ready to tear. He struck Raphael square in the
chest, and the two went over in a writhing, snarling
tangle. With answering howls of rage, the vampires
charged the werewolves, who met them head-on in the
center of the ballroom.
The noise was like nothing ry had ever heard. If
Bosch’s paintings of hell hade with a soundtrack,
they would have sounded like this.
Jace whistled. “Raphael is really having an exceptionally
bad night.”
“So what?” ry had no sympathy for the vampire.
“What are we going to do?”
He nced around. They were pinned in a corner by the
churning mass of bodies; though they were being
ignored for now, it wouldn’t be for long. Before ry
could voice this thought, Simon suddenly squirmed
violently free of her grasp and leaped to the floor.
“Simon!” she screamed as he dashed for the corner and
a moldering pile of rotted velvet drapes. “Simon, stop !”
Jace’s eyebrows made quizzical peaks. “What is he—”
He grabbed for her arm, jerking her back. “ry, don’t
chase the rat. He’s fleeing. That’s what rats do.”
She shot him a furious look. “He’s not a rat. He’s Simon.
And he bit Raphael for you, you ungrateful cretin.” She
yanked her arm free and dashed after Simon, who was
crouched in the folds of the drapes, chittering excitedly
and pawing at them. Btedly realizing what he was
trying to tell her, she yanked the drapes aside. They
were slimy with mold, but behind them was—
“A door,” she breathed. “You genius rat.”
Simon squeaked modestly as she snatched him up.
Jace was right behind her. “A door, eh? Well, does it
open?”
She grabbed for the knob and turned to him, crestfallen.
“It’s locked. Or stuck.”
Jace threw himself against the door. It didn’t budge. He
cursed. “My shoulder will never be the same. I expect
you to nurse me back to health.”
“Just break the door down, will you?”
He looked past her with wide eyes. “ry—”
She turned. A huge wolf had broken away from the
melee and was racing toward her, ears ttened to its
narrow head. It was huge, gray-ck and brindled, with
a long lolling red tongue. ry screamed. Jace threw
himself against the door again, still cursing. She
reached for her belt, grabbed the dagger, and threw it.
She’d never thrown a weapon before, never even
thought of throwing one. The closest she’de to
weaponry before this week was drawing pictures of
them, so ry was more surprised than anyone else,
she suspected, when the dagger flew, wobbly but true,
and sank into the werewolf’s side.
It yelped, slowing, but three of itsrades were
already racing toward them. One paused at the side of
the wounded wolf, but the others charged for the door.
ry screamed again as Jace hurled his body against
the door a third time. It gave with an explosive shriek of
grinding rust and tearing wood. “Three times the charm,”
he panted, holding his shoulder. He ducked into the dark
space that gaped beyond the broken door, and turned to
hold out an impatient hand. “ry,e on.”
With a gasp she darted after him and flung the door
shut, just as two heavy bodies thudded against it. She
fumbled for the bolt, but it was gone, torn away where
Jace had broken through it.
“Duck,” he said, and as she did, the stele whipped over
her head, slicing dark lines into the moldering wood of
the door. She craned her neck to see what he’d carved:
a curve like a sickle, three parallel lines, a rayed star: To
hold against pursuit.
“I lost your dagger,” she confessed. “I’m sorry.”
“It happens.” He pocketed the stele. She could hear the
faint thuds as the wolves hurled themselves against the
door again and again, but it held. “The rune will keep
them back, but not for long. We’d better hurry.”
She looked up. They were in a dank passageway; a
narrow set of stairs led up into darkness. The steps
were wood, the banisters filmy with dust. Simon thrust
his nose out of her jacket pocket, his ck button eyes
glittering in the dim light. “All right.” She nodded at Jace.
“You go first.”
Jace looked as if he wanted to grin but was too tired.
“You know how I like to be first. But slowly,” he added.
“I’m not sure the stairs can hold our weight.”
ry wasn’t sure either. The steps creaked and
groaned as they ascended, like an old woman
comining about her aches and pains. ry gripped
the banister for bnce, and a chunk of it snapped off in
her hand, making her squeak and wringing an
exhausted chuckle out of Jace. He took her hand.
“Here. Steady.”
Simon made a sound that, for a rat, sounded a lot like a
snort. Jace didn’t seem to hear it. They were stumbling
up the steps as rapidly as they dared. The flight rose in
a high spiral, up through the building. They passed
landing afternding, but no doors. They had reached
the fourth featureless turn when a muffled explosion
rocked the stairwell, and a cloud of dust billowed
upward.
“They’ve gotten past the door,” Jace said grimly. “Damn
—I thought it would hold for longer.”
“Do we run now?” ry inquired.
“Now we run,” he said, and they thundered up the stairs,
which shrieked and wailed under their weight, nails
popping like gunfire. They were at the fifthnding now
—she could hear the soft thud-thud of the wolves’ paws
on the steps far below, or perhaps it was just her
imagination. She knew there wasn’t really hot breath on
the back of her neck, but the snarls and howls, getting
louder as they came closer, were real and terrifying.
The sixthnding rose in front of them and they half-
flung themselves onto it. ry was gasping, her breath
sawing painfully in her lungs, but she managed a weak
cheer when she saw the door. It was heavy steel,
riveted with nails, and propped open with a brick. She
barely had time to wonder why when Jace kicked it
open, pushed her through, and, following, mmed it
shut. She heard a definitive click as it locked behind
them. Thank God, she thought.
Then she turned around.
The night sky wheeled above her, scattered with stars
like a handful of loose diamonds. It was not ck but a
clear dark blue, the color of oing dawn. They were
standing on a bare te roof turreted with brick
chimneys. An old water tower, ck with neglect, stood
on a raised tform at one end; a heavy tarpaulin
concealed a lumpy pile of lumber at the other. “This
must be how they get in and out,” Jace said, ncing
back at the door. ry could see him properly now in
the pale light, the lines of strain around his eyes like
shallow cuts. The blood on his clothes, mostly
Raphael’s, looked ck. “They fly up here. Not that that
does us much good.”
“There might be a fire escape,” ry suggested.
Together they picked their way gingerly to the edge of
the roof. ry had never liked heights, and the ten-floor
drop to the street made her stomach spin. So did the
sight of the fire escape, a twisted, unusable hunk of
metal still clinging to the side of the hotel’s stone facade.
“Or not,” she said. She nced back at the door they
had emerged from. It was set into a cabinlike structure
in the center of the roof. It was vibrating, the knob
jerking wildly. It would only hold for a few more minutes,
perhaps less.
Jace pressed the backs of his hands against his eyes.
The leaden air bore down on them, making the back of
ry’s neck prickle. She could see the sweat trickling
into his cor. She wished, irrelevantly, that it would rain.
Rain would burst this heat bubble like a pricked blister.
Jace was muttering to himself. “Think, Wand, think—”
Something began to take shape in the back of ry’s
mind. A rune danced against the backs of her eyelids:
two downward triangles, joined by a single bar—a rune
like a pair of wings ….
“That’s it,” Jace breathed, dropping his hands, and for a
startled moment ry wondered if he had read her
mind. He looked feverish, his gold-flecked eyes very
bright. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.” He
dashed to the far end of the roof, then paused and
looked back at her. She was still standing dazed, her
thoughts full of glimmering shapes. “Come on, ry.”
She followed him, pushing thoughts of runes from her
mind. He had reached the tarpaulin and was tugging at
the edge of it. It came away, revealing not junk but
sparkling chrome, tooled leather, and gleaming paint.
“Motorcycles?”
Jace reached for the nearest one, an enormous dark
red Harley with gold mes on the tank and fenders. He
swung a leg over it and looked over his shoulder at her.
“Get on.”
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