Chapter 44
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She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. The
good things you do don’t cancel out the bad ones. But
—” She bit her lip. “If you told me where Valentine
was—”
“No.” He breathed the word. “It is said that the
Nephilim are the children of men and angels. All that
this angelic heritage has given to us is a longer
distance to fall.” He touched the invisible surface of
the wall with his fingertips. “You were not raised as
one of us. You have no part of this life of scars and
killing. You can still get away. Leave the Institute,
ry, as soon as you can. Leave, and nevere
back.”
She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do
that.”
“Then you have my condolences,” he said, and
walked out of the room.
The door closed behind Hodge, leaving ry in
silence. There was only her own harsh breathing and
the scrabble of her fingertips against the ungiving
transparent barrier between her and the door. She did
exactly what she’d told herself she wouldn’t do, and
flung herself against it, again and again, until she was
exhausted and her sides ached. Then she sank to the
floor and tried not to cry.
Somewhere on the other side of this barrier Alec was
dying, while Isabelle waited for Hodge toe and
save him. Somewhere beyond this room Jace was
being shaken roughly awake by Valentine.
Somewhere her mother’s chances were ebbing away,
moment by moment, second by second. And she was
trapped here, as useless and helpless as the child
she was.
She sat bolt upright then, remembering the moment at
Madame Dorothea’s when Jace had pressed the stele
into her hand. Had she ever given it back to him?
Holding her breath, she felt in her left jacket pocket; it
was empty. Slowly her hand crept into the right
pocket, her sweaty fingers picking up lint and then
skidding across something hard, smooth, and round—
the stele.
She bounded to her feet, her heart pounding, and felt
with her left hand for the invisible wall. Finding it, she
braced herself, inching the tip of the stele forward with
her other hand until it rested against the smooth, level
air. Already an image was forming in her mind, like a
fish rising up through cloudy water, the pattern of its
scales growing clearer and clearer as it neared the
surface. Slowly at first, and then more confidently, she
moved the stele across the wall, leaving searingly
bright ash-white lines hovering in the air before her.
She felt when the rune was done, and lowered her
hand, breathing hard. For a moment everything was
motionless and silent and the rune hung like glowing
neon, burning her eyes. Then came a sound like the
loudest shattering she had ever heard, as if she were
standing under a waterfall of stones listening to them
crash to the ground all around her. The rune she had
drawn turned ck and sifted away like ash; the floor
trembled under her feet; then it was over, and she
knew, without a doubt, that she was free.
Still holding the stele, she raced to the window and
pushed the curtain aside. Twilight was falling and the
streets below were bathed in a reddish-purple glow.
She caught a clear glimpse of Hodge crossing a
street, his gray head bobbing above the crowd.
She dashed out of the library and down the stairs,
pausing only to shove the stele back into her jacket
pocket. She took the stairs running and hit the street
with a stitch already forming in her side. People
walking their dogs in the humid twilight jumped aside
as she barreled down the walkway alongside the East
River. She caught sight of herself in the darkened
window of an apartment building as she careened
around a corner. Her sweaty hair was stered to her
forehead, her face crusted with dried blood.
She reached the intersection where she had seen
Hodge. For a moment she thought she’d lost him. She
darted through the crowd near the subway entrance,
shouldering people aside, using her knees and
elbows as weapons. Sweaty and bruised, ry pulled
free of the crowd just in time to see a sh of tweed
suit disappear around the corner of a narrow service
alley between two buildings.
She wriggled around a Dumpster and into the mouth
of the alley. The back of her throat felt like it was
burning every time she breathed. Though it had been
twilight on the street, here in the alley it was as dark
as nightfall. She could just see Hodge, standing at the
far end of the alley, where it dead-ended into the back
of a fast-food restaurant. Restaurant trash was piled
outside: heaping bags of food, dirty paper tes, and
stic cutlery that crunched unpleasantly under his
boots as he turned to look at her. She remembered a
poem she’d read in English ss: I think we are in
rats’ alley / Where the dead men lost their bones.
“You followed me,” he said. “You shouldn’t have.”
“I’ll leave you alone if you just tell me where Valentine
is.”
“I can’t do that,” he said. “He’ll know I told you, and
my freedom will be as short as my life.”
“It will be anyway when the ve finds out that you
gave the Mortal Cup to Valentine,” ry pointed out.
“After tricking us into finding it for you. How can you
live with yourself, knowing what he ns to do with
it?”
He cut her off with a shortugh. “I fear Valentine
more than the ve, and so would you, if you were
wise,” he said. “He would have found the Cup
eventually, whether I helped him or not.”
“And you don’t care that he’s going to use it to kill
children?”
A spasm crossed his face as he took a step forward;
she saw something shine in his hand. “Does all this
really matter to you this much?”
“I told you before,” she said. “I can’t just walk away.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, and she saw him raise his
arm—and remembered suddenly Jace saying that
Hodge’s weapon had been the chakram, the flying
disk. She ducked even before she saw the bright
circle of metal spin singing toward her head; it
passed, humming, inches from her face and
embedded itself in the metal fire escape on her left.
She looked up. Hodge was gazing at her, the second
metal disk held lightly in his right hand. “You can still
run,” he said.
Instinctively she raised her hands, though logic told
her the chakram would just slice them to pieces.
“Hodge—”
Something hurtled in front of her, something big, gray-
ck, and alive. She heard Hodge shout in horror.
Stumbling backward, ry saw the thing more clearly
as it paced between her and Hodge. It was a wolf, six
feet in length, with a jet-ck coat shot through with a
single stripe of gray.
Hodge, the metal disk gripped in his hand, was white
as a bone. “You,” he breathed, and with a sense of
distant astonishment ry realized he was talking to
the wolf. “I thought that you had fled—”
The wolf’s lips drew back from its teeth, and she saw
its lolling red tongue. There was hatred in its eyes as
it looked at Hodge, a pure and human hatred.
“Did youe for me, or for the girl?” said Hodge.
Sweat streamed from his temples, but his hand was
steady.
The wolf paced toward him, growling low in its throat.
“There’s still time,” said Hodge. “Valentine would take
you back—”
With a howl the wolf sprang. Hodge cried out again,
then there was a sh of silver, and a sickening noise
as the chakram embedded itself in the wolf’s side.
The wolf reared back on its hind legs, and ry saw
the disk’s edge jutting from the wolf’s fur, blood
streaming, just as it struck Hodge.
Hodge screamed once as he went down, the wolf’s
jaws mping shut over his shoulder. Blood flew into
the air like the spray of paint from a broken can,
sttering the cement wall with red. The wolf lifted its
head from the tutor’s limp body and turned its gray,
lupine gaze on ry, teeth dripping scarlet.
She didn’t scream. There was no air in her lungs that
she could have dragged up to make a sound; she
scrambled to her feet and ran, ran for the mouth of the
alley and the familiar neon lights of the street, ran for
the safety of the real world. She could hear the wolf
growling behind her, feel its hot breath on the bare
backs of her legs. She put on onest burst of speed,
flinging herself toward the street—
The wolf’s jaws closed on her leg, jerking her
backward. Just before her head struck the hard
pavement, plunging her into ckness, she
discovered that she did have enough air to scream,
after all.
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The sound of dripping water woke her. Slowly ry
peeled her eyes open. There wasn’t much to see. She
lay on a wide cot that had been ced on the floor of
a small dingy-walled room. There was a rickety table
propped against one wall. On it was a cheap-looking
brass candleholder sporting a fat red candle that cast
the only light in the room. The ceiling was cracked
and damp, wetness seeping down through the
fissures in the stone. ry felt a vague sense that
something was missing from the room, but this
concern was overwhelmed by the strong smell of wet
dog.
She sat up and immediately wished she hadn’t. Hot
pain drove through her head like a spike, followed by
a racking wave of nausea. If there had been anything
in her stomach, she would have thrown it up.
A mirror hung over the cot, dangling from a nail driven
between two stones. She nced in it and was
appalled. No wonder her face hurt—long parallel
scratches ran from the corner of her right eye down to
the edge of her mouth. Her right cheek was crusted
with blood, and blood was smeared on her neck and
all down the front of her shirt and jacket. In a sudden
panic she grabbed for her pocket, then rxed. The
stele was still there.
It was then that she realized what was odd about the
room. One wall of it was bars: thick iron floor-to-ceiling
bars. She was in a jail cell.
Veins surging with adrenaline, ry staggered to her
feet. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she
caught at the table to steady herself. I will not faint,
she told herself grimly. Then she heard the footsteps.
Someone wasing down the hallway outside the
cell. ry backed up against the table.
It was a man. He was carrying amp, its light brighter
than the candle, which made her blink and turned him
into a backlit shadow. She saw height, square
shoulders, ragged hair; it was only when he pushed
the door of the cell open and came inside that she
realized who he was.
He looked the same: worn jeans, denim shirt, work
boots, same uneven hair, same sses pushed down
to the bridge of his nose. The scars she’d noticed
along the side of his throatst time she’d seen him
were healing patches of shiny skin now.
Luke.
It was all too much for ry. Exhaustion,ck of sleep
and food, terror and blood-loss, caught up with her in
a rushing wave. She felt her knees buckle as she slid
toward the ground.
In seconds Luke was across the room. He moved so
fast, she didn’t have time to hit the floor before he
caught her, swinging her up the way he’d done when
she was a little girl. He set her down on the cot and
stepped back, eyes anxious. “ry?” he said,
reaching for her. “Are you all right?”
She flinched away, throwing up her hands to ward him
off. “Don’t touch me.”
An expression of profound hurt crossed his face.
Wearily he drew a hand across his forehead. “I guess
I deserve that.”
“Yeah. You do.”
The look on his face was troubled. “I don’t expect you
to trust me—”
“That’s good. Because I don’t.”
“ry …” He began to pace the length of the cell.
“What I did … I don’t expect you to understand. I
know you feel that I abandoned you—”
“You did abandon me,” she said. “You told me never
to call you again. You never cared about me. You
never cared about my mother. You lied about
everything.”
“Not,” he said, “about everything.”
“So your name really is Luke Garroway?”
His shoulders drooped perceptibly. “No,” he said, then
nced down. A dark red patch was spreading across
the front of his blue denim shirt.
ry sat up straight. “Is that blood?” she demanded.
She forgot for a moment to be furious.
“Yes,” said Luke, his hand against his side. “The
wound must have torn open when I lifted you.”
“What wound?” ry couldn’t help asking.
He said with deliberation: “Hodge’s disks are still
sharp, though his throwing arm is not what it once
was. I think he may have nicked a rib.”
“Hodge?” ry said. “When did you …?”
He looked at her, not saying anything, and she
remembered suddenly the wolf in the alley, all ck
except for that one gray streak down its side, and she
remembered the disk hitting it, and she realized.
“You’re a werewolf.”
He took his hand away from his shirt; his fingers were
stained red. “Yep,” he saidconically. He moved to
the wall and rapped sharply on it: once, twice, three
times. Then he turned back to her. “I am.”
“You killed Hodge,” she said, remembering.
“No.” He shook his head. “I hurt him pretty badly, I
think, but when I went back for the body, it was gone.
He must have dragged himself away.”
“You tore at his shoulder,” she said. “I saw you.”
“Yes. Though it’s worth noting that he was trying to kill
you at the time. Did he hurt anyone else?”
ry sank her teeth into her lip. She tasted blood, but
it was old blood from where Hugo had attacked her.
“Jace,” she said in a whisper. “Hodge knocked him out
and handed him over to … to Valentine.”
“To Valentine?” Luke said, looking astonished. “I knew
Hodge had given Valentine the Mortal Cup, but I
hadn’t realized—”
“How did you know that?” ry began, before
remembering. “You heard me talking to Hodge in the
alley,” she said. “Before you jumped him.”
“I jumped him, as you put it, because he was about to
slice your head off,” Luke said, then looked up as the
cell door opened again and a tall man came in,
followed by a tiny woman, so short she looked like a
child. Both of them wore in, casual clothes: jeans
and cotton shirts, and both had the same untidy,
flyaway hair, though the woman’s was fair and the
man’s was a badgery gray and ck. Both had the
same young-old faces, unlined but with tired eyes.
“ry,” said Luke, “meet my second and third, Gretel
and ric.”
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