"Wow," Kit said. He meant it.
The weasel ran down Ty's arm and leaped onto the railing, then disappeared into the darkness. "Ferrets make great pets," Ty said. "They're surprisingly loyal. Or at least, people say it's surprising. I don't know why it would be. They're clean, and they like toys and quiet. And they can be trained to--" He broke off. "Are you bored?"
"No." Kit was jolted; had he looked bored? He'd been enjoying the sound of Ty's voice, lively and thoughtful. "Why?"
"Julian says sometimes people don't want to know as much about some topics as I do," said Ty. "So I should just ask."
"I guess that's true for everyone," said Kit.
Ty shook his head. "No," he said. "I'm different." He didn't sound bothered, or at all upset about it. It was a fact he knew about himself and that was all. Ty had a quiet confidence Kit found to his surprise that he envied. He never thought he would have envied anything about a Shadowhunter.
Ty climbed up onto the porch beside Kit and sat down. He smelled faintly of desert, sand and sage. Kit thought of the way he'd liked the sound of Ty's voice: It was rare to hear someone get that kind of sincere pleasure out of simply sharing information. He guessed it might be a coping mechanism, too--with the unpleasantness of the Centurions, and the worry about Julian and the others, Ty was probably stressed out.
"Why are you outside?" Ty asked Kit. "Are you thinking about running away again?"
"No," Kit said. He wasn't, really. Maybe a little. Looking at Ty made him not want to think about it. It made him want to discover a mystery so he could present it to Ty for solving, the way you might give someone who loved candy a box of See's.
"I wish we all could," Ty said, with disarming frankness. "It took us a long time to feel safe here, after the Dark War. Now it feels as if the Institute is full of enemies again."
"The Centurions, you mean?"
"I don't like having them all here," said Ty. "I don't like crowds of people in general. When they're all talking at the same time, and making noise. Crowds are the worst--especially places like the Pier. Have you ever been there?" He made a face. "All the lights and the shouting and the people. It's like broken glass in my head."
"What about fighting?" asked Kit. "Battles, killing demons, that must be pretty noisy and loud?"
Ty shook his head. "Battle is different. Battle is what Shadowhunters do. Fighting is in my body, not my mind. As long as I can wear headphones--"
He broke off. In the distance, Kit heard a delicate shattering, like a window being blown in by a hurricane.
Ty exploded into a standing position, almost stepping on Kit, and drew a seraph blade from his weapons belt. He gripped it, staring out toward the ocean with a look as set as the glares on the statues in the garden behind the Institute.
Kit scrambled up after him, his heart hammering. "What's wrong? What was that?"
"Wards--the wards the Centurions put up--that's the sound of them breaking," said Ty. "Something's coming. Something dangerous."
"I thought you said the Institute was safe!"
"It usually is," Ty said, and raised the blade in his hand. "Adriel," he said, and the blade seemed to burn up from within. The glow lit the night, and in its illumination Kit saw that the road leading up to the Institute was packed with moving shapes. Not human ones--a surge of dark things, slippery and dank and undulating, and a stink rolled up toward them from below, one that almost made Kit gag. He remembered having been on Venice Beach once and passing the rotting corpse of a seal, festooned in maggoty seaweed--it stank like that, but worse.
"Hold this," Ty said, and a second later Kit found that Ty had shoved his blazing seraph blade into Kit's hand.
It was like holding a live wire. The sword seemed to pulse and writhe, and it was all Kit could do to hang on to it. "I've never held one of these before!" he said.
"My brother always says you have to start somewhere." Ty had detached a dagger from his belt. It was short and sharp and seemed altogether less fearsome a weapon than the seraph blade.
Which brother? Kit wondered, but he didn't have a chance to ask--he could hear shouts now, and running feet, and he was glad because the dark tide of things was nearly at the top of the road. He had turned his wrist a way he wouldn't have thought was possible, and the blade seemed steadier in his hand--it glowed without heat, as if it were composed of whatever made stars or moonlight.
"So now that everyone's awake," Kit said, "I don't suppose that means we retreat inside?"
Ty was pulling his headphones out of his pocket, bracing his black-sneakered feet just above the top step. "We're Shadowhunters," he said. "We don't run."
The moon came out from behind the cloud then, just as the door behind Kit and Ty flew open, and Shadowhunters poured out. Several of the Centurions carried witchlights: The night lit up, and Kit saw the things coming up the road, spilling onto the grass. They clamored toward the Institute, and on the porch the Shadowhunters raised their weapons.
"Sea demons," he heard Diana say grimly, and Kit knew suddenly that he was about to be in his first real battle, whether he liked it or not.
Kit whirled around. The night was full of light and noise. The brilliance of seraph blades illuminated the darkness, which was a blessing and a curse.
Kit could see Livvy and Diana with their weapons, followed by Diego, a massive ax in his hand. Zara and the other Centurions were just behind.
But he could also see the sea demons, and they were much worse than he'd imagined. There were things that looked like prehistoric lizards, scaled with stone, their heads a mass of dripping needle teeth and dead black eyes. Things that looked like pulsing jelly with fanged mouths, in which hideous organs hung: misshapen hearts, transparent stomachs in which Kit could discern the outlines of what one of them had just eaten--something with human arms and legs . . . Things like huge squids with leering faces and tentacles dotted with suckers from which green acid dripped to the ground, leaving seared holes in the grass.
The demons who'd killed his father were looking pretty attractive by comparison.
"By the Angel," Diana breathed. "Get behind me, Centurions."
Zara shot her a nasty look, though the Centurions were mostly clustered on the porch, gaping. Only Diego looked as if he literally couldn't wait to hurl himself into the fray. Veins stood out on his forehead, and his hand trembled with hatred.
"We are Centurions," Zara said. "We don't take orders from you--"
Diana whirled on her. "Shut up, you stupid child," she said in a voice of cold fury. "As if the Dearborns didn't cower in Zurich during the Dark War? You've never been in a real battle. I have. Don't speak another word."
Zara reeled back, rigid with shock. Not a one of her Centurions, not even Samantha or Manuel, moved to argue for her.
The demons--squawking, flapping, and sliding across the grass--had nearly reached the porch. Kit felt Livvy edging toward him and Ty, moving to stand in front of him. They were trying to block him, he realized suddenly. To protect him. He felt a wave of gratitude, and then a wave of annoyance--did they think he was a helpless mundane?
He'd fought demons before. Deep down in his soul, something was stirring. Something that made the seraph blade blaze brighter in his hand. Something that made him understand the look on Diego's face as he turned to Diana and said, "Orders?"
"Kill them all, obviously," Diana said, and the Centurions began to pour down the stairs. Diego plunged his ax into the first one he saw; runes gleamed along the blade as it slashed through jelly, spraying gray-black blood.
Kit threw himself forward. The space in front of the steps had become a melee. He saw the full power of seraph blades as Centurions plunged and stabbed, and the air filled with the stench of demon blood, and the blade in his hand blazed and blazed and something caught his wrist, trapping him at the top of the steps.
It was Livvy. "No," she said. "You're not ready--"
"I'm fine," he protested. Ty was halfway down the steps; he drew his hand back and flung th
e dagger he was still holding. It sank into the wide, flat flounder-eye of a rearing fish-headed demon, which blinked into oblivion.
He turned back to look at Kit and his sister. "Livvy," he said. "Let him--"
The door slammed open again, and to Kit's surprise, it was Arthur Blackthorn, still in jeans with his bathrobe over them, but he had jammed his feet into shoes at least. An ancient, tarnished sword dangled from his hand.
Diana, locked in combat with a lizard-demon, looked up in horror. "Arthur, no!"
Arthur was panting. There was terror on his face, but something else as well, a sort of fierceness. He hurtled down the steps, flinging himself at the first demon he saw--a fringed, reddish thing with a single massive mouth and a long stinger. As the stinger came down, he sliced it in half, sending the creature bobbing and shrieking through the air like a deflating balloon.
Livvy released Kit. She was staring at her uncle in amazement. Kit turned to descend the stairs, just as the demons began to draw back--retreating, but why? The Centurions had started to cheer as the space before the Institute cleared, but to Kit, it seemed too soon. The demons hadn't been losing. They hadn't been winning, but it was too early for a retreat.
"Something's going on," he said, looking between Livvy and Ty, both of whom were poised on the steps with him. "Something's wrong--"
Laughter pierced the air. The demons froze in a semicircle, blocking the way to the road, but not moving forward. In the middle of their semicircle walked a figure out of a horror movie.
It had once been a man; he still had the blurred shape of one, but his skin was fish-belly gray-green, and he limped because most of one arm and his side had been chewed away. His shirt hung in rags, showing where the white bones of his ribs had been picked clean, the drained gray skin around his terrible wounds.
His hair was mostly gone, though what remained of it was bone-white. His face was drowned and bloated, his eyes gone milky, bleached by seawater. He smiled with a mouth that was mostly lipless. In his hand he clutched a black sack, its fabric stained wet and dark.
"Shadowhunters," he said. "How I've missed you."
It was Malcolm Fade.
*