The Last Stand of the New York Institute (The Bane Chronicles 9)

They all looked shocked to be spoken to in that manner. They were of Idris, and no doubt if they knew warlocks at all, they knew warlocks like Ragnor, who made certain to be professional and civil in all his dealings with the Nephilim. Marian Whitelaw might have told Magnus to control his unruly tongue, but she had not been shocked by his speaking out. These stupid children were content to hate from a distance, to fight and never speak to Downworlders, to never risk for a moment seeing their designated enemies as anything like people.

They thought they knew it all, and they knew so little.

"I am Lucian Graymark," said the young man with the thin clever face at the front of the group. Magnus had heard the name before--Valentine's parabatai, his second-in-command, dearer than a brother. Magnus disliked him as soon as he spoke. "Who are you to come here and interfere with us in the pursuit of our sworn duty?"

Graymark held his head high and spoke in a clear, authoritative voice that belied his years. He looked every inch the perfect child of the Angel, stern and merciless. Magnus looked back over his shoulder at the werewolves, huddled at the very back of the room.

Magnus lifted a hand and painted a line of magic, a shimmering barrier of blue and gold. He made the light blaze as fiercely as any angel's sword might have, and barred the Shadowhunters' way.

"I am Magnus Bane. And you are trespassing in my city."

That got a little laugh. "Your city?" said Lucian.

"You need to let these people go."

"Those creatures," said Lucian, "are part of a wolf pack that killed my parabatai's parents. We tracked them down here. We can now exact Shadowhunter justice, as is our right."

"We didn't kill any Shadowhunters!" the only woman among the werewolves said. "And my children are innocent. Killing my children would be murder. Bane, you have to make him let my children go. He has my--"

"I would hear no more of your whining like a mongrel dog," said the young man with the hawklike face, the one standing beside the black-haired woman. They looked like a matched set, and the expressions on their faces were identically ferocious.

Valentine was not famed for his mercy, and Magnus did not have any confidence in his Circle's sparing the children.

The werewolves might have been partially shifted from human to wolf form, but they did not look ready to fight, and Magnus did not know why. There were too many Shadowhunters for Magnus to be sure he could fight them off successfully on his own. The best he could hope for was to stall them with conversation, and hope that he could inspire doubt in some of the Circle, or that Catarina would come or that the Whitelaws would come, and that they might stand with Downworlders and not their own kind.

It seemed a very slim hope, but it was all he had.

Magnus could not help but look again toward the golden-haired youth at the front of the group. There was something terribly familiar about him, as well as a suggestion of tenderness about his mouth, and hurt in the deep blue wells of his eyes. There was something that made Magnus look toward him as the one chance to get the Circle to turn from their purpose.

"What's your name?" Magnus asked.

Those blue eyes narrowed. "Stephen Herondale."

"I used to know the Herondales very well, once upon a time," said Magnus, and he saw it was a mistake by the way Stephen Herondale flinched. The Shadowhunter knew something, had heard some dark whisper about his family tree, then, and was desperate to prove it was not true. Magnus did not know how desperate Stephen Herondale might be, and he had no wish to find out. Magnus went on, genially addressing them all: "I have always been a friend to Shadowhunters. I know many of your families, going back for hundreds of years."

"There is nothing we can do to correct the questionable judgments of our ancestors," Lucian said.

Magnus hated this guy.

"Also," Magnus went on, pointedly ignoring Lucian Graymark, "I find your story suspect. Valentine is ready to hunt down any Downworlder on any vague pretext. What had the vampires he killed in Harlem done to him?"

Stephen Herondale frowned, and glanced at Lucian, who looked troubled in turn, but said, "Valentine told me he went hunting some vampires who broke the Accords there."

"Oh, the Downworlders are all so guilty. And that is so very convenient for you, isn't it? What about their children? The boy who came to collect me was about nine. Has he been dining on Shadowhunter flesh?"

"The pups gnaw on whatever bones their elders drag in," muttered the black-haired woman, and the man beside her nodded.

"Maryse, Robert, please. Valentine is a noble man!" Lucian said, his voice rising as he turned to address Magnus. "He would not hurt a child. Valentine is my parabatai, my best beloved swordbrother. His fight is mine. His family has been destroyed, the Accords have been broken, and he deserves and will have his vengeance. Stand aside, warlock."

Lucian Graymark did not have his hand on his weapon, but Magnus saw that the black-haired woman, Maryse, behind him had a blade shining between her fingers. Magnus looked again at Stephen and realized exactly why his face was so familiar. Gold hair and blue eyes--he was a more ethereal and slender version of a young Edmund Herondale, as though Edmund had come back from heaven, twice as angelic. Magnus had not known Edmund for long, but Edmund had been the father of Will Herondale, who had been one of the very few Shadowhunters that Magnus had ever thought of as a friend.

Stephen saw Magnus looking. Stephen's eyes had narrowed so much now that the sweet blue of them was lost, and they seemed black.

"Enough of this byplay with demonspawn!" said Stephen. He sounded as if he were quoting somebody, and Magnus bet that he knew who.

"Stephen, don't--" Lucian ordered, but golden-haired Stephen had already flung a knife in the direction of one werewolf.

Magnus flicked his hand and sent the knife dropping to the ground. He glared at the werewolves. The woman who had spoken before stared intensely back at him, as if trying to convey a message with her eyes alone.

"This is what the modern young Shadowhunter has become, is it?" Magnus asked. "Let me see, how does your little bedtime story about how super-duper extra special you all are go again? . . . Ah, yes. Through the ages your mandate has been to protect mankind, to fight against evil forces until they are finally vanquished and the world can live in peace. You don't seem terribly interested in peace or protecting anybody. What is it that you're fighting for, exactly?"

"I am fighting for a better world for myself and my son," said the woman called Maryse.

"I have no interest in the world you want," Magnus told her. "Or in your doubtless repellent brat, I might add."

Robert drew a dagger from his sleeve. Magnus was not prepared to waste all his magic deflecting daggers. He lifted a hand into the air, and all the light in the room was quenched. Only the noise and neon glow of the city spilled in, not providing enough illumination to see by, but Robert threw the dagger just the same. That was when the glass of the windows broke and dark forms came flooding in: young Rachel Whitelaw landed in a roll on the floor in front of Magnus, and took the blade meant for him in her shoulder.

Magnus could see better in the dark than most. He saw that, past all hope, the Whitelaws had come. Marian Whitelaw, the head of the Institute; her husband, Adam; and Adam's brother; and the young Whitelaw cousins whom Marian and Adam had taken in after their parents' deaths. The Whitelaws had already been fighting tonight. Their gear was bloodstained and torn, and Rachel Whitelaw was clearly wounded. There was blood in Marian's gray bob of hair, but Magnus did not think it was hers. Marian and Adam Whitelaw, Magnus happened to know, had not been able to have their own children. The word was that they adored the young cousins who lived with them, that they always made a fuss over any young Shadowhunters who came to their Institute. The Circle members must have been peers of the Whitelaw cousins, brought up together in Idris. The Circle was exactly designed to win the Whitelaws' sympathy.

The Circle was, however, in a panic.

They could not see as Magnus could. They did not know who was attacking them, only that somebody had come to Magnus's aid. Magnus saw the swing and heard the clash of blades meeting, so loud it was almost impossible to hear Marian Whitelaw's shouted commands for the Circle to stop and drop their weapons. He wondered which of the Circle even realized who they were fighting. He conjured a small light in his palm and searched for the werewolf woman. He had to know why the werewolves would not attack.

Someone knocked into him. Magnus stared into the eyes of Stephen Herondale.

"Do you never have doubts about all this?" Magnus breathed.

"No," Stephen panted. "I have lost too much--I have sacrificed too much to this great cause ever to turn my back on it now."

As he spoke, he swung his knife up toward Magnus's throat. Magnus turned the hilt hot in the young man's hand until he dropped it.

Magnus suddenly did not care what Stephen had sacrificed, or about the pain in his blue eyes. He wanted Stephen gone from this earth. Magnus wanted to forget he had ever seen Stephen Herondale's face, so full of hate and so reminiscent of faces Magnus had loved. The warlock summoned a new spell into his hand and was about to hurl it at Stephen, when a thought arrested him. He did not know how he could face Tessa again if he killed one of her descendants.

Then Marian Whitelaw stepped into the light from the spell shimmering in Magnus's palm, and Stephen's face went blank with surprise.

"Ma'am, it's you! We shouldn't-- We're Shadowhunters. We shouldn't be fighting over them. They are Downworlders," Stephen hissed. "They will turn on you like the treacherous dogs they are. That's their nature. They are not worth fighting for. What do you say?"

"I don't have any proof these werewolves broke the Accords."

"Valentine said," began Stephen, but Magnus heard the uncertainty in his voice. Lucian Graymark might believe they only hunted Downworlders who had broken the Accords, but Stephen at least knew they were acting as vigilantes rather than Law-abiding Shadowhunters. Stephen had been doing it, just the same.