Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices #1)(64)
Author: Cassandra Clare

It hardly mattered, really. Everything seemed to be going on in a dream. She sat on the floor with Nathaniel as the Shadowhunters moved around her, drawing on one another with their steles. It was incredible to watch their injuries vanishing as the healing Marks went onto their skin. They all seemed equally able to draw the Marks. She watched as Jem, wincing, unbuttoned his shirt to show a long cut along one pale shoulder; he looked away, his mouth tight, as Will drew a careful Mark below the injury.

It wasn’t until Will, having finished with Jem, came sauntering over to her that she realized why she was so tired.

“Back to yourself, I see,” he said. He had a damp towel in one hand but hadn’t yet bothered to clean the blood off his face and neck.

Tessa glanced down at herself. It was true. At some point she had lost Camille and become herself again. She must have been dazed indeed, she thought, not to have noticed the return of her own heartbeat. It pulsed inside her chest like a drum.

“I didn’t know you knew how to use a pistol,” Will added.

“I don’t,” Tessa said. “I think Camille must have. It was—instinctive.” She bit her lip. “Not that it matters, since it didn’t work.”

“We rarely use them. Etching runes into the metal of a gun or bullet prevents the gunpowder from igniting; no one knows why. Henry has tried to address the problem, of course, but not with any success. Since you can’t kill a demon without a runed weapon or a seraph blade, guns aren’t much use to us. Vampires die if you shoot them through the heart, admittedly, and werewolves can be injured if you have a silver bullet, but if you miss the vitals, they’ll just come at you angrier than ever. Runed blades simply work better for our purposes. Get a vampire with a runed blade and it’s much harder for them to recover and heal.”

Tessa looked at him, her gaze steady. “Isn’t it hard?”

Will tossed the damp cloth aside. It was scarlet with blood. “Isn’t what hard?”

“Killing vampires,” she said. “They may not be people, but they look like people. They feel as people do. They scream and bleed. Isn’t it hard to slaughter them?”

Will’s jaw tightened. “No,” he said. “And if you really knew anything about them—”

“Camille feels,” she said. “She loves and hates.”

“And she is still alive. Everyone has choices, Tessa. Those vampires would not have been here tonight if they hadn’t made theirs.” He glanced down at Nathaniel, limp in Tessa’s lap. “Nor, I imagine, would your brother have been.”

“I don’t know why de Quincey wanted him dead,” Tessa said softly. “I don’t know what he could have done to incur the wrath of vampires.”

“Tessa!” It was Charlotte, darting up to Tessa and Will like a hummingbird. She still seemed so tiny, and so harmless, Tessa thought—despite the fighting gear she wore and the black Marks that laced her skin like curling snakes. “We’ve been given permission to bring your brother back to the Institute with us,” she announced, gesturing at Nathaniel with a small hand. “The vampires may well have drugged him. He’s certainly been bitten, and who knows what else? He could turn darkling—or worse, if we don’t prevent it. In any case, I doubt they’ll be able to help him in a mundane hospital. With us, at least the Silent Brothers can see to him, poor thing.”

“Poor thing?” echoed Will rather rudely. “He rather got himself into this, didn’t he? No one told him to run off and get himself involved with a bunch of Downworlders.”

“Really, Will.” Charlotte eyed him coldly. “Can’t you have a little empathy?”

“Dear God,” said Will, looking from Charlotte to Nate and back again. “Is there anything that makes women sillier than the sight of a wounded young man?”

Tessa slitted her eyes at him. “You might want to clean the rest of the blood off your face before you continue arguing in that vein.”

Will threw his arms up into the air and stalked off. Charlotte looked at Tessa, a half smile curving the side of her mouth. “I must say, I rather like the way you manage Will.”

Tessa shook her head. “No one manages Will.”

It was quickly decided that Tessa and Nathaniel would go with Henry and Charlotte in the town coach; Will and Jem would ride home in a smaller carriage borrowed from Charlotte’s aunt, with Thomas as their driver. The Lightwoods and the rest of the Enclave would stay behind to search de Quincey’s house, leaving no evidence of their battle for the mundanes to find in the morning. Will had wanted to stay and take part in the search, but Charlotte had been firm. He had ingested vampire blood and needed to return to the Institute as soon as possible to begin the cure.

Thomas, however, would not allow Will into the carriage as covered in blood as he was. After announcing that he would return in “half a tick,” Thomas had gone off to find a damp piece of cloth. Will leaned against the side of the carriage, watching as the Enclave rushed in and out of de Quincey’s house like ants, salvaging papers and furniture from the remains of the fire.

Returning with a soapy rag, Thomas handed it over to Will, and leaned his big frame against the side of the carriage. It rocked under his weight. Charlotte had always encouraged Thomas to join Jem and Will for the physical parts of their training, and as the years had gone by, Thomas had grown from a scrawny child to a man so large and muscular that tailors despaired over his measurements. Will might have been the better fighter—his blood made him that—but Thomas’s commanding physical presence was not easy to ignore.

Sometimes Will could not help remembering Thomas as he had first come to the Institute. He belonged to a family that had served the Nephilim for years, but he had been born so frail they’d thought he wouldn’t live. When he’d reached twelve years of age, he’d been sent to the Institute; at that time he’d still been so small that he’d looked barely nine. Will had made fun of Charlotte for wanting to employ him, but had secretly hoped he would stay so that there might be another boy his own age in the house. And they had been friends of a sort, the Shadowhunter and the servant boy—until Jem had come and Will had forgotten Thomas almost completely. Thomas had never seemed to hold it against him, treating Will always with the same friendliness with which he treated everyone else.

“Always rum to see this sort of thing goin’ on, and none of the neighbors out for so much as a gander,” Thomas said now, glancing up and down the street. Charlotte had always demanded that the Institute servants speak “proper” English within its walls, and Thomas’s East End accent tended to come and go depending on whether he remembered.