The Mortal Instruments - 1 - City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Author:Cassandra Clare
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-02-19T00:25:20+00:00

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 Niños de la Luna," he hissed. Even Clary, 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 never come to each other's lairs. 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.

The largest 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 rope-like 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't come 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 Clary.

She was too shocked to move. Simon, who had been squirming in her grasp, went still. Behind her Jace muttered something that sounded distinctly blasphemous. "You didn't tell me you knew any werewolves." She could hear the slight catch under his flat 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." Clary 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 werewolf laughed. "I'm so glad you said that," he said, and launched 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 Clary had ever heard. If Bosch's paintings of hell had come with a soundtrack, they would have sounded like this.

Jace whistled. "Raphael is really having an exceptionally bad night."

"So what?" Clary had no sympathy for the vampire. "What are we going to do?"

He glanced 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 Clary could voice this thought, Simon suddenly squirmed violently free of her grasp and leaped to the floor.

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