Cassandra Clare - Clockwork Princess

The hand in his shirt tightened. “You want to be a little more respectful, Shadowhunter.”

“No,” Will said. “No, I really don’t.”

“We’ve heard all about you, Will Herondale,” said one of the other werewolves. “Always crawling to Downworlders for help. We’d like to see you crawl now.”

“You’ll have to cut me off at the knees, then.”

“That,” said the werewolf holding Will, “can be arranged.”

Will exploded into action. He slammed his head into the face of the werewolf in front of him. He both heard and felt the sick crunch of the werewolf’s nose breaking, hot blood spurting over the man’s face as he staggered back across the courtyard and crumpled onto his knees on the cobblestones. His hands were pressed to his face, trying to stem the flow of blood.

A hand grasped Will’s shoulder, claws piercing the fabric of Will’s wet shirt. He whirled around to face the wolves and saw in this second werewolf’s hand, silvery in the moonlight, the sharp gleam of a knife. His assailant’s eyes shone through the rain, gold-green and menacing.

They did not come out here to taunt or hurt me, Will realized. They came out here to kill me.

For one black moment Will was tempted to let them. The thought of it seemed like an enormous relief—all pain gone, all responsibility gone, a simple submersion in death and forgetting. He stood without moving as the knife swung toward him. Everything seemed to be happening very slowly—the iron edge of the knife swinging toward him, the sneering face of the werewolf blurred by the rain.

The image he had dreamed the night before flashed before his eyes: Tessa, running up a green path toward him. Tessa. His hand came up automatically and grasped the werewolf’s wrist in one hand as he ducked the blow, swinging under the wolf’s arm. He brought the arm down hard, breaking the bone with a savage splintering. The lycanthrope screamed, and a dark bolt of glee shot through Will. The dagger fell to the cobblestones as Will kicked his opponent’s legs out from under him, then slammed his elbow into the man’s temple. The wolf went down in a heap and didn’t move again.

Will snatched up the dagger and turned to face the others. There were only three of them standing now, and they looked decidedly less sure of themselves than they had before. He grinned, cold and terrible, and tasted the metal of rain and blood in his mouth. “Come and kill me,” he said. “Come and kill me if you think you can.” He kicked the unconscious werewolf at his feet. “You’ll have to do better than your friends.”

They lunged at him, claws out, and Will went down hard onto the cobblestones, his head cracking against the stone. A set of claws raked his shoulder; he rolled sideways under a flurry of blows and lashed upward with his dagger. There was a high yelp of pain that ended on a whine, and the weight on top of Will, which had been moving and struggling, went limp. Will rolled to the side and sprang to his feet, spinning around.

The wolf he had stabbed lay open-eyed, dead in a widening pool of blood and rainwater. The two remaining werewolves were struggling to their feet, caked in mud and drenched in water. Will was bleeding from his shoulder where one of them had dug deep furrows with his claws; the pain was glorious. He laughed through the blood and the mud as the rain sluiced the blood from the blade of his dagger. “Again,” he said, and barely recognized his own voice, strained and cracked and deadly. “Again.”

One of the werewolves spun and bolted. Will laughed again and moved toward the last of them, who stood, frozen, clawed hands extended—with bravery or terror, Will wasn’t sure, and didn’t care. His dagger felt like an extension of his wrist, part of his arm. One good blow and a jerk upward, and he would rip through bone and cartilage, stabbing toward the heart—

“Stop!” The voice was hard, commanding, familiar. Will cut his eyes to the side. Striding across the courtyard, his shoulders hunched against the rain, his expression furious, was Woolsey Scott. “I command you, both of you, stop this instant!”

The werewolf dropped his hands to his sides instantly, his claws vanishing. He bent his head, the classic gesture of submission. “Master—”

A boiling tide of rage poured over Will, obliterating rationality, sense, everything but rage. He reached out and jerked the werewolf toward him, his arm wrapping the man’s neck, blade against his throat. Woolsey, only a few feet away, came up short, his green eyes shooting daggers.

“Come any closer,” Will said, “and I’ll cut your little wolfling’s throat.”

“I told you to stop,” Woolsey said in a measured tone. He was wearing, as he always was, a beautifully cut suit, a brocade riding coat atop it, everything now liberally soaked with rain. His fair hair, plastered to his face and neck, was colorless with water. “Both of you.”

“But I don’t have to listen to you !” Will shouted. “I was winning! Winning! ” He glanced about the courtyard at the three scattered bodies of the wolves he had fought—two unconscious, one dead. “Your pack attacked me unprovoked. They broke the Accords. I was defending myself. They broke the Law !” His voice rose, harsh and unrecognizable. “I am owed their blood, and I will have it !”

“Yes, yes, buckets of blood,” said Woolsey. “And what would you do with it if you had it? You don’t care about this werewolf. Let him go.”

“No.”

“At least let him free so he can fight you,” Woolsey said.

Will hesitated, then released his grip on the werewolf he held, who faced his pack leader, looking terrified. Woolsey snapped his fingers in the wolf’s direction. “Run, Conrad,” he said. “Fast. And now.”

The werewolf didn’t need to be told twice; he turned on his heels and darted away, vanishing behind the stables. Will turned back to Woolsey with a sneer.

“So your pack are all cowards,” he said. “Five against one Shadowhunter? Is that how it is?”

“I didn’t tell them to come out here after you. They’re young. And stupid. And impetuous. And half their pack was killed by Mortmain. They blame your kind.” Woolsey stepped a little closer, his eyes raking up and down Will, as cold as green ice. “I assume your parabatai is dead, then,” he added with shocking casualness.

Will was not ready to hear the words at all, would never be ready. The battle had cleared his head of the pain for a moment. Now it threatened to return, all-encompassing and terrifying. He gasped as if Woolsey had punched him, and took an involuntary step back.

“And you’re trying to get yourself killed because of it, Nephilim boy? Is that what’s going on?”

Will swiped his wet hair out of his face and looked at Woolsey with hatred. “Maybe I am.”

“Is that how you respect his memory?”

“What does it matter?” Will said. “He’s dead. He’ll never know what I do or what I don’t do.”

“My brother is dead,” Woolsey said. “I still struggle to fulfill his wishes, to continue the Praetor Lupus in his memory, and to live as he would have had me live. Do you think I’m the sort of person who would ever be found in a place like this, consuming pig swill and drinking vinegar, knee deep in mud, watching some tedious Shadowhunter brat destroy even more of my already diminished pack, if it weren’t for the fact that I serve a greater purpose than my own desires and sorrows? And so do you, Shadowhunter. So do you.”

“Oh, God.” The dagger fell out of Will’s hand and landed in the mud at his feet. “What do I do now?” he whispered.

He had no idea why he was asking Woolsey, except that there was no one else in the world to ask. Not even when he thought he was cursed had he felt so alone.