The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses #1)(27)

Five hulking Raum demons barreled through the windows on either side, and she screamed. Alec threw himself onto her, shielding her with his own body and stabbing the demon trying to crush them. Another demon’s tentacles wrapped around them both, and Alec rolled with the werewolf girl in his arms, scything away the tentacles with his seraph blade.

One of the remaining Raums lumbered toward the sounds emanating from the bar. Magnus sent a blast of scorching light in its direction.

“Is that a demon?” he heard someone yell. “Who invited them?”

Someone else said, “Read the sign, demon!”

“Is everyone all right?” called Magnus, and a demon seized this split second of distraction and went for him.

A nightmare of tentacles and teeth loomed before Magnus; then the demon exploded into nothing, an arrow in its back. Magnus looked through the haze and the flash to Alec, crouched on the floor with his bow in his hands.

The werewolf girl was regarding Alec with some awe. The dark dust of slain demons and a faint sheen of sweat gleamed on Alec’s rune-marked bare skin.

“I had Shadowhunters all wrong. From now on, you can ask me to do anything for your fight against demons,” the werewolf girl announced with conviction. “And I will do it.”

Alec turned his head to look at her. “Anything?”

“Gladly,” said the girl.

“What’s your name?” Alec asked.

“Juliette.”

“Are you from Paris?” asked Alec. “Do you go to the Paris Shadow Market? Do you know a faerie child called Rose?”

“I am,” said the werewolf girl. “I do. Is she really a child? I thought it was just faerie trickiness.”

“Next time you see her,” said Alec, “can you feed her?”

The werewolf girl blinked, her expression softening. “Yes,” she said. “I can do that.”

“What’s going on out there?” asked the goblin they’d spoken to earlier, barging out of the party and into the corridor. His eyes widened. “There’s demon gunk all over the place and a lot of Shadowhunter skin out here!” he called over his shoulder.

Alec rose to his feet and went to Magnus, who snapped his fingers and made Alec’s still-wet undershirt appear in his hand. Alec grabbed for it with obvious relief. Magnus and the werewolf girl watched a little sadly as he put it on.

Once his shirt was on, Alec took Magnus’s hand. “Stay close to—”

Magnus didn’t hear the rest. Before he could utter a cry, something looped around his waist, wrenched him off his feet, and tore him out of Alec’s grasp. A bone-jarring pain stunned him, forcing the breath from his body. He heard the sound of shattering glass and felt hundreds of tiny shards cutting into his skin.

The world blinked, and consciousness returned a moment later to the sound of wind howling in his ears and freezing air slapping him in the face. Dazed and disoriented, Magnus looked up and saw the full white moon hovering above the jagged mountaintops. Beneath him, the train was speeding along a bridge.

Magnus was dangling in the air above a ravine. All that prevented him from falling to his death was the black tentacle wrapped around his waist.

The tentacle was not a huge comfort.





CHAPTER EIGHT




* * *





Speed of Fire


ALEC LOOKED, HIS HAND STILL extended, his heart forgetting to beat, at the empty space where Magnus had been standing just seconds ago.

One moment he had been holding Magnus’s hand. Now he stood, his hand outstretched toward a window that had become ten thousand tiny jagged shards littering the plush wine-colored carpet.

A shudder passed through Alec: he couldn’t suppress the thought of all he had lost in the battle at Alicante. He could not lose Magnus, too. He was meant to be a warrior and soldier, a steady light against the darkness. But the terror that went through him now was visceral and deep, stronger than any fear he’d ever felt in battle.

Alec heard a cry, barely perceptible over the sound of the howling wind. He rushed to the broken window.

There was Magnus, suspended in the air next to the train. He was in the grip of a creature, squatting on top of the train, that looked like a tree made of smoke. Magnus was caught in its black branches, his hands pinned by dark tentacles. Below them was a plummeting fall of hundreds of feet.

The demon’s smoky surface bubbled and rippled in the air. Alec was tempted to put a few arrows into it, but he didn’t want to provoke it, not with Magnus in its grasp. Nor could Magnus use magic without his hands free. Alec looked down at the ravine; it was too dark to see the bottom.

“Magnus!” he shouted. “I’m coming!”

“Wonderful!” Magnus yelled back. “I’ll just hang around until then!”

Alec climbed out onto the window frame and steadied himself as the train shook from side to side, silently thanking his Dexterity rune for maintaining his balance. He reached up and grabbed the T and E at the beginning of the word INTERNATIONALE that was blazoned in brass letters affixed to the train car, above the windows. All he had to do was pull himself up and swing his legs over onto the roof.

It should have worked. Alec had completed similar feats hundreds of times in his training. But the letter T was less well-attached than he’d thought, and with a groan it pulled halfway out of the train, its screws stripped and bent. He managed to get only one leg onto the roof before it broke off completely. He scrambled for purchase, his arms and legs splayed against the curved edge of the train car.