William Herondale

October 24, 1882

Will sat in the window with his feet hanging over the sill like a little boy on a garden wall. Sophie had gone to round up the others and make sure that Gideon had all of his pieces still attached. He drummed his heels against the wall beneath the window and watched as the roof over the west side of the factory finally gave up and collapsed.

He should leave, he should certainly not be sitting so obviously but he almost wanted something to happen. The destruction had gone according to plan but the adrenaline, the need for a fight, thrummed through him. Reckless. The more logical part of his mind was telling him, Go home. Read a book. Write another letter to Tessa. Reread the last one from Jem. Don't sit here. But he did, playing with a knife in his fingers and feeling the weight of the sword worn across his back like a promise. Something was about to happen.

His first thought when he saw it was, "Now the bastards can fly?"

He watched it come down on his side of the factory. The packed dirt yard was no longer neat and orderly. The thing with the metal wings set down on the street just outside the gate and then it flashed and started to shrink. It wasn't one thing. It was two. The automaton with the wings was rapidly vanishing, shrinking down and down and down until Will couldn't see it. Leaving only a crumpled form in a dress on the side of the road.

Frozen for a moment, Will tried to make sense of it. There had been another person in the factory. He swore. They'd been sure, they'd done every inch of research to make sure that there were no living staff. An automaton had removed her and left her. She didn't move and Will dropped out of his window seat, grabbing the roof edge above and swinging himself sideways to land on the lower roof of the building next door. His foot slipped just a bit on the roofing tile as he turned to look down again.

She had pushed herself up and then turned sideways and leaned against the gate to vomit. Then her head snapped up and her shoulders set and Will knew exactly who it was. He opened his mouth to call her name but before he could get it out he saw what she had heard. Automatons, still streaked with soot and dirt from the crumbling factory headed across the yard to the back gate. She gathered her scattered papers and ran.

He took off in the same direction, moving over the roofs as she ran along the street. The houses were all roughly the same height and he was faster than she was which balanced out the time he lost when he did have to climb over a gap or up to a higher level.

When he hit the corner he dropped off the edge without pausing and rolled as he hit the street. He came up in a fighting stance and there was no one there but a woman dumping washing water into the gutter. The rest of the street was gathered to watch the fire. She didn't see him.

"Tessa!" he called listening for footsteps.

The intersection between the two roads was full of gawkers muttering about the bombing and the other ones like it. He scanned the crowd for her. She'd been easy to see when he'd been above, the dress was bright yellow and she'd been moving in the opposite direction of the flow of traffic. It was the movement that he caught again and he dove back into the crush of mundanes of stepped out of his way to allow him to pass without noticing him at all. She was flagging, slower now than she had been.

The crowd was yelling behind him which meant whatever was after her had made it this far. He put on a last burst of speed and grabbed her arm, swinging her sideways into an alley. She screamed and kicked him in the leg. Hard.

"Tessa," he started but she swung an elbow up in a well targeted strike that would have hit him in the side of the face if he hadn't been faster than she was. He caught her arm and held it. She looked at him with wide eyes and an open mouth ready to scream. The start of a struggle died when she met his eyes. A look of pure relief washed over her and he prayed that he was capable of living up to it.

"That was a hell of a kick, Angel," he said letting go of her and stepping back.

She looked back to the street. When she turned back to him, his hand was out, "Are you ready to run?"

He ran his thumb over the empty spot on her wrist where the bands had sat every other time he'd seen her. Not trapped, not right now. He gathered all her papers from her and without looking at them, folded them small enough to fit inside his pocket so that they'd both have free hands.

He pulled her forward, down toward narrower alleys where the twisting would keep them ahead of pursuit.

She saw the next problem coming before Will did. He had pulled her up onto a rooftop, a more difficult feat in a fashionable dress and crinoline than it was wearing boots and trousers, when she froze. He took her wrist and she grabbed his shirt sleeve and wrenched him around with more strength than he would have expected from her and pointed out the shadows running through the dark edges below them. She tapped an incisor and he realized she was right.

"Glad one of us is paying attention," he murmured to her as he scanned the shadows. It had gotten dark as they'd moved and the vampires were out. Mortmain controlled almost all the vampire covens in London. Any of them that didn't offer perfect loyalty had relocated to places outside the city either by choice or force.

She touched her nose as the shadows moved upwards farther down the block. They climbed the brick work of a tall tenement and moved fast. It took him a moment to understand what the gesture meant. They were following her by scent.

"The evening just got more interesting," Will told her. "Are you a better fighter or a better runner?" He wasn't expecting much but she had kicked him hard enough to bruise and the elbow hadn't been thrown by chance. She surprised him by stretching out a hand that lit up with blue fire and smirking at him. In that moment she was terrifying and beautiful. Her face cast in sharp blue light for just an instant that reflected off her eyes and picked out the lines of her face before she doused the fire an instant later.

"Stand and fight then," Will said reevaluating her. "Best find better ground"

He led her up to a higher rooftop. Vampires could jump and he didn't want to be caught with anything above them. She had good balance, standing steady in fashionable boots on the peaked roof. He calculated their odds. They were going to need an awful lot of luck to make it through this. He announced loudly in a tone one might use to inquire about the weather, "We might not die here!" She smirked but it wasn't quite the laugh he'd promised he would get out of her.

"Would you like a knife?" he asked still keeping up the genteel tone. "Would you like another glass of wine before the vampires arrive to drag us back?"

She shook her head spreading both hands and lighting them up. The blue light was the only illumination this high. They were above the fog as well as the lanterns at street level. The October evening was cloudy and the moonlight flitted through the clouds unsteadily. The blue light was unearthly. Transforming the slate tiles to an uneven texture below them and the spaces below them were blacker for the being outside the halo of light.

"They should be here," Will said at almost the same moment that she hurled the first ball of fire. She was facing away from him and threw it into a black corner below them that flared blue before an orange flame caught and a shriek broke through the otherwise quiet night.

Evening in London neighbourhoods like this could be a hubbub of conversation, back alley commerce and jovial drunks but when the stomp of metal feet was heard, everyone mundane and Downworlder alike, disappeared inside. It was not unlike being the only living people in the world. A candle lit window two buildings over suddenly went dark as the vampire's shriek continued. Doors and shutters slammed shut. The neighbourhood locked down under them. They weren't the only people living here but everyone hoped they'd be the only ones to die.

"We've come to take you home, darling," a nasal voice drifted from somewhere nearby. Almost gentle. Tessa responded by pushing the flare of fire higher which lit the rooftop better. Will got a few moments of light that allowed him to aim three runed daggers that brought down three advancing vampires who had been creeping through the shadows. One of them caught fire as he fell, she hit two of them with another fireball. It was the perfect weapon for vampires and being so high would slow down the automatons that were probably on their heels.

"Look at the little shadowhunter, darling, you can bring him home with you, keep him as a pet," the voice was curling and insinuating. There was compulsion in it. She screamed and Will had to resist the urge to wheel to see if she'd been injured. The first vampire in range had made the jump onto their rooftop and he was distracted by hacking her into pieces. Three more fell away burning and falling into the crowd which spread the fire. The mass of vampires retreated from the shrieking flaming scrum below them. The heat was intense. A vampire burned fast and hot and down to ash in minutes.

"Too many," Will said backing up to catch a look at her. She met his gaze, apparently uninjured, still glowing with blue fire.

Her hand closed around his wrist, half the light dying. She was looking towards a stretch of rooftop that looked clear. She moved first and dropped onto the lower roof and hit the ground, rolling sideways. He pulled her to her feet.

"Time to run, Tess," he said and they did. The next building over had broken windows on it's highest floor. A flaming vampire had made a run for it and set the room beyond on fire as it died. Will pushed her through the hole and had to grab her waist to keep her from falling. She wasn't breathing properly, he could hear a hitch in each gasp.

"They won't follow us in here," he told her when she had regained her footing. She gave him a look that implied she thought he might be better suited to a madhouse than the vampire hunting business. They headed toward the doors and the sounds of people below screaming about the fire, waking the neighbours and creating a surging mass of humanity. It was a good crowd to get lost in. Will hit the street running full tilt and she struggled to keep up with him.

When he found a street with shops he chose a men's clothiers and used a rune to open a door. She slammed the door behind them and sunk to the floor on her knees, eyes fluttering shut. Will crouched beside her. She was pale and dirty, her hair was a wild tangle of half slipped pins and ashy tendrils. There was still a flower in place just above her ear. Her hands were curled in her lap and she hunched over them as she tried to catch her breath

"That was amazing magic but we're not safe yet," Will said. "At least every girl loves a shopping trip doesn't she?" He spread his hands at the dark shop full of suits and trousers and she gave him that "get thee to a madhouse" look but struggled to her feet and followed him deeper into the shop.

He had to pass her a knife so she could cut her way out of the remains of the dress while he found clothing that looked like it might fit her. He was wrong. Twice. When she emerged from the office in the back that she'd been using as a dressing room, she wore a suit that was too large for her and didn't really make her look less like a girl. She was also ashy pale and barely breathing.

The little office was utilitarian and aggressively neat and tidy. He pushed her into the leather desk chair and she collapsed more than sat down. With the door shut, he could use a witchlight.

"Where are you hurt?" he asked. Some of the injuries were superficial, a bruise over one cheek and burns on her hands where she'd lost control of the fire. Neither of those things explained the vomiting or the trouble breathing. She twisted in the chair and lifted the shirt high enough that he could see bruising spread across her side. This wasn't superficial. It was dark and angry looking probably the result of internal bleeding and broken ribs.

She face was drawn but she was eerily calm as though having half the bones in her chest broken wasn't much of a problem.

"I'm going to use an iratze," he said. She shook her head vehemently which made her waver. If she hadn't been sitting, she would have fallen. He steadied her shoulder in case she did faint. A tiny spark jumped between her fingers before fizzling. Reminding him that she wasn't really a Shadowhunter.

"I guess we're going to have to go visit a friend," he said. "Magnus is going to kill me for this."