It was just before dawn when Jem and Tessa walked by the church. There hadn't been much sleep the night before and it was still before dawn when Tessa declared that they needed to do something. Her head had been against his shoulder and the warmth and nearness of her had kept his heart rate in check until she whispered, "Are you asleep?"
"No," he told the top of her head. They had been lying in bed for a little better than an hour. Tessa had murmured Will's name before she'd dozed off and Jem hadn't been able to sleep at all. He kept worrying at the newly recovered parabatai connection. They had done the same thing when they'd first completed the ritual. They'd played little games to figure out how to use this new sense of another person. It wouldn't tell him where Will was but it could tell him that he wasn't seriously injured. He wished it would work more like a homing signal or a communication device but it wouldn't.
His rune was still faded but the sense of Will was there again. It had been missing for so long that Jem was surprised how strongly he felt like he'd recovered something immense and essential. The link had only existed for the blink of an eye in a very long life — just a handful of years out of 15. And yet, it had defined him and everything that came after.
Tessa's hand was in his as they walked through Venice in the dark. Shuttered and silent, the city slept around them. He had said the past was strong here and it was even stronger in the dark. The modern pavements and concretes of New York and Los Angeles didn't feel like flagstones beneath your feet. The sound of the water in the canals was almost like the sound of the Thames and if he closed his eyes he could call up exact memories of London as he'd seen it as a young man right down to the fogs.
She led the way to a large crumbling building and looked up at the faceless angels over the front doors with a frown line between her eyebrows. Jem scanned the building again, looking for the thing that he had missed. It looked quiet and empty. His patience waned faster than it usually did. He squeezed her hand and raised his eyebrows.
"The warding is different. It isn't simple anymore," she answered the silent question.
"You will not go in there alone," Jem said before she could suggest it.
"If you go in there, it will not go well," she said.
"They kicked you out," he said, "They pushed you out a door and slammed it behind you. Magnus is on the Council and that you are his friend is not a secret. They aren't going to welcome you with flowers and champagne."
"I know that but they also won't panic. You're rather distinctly Nephilim. They'll think I did bring the Council down on them," she said running her fingers over the runes of his cheeks. In the dark her face was just shadows and impressions of features. There was no way she could see the marks below her fingers but she had the shape memorized.
"That isn't far from the truth," Jem said.
Tessa turned back to the church and didn't answer him, "There is something wrong," she said.
"Yes but please don't put yourself in the middle of it," he said. It was a losing argument but he made it. He did not want her in that building. Even without being able to feel the magic like she could, he knew that something was wrong. He reached out for the possible futures radiating out of this moment but the senses that allowed him to do that were long gone. The runes on his face were no longer active though they were still deep black against his skin.
"Go get the others. I'm already in the middle of it but I'm glad that I'm not in the middle of it by myself," she said and then kissed him before he could say anything else. He leaned into the kiss harder than she was expecting and when they broke apart she looked just a little alarmed. He wanted to promise her that he was fine but wasn't sure if it was true or not. He didn't say anything. He did kiss her again.
Jem followed Tessa down the alley but she entered the building alone. He had his phone open and was dialing a number before the door had fully swung shut.
Will was leaning against the magical barrier that stood between the motley crew of seven time travelers and the even more motley crew of warlocks below them. Snippets of conversation could be heard from below but the little prison was set back from the edge of the choir loft and the barrier itself muffled sound.
What they could tell was that the warlocks were packing. It hardly seemed a good sign. Will had watched them box up materials he couldn't identify as they spoke in low voices and looked around worriedly.
"Let me see your arm," a voice interrupted his spinning thoughts and he turned to look at Edith Wilson. She was a woman who was ten years older than he was and thought the proper date was in August of 1922. She was a study in beiges from her sensible shoes to her demure little hat. Even her hair was a light brown that was nearly beige.
Dull and plain and yet she had an air authority about her that rivaled Charlotte's. She had been an army nurse during the Great War. Will hadn't asked what made it a war Great as he was too faint to do much more than pretend that he wasn't faint. He held the arm out to her.
"Is the headache fading?" she asked as she prodded at the bandage she had wrapped around his arm.
"Yes," he said. His stele was gone but even without iratzes his body was clearing the poisons from the bite quickly. The pain that had come with the bite had faded and now he was just suffering from the dizziness and lack of coordination that blood loss brought on and even that was less than it had been.
"Could you take one of them in a fight?" this question didn't come from the practical Edith, it came from Alison. Alison Lynburn was exactly 100 years younger than Will - to the month - and somehow also two years older. It baffled him when he stopped to think about it so he avoided it.
She was the only other Shadowhunter to have come through. She had a Scottish accent, a lot of dark brown skin showing through an alarmingly orange shirt and a pair of tight trousers that might have come from a set of gear. Her black hair cut too short to even be considered boyish and she wore a ring in her nose.
"Yes," Will said.
"It hardly matters as we are inside this thing," this came from Edward, the werewolf from the 1840s as he thumped on the barrier.
Alison let out a torrent of swearing that was creative even by Will's standards. She also had an attitude that made Will's seem charming. In Alison's own words, she was pissed right off. She had been there more than a week. It was grating on her. No one else stood too close to her. When she turned to hammer on the barrier herself, she went through.
"You were saying?" she said with something like glee in her expression.
The barrier was gone. Will gently disengaged from Edith's still and shocked hands that had been prodding at the bandage on his arm and stepped toward the edge of the loft.
"Everyone stay up here," Will said and was surprised that no one argued with him. They either had the upper hand because the spell had unexpectedly failed or they were being released for a reason. The reason was probably not something they wanted to discover too quickly.
Below them was a wide church floor cleared of pews. There was a pile of boxes and the remains of a pair of massive spell circles near the back door. A knot of warlocks stood near the sealed doors at the front of the church. They were gathered around a woman in dark pants and a blue sweater who pulled Will's attention immediately.
"Another arrival," Edith whispered looking out at the floor, "Another one of you."
"How can you tell that from here?" Alison asked.
"I've met her," Edith said. "Teresa something. Highsmith maybe or Highdale? She worked with the Shadowhunters in 1921. An entire camp of soldiers and a few of us nurses were bit by one crazy werewolf after the battle of the Somme. I can't remember what her position was but Inquisitor Lightwood took her seriously whenever she gave advice. She gave me the number for the Praeter Lupus herself. How a Shadowhunter even knew it is beyond me but I'm still grateful for it."
It was Tessa. His Tessa. No, even now, his mind whispered the correction: Jem's Tessa. Tessa looked tall and severe in a way Will hadn't ever thought she could be. Not a brave girl but a queen among commoners. When she turned to glare at the bat winged warlock who had originally met Will, the look was enough to make everyone shut up and listen to her.
"You're all going to die here. This isn't the first time this has happened. Seven warlocks died in Melbourne after Dmitri Zakarov showed up looking into time travel rumours. Melbourne doesn't have seven warlocks of its own. They were an assembled team, like you," she said in response to whatever had been said while Edith whispered her explanation.
Tessa stood among them and the division between two sides came visible as the little group shifted. She was among them as one of them, not a Shadowhunter but a warlock. He had never really thought of her as a warlock even as the evidence piled up that that was what she was. Will didn't correct Edith because he couldn't get the thoughts straight. He was busy wondering how old she was and whether or not she was happy and how she had found herself here and how she knew these people.
He found himself wondering if she remembered him at all.
That thought nearly crippled him.
If the others were right about the date they found themselves in, it was 136 years since he'd told her he loved her. 136 years of life between that moment and this one. Had they been friends? Had he ever succeeded in stopping himself from loving her? Had she still been kind to him after Jem -
He stopped himself from thinking it all the way through.
If the first thought nearly crippled him, that one finished the job.
His fingers were white against cracked paint of the rail and he had to be elbowed by Alison to be pulled back to the world as it was. 136 years from home. Everyone he knew must be a century gone.
Everyone but Tessa.
"We need to get out of here, are you coming?" Alison asked when he finally managed to look at her and actually see her face. Everyone he knew had already died before she'd been born. Will might have stayed frozen by thoughts like that if the werewolves hadn't had better senses than he did.
"Something's burning," Edith said in the same calm voice she had used while bandaging up his bleeding arm. There was a wide gap of floor between where Will stood and where everyone else had gathered by the stairs. He hadn't realized that everyone had moved. A feeling made up of longing and grief and confusion worried at his mind but if there was one thing William Herondale could do it was suppress his emotions.
"Try the window," he said turning away from the stairs and the edge of the loft and Tessa. Letting her out of his sight made him nervous but they all needed an exit.
The large window at the back of the choir's space had been boarded over from the outside and much of the glass had already been smashed out of the frames by weather or vandals or just time. They might have been able to pry loose the boards but the smoke that Edith had been able to smell thickened and the boards were heating up.
"I think the roof is on fire," Alison said. In the last few hours she had filled every silence with talking even when nothing needed said.
They headed for the stairs. They made it down to the long hallway still smeared with Will's dried blood and found that the back door was sealed too tightly to even shift when Alison threw her weight against it. Will turned first, needing to double check where Tessa was and they spilled out into the main room of the church in time to see the fight break out.
It wasn't much of a fight really. Tessa had her back to the door and Will saw Trevor shove her. Moving shadowhunter fast, Tessa absorbed the impact and settled into a fighting stance for a brief moment before she lashed out. She hit him square in the chest and knocked him to the floor in an angry sputtering sprawl. She stood over him and looked down. Will couldn't see her expression but he could see the warlock's scowl.
Will and Jem had had a trainer as a boy who had done that back before Jessamine's disinterest and Will's attitude had chased him off like all the others. It was embarrassing to have someone just push you over because it meant you didn't know how to fight at all. He had shoved Will over repeatedly until Will had taken to dragging Jem to the training room to drill footwork until he could dodge or block fast enough to stay up. It was rather more comedic when it was being done to someone else.
"The building is on fire and your back door doesn't open," Edith said when the warlocks all turned from the tussle to look at them.
Tessa looked over her shoulder and didn't look away from him. He wasn't sure she so much as scanned the other arrivals. One of them might have been a seven foot gorilla and she wouldn't have seen it. Nothing in her expression was readable to him. It could have been horror or shock or relief or even mild annoyance. She looked ancient and childlike. She didn't really look like Tessa at all.
"Get the front doors open," she said and though she didn't look away from him the order was issued to everyone else.
"If you're right, we'll step out there and he'll kill us," a warlock Will hadn't met yet said.
"You'd rather take your chances with the fire?" she said finally looking away though only for a moment. Her accent was different, less American, with a different weight to the vowels. "There are people out there who can help. Follow the lights and get the hell away from the building. Dawn is coming and just about anything he might have called up won't be able to follow you into sunlight."
She wasn't speaking to the warlocks now, she was speaking to the people around Will.
"You called the Council?"
"She would, she's another one of Bane's little sluts."
"The hell is wrong with you?"
"When they kill us all, do you really think you'll be safe?"
The voices overlapped but at least a few were moving to pull wood off the doors instead of yell things at Tessa. The wood was old and warped but they had magic on their side and a few of the arrivals went to help. Will was still watching Tessa and waiting for her to turn her attention back to him. He should have gone to help but he was caught by some spell in the way her expression shifted just slightly as the voices from the little crowd overlapped.
"Bane's sluts?" of all the possible comments to answer, she chose that one and turned towards the person who had said it. "Are you serious? Is that really the insult you chose? He's married now, did you know? Go get the doors down so we don't burn to death you idiot."
"You could have done better than idiot, you're more creative than that," Will said falling into step beside her, "Something like "foul diseased slug" perhaps."
"He wouldn't have got it if I'd tried," she said with a brief but brilliant flash of smile.
"You're here," she said. She turned her back on everyone else, still yelling insults and her hand fluttered for a second but she didn't touch him. The hesitation was so out of step with the orders and the aristocratic bearing that it shattered the illusion that she wasn't the girl he had known. Older and stronger perhaps but still herself.
When she looked right at him the smile became that same look she'd given him before. There was so much force behind that look and he wasn't any closer to understanding it. It wasn't a happy look but it also wasn't angry or even sad. It was strong enough that the gathering smoke up above and the sound of fire didn't pull his attention like they should have. He should have worried when they heard the first crack of large pieces of the ceiling settling.
He should have felt that same trill of panic that everyone else did when they realized why the barrier spell on the circle upstairs had failed. There was a larger barrier between them and the outside world.
Instead his voice was calm and even when he spoke to Tessa.
"Can we get out?" he asked.
"Yes, you take them out the front and find the Shadowhunters, depending on when people came from they won't trust them at all and none of the warlocks will but I trust those people, they'll get everyone clear," she said it just to Will in a low voice that sounded less like the angry warlock queen she had been and more like the girl he knew.
"I'll go when you go, not sooner," he said.
She might have argued but there wasn't time for it. The crackling had become roaring and the air around them was hot and thick. The nave was stone but the fire was above them in the rafters and the supports for the dome. The lights failed and there were shrieks and pushing in the dark.
That there was still light to see by was terrifying in itself. The fire above them glowed bright though the rafters hadn't started to collapse yet.
Tessa flattened her hands against the barrier and ignored everything else. Will stood near her but the warlocks who called commentary at her ignored him. The idea that Tessa might have contacted the Clave had set everyone on edge. He didn't answer them either except for the one he hit. It hadn't been planned but it was Trevor and he kept getting closer and closer as he tried to get Tessa's attention. Will pulled the punch enough that the man staggered with a bloody lip instead of going down. He didn't try to get close to her again.
Tessa didn't appear to be doing anything but there was a tension to her and a little frown played across her face. The barrier split just enough to allow Will and the others near the front to catch a glimpse of the fire lit square and a breath of fresh air. She inhaled audibly and then pushed it wide enough that a person might pass through.
And they did.
Tessa held her ground to the side of the rift as people jostled by her. In the end there were only three of them left. It was Tessa's friend with the orange hair and the curling horns who had stayed behind and Will perhaps should have waited to see what she had to say but he didn't. He grabbed hold of her sleeve and pushed her out the gap with every intention of dragging Tessa along behind.
She had been fighting to hold the barrier in place the entire time. Her breathing had been uneven and sometimes even gasping. Whatever battle she was fighting she lost and fell forward as the rift she'd carved out fell shut again. Will had to catch her to keep her from collapsing to the floor.
"Tess?" he asked. He turned her so she leaned against the spot where the gap in the spell had been. She wasn't unconscious but she leaned her head against his shoulder and let the barrier hold her weight.
"He's fighting me. It's not just the spell, someone's trying to stop me," she murmured.
"Can you do it a moment longer?" Will asked touching her face and tilting her chin up so she would look at him. She looked ragged and shaky.
"Not alone," she said.
"It's just us here, everyone else is gone," he said.
"It's you I need," she said with a little smile that looked sad.
The same trainer who had been fond of pushing Will over whenever he missed his footwork had also had an irrational fear of warlocks. He had claimed you should never allow one to so much as shake your hand because they could drain all your power with a touch. Will had flagrantly ignored that advice a repeatedly just to see if it was true. So far he hadn't been drained by any of the warlocks he had met.
"I've never done that," he said.
"It's ok," she told him, "We've done it before. You and me," she linked her fingers through his and even with the building burning down around them it made his heart stutter just a bit. She looked at him and the grey-blue of her eyes didn't belong in this world painted in charcoal and black and orange. "You may have to drag me out of here."
"Anything you need," he said tightening his fingers around hers to let her know that she had his permission for whatever she was about to do.
She flattened her free hand against the barrier but didn't turn back to look at it. She dropped her head to Will's shoulder again and he felt the warmth of her magic spill up his arm and then draw something out of the center of him. He'd been expecting it to hurt but it felt peaceful if strange.
He pulled her in with his other arm so that he was actually holding her against his chest when she went rigid with the effort of forcing her way through the spell. He felt the yank in his chest somewhere when she pulled hard on the magic connection. She pressed herself a little closer to him and then screamed.
They tumbled out through the rift she opened and straight into a battle already raging. The little link and the feeling that he was full of water draining slowly vanished and Tessa collapsed against him with a soft noise that might have been his name. The heat of the fire made breathing difficult. Will gathered her into his arms and pulled her away from the roar of flames and the nearby screech of something that wasn't human.
Jem did not see the fire start. He made it back to the square only moments after the first flames started licking up the rooftop. He wasn't alone. He had a pair of rumpled Shadowhunters who had been dragged out of bed by a phone call that made only a little bit of sense. They had been prepared for most of what was going to happen but they had been intended to arrive in Italy later that day with a few more people. Instead of five or six, there were only two and Magnus who was still quite a bit farther behind them after opening and reseting the portal so that they could get out of the city quickly.
The fire wasn't any of the things that Jem was prepared for. The shock of it wasn't improved when they realized that the flash of flames wasn't just fire. Pieces of it took flight and lifted up off the fledgling inferno on burning wings.
"Is anything about the two of you normal?" Jem looked over at Jace Herondale who, unlike him, was properly dressed and armed. He was all black and gold as he considered the church. He shrugged in an almost elegant way and continued, "Most people don't find flying fire demons on their vacations."
"Or get married on bridges," Alec added.
"Or steal cats," Jace said.
"He is my cat," Jem said and he might have had a comeback for the other points but it was lost in a low swoop of the nearest of the flaming birds. It screeched as it came at them with claws outstretched. Any other details of its appearance were lost in a blur of fire as the three of them rolled away in different directions.
Jace's blonde hair looked orange in the reflected fire light as he swung around with a runed blade that flashed before it bit into the thing. Jem couldn't have moved that fast to get back and complete that swing before it took off again. He sometimes forgot just how much stronger and faster Jace was than even other Shadowhunters. The demon let out a second screech before it exploded into ichor and fizzling flame.
Alec had a bow and arrow and brought down two more. Even with training and experience on his side Jem's throwing knives weren't nearly as effective as the bow. The demons came thick and fast and the battle blocked out every other worry until Jem heard a human yell. Jace and Alec were to his right and this sound came from farther left and he swung around to look at the church and see the first people step out into the square and start to scatter.
He turned in that direction and dodged rather than attacked as he made his way forward. He met up with a Shadowhunter girl wearing neon and skinny jeans either forty years out of fashion or brand new off the shelves of a fashionable shop.
"How many people are still inside?" he asked. She gave the runes on his face a strange glance but that wasn't unusual. What was unusual was that she didn't immediately know who he was. He had gotten used to people knowing who he was. The Shadowhunter community was so small that being the only ex-Silent Brother in existence made him something of a household name. That he'd been one of only a handful of the few who survived the massacre added to the notoriety as did his role in the Battle of Alicante.
"Fucked if I know," she said, "Not many. There were only 16 to begin with."
Jem handed her a weapon. All of his weapons had been hastily borrowed from what Jace and Alec had brought with them. The sword he handed her was not really ideal for fighting flying creatures. He didn't ask her about Will or Tessa.
"Are you the one the girl who is apparently not actually a Shadowhunter from 1920 claims is here to help?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. It was a pretty good description of Tessa and it eased something tight and anxious in him.
Jem sent the girl toward Jace and Alec and any one else he found he sent that way as well. He found a man curled against the stone fountain looking terrified and had to physically drag him to safety. He would find out later that Dennis the dentist was the only mundane to come through the portal and had been in a state of panic since he'd arrived. Fire and demons had sent him into a near catatonic state.
Nearer the church the attacks from the swooping demons thinned out and the only real danger was that the building was burning and starting to collapse. The fire was demonic and it was even eating through the stone now that it was picking up speed.
He hadn't seen Tessa.
He scanned the building and then turned and looked out over the battlefield that had once been a square. There were still people scurrying about and he could pick out Alec rationing his last arrows. A warlock stood inside the fountain, it might have been Magnus but he was facing the wrong way for Jem to be sure. He raised water and flung it at the creatures making them hiss and shudder before they burst into unnatural flame again. It slowed them down but didn't stop them.
Tessa wasn't there. She wasn't on the ground. She wasn't on her feet. She simply wasn't there. He turned back to the burning building and prepared to do something stupid. Something hit him hard between the shoulder blades and he hit the ground inelegantly with a sideways roll. He was flat on his back when the creature lunged at him with its claws and then went sideways. Jem pushed himself to his feet and caught it with the only sword he had left as it whirled again.
Ichor and flames blew past him as it disintegrated but didn't actually stop. He wiped the mess away with his sleeve and turned to see that it had been a cafe chair that had hit the thing. The chair was made of ornate wrought iron and still had the little blue cushion tied to it. None of those details made Jem stop and blink.
"Are you thick?" Will asked and Jem blinked again. It might have proved the point but he didn't have anything to say yet. Will was young. He wore shirt sleeves and had a bandage that stretched up his arm from wrist to elbow. Even disheveled he was as obnoxiously handsome as he had ever been. The familiarity of him surprised Jem. It had to be better than 130 years since he'd seen Will like this and yet he knew him immediately.
"Some days," Jem told him. "Down."
Will didn't argue the point. He ducked and swung his chair up to catch the wings of the demon and yank it around. Someone's hair burned before Jem managed to behead the thing. The smell of singed hair was strong even in the assault on the senses that was the demonic fire.
When they were both on their feet again, Will looked at Jem differently. The realization crossed his face slowly.
"You don't recognize me. I hadn't even considered that," Jem said.
"You should be dead," Will said.
"You actually are," Jem said and even with him standing there the joke was painful.
"The Brothers," Will touched Jem's face and his expression was dark. Jem's mind pulled up a long buried memory of how angry Will had been during their last meeting after Cadair Idris before he'd descended into the Silent City to start his training. Like the promise he had made Tessa, it was a memory both distinct and faded after being pulled out and thought over too many times.
"Zack!" Jace's voice interrupted the train of everyone's thoughts and Will followed Jem's glance back towards where the people were massing. There were people on the ground but even at a distance, Jem knew that none of them were Tessa. The demons were gone, either dead or fleeing. Dawn was coming but the square was spattered with ichor where many of the things had died.
"Zack?" Will asked.
"I was Brother Zachariah when I met him," Jem said absently as he turned to look back at the church. Whatever Jace needed could wait. Without intending to, he changed his footing so that his shoulder was against Will's before he said "Tessa went in there."
"I know," Will said.
"Where is she?" he tried to be comforted by the tone in Will's voice but Will was the type of person who could have buried any feeling. Jem had never pretended to understand what he was thinking.
"Over here," Will said and Jem let the last of the fear go. His emotions weren't always stable. Even five years after leaving the brothers and having them come back to him, he still swung wildly from one extreme to the other. His relief washed through him.
Tessa was tucked into the doorway of the cafe where the chair had come from. She was curled in the remains of Will's jacket and her eye lashes fluttered when Jem touched her shoulder. He stumbled a little to settle down beside her. He kissed her forehead and she stirred a little closer to awake.
"Jem?" she said very softly.
"Hello," he said.
"Jem, I had a dream," she was muttering, half asleep. He had seen her like this only a handful of times when she had used too much magic and was left exhausted and drained. She had explained once that being half Shadowhunter allowed her to use types of magics that others couldn't but she could never be as strong as someone like Magnus.
He pulled her forward and she curled into his arms so that he could pick her up. She was snuggly and needy when she was hurt. He held her close. Will was quiet and distant and Jem kicked him in the ankle. It was something they'd done as children when they'd wanted one another's attention. Will looked at him and there was something incredulous in his expression.
"I am so glad to see you," Jem said.
"And I you," Will said.
They turned back towards the little group across the square. It wasn't safe to stay here. It wasn't safe to be in the country but that relief that had washed through Jem hadn't faded.
"I had a dream that Will was here," she whispered into his chest.
"I know," Jem said to her looking over at Will who gave him a smile that he had seen before but hadn't been able to read back then. He had thought it indulgent annoyance at all the romantic sappiness. It wasn't. It was a smile that said, I'm trying to be happy for you but it hurts.
"I know," Jem repeated in answer to that smile though Will would assume it was directed at Tessa. He did know. He had lost her too. He held her close as he bumped his shoulder against Will again and then led the way across the square.