The Evil We Love (Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, #5)

Useless.

Valentine said they should be proud to do the job the Clave was unwilling to get done, that they were serving their people, even as they skirted the Law, and with his words, Robert felt that pride bloom. Let the other Academy students have their parties and their petty school melodramas. Let them think growing up meant graduating, marrying, attending meetings. This was growing up, just like Valentine said. Seeing an injustice and doing something about it, no matter the risk. No matter the consequences.

The wolves had a keen sense of smell and sharp instincts, even in their human bodies, so the Shadowhunters were careful. They crept around the decaying mansion, peered in windows, waited, watched. Planned. Five werewolves and four young Shadowhunters—those were odds even Valentine didn’t want to play. So they were patient, and they were careful.

They waited until dark.

It was disconcerting to watch the wolves in human form, impersonating a normal human family, the younger man washing dishes while the elder one made himself a pot of tea, the child sitting cross-legged on the floor racing her model cars. Robert reminded himself that these trespassers were claiming a home and a life they didn’t deserve—that they’d killed innocents and may even have helped slaughter Valentine’s father.

Still, he was relieved when the moon rose and they reverted to monstrous form. Robert and the others clung to the shadows while three members of the pack sprouted fur and fangs, leaping through a broken window and into the night. They went out to hunt—leaving, as Valentine suspected they would, their most vulnerable behind. The old man and the child. These were odds more to Valentine’s liking.

It wasn’t much of a fight.

By the time the two remaining werewolves registered attack, they were surrounded. They didn’t even have time to transform. It was over in minutes, Stephen knocking the older one unconscious with a blow to the head, the child cowering in a corner, inches from the tip of Michael’s sword.

“We’ll take them both for interrogation,” Valentine said.

Michael shook his head. “Not the kid.”

“They’re both criminals,” Valentine argued. “Every member of the pack is culpable for—”

“She’s a little kid!” Michael said, turning to his parabatai for support. “Tell him. We’re not dragging some child into the woods to throw her at the mercy of the Clave.”

He had a point . . . but then, so did Valentine. Robert said nothing.

“We’re not taking the child,” Michael said, and the look on his face suggested he was willing to back up his words with action.

Stephen and Robert tensed, waiting for the explosion. Valentine didn’t take well to being challenged; he had very little experience with it. But he only sighed, and offered up a charmingly rueful smile. “Of course not. Don’t know what I was thinking. Just the old man, then. Unless you’ve got some objection to that as well?”

No one had any objections, and the unconscious old man was skin and bones, his weight barely noticeable on Robert’s broad shoulders. They locked the child up in a closet, then carried the old man deep into the woods, back to the campsite.

They tied him to a tree.

The rope was woven with silver filament—when the old man woke up, he would wake to pain. It probably wouldn’t be enough to bind him in wolf form, not if he was determined to escape. But it would slow him down. Their silver daggers would do the rest.

“You two, patrol a half-mile perimeter,” Valentine told Michael and Stephen. “We don’t want any of its grubby little friends catching its stench. Robert and I will guard the prisoner.”

Stephen nodded sharply, eager as ever to do as Valentine willed.