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

“And when he wakes up?” Michael asked.

“When it wakes up, Robert and I will question it on the subject of its crimes, and what it knows about the crimes of its fellows,” Valentine said. “Once we’ve secured its confession, we’ll deliver it to the Clave for its punishment. Does that satisfy you, Michael?”

He didn’t sound like he much cared about the answer, and Michael didn’t give him one.

“So now we wait?” Robert asked, once they were alone.

Valentine smiled.

When he wanted it to, Valentine’s smile could worm its way into the most well-fortified heart, melt it from the inside out.

This one wasn’t designed for heat. This was a cold smile, and it chilled Robert to the core.

“I’m tired of waiting,” Valentine said, and drew out a dagger. Moonlight glinted off the pure silver.

Before Robert could say anything, Valentine pressed the flat side of the blade against the old man’s bare chest. There was a sizzle of flesh, then a howl, as the prisoner woke to agony.

“I wouldn’t,” Valentine said calmly, as the old man’s features began to take on a wolfish cast, fur sprouting across his naked body. “I’m going to hurt you, yes. But change back into a wolf, and I promise, I will kill you.”

The transformation stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

The old man issued a series of racking coughs that shook his skinny body from head to toe. He was skinny, so skinny that ribs protruded from pale flesh. There were hollows beneath his eyes and only a few sorry strands of gray hair crossing his liver-spotted skull. It had never occurred to Robert that a werewolf could go bald. Under other circumstances, the thought of it might have amused him.

But there was nothing amusing about the sound the man made as Valentine traced the dagger’s tip from jutting collarbone to belly button.

“Valentine, he’s just an old man,” Robert said hesitantly. “Maybe we should—”

“Listen to your friend,” the old man said in a pleading, warbling voice. “I could be your own grandfather.”

Valentine struck him across the face with the hilt of the dagger.

“It’s not any kind of man,” he told Robert. “It’s a monster. And it’s been doing things it shouldn’t be doing, isn’t that true?”

The werewolf, apparently concluding that playing aged and weak wouldn’t get him out of this one, drew himself up straight and bared sharp teeth. His voice, when he spoke, had lost its tremble. “Who are you, Shadowhunter, to tell me what I should and shouldn’t be doing?”

“So you admit it, then,” Robert said eagerly. “You’ve violated the Accords.”

If he confessed this easily, they could be done with this whole sordid affair, turn the prisoner in to the Clave, go home.

“I don’t give my accord to killers and weaklings,” the werewolf spat.

“Fortunately, I don’t need your accord,” Valentine said. “I need only information. You tell me what I need to know, and we’ll let you go.”

This wasn’t what they’d discussed, but Robert held his tongue.

“Two months ago, a pack of werewolves killed a Shadowhunter at the western edge of these woods. Where can I find them?”

“And exactly how would I know that?”

Valentine’s icy smile returned. “You better hope that you do, because otherwise you’ll be of no use to me.”

“Well then, on second thought, maybe I have heard tell of this dead Shadowhunter you’re talking about.” The wolf barked a laugh. “Wish I could have been there to see him die. To taste of his sweet flesh. It’s the fear that gives the meat its taste, you know. Best of all when they cry first, a little salty with the sweet. And rumor has it your doomed Shadowhunter wept buckets. Cowardly, that one was.”

“Robert, hold its mouth open.” Valentine’s voice was steady, but Robert knew Valentine well enough to sense the fury roiling beneath.

“Maybe we should take a moment to—”

“Hold its mouth open.”