City of Fallen Angels - Chapter 16

NEW YORK CITY ANGELS
“We’re here,” Maureen said to Simon.
She had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and was looking up at a massive glass-andstone
building that rose above them. It was clearly designed to look like one of the luxury
apartment complexes that had been built on Manhattan’s Upper East Side before the
Second World War, but the modern touches gave it away—the high sheets of windows,
the copper roof untouched by verdigris, the banner signs draping themselves down the
front of the edifice, promising LUXURY CONDOS STARTING AT $750,000 .
Apparently the purchase of one would entitle you to the use of a roof garden, a fitness
center, a heated pool, and twenty-four-hour doorman service, starting in December. At
the moment the place was still under construction, and KEEP OUT: PRIVATE
PROPERTY signs were tacked to the scaffolding that surrounded it.
Simon looked at Maureen. She seemed to be getting used to being a vampire pretty fast.
They had run over the Queensboro Bridge and up Second Avenue to get here, and her
white slippers were shredded. But she had never slowed, and had never seemed surprised
not to have gotten tired. She was looking up at the building now with a beatific
expression, her small face aglow with what Simon could only guess was anticipation.
“This place is closed,” he said, knowing he was stating the obvious. “Maureen—”
“Hush.” She reached out a small hand to pull at a placard attached to a corner of the
scaffolding. It came away with a sound of tearing plasterboard and ripped-out nails.
Some of them rattled to the ground at Simon’s feet. Maureen tossed the square of
plasterboard aside and grinned at the hole she’d made.
An old man who’d been passing by, walking a small plaid-jacketed poodle on a leash,
stopped and stared. “You ought to get a coat on your little sister there,” he said to Simon.
“Skinny thing like that, she’ll freeze in this weather.”
Before Simon could reply, Maureen turned on the man with a ferocious grin, showing all
her teeth, including her needle fangs. “I am not his sister,” she hissed.
The man blanched, picked up his dog, and hurried away.
Simon shook his head at Maureen. “You didn’t need to do that.”
Her fangs had pierced her lower lip, something that had happened to Simon often before
he’d gotten used to them. Thin trickles of blood ran down her chin. “Don’t tell me what
to do,” she said peevishly, but her fangs retracted. She wiped the back of her hand across
her chin, a childish gesture, smearing the blood. Then she turned back to the hole she’d
made. “Come on.”
She ducked through, and he followed her. They passed through an area where the
construction crew had clearly dumped their junk. There were broken tools lying around,
smashed bricks, old plastic bags, and Coke cans littering the ground. Maureen lifted her
skirts and picked her way daintily through the wreckage, a look of disgust on her face.
She hopped over a narrow trench, and up a row of cracked stone steps. Simon followed.
The steps led to a set of glass doors, propped open. Through the doors was an ornate
marble lobby. A massive unlit chandelier hung from the ceiling, though there was no
light to spark off its pendant crystals. It would have been too dark in the room for a
human to see at all. There was a marble desk for a doorman to sit at, a green chaise
longue beneath a gilt-edged mirror, and banks of elevators on either side of the room.
Maureen hit the button for the elevator, and to Simon’s surprise, it lit.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
The elevator pinged, and Maureen stepped in, Simon behind her. The elevator was
paneled in gold and red, with frosted glass mirrors on each of the walls. “Up.” She hit the
button for the roof and giggled. “Up to Heaven,” she said, and the doors closed.
“I can’t find Simon.”
Isabelle, who had been leaning against a pillar in the Ironworks and trying not to brood,
looked up to see Jordan looming over her. He really was most unreasonably tall, she
thought. He had to be at least six foot two. She had thought he was very attractive the
first time she’d seen him, with his tousled dark hair and greenish eyes, but now that she
knew he was Maia’s ex, she had moved him firmly into the mental space she reserved for
boys who were off-limits.
“Well, I haven’t seen him,” she said. “I thought you were supposed to be his keeper.”
“He told me he was going to be right back. That was forty minutes ago. I figured he was
going to the bathroom.”
“What kind of guardian are you? Shouldn’t you have gone to the bathroom with him?”
Isabelle demanded.
Jordan looked horrified. “Dudes,” he said, “do not follow other dudes to the bathroom.”
Isabelle sighed. “Latent homosexual panic will do you in every time,” she said. “Come
on. Let’s look for him.”
They circled the party, moving in and out among the guests. Alec was sulking alone at a
table, playing with an empty champagne glass. “No, I haven’t seen him,” he said in
response to their question. “Though admittedly I haven’t been looking.”
“Well, you can search along with us,” said Isabelle. “It’ll give you something to do
besides look miserable.”
Alec shrugged and joined them. They decided to split up and fan out across the party.
Alec headed upstairs to search the catwalks and the second level. Jordan went outside to
check the terraces and the entryway. Isabelle took the party area. She was just wondering
whether glancing under the tables would actually be ridiculous, when Maia came up
behind her. “Everything all right?” she inquired. She glanced up toward Alec, and then in
the direction Jordan had gone. “I know a searching formation when I see one. What are
you guys looking for? Is there trouble?”
Isabelle filled her in on the Simon situation.
“I just talked to him about half an hour ago.”
“So did Jordan, but he’s gone now. And since people have been trying to kill him lately .
. .”
Maia set her glass down on the table. “I’ll help you look.”
“You don’t have to. I know you’re not feeling super-fond of Simon right now—”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to help out if he’s in trouble,” Maia said, as if Isabelle
were being ridiculous.
“Wasn’t Jordan supposed to be watching him?”
Isabelle threw up her hands. “Yeah, but apparently dudes don’t follow other dudes to the
bathroom or something.
He wasn’t making a lot of sense.”
“Guys never do,” Maia said, and followed her. They glided in and out through the crowd,
though Isabelle was already pretty sure they weren’t going to find Simon. She had a small
cold spot in the middle of her stomach that was growing bigger and colder. By the time
they’d all convened back at their original table, she felt as if she’d swallowed a glass of
ice water.
“He isn’t here,” she said.
Jordan swore, then stared guiltily at Maia. “Sorry.”
“I’ve heard worse,” she said. “So what’s the next step? Anyone tried calling him?”
“Straight to voice mail,” Jordan said.
“Any idea where he might have gone?” asked Alec.
“Best-case scenario, maybe back to the apartment,” said Jordan. “Worst, those people
who’ve been after him finally got him.”
“People who what?” Alec looked bewildered; while Isabelle had told Maia Simon’s
story, she hadn’t had a chance to fill her brother in yet.
“I’m going to head back to the apartment and look for him,” said Jordan. “If he’s there,
great. If not, that’s still where I should start. They know where he lives; they’ve been
sending us messages there. Maybe there’ll be a message.”
He didn’t sound too hopeful.
Isabelle made a split-second decision. “I’ll go with you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, Ido. Itold Simonhe should come here tonight; I’m responsible.Besides, I’m having
a crap time at this party anyway.”
“Yeah,” Alec said, looking relieved at the prospect of getting out of there. “Me too.
Maybe we should all go. Should we tell Clary?”
Isabelle shook her head. “It’s her mom’s party. It wouldn’t be fair. Let’s see what we can
do just the three of us.”
“Three of you?” Maia asked, a tone of delicate annoyance shading her voice.
“Do you want to come with us, Maia?” It was Jordan. Isabelle froze; she wasn’t sure how
Maia would respond to having her ex-boyfriend speak to her directly. The other girl’s
mouth tightened a little, and for just a moment she looked at Jordan—not as if she hated
him, but thoughtfully.
“It’s Simon,” she said finally, as if that decided everything. “I’ll go get my coat.”
The elevator doors opened onto a swirl of dark air and shadows. Maureen gave another
high-pitched giggle and danced out into the darkness, leaving Simon to follow her with a
sigh.
They stood in a large marble windowless room. There were no lights, but the wall to the
left of the elevator was fitted with a towering set of double glass doors. Through them
Simon could see the flat surface of the roof, and above it the black night sky overhead
pinpointed with faintly glowing stars.
The wind was blowing hard again. He followed Maureen through the doors and out into
the cold, gusting air, her dress fluttering around her like a moth beating its wings against
a gale. The roof garden was as elegant as the signs had promised. Smooth hexagonal
stone tiles made up the flooring; there were banks of flowers blooming under glass, and
carefully clipped topiary hedges in the shapes of monsters and animals. The walkway
they followed was lined with tiny gleaming lights. All around them rose high glass-andsteel
apartment buildings, their windows aglow with electricity.
The path dead-ended at a row of raised, tiled steps, atop which was a wide square
bordered on three sides by the high wall that encircled the garden. It was clearly intended
to be an area where the building’s eventual residents would socialize. There was a big
concrete block in the center of the square, which would probably someday hold a grill,
Simon guessed, and the area was encircled by neatly clipped rosebushes that in June
would bloom, just as the bare trellises adorning the walls would one day vanish under a
covering of leaves. It would be an attractive space eventually, a luxury Upper East Side
penthouse garden where you could relax on a lounge chair, with the East River glittering
under the sunset, and the city stretched out before you, a mosaic of shimmering light.
Except. The tile floor had been defaced, splattered with some sort of black, sticky fluid
that had been used to draw a rough circle, inside a larger circle. The space between the
two circles was filled with scrawled runes. Though Simon wasn’t a Shadowhunter, he’d
seen enough Nephilim runes to recognize what came from the Gray Book.
These didn’t. They looked menacing and wrong, like a curse scrawled in an unfamiliar
language.
In the very center of the circle was the concrete block. On top of it a bulky rectangular
object sat, draped with a dark cloth. The shape of it was not unlike that of a coffin. More
runes were scribbled around the base of the block.
If Simon’s blood had run, it would have run cold.
Maureen clapped her hands together. “Oh,” she said in her elfin little voice. “It’s pretty.”
“Pretty?” Simon looked quickly at the hunched shape on top of the concrete block.
“Maureen, what the hell—”
“So you brought him.” It was a woman’s voice that spoke, cultured, strong, and—
familiar. Simon turned. Standing on the pathway behind him was a tall woman with short
dark hair. She was very slender, wearing a long dark coat, belted around the middle like a
femme fatale from a forties spy movie. “Maureen, thank you,” she went on. She had a
hard, beautiful face, sharply planed, with high cheekbones and wide dark eyes. “You’ve
done very well. You may go now.” She turned her gaze on Simon. “Simon Lewis,” she
said. “Thank you for coming.”
The moment she said his name he recognized her. The last time he’d seen her she’d been
standing in pouring rain outside the Alto Bar. “You. I remember you. You gave me your
card. The music promoter. Wow, you must really want to promote my band. I didn’t even
think we were that good.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” the woman said. “There’s no point in it.” She glanced sideways.
“Maureen. You may go.” Her voice was firm this time, and Maureen, who had been
hovering like a little ghost, gave a tiny squeak and darted back the way they’d come. He
watched as she vanished through the doors that led to the elevators, feeling almost sorry
to see her go. Maureen wasn’t much company, but without her he felt very alone.
Whoever this strange woman was, she gave off a clear aura of dark power he’d been too
blood-drugged to notice before.
“You led me a dance, Simon,” she said, and now her voice was coming from another
direction, several feet away.
Simon spun, and saw that she was standing beside the concrete block, in the center of the
circle. The clouds were blowing swiftly across the moon, casting a moving pattern of
shadows across her face. Because he was at the foot of the steps, he had to crane his head
back to look up at her. “I thought getting hold of you would be easy.
Dealing with a simple vampire. A newly made one, at that. Even a Daylighter is nothing I
haven’t encountered before, though there has not been one for a hundred years. Yes,” she
added, with a smile at his glance, “I am older than I look.”
“You look pretty old.”
She ignored the insult. “I sent my best people after you, and only one returned, with some
babbled tale about holy fire and the wrath of God. He was quite useless to me after that. I
had to have him put down. It was most annoying.
After that Idecided Iought to deal withyoumyself. Ifollowed youto your sillymusical
show,and afterward,whenI came up to you, I saw it. Your Mark. As one who knew Cain
personally, I am intimately familiar with its shape.”
“Knew Cain personally?” Simon shook his head. “You can’t expect me to believe that.”
“Believe it or do not believe it,” she said. “It makes no difference to me. I am older than
the dreams of your kind, little boy. I walked the paths of the Garden of Eden. I knew
Adam before Eve did. I was his first wife, but I would not be obedient to him, so God
cast me out and made for Adam a new wife, one fashioned of his own body that she
might ever be subservient.” She smiled faintly. “I have many names. But you may call
me Lilith, first of all demons.”
At that, Simon, who had not felt cold in months, finally shivered. He had heard the name
Lilith before. He couldn’t remember where exactly, but he knew it was a name associated
with darkness, with evil and terrible things.
“Your Mark presented me with a conundrum,” said Lilith. “I need you, you see,
Daylighter. Your life force—your blood. But I could not force you or harm you.”
She said this as if needing his blood were the most natural thing in the world.
“You—drink blood?” Simon asked. He felt dazed, as if he were trapped in a strange
dream. Surely this couldn’t really be happening.
She laughed. “Blood is not the food of demons, silly child. What I want from you is not
for myself.” She held out a slender hand. “Come closer.”
Simon shook his head. “I’m not stepping inside that circle.”
She shrugged. “Very well, then. I intended only to give you a better view.” She moved
her fingers slightly, almost negligently, the gesture of someone twitching a curtain aside.
The black cloth covering the coffin-shaped object between them vanished.
Simon stared at what was revealed. He had not been wrong about the coffin shape. It was
a big glass box, just long and wide enough for a person to lie down in. A glass coffin, he
thought, like Snow White’s. But this was no fairy tale. Inside the coffin was a cloudy
liquid, and floating in that liquid—naked from the waist up, his white-blond hair drifting
around him like pale seaweed—was Sebastian.
There were no messages stuck to Jordan’s apartment door, nothing on or under the
welcome mat, and nothing immediately obvious inside the apartment, either. While Alec
stood guard downstairs and Maia and Jordan rummaged through Simon’s backpack in the
living room, Isabelle, standing in the doorway of Simon’s bedroom, looked silently at the
place he’d been sleeping for the past few days. It was so empty—just four walls, naked of
any decoration, a bare floor with a futon mattress on it and a white blanket folded at the
foot, and a single window that looked out onto Avenue B.
She could hear the city—the city she had grown up in, whose noises had always
surrounded her, since she was a baby. She had found the quiet of Idris terribly alien
without the sounds of car alarms, people shouting, ambulance sirens, and music playing
that never, in New York City, quite went away, even in the dead of night. But now,
standing here looking at Simon’s small room, she thought about how lonely those noises
sounded, how distant, and whether he had been lonely himself at night, lying here
looking up at the ceiling, alone.
Then again, it wasn’t as if she’d ever seen his bedroom at home, which presumably was
covered with band posters, sports trophies, boxes of those games he loved to play,
musical instruments, books—all the flotsam and jetsam of a normal life. She’d never
asked to come over, and he’d never suggested it. She’d been gun-shy of meeting his
mother, of doing anything that might bespeak a greater commitment than she was willing
to make. But now, looking at this empty shell of a room, feeling the vast dark bustle of
the city all around her, she felt a twinge of fear for Simon—mixed with an equal twinge
of regret. jetsam of a normal life. She’d never asked to come over, and he’d never
suggested it. She’d been gun-shy of meeting his mother, of doing anything that might
bespeak a greater commitment than she was willing to make. But now, looking at this
empty shell of a room, feeling the vast dark bustle of the city all around her, she felt a
twinge of fear for Simon—mixed with an equal twinge of regret.
She turned back toward the rest of the apartment, but paused when she heard a low
murmur of voices coming from the living room. She recognized Maia’s voice. She didn’t
sound angry, which was surprising in and of itself, considering how much she seemed to
hate Jordan.
“Nothing,” she was saying. “Some keys, a bunch of papers with game stats scrawled on
them.” Isabelle leaned around the doorway. She could see Maia, standing on one side of
the kitchen counter, her hand in the zip pocket of Simon’s backpack. Jordan, on the other
side of the counter, was watching her. Watching her, Isabelle thought, not what she was
doing—that way guys watched you when they were so into you they were fascinated by
every move you made. “I’ll check his wallet.”
Jordan, who had changed out of his formal wear into jeans and a leather jacket, frowned.
“Weird that he left it. Can I see?” He reached across the counter.
Maia jerked back so fast she dropped the wallet, her hand flying out.
“I wasn’t . . .” Jordan drew his hand back slowly. “I’m sorry.”
Maia took a deep breath.“Look,” she said, “Italked to Simon.Iknowyounevermeant to
Turnme.Iknowyou didn’t know what was happening to you. I remember what that was
like. I remember being terrified.”
Jordan put his hands down slowly, carefully, on the countertop. It was odd, Isabelle
thought, watching someone so tall try to make himself look harmless and small. “I should
have been there for you.”
“But the Praetor wouldn’t let you be,” Maia said. “And let’s face it, you didn’t know
anything about being a werewolf; we would have been like two blindfolded people
stumbling around in a circle. Maybe it’s better you weren’t there. It made me run away to
where I could get help. From the Pack.”
“At first I hoped the Praetor Lupus would bring you in,” he whispered. “So I could see
you again. Then I realized that was selfish and I should be wishing that I didn’t pass on
the disease to you. I knew it was fifty-fifty. I thought you might be one of the lucky
ones.”
“Well, I wasn’t,” she said, matter-of-factly. “And over the years I built you up in my head
to be this sort of monster. I thought you knew what you were doing when you did this to
me. I thought it was revenge on me for kissing that boy. So I hated you. And hating you
made everything easier. Having someone to blame.”
“You should blame me,” he said. “It is my fault.”
She ranher finger along the countertop, avoiding his eyes. “Ido blame you. But . . . notthe
wayIdid before.”
Jordan reached up and grabbed his own hair with his fists, tugging on it hard. “There isn’t
a day goes by I don’t think about what I did to you. I bit you. I Turned you. I made you
what you are. I raised my hand to you. I hurt you.
The one person I loved more than anything else in the world.”
Maia’s eyes were shining with tears. “Don’t say that. That doesn’t help. You think that
helps?”
Isabelle cleared her throat loudly, stepping into the living room. “So. Have you found
anything?”
Maia looked away, blinking rapidly. Jordan, lowering his hands, said, “Not really. We
were just about to go through his wallet.” He picked it up from where Maia had dropped
it. “Here.” He tossed it to Isabelle.
She caught it and flicked it open. School pass, New York state nondriver’s ID, a guitar
pick tucked into the space that was supposed to hold credit cards. A ten-dollar bill and a
receipt for dice. Something else caught her eye—a business card, shoved carelessly
behind a photo of Simon and Clary, the kind of picture you might take in a cheap
drugstore photo booth. They were both smiling.
Isabelle took out the card and stared at it. It had a swirling, almost abstract design of a
floating guitar against clouds. Below that was a name.
Satrina Kendall. Band Promoter. Below that was a telephone number, and an Upper East
Side address. Isabelle frowned. Something, a memory, tugged at the back of her mind.
Isabelle held the card up toward Jordan and Maia, who were busy not looking at each
other. “What do you think of this?”
Before they could respond the apartment door opened, and Alec strode in. He was
scowling. “Have you found anything? I’ve been standing down there for thirty minutes,
and nothing even remotely threatening has come by.
Unless you count the NYU student who threw up on the front steps.”
“Here,” Isabelle said, handing the card over to her brother. “Look at this. Does anything
strike you as odd?”
“You mean besides the fact that no band promoter could possibly be interested in Lewis’s
sucky band?” Alec inquired, taking the card between two long fingers. Lines appeared
between his eyes. “Satrina?”
“Does that name mean something to you?” Maia asked. Her eyes were still red, but her
voice was steady.
“Satrina is one of the seventeen names of Lilith, the mother of all demons. She is why
warlocks are called Lilith’s children,” said Alec. “Because she mothered demons, and
they in turn brought forth the race of warlocks.”
“And you have all seventeen names committed to memory?” Jordan sounded dubious.
Alec gave him a cold look. “Who are you again?”
“Oh,shut up,Alec,” Isabelle said, inthe tone she onlyever took withher brother.
“Look,notallof us have your memory for boring facts. I don’t suppose you recall the other
names of Lilith?”
With a superior look Alec rattled them off, “Satrina, Lilith, Ita, Kali, Batna, Talto—”
“Talto!” Isabelle yelped. “That’s it. I knew I was remembering something. I knew there
was a connection!” Quickly she told them about the Church of Talto, what Clary had
found there, and how it connected to the dead half-demon baby at Beth Israel.
“I wish you’d told me about this before,” Alec said. “Yes, Talto is another name for
Lilith. And Lilith has always been associated with babies. She was Adam’s first wife, but
she fled from the Garden of Eden because she didn’twant to obeyAdam or God. God
cursed her forherdisobedience,though—anychild she bore would die.
The legend says she tried over and over to have a child, but they were all born dead.
Eventually she swore she would have vengeance against God by weakening and
murdering infant humans. You might say she’s the demon goddess of dead children.”
“But you said she was the mother of demons,” said Maia.
“She was able to create demons by scattering drops of her blood on the earth in a place
called Edom,” said Alec.
“Because they were born out of her hatred for God and mankind, they became demons.”
Aware that they were all staring at him, he shrugged. “It’s just a story.”
“All stories are true,” said Isabelle. This had been a tenet of her beliefs since she was a
child. All Shadowhunters believed it. There was no one religion, no one truth—and no
myth lacked meaning. “You know that, Alec.”
“I know something else, too,” Alec said, handing her back the card. “That telephone
number and that address are crap. No way they’re real.”
“Maybe,” Isabelle said, tucking the card into her pocket. “But we don’t have anywhere
else to start looking. So we’re going to start there.”
Simon could only stare. The body floating inside the coffin—Sebastian’s—didn’t appear
to be alive; at least, he wasn’t breathing. But he clearly wasn’t exactly dead, either. It had
been two months. If he were dead, Simon was fairly sure, he’d look like he was in a lot
worse shape than he did. His body was very white, like marble; one hand was a bandaged
stump, but he was otherwise unmarked. He appeared to be asleep, his eyes shut, his arms
loose at his sides. Only the fact that his chest wasn’t rising or falling indicated that
something was very wrong.
“But,” Simon said, knowing he sounded ridiculous, “he’s dead. Jace killed him.”
Lilith placed a pale hand on the glass surface of the coffin. “Jonathan,” she said, and
Simon remembered that that was, in fact, his name. Her voice had an odd soft quality
when she said it, as if she were crooning to a child. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”
“Um,” said Simon, looking with loathing at the creature inside the coffin—the boy who
had murdered nine-year-old Max Lightwood. The creature who had killed Hodge. Had
tried to kill them all. “Not my type, really.”
“Jonathan is unique,” she said. “He is the only Shadowhunter I have ever known of who
is part Greater Demon.
This makes him very powerful.”
“He’s dead,” Simon said. He felt that, somehow, it was important to keep making this
point, though Lilith didn’t seem to quite grasp it.
Lilith, gazing down at Sebastian, frowned. “It’s true. Jace Lightwood slipped up behind
him and stabbed him in the back, through to the heart.”
“How do you—”
“I was in Idris,” said Lilith. “When Valentine opened the doorway to the demon worlds, I
came through. Not to fight in his stupid battle. Out of curiosity more than anything else.
That Valentine should have such hubris—” She broke off, shrugging. “Heaven smote him
down for it, of course. I saw the sacrifice he made; I saw the Angel rise and turn on him. I
saw what was brought back. I am the oldest of demons; I know the Old Laws. A life for a
life. I raced to Jonathan. It was almost too late. That which was human about him died
instantly—his heart had ceased to beat, his lungs to inflate. The Old Laws were not
enough. I tried to bring him back then. He was too far gone. All I could do was this.
Preserve him for this moment.”
Simon wondered briefly what would happen if he made a run for it—dashed past this
insane demon and threw himself off the roof of the building. He couldn’t be harmed by
another living creature; that was the result of the Mark, but he doubted its power
extended to protecting him against the ground. Still, he was a vampire. If he fell forty
stories and smashed every bone in his body, would he heal from that? He swallowed hard
and found Lilith looking at him with amusement.
“Don’t you want to know,” she said in her cold, seductive voice, “what moment I mean?”
Before he could answer, she leaned forward, her elbows on the coffin. “I suppose you
know the story of the way the Nephilim came to be?
How the Angel Raziel mixed his blood with the blood of men, and gave it to a man to
drink, and that man became the first of the Nephilim?”
“I’ve heard it.”
“In effect the Angel created a new race of creature. And now, with Jonathan, a new race
has been born again. As Jonathan Shadowhunter led the first Nephilim, so shall this
Jonathan lead the new race that I intend to create.”
“The new race you intend—” Simon held up his hands. “You know what, you want to
lead a new race starting off with one dead guy, you go right ahead. I don’t see what this
has to do with me.”
“He is dead now. He need not remain so.” Lilith’s voice was cool, unemotional. “There
is, of course, one kind of Downworlder whose blood offers the possibility of, shall we
say, resurrection.”
“Vampires,” said Simon. “You want me to turn Sebastian into a vampire?”
“His name is Jonathan.” Her tone was sharp. “And yes, in a sense. I want you to bite him,
to drink his blood, and to give him your blood in exchange—”
“I won’t do it.”
“Are you so sure of that?”
“A world without Sebastian”—Simon used the name deliberately—“in it is a better world
than one with him in it. I
won’tdoit.”AngerwasrisinginSimon,aswifttide.“Anyway,Icouldn’tifIwantedto.He’s
dead.Vampirescan’t bring back the dead. You ought to know that, if you know so much.
Once the soul is gone from the body, nothing can bring someone back. Thankfully.”
Lilith bent her gaze on him. “You really don’t know, do you?” she said. “Clary never told
you.”
Simon was getting fed up. “Never told me what?”
She chuckled. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. To prevent chaos
there must be order. If a life is given to the Light, a life is owed to the Dark as well.”
“I have,” Simon said slowly and deliberately, “literally no idea what you’re talking about.
And I don’t care. You villains and your creepy eugenics programs are starting to bore me.
So I’m going to leave now. You’re welcome to try to stop me by threatening or hurting
me. I encourage you to go ahead and try.”
She looked at him and chuckled. “‘Cain rose up,’” she said. “You are a bit like him
whose Mark you bear. He was stubborn, as you are. Foolhardy, too.”
“He went up against—” Simon choked on the word. God. “I’m just dealing with you.” He
turned to leave.
“I would not turn your back on me, Daylighter,” said Lilith, and there was something in
her voice that made him look back at her, where she leaned on Sebastian’s coffin. “You
think you cannot be hurt,” she said with a sneer. “And indeed I cannot lift a hand against
you. I am not a fool; I have seen the holy fire of the divine. I have no wish to see it turned
against me. I am not Valentine, to bargain with what I cannot understand. I am a demon,
but a very old one. I know humanity better than you might think. I understand the
weaknesses of pride, of lust for power, of desire of the flesh, of greed and vanity and
love.”
“Love isn’t a weakness.”
“Oh, isn’t it?” she said, and glanced past him, with a look as cold and pointed as an icicle.
He turned, not wanting to, knowing he must, and looked behind him.
There on the brick walkway was Jace. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt. Standing in
front of him was Clary, still in the pretty gold-colored dress she had worn to the
Ironworks party. Her long, wavy red hair had come out of its knot and hung down around
her shoulders. She stood very still in the circle of Jace’s arms. It would almost have
looked like a romantic picture if it were not for the fact that in one of his hands, Jace was
holding a long and glittering bone-handled knife, and the edge of it was pressed against
Clary’s throat.
Simon stared at Jace in total and absolute shock. There was no emotion on Jace’s face, no
light in his eyes. He seemed utterly blank.
Very slightly he inclined his head.
“I brought her, Lady Lilith,” he said. “Just as you asked.”

Categories: City of Fallen Angels

City of Fallen Angels - Chapter 17

AND CAIN ROSE UP
Clary had never been so cold.
Even when she had crawled out of Lake Lyn, coughing and sputtering its poisonous
water onto the shore, she hadn’t been this cold. Even when she had thought Jace was
dead, she hadn’t felt this terrible icy paralysis in her heart. Then she had burned with
rage, rage against her father. Now she just felt ice, all the way down to her toes.
She had come back to consciousness in the marble lobby of a strange building, under the
shadow of an unlit chandelier. Jace had been carrying her, one arm under her bent knees,
the other supporting her head. Still dizzy and groggy, she’d buried her head against his
neck for a moment, trying to remember where she was.
“What happened?” she had whispered.
They had reached the elevator. Jace pushed the button, and Clary heard the rattle that
meant the machine was moving down toward them. But where were they?
“You were unconscious,” he said.
“But how—” She remembered then, and fell silent. His hands on her, the sting of her
stele on her skin, the wave of darkness that had come over her. Something wrong with the
rune he had drawn on her, the way it had looked and felt. She stayed motionless in his
arms for a moment, and then said:
“Put me down.”
He set her down on her feet, and they looked at each other. Only a small space separated
them. She could have reached out and touched him, but for the first time since she had
met him, she didn’t want to. She had the terrible feeling that she was looking at a
stranger. He looked like Jace, and sounded like Jace when he spoke, and had felt like Jace
when she was holding him. But his eyes were strange and distant, as was the tiny smile
playing about his mouth.
The elevator doors opened behind him. She remembered standing in the nave of the
Institute, saying “I love you” to a closed elevator door. The gap yawned behind him now,
as black as the mouth of a cave. She felt for the stele in her pocket; it was gone.
“You knocked me out,” she said. “With a rune. You brought me here. Why?”
His beautiful face was entirely, carefully blank. “I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice.”
She turned and ran then, going for the door, but he was faster than she was. He always
had been. He swung in front of her, blocking her path, and held out his hands. “Clary,
don’t run,” he said. “Please. For me.”
She looked at him incredulously. His voice was the same—he sounded just like Jace, but
not like him—like a recording of him, she thought, all the tones and patterns of his voice
there, but the life that animated it gone. How had she not realized it before? She had
thought he sounded remote because of stress and pain, but no. It was that he was gone.
Her stomach turned over, and she bolted for the door again, only to have him catch her
around the waist and swing her back toward him. She pushed at him, her fingers locking
into the fabric of his shirt, ripping it sideways.
She froze, staring. On the skin of his chest, just over his heart, was a rune.
It wasn’t one she had ever seen before. It wasn’t black, like Shadowhunter runes were,
but dark red, the color of blood. And it lacked the delicate grace of the runes from the
Gray Book. It was scrawling, ugly, its lines sharp and cruel rather than curving and
generous.
Jace didn’t seem to see it. He stared down at himself as if wondering what she was gazing
at, then looked at her, puzzled. “It’s all right. You didn’t hurt me.”
“That rune—,” she began, but cut herself off, hard. Maybe he didn’t know it was there.
“Let me go, Jace,” she said instead, backing away from him. “You don’t have to do this.”
“You’re wrong about that,” he said, and reached for her again.
This time she didn’t fight. What would happen even if she escaped? She couldn’t just
leave him here. Jace was still there, she thought, trapped somewhere behind those blank
eyes, maybe screaming for her. She had to stay with him. Had to know what was
happening. She let him pick her up and carry her into the elevator. with him. Had to know
what was happening. She let him pick her up and carry her into the elevator.
“The Silent Brothers will notice you left,” she said, as the buttons for floor after floor lit
up while the elevator rose.
“They’ll alert the Clave. They’ll come looking—”
“I need not fear the Brothers. I wasn’t a prisoner; they weren’t expecting me to want to
leave. They won’t notice I’m gone until they wake up tomorrow morning.”
“What if they wake up earlier than that?”
“Oh,” he said, with a cold certainly, “they won’t. It’s much more likely the other
partygoers at the Ironworks will notice you’re missing. But what can they do about it?
They’ll have no idea where you went, and Tracking to this building is blocked.” He
stroked her hair back from her face, and she went still. “You’re just going to have to trust
me. No one’s coming for you.”
He didn’t bring the knife out until they left the elevator, and then he said, “I would never
hurt you. You know that, don’t you?” even as he flicked her hair back with the tip of the
blade and pressed the edge to her throat. The icy air hit her bare shoulders and arms as
soon as they were out on the roof. Jace’s hands were warm where he touched her, and she
could feel the heat of him through her thin dress, but it didn’t warm her, not inside. Inside
she was filled with jagged slivers of ice.
She grew colder still when she saw Simon, looking at her with his huge dark eyes. His
face looked scrubbed blank with shock, like a white piece of paper. He was looking at
her, and Jace behind her, as if he were seeing something fundamentally wrong, a person
with their face turned inside-out, a map of the world with all the land gone and nothing
left but ocean.
She barely looked at the woman beside him, with her dark hair and her thin, cruel face.
Clary’s gaze had gone immediately to the transparent coffin on its pedestal of stone. It
seemed to glow from within, as if lit by a milky inner light. The water that Jonathan was
floating in was probably not water but some other, less natural liquid.
Normal Clary, she thought dispassionately, would have screamed at the sight of her
brother, floating still and dead-looking and totally unmoving in what looked like Snow
White’s glass coffin. But frozen Clary just stared with a remote and distant shock.
Lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow, hair as black as ebony. Well, some of that
was true. When she had met Sebastian, his hair had been black, but it was white-silver
now, floating around his head like albino seaweed.
The same color as his father’s hair. Their father’s hair. His skin was so pale it looked as if
it could be made up of luminous crystals. But his lips were colorless too, as were the lids
of his eyes.
“Thank you, Jace,” the womanthat Jace had called LadyLilithsaid. “Nicelydone, and
veryprompt. Ithought Iwas going to have difficulties with you at first, but it appears I
worried for nothing.”
Clary stared. Though the woman did not look familiar, her voice was familiar. She had
heard that voice before. But where? She tried to pull away from Jace, but his grip on her
only tightened. The edge of the knife kissed her throat. An accident, she told herself.
Jace—even this Jace—would never hurt her.
“You,” she said to Lilith between her teeth. “What have you done to Jace?”
“Valentine’s daughter speaks.” The dark-haired woman smiled. “Simon? Would you like
to explain?”
Simon looked like he was going to throw up. “I have no idea.” He sounded as if he were
choking. “Believe me, you two were the last thing I expected to see.”
“The Silent Brothers said that a demon was responsible for what’s been happening with
Jace,” Clary said, and saw Simon look more baffled than ever. The woman, though, just
watched her with eyes like flat obsidian circles.
“That demon was you, wasn’t it? But why Jace? What do you want from us?”
“‘Us’?” Lilith pealed with laughter. “As if you mattered in this, my girl. Why you?
Because you are a means to an end. Because I needed both these boys, and both of them
love you. Because Jace Herondale is the one person you trust more than anyone else in
the world. And you are someone the Daylighter loves enough to give up his own life for.
Perhaps you cannot be harmed,” she said, turning to Simon. “But she can be. Are you so
stubborn that you will sit back and watch Jace cut her throat rather than give up your
blood?” will sit back and watch Jace cut her throat rather than give up your blood?”
Simon, looking like death itself, shook his head slowly, but before he could speak, Clary
said, “Simon, no! Don’t do it, whatever it is. Jace wouldn’t hurt me.”
The woman’s fathomless eyes turned to Jace. She smiled. “Cut her,” she said. “Just a
little.”
Clary felt Jace’s shoulders tense, the way they had in the park when he’d been showing
her how to fight. She felt something at her throat, like a stinging kiss, cold and hot at
once, and felt a warm trickle of liquid spill down onto her collarbone. Simon’s eyes
widened.
He had cut her. He had actually done it. She thought of Jace crouched on the floor of the
bedroom at the Institute, hispainclearineverylineofhisbody.
Idreamthatyoucomeintomyroom.AndthenIhurtyou.Icutyouor strangle or stab you, and
you die, looking up at me with those green eyes of yours while your life bleeds away
between my hands.
She had not believed him. Not really. He was Jace. He would never hurt her. She looked
down and saw the blood staining the neckline of her dress. It looked like red paint.
“You see now,” said the woman. “He does what I tell him. Don’t blame him for it. He is
completely within my power.
For weeks I have crept through his head, seeing his dreams, learning his fears and wants,
his guilts and desires.
In a dream he accepted my Mark, and that Mark has been burning through him ever
since—through his skin, down into his soul. Now his soul is in my hands, to shape or
direct as I see fit. He will do whatever I say.”
Clary remembered what the Silent Brothers had said. When a Shadowhunter is born, a
ritual is performed, a number of protective spells placed upon the child by both the Silent
Brothers and the Iron Sisters. When Jace died and then was raised, he was born a second
time, with those protections and rituals stripped away. It would have left him as open as
an unlocked door—open to any kind of demonic influence or malevolence.
I did this, Clary thought. I brought him back, and I wanted it kept secret. If we had only
told someone what had happened, maybe the ritual could have been done in time to keep
Lilith out of his head. She felt sick with selfloathing. Behind her Jace was silent, as still
as a statue, his arms around her and the knife still at her throat. She could feel it against
her skin when she took a breath to speak, keeping her voice even with an effort. “I
understand that you control Jace,” she said. “I don’t understand why. Surely there are
other, easier ways to threaten me.”
Lilith sighed as if the whole business had grown tedious. “I need you,” she said, with
exaggerated patience, “to get Simon to do what I want, which is give me his blood. And I
need Jace not just because I needed a way to get you here, but as a counterweight. All
things in magic must balance, Clarissa.” She pointed at the rough black circle drawn on
the tiles, and then at Jace. “He was the first. The first to be brought back, the first soul
restored to this world in the name of Light. Therefore he must be present for me to
successfully restore the second, in the name of the Dark. Do you understand now, silly
girl? We are all needed here. Simon to die. Jace to live. Jonathan to return.
And you, Valentine’s daughter, to be the catalyst for it all.”
The demon woman’s voice had dropped to a low chant. With a shock of surprise Clary
realized that she now knew where she had heard it before. She saw her father, standing
inside a pentagram, a black-haired woman with tentacles for eyes kneeling at his feet.
The woman said, The child born with this blood in him will exceed in power the Greater
Demons of the abysses between the worlds. But it will burn out his humanity, as poison
burns the life from the blood.
“I know,” Clary said through stiff lips. “I know who you are. I saw you cut your wrist
and drip blood into a cup for my father. The angel Ithuriel showed it to me in a vision.”
Simon’s eyes darted back and forth between Clary and the woman, whose dark eyes held
a hint of surprise. Clary guessed she didn’t surprise easily. “I saw my father summon you.
I know what he called you. My Lady of Edom.
You’re a Greater Demon. You gave your blood to make my brother what he is. You
turned him into a—a horrible thing. If it weren’t for you—”
“Yes. All that is true. I gave my blood to Valentine Morgenstern, and he put it in his baby
boy, and this is the result.”
The woman placed her hand gently, almost as a caress, against the glass surface of
Sebastian’s coffin. There was the oddest smile on her face. “You might almost say that,
in a way, I am Jonathan’s mother.”
“I told you that address didn’t mean anything,” Alec said.
Isabelle ignored him. The moment they had stepped through the doors of the building, the
ruby pendant around her neck had pulsed, faintly, like the beat of a distant heart. That
meant demonic presence. Under other circumstances she would have expected her
brother to sense the weirdness of the place just like she did, but he was clearly too sunk in
gloom about Magnus to concentrate.
“Get your witchlight,” she said to him. “I left mine at home.”
He shot her an irritated look. It was dark in the lobby, dark enough that a normal human
wouldn’t have been able to see. Maia and Jordan both had the excellent night vision of
werewolves. They were standing at opposite ends of the room, Jordan examining the big
marble lobby desk, and Maia leaning against the far wall, apparently examining her rings.
“You’re supposed to bring it with you everywhere,” Alec replied.
“Oh? Did you bring your Sensor?” she snapped. “I didn’t think so. At least I have this.”
She tapped the pendant. “I can tell you that there’s something here. Something demonic.”
Jordan’s head snapped around. “There are demons here?”
“I don’t know—maybe only one. It pulsed and faded,” Isabelle admitted. “But it’s too big
a coincidence for this just to have been the wrong address. We have to check it out.”
A dim light rose up all around her. She looked over and saw Alec holding up his
witchlight, its blaze contained by his fingers. It threw strange shadows across his face,
making him look older than he was, his eyes a darker blue.
“So let’s get going,” he said. “We’ll take it one floor at a time.”
They moved toward the elevator, Alec first, then Isabelle, Jordan and Maia dropping into
line behind them.
Isabelle’s boots had Soundless runes carved into the soles, but Maia’s heels clicked on
the marble floor as she walked. Frowning, she paused to discard them, and went barefoot
the rest of the way. As Maia stepped into the elevator, Isabelle noticed that she wore a
gold ring around her left big toe, set with a turquoise stone.
Jordan, glancing down at her feet, said in a surprised tone, “I remember that ring. I
bought that for you at—”
“Shut up,” Maia said, hitting the door close button. The doors slid shut as Jordan lapsed
into silence.
They paused at every floor. Most were still under construction—there were no lights, and
wires hung down from the ceilings like vines. Windows had plywood nailed over them.
Drop cloths blew in the faint wind like ghosts. Isabelle kept a firm hand on her pendant,
but nothing happened until they reached the tenth floor. As the doors opened, she felt a
flutter against the inside of her cupped palm, as if she had been holding a tiny bird there
and it had beaten its wings.
She spoke in a whisper. “There’s something here.”
Alec just nodded; Jordan opened his mouth to say something, but Maia elbowed him,
hard. Isabelle slipped past her brother, into the hall outside the elevators. The ruby was
pulsing and vibrating against her hand now like a distressed insect.
Behind her, Alec whispered, “Sandalphon.” Light blazed up around Isabelle, illuminating
the hall. Unlike some of the other floors they had seen, this one seemed at least partly
finished. Bare granite walls rose around her, and the floor was smooth black tile. A
corridor led in two directions. One ended in a heap of construction equipment and tangled
wires. The other ended in an archway. Beyond the archway, black space beckoned.
Isabelle turned to look back at her companions. Alec had put away his witchlight stone
and was holding a blazing seraph blade, lighting the interior of the elevator like a lantern.
Jordan had produced a large, brutal-looking knife and was gripping it in his right hand.
Maia seemed to be in the process of putting her hair up; when she lowered her hands, she
was holding a long, razor-tipped pin. Her nails had grown, too, and her eyes held a feral,
greenish gleam.
“Follow me,” Isabelle said. “Quietly.”
Tap, tap went the ruby against Isabelle’s throat as she went down the hall, like the
prodding of an insistent finger.
She didn’t hear the rest of them behind her, but she knew they were there from the long
shadows cast against the dark granite walls. Her throat was tight, her nerves singing, the
way they always did before she walked into battle.
This was the part she liked least, the anticipation before the release of violence. During a
fight nothing mattered but the fight itself; now she had to struggle to keep her mind on
the task at hand.
The archway loomed above them. It was carved marble, oddly old-fashioned for such a
modern building, its sides decorated with scrollwork. Isabelle glanced up briefly as she
passed through, and almost started. The face of a grinning gargoyle was carved into the
stone, leering down at her. She made a face at it and turned to look at the room she had
entered.
It was vast, high-ceilinged, clearly meant to someday be a full loft apartment. The walls
were floor-to-ceiling windows, giving out onto a view of the East River with Queens in
the distance, the Coca-Cola sign flashing bloodred and navy blue down onto the black
water. The lights of surrounding buildings hovered glittering in the night air like tinsel on
a Christmas tree. The room itself was dark, and full of odd, humped shadows, spaced at
regular intervals, low to the ground. Isabelle squinted, puzzled. They weren’t animate;
they appeared to be chunks of square, blocky furniture, but what—?
“Alec,” she said softly. Her pendant was writhing as if alive, its ruby heart painfully hot
against her skin.
In a moment her brother was beside her. He raised his blade, and the room was full of
light. Isabelle’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “Oh, by the
Angel, no.”
“You’re not his mother.” Simon’s voice cracked as he said it; Lilith didn’t even turn to
look at him. She still had her hands on the glass coffin. Sebastian floated inside it, silent
and unaware. His feet were bare, Simon noticed. “He has a mother. Clary’s mother.
Clary’s his sister. Sebastian—Jonathan—won’t be too pleased if you hurt her.”
Lilith looked up at that, and laughed. “A brave attempt, Daylighter,” she said. “But I
know better. I saw my son grow up, you know. Often I visited him in the form of an owl.
I saw how the woman who had given birth to him hated him.
He has no love lost for her, nor should he, nor does he care for his sister. He is more like
me than he is like Jocelyn Morgenstern.” Her dark eyes moved from Simon to Jace and
Clary. They had not moved, not really. Clary still stood in the circle of Jace’s arms, with
the knife near her throat. He held it easily, carelessly, as if he were barely paying
attention. But Simon knew how quickly Jace’s seeming uninterest could explode into
violent action.
“Jace,” said Lilith. “Step into the circle. Bring the girl with you.”
Obediently Jace moved forward, pushing Clary ahead of him. As they crossed the barrier
of the black-painted line, the runes inside the line flashed a sudden, brilliant red—and
something else lit as well. A rune on the left side of Jace’s chest, just above his heart,
glowed suddenly, with such brightness that Simon closed his eyes. Even with his eyes
closed, he could still see the rune, a vicious swirl of angry lines, printed against the inside
of his eyelids.
“Open your eyes, Daylighter,” Lilith snapped. “The time has come. Will you give me
your blood, or will you refuse?
You know the price if you do.”
Simon looked down at Sebastian in his coffin—and did a double take. A rune that was
the twin of the one that had just flashed on Jace’s chest was visible on his bare chest as
well, just beginning to fade as Simon stared down at him. In a moment it was gone, and
Sebastian was still and white again. Unmoving. Unbreathing.
Dead.
“I can’t bring him back for you,” Simon said. “He’s dead. I’d give you my blood, but he
can’t swallow it.”
Her breath hissed through her teeth in exasperation, and for a moment her eyes glowed
with a harsh acidic light.
“First you must bite him,” she said. “You are a Daylighter. Angel blood runs through
your body, through your blood and tears, through the fluid in your fangs. Your Daylighter
blood will revive him enough that he can swallow and drink. Bite him and give him your
blood, and bring him back to me.”
Simon stared at her wildly. “But what you’re saying—you’re saying I have the power to
bring back the dead?”
“Since you’ve been a Daylighter you’ve had that power,” she said. “But not the right to
use it.”
“The right?”
She smiled, tracing the tip of one long red-painted nail across the top of Sebastian’s
coffin. “History is written by the winners, they say,” she said. “There might not be so
much of a difference between the side of Light and the side ofDark as yousuppose.After
all, without the Dark, there is nothing for the Light to burnaway.”
Simon looked at her blankly.
“Balance,” she clarified. “There are laws older than any you can imagine. And one of
them is that you cannot bring back what is dead. When the soul has left the body, it
belongs to death. And it cannot be taken back without a price to pay.”
“And you’re willing to pay it? For him?” Simon gestured toward Sebastian.
“He is the price.” She threw her head back and laughed. It sounded almost like human
laughter. “If the Light brings back a soul, then the Dark has the right to bring one back as
well. This is my right. Or perhaps you should ask your little friend Clary what I’m talking
about.”
Simon looked at Clary. She looked as if she might pass out. “Raziel,” she said faintly.
“When Jace died—”
“Jace died?” Simon’s voice went up an octave. Jace, despite being the subject under
discussion, remained serene and expressionless, his knife hand steady.
“Valentine stabbed him,” Clary said in an almost-whisper. “And then the Angel killed
Valentine, and he said I could have anything I wanted. And I said I wanted Jace back, I
wanted him back, and he brought him back—for me.” Her eyes were huge in her small
white face. “He was dead for only a few minutes . . . hardly any time at all . . .”
“It was enough,” breathed Lilith. “I was hovering near my son during his battle with Jace;
I saw him fall and die. I followed Jace to the lake, I watched as Valentine slew him, and
then as the Angel raised him again. I knew that was my chance. I raced back to the river
and took my son’s body from it. . . . I kept it preserved for just this moment.” She looked
fondly down at the coffin. “Everything in balance. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.
A life for a life. Jace is the counterweight. If Jace lives, then so shall Jonathan.”
Simon couldn’t tear his eyes away from Clary. “What she’s saying—about the Angel—
it’s true?” he said. “And you never told anyone?”
To his surprise it was Jace who answered. Brushing his cheek against Clary’s hair, he
said, “It was our secret.”
Clary’s green eyes flashed, but she didn’t move.
“So you see, Daylighter,” said Lilith, “I am only taking what is mine by right. The Law
says that the one who was first brought back must be here in the circle when the second is
returned.” She indicated Jace with a contemptuous flick of her finger. “He is here. You
are here. All is in readiness.”
“Then you don’t need Clary,” said Simon. “Leave her out of it. Let her go.”
“Of course I need her. I need her to motivate you. I cannot hurt you, Mark-bearer, or
threaten you, or kill you. But I can cut out your heart when I cut out her life. And I will.”
She looked toward Clary, and Simon’s gaze followed hers.
Clary. She was so pale that she looked almost blue, though perhaps that was the cold. Her
green eyes were vast in her pale face. A trickle of drying blood spilled from her
collarbone to the neckline of her dress, now spotted with red. Her hands hung at her
sides, loose, but they were shaking.
Simon saw her as she was, but also as she had been when she was seven years old, skinny
arms and freckles and those blue plastic barrettes she’d worn in her hair until she was
eleven. He thought of the first time he’d noticed she had a real girl’s shape under the
baggy T-shirt and jeans she always wore, and how he hadn’t been sure if he should look
or look away. He thought of her laugh and her quick pencil moving across a page, leaving
intricately designed images behind: spired castles, running horses, brightly colored
characters she’d made up in her head. You can walk to school by yourself, her mother
had said, but only if Simon goes with you. He thought of her hand in his when they
crossed the street, and his own sense of the awesome task that he had undertaken: the
responsibility for her safety.
He had been in love with her once, and maybe some part of him always would be,
because she had been his first.
But that wasn’t what mattered now. She was Clary; she was part of him; she always had
been and would be forever. As he stared at her, she shook her head, very slightly. He
knew what she was saying. Don’t do it. Don’t give her what she wants. Let whatever
happens to me happen.
He stepped into the circle; as his feet passed over the painted line, he felt a shiver, like an
electric shock, go through him. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
“No!” Clary cried, but Simon didn’t look at her. He was watching Lilith, who smiled a
cool, gloating smile as she raised her left hand and passed it across the surface of the
coffin.
The lid of it vanished, peeling back in a way that reminded Simon bizarrely of peeling
back the lid of a tin of sardines. As the top layer of glass pulled away, it melted and ran,
dripping down the sides of the granite pedestal, crystallizing into tiny shards of glass as
the drops struck the ground.
The coffin was open now, like a fish tank; Sebastian’s body drifted inside, and Simon
thought he could once again see the flash of the rune on his chest as Lilith reached into
the tank. As Simon watched, she took Sebastian’s dangling arms and crossed them over
his chest with an oddly tender gesture, tucking the bandaged one under the one that was
whole. She brushed a lock of his wet hair away from his still, white forehead, and stepped
back, shaking milky water from her hands.
“To your work, Daylighter,” she said.
Simon moved toward the coffin. Sebastian’s face was slack, his eyelids still. No pulse
beat in his throat. Simon remembered how much he had wanted to drink Maureen’s
blood. How he had craved the feeling of his teeth sinking into her skin and freeing the
salty blood beneath. But this—this was feeding off a corpse. The very thought made his
stomach turn.
Though he wasn’t looking at her, he was aware of Clary watching him. He could feel her
breath as he bent over Sebastian. He could sense Jace, too, watching him out of blank
eyes. Reaching into the coffin, he closed his hands around Sebastian’s cold, slippery
shoulders. Biting back the urge to be sick, he bent and sank his teeth into Sebastian’s
throat. Black demon blood poured into his mouth, as bitter as poison.
***
Isabelle moved silently among the stone pedestals. Alec was with her, Sandalphon in his
hand, sending light winging through the room. Maia was in one corner of the room, bent
over and retching, her hand braced against the wall; Jordan hovered over her, looking as
if he wanted to reach out and stroke her back, but was afraid of being rebuffed.
Isabelle didn’t blame Maia for throwing up. If she hadn’t had years of training, she would
have thrown up herself.
She had never seen anything like what she was looking at now. There were dozens,
maybe fifty, of the stone pedestals in the room. Atop each one was a low crib-like basket.
Inside each basket was a baby. And every one of the babies was dead.
She had held out hope at first, as she walked up and down the rows, that she might find
one alive. But these children had been dead for some time. Their skin was gray, their
small faces bruised and discolored. They were wrapped in thin blankets, and though it
was cold in the room, Isabelle didn’t think it was cold enough for them to have frozen to
death. She wasn’t sure how they had died; she couldn’t bear to investigate too closely.
This was clearly a matter for the Clave. wrapped in thin blankets, and though it was cold
in the room, Isabelle didn’t think it was cold enough for them to have frozen to death.
She wasn’t sure how they had died; she couldn’t bear to investigate too closely. This was
clearly a matter for the Clave.
Alec, behind her, had tears running down his face; he was cursing under his breath by the
time they reached the last of the pedestals. Maia had straightened up and was leaning
against the window; Jordan had given her some kind of cloth, maybe a handkerchief, to
hold to her face. The cold white lights of the city burned behind her, cutting through the
dark glass like diamond drills.
“Iz,” Alec said. “Who could have done something like this? Why would someone—even
a demon—”
He broke off. Isabelle knew what he was thinking about. Max, when he had been born.
She had been seven, Alec nine. They had bent over their little brother in the cradle,
amused and enchanted by this fascinating new creature.
They’d played with his little fingers, laughed at the weird faces he made when they
tickled him.
Her heart twisted. Max. As she had moved down the lines of little cribs, now turned into
little coffins, a sense of overwhelming dread had begun to press down on her. She
couldn’t ignore the fact that the pendant around her neck was glowing with a harsh,
steady glow. The sort of glow she might have expected if she were facing down a Greater
Demon.
She thought of what Clary had seen in the morgue in Beth Israel. He looked just like a
normal baby. Except for his hands. They were twisted into claws. . . .
With great care she reached into one of the cribs. Careful not to touch the baby, she
twitched aside the thin blanket that wrapped its body.
She felt the breath puff out of her in a gasp. Ordinary chubby baby arms, round baby
wrists. The hands looked soft and new. But the fingers—the fingers were twisted into
claws, as black as burned bone, tipped with sharp little talons. She took an involuntary
step back.
“What?” Maia moved toward them. She still looked sickened, but her voice was steady.
Jordan followed her, hands in his pockets. “What did you find?” she asked.
“By the Angel.” Alec, beside Isabelle, was looking down into the crib. “Is this—like the
baby Clary was telling you about? The one at Beth Israel?”
Slowly Isabelle nodded. “I guess it wasn’t just the one baby,” she said. “Someone’s been
trying to make a lot more of them. More . . . Sebastians.”
“Why would anyone want more of him?” Alec’s voice was full of naked hatred.
“He was fast and strong,” Isabelle said. It almost hurt physically to say anything
complimentary about the boy who had killed her brother and tried to kill her. “I guess
they’re trying to breed a race of super-warriors.”
“It didn’t work.” Maia’s eyes were dark with sadness.
A noise so soft it was almost inaudible teased at the edge of Isabelle’s hearing. Her head
jerked up, her hand going to her belt, where her whip was coiled. Something in the thick
shadows at the edge of the room, near the door, moved, just the faintest flicker, but
Isabelle had already broken away from the others and was running for the door. She burst
out into the hallway near the elevators. There was something there—a shadow that had
broken free of the greater darkness and was moving, edging along the wall. Isabelle
picked up speed and threw herself forward, knocking the shadow to the floor.
It wasn’t a ghost.As theywent downtogether ina heap,Isabelle surprised a veryhumansounding
grunt of surprise out of the shadowy figure. They hit the ground together and
rolled. The figure was definitely human—slight and shorter than Isabelle, wearing a gray
warm-up suit and sneakers. Sharp elbows came up, jabbing into Isabelle’s collarbone. A
knee dug into her solar plexus. She gasped and rolled aside, feeling for her whip. By the
time she got it free, the figure was on its feet. Isabelle rolled onto her stomach, flicking
the whip forward; the end of itcoiled around the stranger’s ankle and pulled tight.Isabelle
jerked the whip back,yanking the figure offits feet.
She scrambled to her feet, reaching with her free hand for her stele, which was tucked
down the front of her dress.
With a quick slash she finished the nyx Mark on her left arm. Her vision adjusted
quickly, the whole room seeming to fill with light as the night vision rune took effect.
She could see her attacker more clearly now—a thin figure in a gray warm-up suit and
gray sneakers, scrambling backward until its back hit the wall. The hood of the suit had
fallen back, exposing the face. The head was shaved cleanly bald, but the face was
definitely female, with sharp cheekbones and big dark eyes.
“Stop it,” Isabelle said, and pulled hard on the whip. The woman cried out in pain. “Stop
trying to crawl away.”
The woman bared her teeth. “Worm,” she said. “Unbeliever. I will tell you nothing.”
Isabelle jammed her stele back into her dress. “If I pull hard enough on this whip, it’ll cut
through your leg.” She gave the whip another flick, tightening it, and moved forward,
until she was standing in front of the woman, looking down at her. “Those babies,” she
said. “What happened to them?”
The woman gave a bubbling laugh. “They were not strong enough. Weak stock, too
weak.”
“Too weak for what?” When the woman didn’t answer, Isabelle snapped, “You can tell
me or lose your leg. Your choice. Don’t think I won’t let you bleed to death here on the
floor. Child-murderers don’t deserve mercy.”
The woman hissed, like a snake. “If you harm me, She will smite you down.”
“Who—” Isabelle broke off, remembering what Alec had said. Talto is another name for
Lilith. You might say she’s the demon goddess of dead children. “Lilith,” she said. “You
worship Lilith. You did all this . . . for her?”
“Isabelle.” It was Alec, carrying the light of Sandalphon before him. “What’s going on?
Maia and Jordan are searching, looking for any more . . . children, but it looks like they
were all in the big room. What’s going on here?”
“This . . . person,” Isabelle said with disgust, “is a cult member of the Church of Talto.
Apparently they worship Lilith. And they’ve murdered all these babies for her.”
“Not murder!” The woman struggled upright. “Not murder. Sacrifice. They were tested
and found weak. Not our fault.”
“Let me guess,” Isabelle said. “You tried injecting the pregnant women with demon
blood. But demon blood is toxic stuff. The babies couldn’t survive. They were born
deformed, and then they died.”
The womanwhimpered. It was a veryslight sound, butIsabelle sawAlec’s eyes narrow. He
had always beenthe one of them that was best at reading people.
“One of those babies,” he said. “It was yours. How could you inject your own child with
demon blood?”
The woman’s mouth trembled. “I didn’t. We were the ones who took the blood
injections. The mothers. Made us stronger, faster. Our husbands, too. But we got sick.
Sicker and sicker. Our hair fell out. Our nails . . .” She raised her hands, showing the
blackened nails, the torn, bloody nail beds where some had fallen away. Her arms were
dotted with blackish bruises. “We’re all dying,” she said. There was a faint sound of
satisfaction in her voice. “We will be dead in days.”
“She made you take poison,” Alec said, “and yet you worship her?”
“Youdon’tunderstand.” The womansounded hoarse,dreamy.“Ihad nothing before She
found me. None of us did.
I was on the streets. Sleeping on subway gratings so I wouldn’t freeze. Lilith gave me a
place to live, a family to take care of me. Just to be in Her presence is to be safe. I never
felt safe before.”
“You’ve seen Lilith,” Isabelle said, struggling to keep the disbelief from her voice. She
was familiar with demon cults; she had done a report on them once, for Hodge. He had
given her high marks on it. Most cults worshipped demons they had imagined or
invented. Some managed to raise weak minor demons, who either killed them all when
set free, or contented themselves with being served by the cult members, all their needs
attended to, and little asked of them in return. She had never heard of a cult who
worshipped a Greater Demon in which the members had ever actually seen that demon in
the flesh. Much less a Greater Demon as powerful as Lilith, the mother of warlocks.
“You’ve been in her presence?” little asked of them in return. She had never heard of a
cult who worshipped a Greater Demon in which the members had ever actually seen that
demon in the flesh. Much less a Greater Demon as powerful as Lilith, the mother of
warlocks. “You’ve been in her presence?”
The woman’s eyes fluttered half-shut. “Yes. With Her blood in me I can feel when She is
near. As She is now.”
Isabelle couldn’t help it; her free hand flew to her pendant. It had been pulsing on and off
since they’d entered the building; she had assumed it was because of the demon blood in
the dead children, but the presence nearby of a Greater Demon would make even more
sense. “She’s here? Where is she?”
The woman seemed to be drifting off into sleep. “Upstairs,” she said vaguely. “With the
vampire boy. The one who walks by day. She sent us to fetch him for Her, but he was
protected. We could not lay hands on him. Those who went to find him died. Then, when
Brother Adam returned and told us the boy was guarded by holy fire, Lady Lilith was
angry. She slew him where he stood. He was lucky, to die by Her hand, so lucky.” Her
breath rattled. “And She is clever, Lady Lilith. She found another way to bring the boy. . .
.”
The whip dropped from Isabelle’s suddenly limp hand. “Simon? She brought Simon
here? Why?”
“‘None that go unto Her,’” the woman breathed, “‘return again . . .’”
Isabelle dropped to her knees, seizing up the whip. “Stop it,” she said in a voice that
shook. “Stop yammering and tell me where he is. Where did she take him? Where is
Simon? Tell me, or I’ll—”
“Isabelle.” Alec spoke heavily. “Iz, there’s no point. She’s dead.”
Isabelle stared at the woman in disbelief. She had died, it seemed, between one breath
and the next, her eyes wide open, her face set in slack lines. It was possible to see now
that beneath the starvation and the baldness and the bruising, she had probably been quite
young, not more than twenty. “God damn it.”
“I don’t get it,” Alec said. “What does a Greater Demon want with Simon? He’s a
vampire. Granted, a powerful vampire, but—”
“The Mark of Cain,” Isabelle said distractedly. “This must have something to do with the
Mark. It’s got to.” She moved toward the elevator and jabbed at the callbutton.“If
Lilithwas reallyAdam’s first wife, and Cainwas Adam’s son, then the Mark of Cain is
nearly as old as she is.”
“Where are you going?”
“She said they were upstairs,” Isabelle said. “I’m going to search every floor until I find
him.”
“She can’t hurt him, Izzy,” said Alec in the reasonable voice Isabelle detested. “I know
you’re worried, but he’s got the Mark of Cain; he’s untouchable. Even a Greater Demon
can’t harm him. No one can.”
Isabelle scowled at her brother. “So what do you think she wants him for, then? So she’ll
have someone to pick up her dry cleaning during the day? Really, Alec—”
There was a ping, and the arrow above the farthest elevator lit up. Isabelle started forward
as the doors began to open. Light flooded out . . . and after the light, a wave of men and
women—bald, emaciated, and dressed in gray tracksuits and sneakers—poured out. They
were brandishing crude weapons culled from the debris of construction: jagged shards of
glass, torn-off chunks of rebar, concrete blocks. None of them spoke. In a silence as total
as it was eerie, they surged from the elevator as one, and advanced on Alec and Isabelle.

Categories: City of Fallen Angels

City of Fallen Angels - Chapter 15

BEATI BELLICOSI
The inside of the Ironworks was alive with ropes of shimmering multicolored lights.
Quite a few guests were already sitting, but just as many were milling around, carrying
champagne glasses full of pale, fizzing liquid.
Waiters—who were also werewolves, Simon noted; the whole event seemed to be staffed
by members of Luke’s pack—moved among the guests, handing out champagne flutes.
Simon declined one. Ever since his experience at Magnus’s party, he hadn’t felt safe
drinking anything that he hadn’t prepared himself, and besides, he never knew which
non-blood liquids were going to stay down and which would make him sick.
Maia was standing over by one of the brick pillars, talking to two other werewolves and
laughing. She wore a brilliant orange satin sheath dress that set off her dark skin, and her
hair was a wild halo of brown-gold curls around her face. She caught sight of Simon and
Jordan and deliberately turned away. The back of her dress was a low V that showed a lot
of bare skin, including a tattoo of a butterfly across her lower spine.
“I don’t think she had that when I knew her,” Jordan said. “That tattoo, I mean.”
Simon looked at Jordan. He was goggling at his ex-girlfriend with the sort of obvious
longing that, Simon suspected, was going to get him punched in the face by Isabelle if he
wasn’t careful. “Come on,” he said, putting his hand against Jordan’s back and shoving
lightly. “Let’s go see where we’re sitting.”
Isabelle, who had been watching them over her shoulder, smiled a catlike smile. “Good
idea.”
They made their way through the crowd to the area where the tables were, only to find
that their table was already half-occupied. Clary sat in one of the seats, looking down into
a champagne glass full of what was most likely ginger ale. Next to her were Alec and
Magnus, both in the dark suits they’d worn when they’d come from Vienna.
Magnus seemed to be playing with the fringed edges of his long white scarf. Alec, his
arms crossed over his chest, was staring ferociously into the distance.
Clary, on seeing Simon and Jordan, bounced to her feet, relief evident on her face. She
came around the table to greet Simon, and he saw that she was wearing a very plain gold
silk dress and low gold sandals. Without heels to give her height, she looked tiny. The
Morgenstern ring was around her neck, its silver glinting against the chain that held it.
She reached up to hug him and muttered, “I think Alec and Magnus are fighting.”
“Looks like it,” he muttered back. “Where’s your boyfriend?”
At that, she detached her arms from his neck. “He got held up at the Institute.” She
turned. “Hey, Kyle.”
He smiled a little awkwardly. “It’s Jordan, actually.”
“So I’ve heard.” Clary gestured toward the table. “Well, we might as well sit. I think
pretty soon there’s going to be toasting and stuff. And then, hopefully, food.”
They all sat. There was a long, awkward silence.
“So,” Magnus said finally, running a long white finger around the rim of his champagne
glass. “Jordan. I hear you’re in the Praetor Lupus. I see you’re wearing one of their
medallions. What does it say on it?”
Jordan nodded. He was flushed, his hazel eyes sparkling, his attention clearly only partly
on the conversation. He was following Maia around the room with his eyes, his fingers
nervously clenching and unclenching on the edge of the tablecloth. Simon doubted he
was even aware of it. “Beati bellicosi: Blessed are the warriors.”
“Good organization,” said Magnus. “I knew the man who founded it, back in the 1800s.
Woolsey Scott.
Respectable old werewolf family.”
Alec made an ugly sound in the back of his throat. “Did you sleep with him, too?”
Magnus’s cat eyes widened. “Alexander!”
“Well, I don’t know anything about your past, do I?” Alec demanded. “You won’t tell me
anything; you just say it doesn’t matter.”
Magnus’s face was expressionless, but there was a dark tinge of anger to his voice. “Does
this mean every time I mention anyone I’ve ever met, you’re going to ask me if I had an
affair with them?”
Alec’s expression was stubborn, but Simon couldn’t help having a flash of sympathy; the
hurt behind his blue eyes was clear. “Maybe.”
“I met Napoleon once,” said Magnus. “We didn’t have an affair, though. He was
shockingly prudish for a Frenchman.”
“You met Napoleon?” Jordan, who appeared to be missing most of the conversation,
looked impressed. “So it’s true what they say about warlocks, then?”
Alec gave him a very unpleasant look. “What’s true?”
“Alexander,” said Magnus coldly, and Clary met Simon’s eyes across the table. Hers
were wide, green, and full of an expression that said Uh-oh. “You can’t be rude to
everyone who talks to me.”
Alec made a wide, sweeping gesture. “And why not? Cramping your style, am I? I mean,
maybe you were hoping to flirt with werewolf boy here. He’s pretty attractive, if you like
the messy-haired, broad-shouldered, chiseledgoodlooks type.”
“Hey, now,” said Jordan mildly.
Magnus put his head in his hands.
“Or there are plenty of pretty girls here, since apparently your taste goes both ways. Is
there anything you aren’t into?”
“Mermaids,” said Magnus into his fingers. “They always smell like seaweed.”
“It’s not funny,” Alec said savagely, and kicking back his chair, he got up from the table
and stalked off into the crowd.
Magnus still had his head in his hands, the black spikes of his hair sticking out between
his fingers. “I just don’t see,” he said to no one in particular, “why the past has to matter.”
To Simon’s surprise it was Jordan who answered. “The past always matters,” he said.
“That’s what they tell you when you join the Praetor. You can’t forget the things you did
in the past, or you’ll never learn from them.”
Magnus looked up, his gold-green eyes glinting through his fingers. “How old are you?”
he demanded. “Sixteen?”
“Eighteen,” said Jordan, looking slightly frightened.
Alec’s age, thought Simon, suppressing an interior grin. He didn’t really find Alec and
Magnus’s drama funny, but it was hard not to feel a certain bitter amusement at Jordan’s
expression. Jordan had to be twice Magnus’s size— despite being tall, Magnus was
slender to the point of skinniness—but Jordan was clearly afraid of him. Simon turned to
share a glance with Clary, but she was staring off toward the front door, her face gone
suddenly bone white. Dropping her napkin onto the table, she murmured, “Excuse me,”
and got to her feet, practically fleeing the table.
Magnus threw his hands up. “Well, if there’s going to be a mass exodus . . . ,” he said,
and got up gracefully, flinging his scarf around his neck. He vanished into the crowd,
presumably looking for Alec.
Simon looked at Jordan, who was looking at Maia again. She had her back to them and
was talking to Luke and Jocelyn, laughing, flinging her curly hair back. “Don’t even
think about it,” Simon said, and got up. He pointed at Jordan. “You stay here.”
“And do what?” Jordan demanded.
“Whatever Praetor Lupus do in this situation. Meditate. Contemplate your Jedi powers.
Whatever. I’ll be back in five minutes, and you better still be here.”
Jordan leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest in a clearly mutinous manner, but
Simon had already stopped paying attention. He turned and moved into the crowd,
following Clary. She was a speck of red and gold among the moving bodies, crowned
with her twist of bright hair.
He caught up to her by one of the light-wrapped pillars, and put a hand on her shoulder.
She turned with a startled exclamation, eyes wide, hand raised as if to fend him off. She
relaxed when she saw who it was. “You scared me!”
“Obviously,” Simon said. “What’s going on? What are you so freaked out about?”
“I . . .” She lowered her hand with a shrug; despite her forced look of casual dismissal,
the pulse was going in her neck like a hammer. “I thought I saw Jace.”
“I figured,” Simon said. “But . . .”
“But?”
“You look really frightened.” He wasn’t sure why he’d said it exactly, or what he was
hoping she’d say back. She bit her lip, the way she always did when she was nervous.
Her gaze for a moment was far away; it was a look familiar to Simon. One of the things
he’d always loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how
easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny
and magic. Once he had been able to do the same, had been able to inhabit imaginary
worlds all the more exciting for being safe—for being fictional. Now that the real and the
imagined had collided, he wondered if she, like he, longed for the past, for the normal.
He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn’t realize was
precious until you lost it.
“He’s having a hard time,” she said in a low voice. “I’m scared for him.”
“I know,” Simon said. “Look, not to pry, but—has he figured out what’s wrong with
him? Has anyone?”
“He—” She broke off. “He’s all right. He’s just having a hard time coming to terms with
some of the Valentine stuff.
You know.” Simon did know. He also knew she was lying. Clary, who hardly ever hid
anything from him. He gave her a hard look.
“He’s been having bad dreams,” she said. “He was worried that there was some demon
involvement—”
“Demon involvement?” Simon echoed in disbelief. He’d known that Jace was having bad
dreams—he’d said as much—but Jace had never mentioned demons.
“Well, apparently there are kinds of demons that try to reach you through your dreams,”
Clary said, sounding as if she were sorry she’d brought it up at all, “but I’m sure it’s
nothing. Everyone has bad dreams sometimes, don’t they?” She put a hand on Simon’s
arm. “I’m just going to see how he is. I’ll come back.” Her gaze was already sliding past
him, toward the doors that led onto the terrace; he stood back with a nod and let her go,
watching her as she moved off into the crowd.
She looked so small—small the way she had in first grade when he’d walked her to the
front door of her house and watched her go up the stairs, tiny and determined, her lunch
box banging against her knee as she went. He felt his heart, which no longer beat,
contract, and he wondered if there was anything in the world as painful as not being able
to protect the people you loved.
“You look sick,” said a voice at his elbow. Husky, familiar. “Thinking about what a
horrible person you are?”
Simon turned and saw Maia leaning against the pillar behind him. She had a strand of the
small, glowing white lights wound around her neck, and her face was flushed with
champagne and the warmth of the room.
“Or maybe I should say,” she went on, “what a horrible vampire you are. Except that
makes it sound like you’re bad at being a vampire.”
“I am bad at being a vampire,” Simon said. “But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t bad at being
a boyfriend, too.”
She smiled crookedly. “Bat says I shouldn’t be so hard on you,” she said. “He says guys
do stupid things when girls are involved. Especially geeky ones who previously haven’t
had much luck with women.”
“It’s like he can see into my soul.”
Maia shook her head. “It’s hard to stay mad at you,” she said. “But I’m working on it.”
She turned away.
“Maia,” Simon said. His head had started to ache, and he felt a little dizzy. If he didn’t
talk to her now, though, he never would. “Please. Wait.”
She turned back and looked at him, both eyebrows raised questioningly.
“I’m sorry about what I did,” he said. “I know I said that before, but I really do mean it.”
She shrugged, expressionless, giving him nothing.
He swallowed past the pain in his head. “Maybe Bat’s right,” he said. “But I think there’s
more to it than that. I wanted to be with you because—and this is going to sound so
selfish—you made me feel normal. Like the person I was before.”
“I’m a werewolf, Simon. Not exactly normal.”
“But you—you are,” he said, stumbling over his words a little. “You’re genuine and
real—one of the realest people I’ve ever known. You wanted to come over and play
Halo. You wanted to talk about comics and check out concerts and go dancing and just
do normal things. And you treated me like I was normal. You’ve never called me
‘Daylighter’ or ‘vampire’ or anything but Simon.”
“That’s all friend stuff,” Maia said. She was leaning against the pillar again, her eyes
glinting softly as she spoke.
“Not girlfriend stuff.”
Simon just looked at her. His headache pulsed like a heartbeat.
“And then you come around,” she added, “bringing Jordan with you. What were you
thinking?”
“That’s not fair,” Simon protested. “I had no idea he was your ex—”
“I know. Isabelle told me,” Maia interrupted. “I just feel like giving you hell about it
anyway.”
“Oh, yeah?” Simon glanced over at Jordan, who was sitting alone at the round linendraped
table, like a guy whose prom date hadn’t showed up. Simon suddenly felt very
tired—tired of worrying about everyone, tired of feeling guilty for the things he’d done
and would probably do in the future. “Well, did Izzy tell you that Jordan got himself
assigned to me so he could be near you? You should hear the way he asks about you. The
way he says your name, even. Man, the way he ripped into me when he thought I was
cheating on you—”
“You weren’t cheating. We weren’t exclusively dating. Cheating is different—”
Simonsmiled as Maia broke off, blushing.“Iguess it’s good that youdislike him so
muchthat you’ll take myside against him no matter what,” he said.
“It’s been years,” she said. “He’s never tried to get in touch with me. Not once.”
“He did try,” Simon said. “Did you know the night he bit you was the first time he ever
Turned?”
She shook her head, her curls bouncing, her wide amber eyes very serious. “No. I thought
he knew—”
“That he was a werewolf? No. He knew he was losing control in some way, but who
guesses they’re turning into a werewolf? The day after he bit you he went looking for
you, but the Praetor stopped him. They kept him away from you. Even then he didn’t stop
looking. I don’t think a day’s gone by in the past two years that he hasn’t wondered
where you were—” werewolf? The day after he bit you he went looking for you, but the
Praetor stopped him. They kept him away from you. Even then he didn’t stop looking. I
don’t think a day’s gone by in the past two years that he hasn’t wondered where you
were—”
“Why are you defending him?” she whispered.
“Because you should know,” said Simon. “I sucked at being a boyfriend, and I owe you.
You should know he didn’t mean to abandon you. He only took me on as an assignment
because your name was mentioned in the notes on my case.”
Her lips parted. As she shook her head, the glittering lights of her necklace winked like
stars. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that, Simon. What am I supposed
to do?”
“I don’t know,” Simon said. His head felt like nails were being pounded into it. “But I
can tell you one thing. I’m the last guy in the world you should be asking for relationship
advice from.” He pressed a hand to his forehead. “I’m going to go outside. Get some air.
Jordan’s over at that table there if you want to talk to him.”
He gestured over toward the tables and then turned away, away from her questioning
eyes, from the eyes of everyone in the room, the sound of raised voices and laughter, and
stumbled toward the doors.
***
Clary pushed open the doors that led out onto the terrace and was greeted by a rush of
cold air. She shivered, wishing she had her coat but unwilling to take up any time going
back to the table to get it. She stepped out onto the terrace and shut the door behind her.
The terrace was a wide expanse of flagstones, surrounded by ironwork railings. Tiki
torches burned in big pewter holders, but they did little to warm the air—which probably
explained why no one was out here but Jace. He was standing by the railing, looking out
over the river.
She wanted to run over to him, but she couldn’t help hesitating. He was wearing a dark
suit, the jacket open over a white shirt, and his head was turned to the side, away from
her. She had never seen him dressed like this before, and it made him look older and a
little remote. The wind off the river lifted his fair hair, and she saw the little scar across
the side of his throat where Simon had bitten him once, and she remembered that Jace
had let himself be bitten, had risked his life, for her.
“Jace,” she said.
He turned and looked at her and smiled. The smile was familiar and seemed to unlock
something inside her, freeing her to run across the flagstones to him and throw her arms
around him. He picked her up and held her off the ground for a long time, his face buried
in her neck.
“You’re all right,” she said finally, when he set her down. She scrubbed fiercely at the
tears that had spilled out of her eyes. “I mean—the Silent Brothers wouldn’t have let you
go if you weren’t all right—but I thought they said the ritual was going to take a long
time? Days, even?”
“It didn’t.” He put his hands on either side of her face and smiled down at her. Behind
him the Queensboro Bridge arced out over the water. “You know the Silent Brothers.
They like to make a big deal out of everything they do. But it’s actually a pretty simple
ceremony.” He grinned. “I felt kind of stupid. It’s a ceremony meant for little kids, but I
just kept thinking that if I got it over with fast, I’d get to see you in your sexy party dress.
It got me through.” His eyes raked her up and down. “And let me tell you, I am not
disappointed. You’re gorgeous.”
“You look pretty good yourself.” She laughed a little through the tears. “I didn’t even
think you owned a suit.”
“I didn’t. I had to buy one.” He slid his thumbs over her cheekbones where the tears had
made them damp. “Clary —”
“Why did you come out here?” she asked. “It’s freezing. Don’t you want to go back
inside?”
He shook his head. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”
“So talk,” Clary said in a half whisper. She took his hands away from her face and put
them on her waist. Her need to be held against him was almost overwhelming. “Is
something else wrong? Are you going to be okay? Please don’t hold anything back from
me. After everything that’s happened, you should know I can handle any bad news.”
She knew she was nervously chattering, but she couldn’t help it. Her heart felt as if it
were beating a thousand miles a minute. “I just want you to be all right,” she said as
calmly as she could.
His gold eyes darkened. “I keep going through that box. The one that belonged to my
father. I don’t feel anything about it. The letters, the photos. I don’t know who those
people were. They don’t feel real to me. Valentine was real.”
Clary blinked; it wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. “Remember, I said that it would
take time—”
He didn’t even seem to hear her. “If I really were Jace Morgenstern, would you still love
me? If I were Sebastian, would you love me?”
She squeezed his hands. “You could never be like that.”
“If Valentine did to me what he did to Sebastian, would you love me?”
There was an urgency to the question that she didn’t understand. Clary said, “But then
you wouldn’t be you.”
His breath caught, almost as if what she’d said had hurt him—but how could it have? It
was the truth. He wasn’t like Sebastian. He was like himself. “I don’t know who I am,”
he said. “I look at myself in the mirror and I see StephenHerondale,butIact like a
Lightwood and talk like myfather—like Valentine. So Isee who Iam inyour eyes, and I
try to be that person, because you have faith in that person and I think faith might be
enough to make me what you want.”
“You’re already what I want. You always have been,” Clary said, but she couldn’t help
feeling as if she were calling into an empty room. It was as if Jace couldn’t hear her, no
matter how many times she told him she loved him. “I know you feel like you don’t
know who you are, but I do. I know. And someday you will too. And in the meantime
you can’t keep worrying about losing me, because it’ll never happen.”
“There is a way . . .” Jace raised his eyes to hers. “Give me your hand.”
Surprised, Clary reached her hand out, remembering the first time he’d ever taken her
hand like that. She had the rune now, the open-eye rune, on the back of her hand, the one
he’d been looking for then and hadn’t found. Her first permanent rune. He turned her
hand over, baring her wrist, the vulnerable skin of her forearm.
She shivered. The wind off the river felt as if it were driving into her bones. “Jace, what
are you doing?”
“Remember what I said about Shadowhunter weddings? How instead of exchanging
rings, we Mark each other with runes of love and commitment?” He looked at her, his
eyes wide and vulnerable under their thick gold lashes.
“I want to Mark you in a way that will bind us together, Clary. It’s just a small Mark, but
it’s permanent. Are you willing?”
She hesitated. A permanent rune, when they were so young—her mother would be
incensed. But nothing else seemed to be working; nothing she said convinced him.
Maybe this would. Silently, she drew out her stele and handed it to him. He took it,
brushing her fingers as he did. She was shivering harder now, cold everywhere except
where he touched her. He cradled her arm against him and lowered the stele, touching it
softly to her skin, moving it gently up and down, and then, when she didn’t protest, with
more force. As cold as she was, the burn of the stele was almost welcome. She watched
as the dark lines spiraled out from the tip of it, forming a pattern of hard, angular lines.
Her nerves tingled with a sudden alarm. The pattern didn’t speak of love and
commitment to her; there was something else there, something darker, something that
spoke of control and submission, of loss and darkness.
Was he drawing the wrong rune? But this was Jace; surely he knew better than that. And
yet a numbness was beginning to spread up her arm from the place the stele touched—a
painful tingling, like nerves waking up—and she felt dizzy, as if the ground were moving
under her—
“Jace.” Her voice rose, tinged with anxiety. “Jace, I don’t think that’s right—”
He let her arm go. He held the stele balanced lightly in his hand, with the same grace with
which he would hold any weapon. “I’m sorry, Clary,” he said. “I do want to be bound to
you. I would never lie about that.”
She opened her mouth to ask him what on earth he was talking about, but no words came.
The darkness was rushing up too fast. The last thing she felt was Jace’s arms around her
as she fell.
After what seemed like an eternity of wandering around what he considered to be an
extremely boring party, Magnus finally found Alec, sitting alone at a table in a corner,
behind a spray of artificial white roses. There were a number of champagne glasses on
the table, most half-full, as if passing partygoers had abandoned them there.
Alec was looking rather abandoned himself. He had his chin in his hands and was staring
moodily into space. He didn’t look up, even when Magnus hitched a foot around the chair
opposite his, spun it toward him, and sat down, resting his arms along the back.
“Do you want to go back to Vienna?” he said.
Alec didn’t answer, just stared into space.
“Or we could go somewhere else,” said Magnus. “Anywhere you want. Thailand, South
Carolina, Brazil, Peru—Oh, wait, no, I’m banned from Peru. I’d forgotten about that. It’s
a long story, but amusing if you want to hear it.”
Alec’s expression said that he very much did not want to hear it. Pointedly he turned and
looked out over the room as if the werewolf string quartet fascinated him.
Since Alec was ignoring him, Magnus decided to amuse himself by changing the colors
of the champagne in the glasses onthe table. He made one blue, the nextpink, and was
working on green whenAlec reached across the table and hit him on the wrist.
“Stop that,” he said. “People are looking.”
Magnus looked down at his fingers, which were spraying blue sparks. Maybe it was a bit
obvious. He curled his fingers under. “Well,” he said. “I have to do something to keep
myself from dying of boredom, since you’re not talking to me.”
“I’m not,” said Alec. “Not talking to you, I mean.”
“Oh?” said Magnus.“Ijust asked youif youwanted to go to Vienna, or Thailand, orthe
moon,and Idon’t recall you saying anything in response.”
“I don’t know what I want.” Alec, his head bent, was playing with an abandoned plastic
fork. Though his eyes were defiantly cast down, their pale blue color was visible even
through his lowered eyelids, which were pale and as fine as parchment. Magnus had
always found humans more beautiful than any other creatures alive on the earth, and had
often wondered why. Only a few years before dissolution, Camille had said. But it was
mortality that made them what they were, the flame that blazed brighter for its flickering.
Death is the mother of beauty, as the poet said. He wondered if the Angel had ever
considered making his human servants, the Nephilim, immortal. But no, for all their
strength, they fell as humans had always fallen in battle through all the ages of the world.
“You’ve got that look again,” Alec said peevishly, glancing up through his lashes. “Like
you’re staring at something I can’t see. Are you thinking about Camille?”
“Not really,” Magnus said. “How much of the conversation I had with her did you
overhear?”
“Most of it.” Alec prodded the tablecloth with his fork. “I was listening at the door.
Enough.”
“Not at all enough, I think.” Magnus glared at the fork, and it skidded out of Alec’s grasp
and across the table toward him. He slammed his hand down on top of it and said, “Stop
fidgeting. What was it I said to Camille that bothered you so much?”
Alec raised his blue eyes. “Who’s Will?”
Magnus exhaled a sort of laugh. “Will. Dear God. That was a long time ago. Will was a
Shadowhunter, like you.
And yes, he did look like you, but you’re not anything like him. Jace is much more the
way Will was, in personality at least—and my relationship with you is nothing like the
one I had with Will. Is that what’s bothering you?”
“I don’t like thinking you’re only with me because I look like some dead guy you liked.”
“I never said that. Camille implied it. She is a master of implication and manipulation.
She always has been.”
“You didn’t tell her she was wrong.”
“If you let Camille, she will attack you on every front. Defend one front, and she will
attack another. The only way to deal with her is to pretend she isn’t getting to you.”
“She said pretty boys were your undoing,” Alec said. “Which makes it sound like I’m
just one in a long line of toys for you. One dies or goes away, you get another one. I’m
nothing. I’m—trivial.”
“Alexander—”
“Which,” Alec went on, staring down at the table again, “is especially unfair, because
you are anything but trivial for me. I changed my whole life for you. But nothing ever
changes for you, does it? I guess that’s what it means to live forever. Nothing ever really
has to matter all that much.”
“I’m telling you that you do matter—”
“The Book of the White,” Alec said, suddenly. “Why did you want it so badly?”
Magnus looked at him, puzzled. “You know why. It’s a very powerful spellbook.”
“But you wanted it for something specific, didn’t you? A spell that was in it?” Alec took
a ragged breath. “You don’t have to answer; I can tell by your face that you did. Was it—
was it a spell for making me immortal?”
Magnus felt shaken to his core. “Alec,” he whispered. “No. No, I—I wouldn’t do that.”
Alec fixed him with his piercing blue gaze. “Why not? Why through all the years of all
the relationships you’ve ever had have you never tried to make any of them immortal like
you? If you could have me with you forever, wouldn’t you want to?”
“Of course I would!” Magnus, realizing he was almost shouting, lowered his voice with
an effort. “But you don’t understand. You don’t get something for nothing. The price for
living forever—”
“Magnus.” It was Isabelle, hurrying toward them, her phone in her hand. “Magnus, I need
to talk to you.”
“Isabelle.” Normally Magnus liked Alec’s sister. Not so much at the moment. “Lovely,
wonderful Isabelle. Could you please go away? Now is a really bad time.”
Isabelle looked from Magnus to her brother, and back again. “Then, you don’t want me to
tell you that Camille’s just escaped from the Sanctuary and my mother is demanding that
you come back to the Institute right now to help them find her?”
“No,” Magnus said. “I don’t want you to tell me that.”
“Well, too bad,” Isabelle said. “Because it’s true. I mean, I guess you don’t have to go,
but—”
The rest of the sentence hung in the air, but Magnus knew what she wasn’t saying. If he
didn’t go, the Clave would be suspicious that he’d had something to do with Camille’s
escape, and that was the last thing he needed.
Maryse would be furious, complicating his relationship with Alec even further. And
yet—
“She escaped?” Alec said. “No one’s ever escaped from the Sanctuary.”
“Well,” said Isabelle, “now someone has.”
Alec slunk down lower in his seat. “Go,” he said. “It’s an emergency. Just go. We can
talk later.”
“Magnus . . .” Isabelle sounded half-apologetic, but there was no mistaking the urgency
in her voice.
“Fine.” Magnus stood up. “But,” he added, pausing byAlec’s chair and leaning inclose to
him,“youare not trivial.”
Alec flushed. “If you say so,” he said.
“I say so,” said Magnus, and he turned to follow Isabelle out of the room.
Outside on the deserted street, Simon leaned against the wall of the Ironworks, against
the ivy-covered brick, and stared up at the sky. The lights of the bridge washed out the
stars so there was nothing to see but a sheet of velvety blackness. He wished with a
sudden fierceness that he could breathe in the cold air to clear his head, that he could feel
it on his face, on his skin. All he was wearing was a thin shirt, and it made no difference.
He couldn’t shiver, and even the memory of what it felt like to shiver was going away
from him, little by little, every day, slipping away like the memories of another life.
“Simon?”
He froze where he stood. That voice, small and familiar, drifting like a thread on the cold
air. Smile. That was the last thing she had said to him.
But it couldn’t be. She was dead.
“Won’t you look at me, Simon?” Her voice was as small as ever, barely a breath. “I’m
right here.”
Dread clawed its way up his spine. He opened his eyes, and turned his head slowly.
Maureen stood in the circle of light cast by a streetlamp just at the corner of Vernon
Boulevard. She wore a long white virginal dress. Her hair was brushed straight down
over her shoulders, shining yellow in the lamplight. There was still some grave dirt
caught in it. There were little white slippers on her feet. Her face was dead white, circles
of rouge painted on her cheekbones, and her mouth colored a dark pink as if it had been
drawn on with a felt-tip marker.
Simon’s knees gave out. He slid down the wall he had been leaning against, until he was
sitting on the ground, his knees drawn up. His head felt like it was going to explode.
Maureen gave a girlish little giggle and stepped out of the lamplight. She moved toward
him and looked down; her face wore a look of amused satisfaction.
“I thought you’d be surprised,” she said.
“You’re a vampire,” Simon said. “But—how? I didn’t do this to you. I know I didn’t.”
Maureen shook her head. “It wasn’t you. But it was because of you. They thought I was
your girlfriend, you know.
They took me out of my bedroom at night, and they kept me in a cage for the whole next
day. They told me not to worry because you’d come for me. But you didn’t come. You
never came.”
“I didn’t know.” Simon’s voice cracked. “I would have come if I’d known.”
Maureen flung her blond hair back over her shoulder in a gesture that reminded Simon
suddenly and painfully of Camille. “It doesn’t matter,” she said in her girlish little voice.
“When the sun went down, they told me I could die or I could choose to live like this. As
a vampire.”
“So you chose this?”
“I didn’t want to die,” she breathed. “And now I’ll be pretty and young forever. I can stay
out all night, and I never need to go home. And she takes care of me.”
“Who are you talking about? Who’s she? Do you mean Camille? Look, Maureen, she’s
crazy. You shouldn’t listen to her.” Simon staggered to his feet. “I can get you help. Find
you a place to stay. Teach you how to be a vampire —”
“Oh, Simon.” She smiled, and her little white teeth showed in a precise row. “I don’t
think you know how to be a vampire either. You didn’t want to bite me, but you did. I
remember. Your eyes went all black like a shark’s, and you bit me.”
“I’m so sorry. If you’ll let me help you—”
“You could come with me,” she said. “That would help me.”
“Come with you where?”
Maureen looked up and down the empty street. She looked like a ghost in her thin white
dress. The wind blew it around her body, but she clearly didn’t feel the cold. “You have
been chosen,” she said. “Because you are a Daylighter. Those who did this to me want
you. But they know you bear the Mark now. They can’t get to you unless you choose to
come to them. So they sent me as a messenger.” She cocked her head to the side, like a
bird’s. “I might not be anyone who matters to you,” she said, “but the next time it will be.
They will keep coming for the people you love until there is no one left, so you might as
well come with me and find out what they want.”
“Do you know?” Simon asked. “Do you know what they want?”
She shook her head. She was so pale under the diffuse lamplight that she looked almost
transparent, as if Simon could have looked right through her. The way, he supposed, he
always had.
“Does it matter?” she said, and reached out her hand.
“No,” he said. “No, I guess it doesn’t.” And he took her hand.

Categories: City of Fallen Angels