City of Fallen Angels

“Camille.” Alec’s head was spinning. “What are you doing here?”


He immediately realized that he sounded like an idiot. He fought down the urge to smack himself in the forehead. The last thing he wanted was to look like a fool in front of Magnus’s ex-girlfriend.

“It was Lilith,” said the vampire woman in a small, trembling voice. “She had her cult members break into the Sanctuary. It isn’t warded against humans, and they’re human—barely. They cut my chains and brought me here, to her.” She raised her hands; the chains binding her wrists to the pipe rattled. “They brutalized me.”

Alec crouched down, bringing his eyes on a level with Camille’s. Vampires didn’t bruise—they healed too quickly for that—but her hair was matted with blood on the left side, which made him think she was telling the truth. “Let’s say I believe you,” he said. “What did she want with you? Nothing in what I know about Lilith says she has a particular interest in vampires.”

“You know why the Clave was holding me,” she said. “You would have heard.”

“You killed three Shadowhunters. Magnus said you claimed you were doing it because someone had ordered you to—” He broke off. “Lilith?”

“If I tell you, will you help me?” Camille’s lower lip trembled. Her eyes were huge, green, pleading. She was very beautiful. Alec wondered if she had once looked at Magnus like this. It made him want to shake her.

“I might,” he said, astonished at the coldness in his own voice. “You don’t have a lot of bargaining power here. I could go off and leave you for Lilith to have, and it wouldn’t make much difference to me.”

“Yes, it would,” she said. Her voice was low. “Magnus loves you. He wouldn’t love you if you were the sort of person who could abandon someone helpless.”

“He loved you,” Alec said.

She gave a wistful smile. “He appears to have learned better since then.”

Alec rocked back on his heels slightly. “Look,” he said. “Tell me the truth. If you do, I’ll cut you free and bring you to the Clave. They’ll treat you better than Lilith would.”

She looked down at her wrists, chained to the pipe. “The Clave chained me,” she said. “Lilith chained me. I see little difference in my treatment between the two.”

“I guess it’s your choice, then. Trust me, or trust her,” Alec said. It was a gamble, he knew.

He waited for several tense moments before she said, “Very well. If Magnus trusts you, I will trust you.” She raised her head, doing her best to look dignified despite torn clothing and bloody hair. “Lilith came to me, not I to her. She had heard I was looking to recover my position as head of the Manhattan clan from Raphael Santiago. She said she would help me, if I would help her.”

“Help her by murdering Shadowhunters?”

“She wanted their blood,” said Camille. “It was for those babies. She was injecting Shadowhunter blood and demon blood into the mothers, trying to replicate what Valentine did to his son. It didn’t work, though. The babies became twisted things—and then they died.” Catching his revolted look, she said, “I didn’t know at first what she wanted the blood for. You may not think much of me, but I have no taste for murdering innocents.”

“You didn’t have to do it,” said Alec. “Just because she offered.”

Camille smiled tiredly. “When you are as old as I am,” she said, “it is because you have learned to play the game correctly—to make the right alliances at the right times. To ally yourself not just with the powerful, but with those who you believe will make you powerful. I knew that if I did not agree to assist Lilith, she would kill me. Demons are not by nature trusting, and she would think that I would go to the Clave with what I knew about her plans to kill Shadowhunters, even if I promised her I would stay silent. I took a chance that Lilith was a greater danger to me than your kind were.”

“And you didn’t mind killing Shadowhunters.”

“They were Circle members,” said Camille. “They had killed my kind. And yours.”

“And Simon Lewis? What was your interest in him?”

“Everyone wants the Daylighter on their side.” Camille shrugged. “And I knew he had the Mark of Cain. One of Raphael’s vampire underlings is still loyal to me. He passed on the information. Few other Downworlders know of it. It makes him an incalculably valuable ally.”

“Is that what Lilith wants with him?”

Camille’s eyes widened. Her skin was very pale, and beneath it Alec could see that her veins had darkened, the pattern of them beginning to spread across the whiteness of her face like widening cracks in china. Eventually, starving vampires became savage, then lost consciousness, once they had been without blood for too long. The older they were, the longer they could stave it off, but Alec couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since she had fed. “What do you mean?”