City of Fallen Angels

“Clary.” Jace whirled on Lilith. “All right,” he said. He was pale now, his bravado gone; his hands, clenched into fists, were white at the knuckles. “All right. Let her go, and I’ll do what you want—so will Simon. We’ll let you—”

“Let me?” Somehow the features of Lilith’s face had rearranged themselves. Snakes wriggled in the sockets of her eyes, her white skin was too stretched and shining, her mouth too wide. Her nose had nearly vanished. “You have no choice. And more to the point, you have annoyed me. All of you. Perhaps if you had simply done as I’d ordered, I would have let you go. You will never know now, will you?”

Simon let go of the stone pedestal, swayed, and steadied himself. Then he began to walk. Putting his feet down, one after the other, felt like heaving enormous bags of packed wet sand down the side of a cliff. Each time his foot hit the ground, it sent a stab of pain through his body. He concentrated on moving forward, one step at a time.

“Maybe I can’t kill you,” Lilith said to Jace. “But I can torture her past the point of her endurance—torture her to madness—and make you watch. There are worse things than death, Shadowhunter.”

She flicked her fingers again, and the silver whip came down, slashing across Clary’s shoulder this time, opening up a wide gash. Clary buckled but didn’t scream, jamming her hands into her mouth, curling in on herself as if she could protect herself from Lilith.

Jace started forward to throw himself at Lilith—and saw Simon. Their gazes met. For a moment the world seemed to hang in suspension, all of it, not just Clary. Simon saw Lilith, all her attention focused on Clary, her hand drawn back, ready to deliver an even more vicious blow. Jace’s face was white with anguish, his eyes darkening as they met Simon’s—and he realized—and understood.

Jace stepped back.

The world blurred around Simon. As he leaped forward, he realized two things. One, that it was impossible, he would never reach Lilith in time; her hand was already whipping forward, the air in front of her alive with whirling silver. And two, that he had never understood before quite how fast a vampire could move. He felt the muscles in his legs, his back, tear, the bones in his feet and ankles crack—

And he was there, sliding between Lilith and Clary as the demoness’s hand came down. The long, razored silver wire struck him across the face and chest—there was a moment of shocking pain—and then the air seemed to burst apart around him like glittering confetti, and Simon heard Clary scream, a clear sound of shock and amazement that cut through the darkness. “Simon!”

Lilith froze. She stared from Simon, to Clary, still hanging in the air, and then down at her own hand, now empty. She drew in a long, ragged breath.

“Sevenfold,” she whispered—and was abruptly cut off as a blinding incandescence lit up the night. Dazed, all Simon could think of was ants burning under the concentrated beam from a magnifying glass as a great ray of fire plunged down from the sky, spearing through Lilith. For a long moment she burned white against the darkness, trapped within the blinding flame, her mouth open like a tunnel in a silent scream. Her hair lifted, a mass of burning filaments against the darkness—and then she was white gold, beaten thin against the air—and then she was salt, a thousand crystalline granules of salt that rained down at Simon’s feet with a dreadful sort of beauty.

And then she was gone.





19

HELL IS SATISFIED


The unimaginable brilliance printed on the back of Clary’s eyelids faded into darkness. A surprisingly long darkness that gave way slowly to an intermittent grayish light, blotched with shadows. There was something hard and cold pressing into her back, and her whole body hurt. She heard murmured voices above her, which sent a stab of pain through her head. Someone touched her gently on the throat, and the hand was withdrawn. She took a deep breath.

Her whole body was throbbing. She opened her eyes to slits, and looked around her, trying not to move very much. She was lying on the hard tiles of the rooftop garden, one of the paving stones digging into her back. She had fallen to the ground when Lilith vanished, and was covered in cuts and bruises, her shoes were gone, her knees were bleeding, and her dress was slashed where Lilith had cut her with the magical whip, blood welling through the rents in her silk dress.

Simon was kneeling over her, his face anxious. The Mark of Cain still gleamed whitely on his forehead. “Her pulse is steady,” he was saying, “but come on. You’re supposed to have all those healing runes. There must be something you can do for her—”

“Not without a stele. Lilith made me throw Clary’s away so she couldn’t grab it from me when she woke up.” The voice was Jace’s, low and tense with suppressed anguish. He knelt across from Simon, on her other side, his face in shadow. “Can you carry her downstairs? If we can get her to the Institute—”

“You want me to carry her?” Simon sounded surprised; Clary didn’t blame him.