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.
SCARS OF FIRE
Clouds had rolled in over the river, the way they sometimes did at night, bringing a thick mist with them. It didn’t hide what was happening on the roof, just laid a sort of dimming fog over everything else. The buildings rising all around them were murky pillars of light, and the moon glowed barely, a muffled lamp, through the low scudding clouds. The broken bits of the glass coffin, scattered across the tiled ground, shone like shards of ice, and Lilith, too, shone, pale under the moon, watching Simon as he bent over Sebastian’s still body, drinking his blood.
Clary could hardly bear to watch. She knew Simon hated what he was doing; she knew he was doing it for her. For her, and even, a little bit, for Jace. And she knew what the next step in the ritual would be. Simon would give up his blood, willingly, to Sebastian, and Simon would die. Vampires could die when their blood was drained. He would die, and she would lose him forever, and it would—all of it—be her own fault.
She could feel Jace behind her, his arms still tight around her, the soft, regular beat of his heart against her shoulder blades. She remembered the way he had held her on the steps of the Accords Hall in Idris. The sound of the wind in the leaves as he’d kissed her, his hands warm on either side of her face. The way she had felt his heart beating and thought that no one else’s heart beat like his, like every pulse of his blood matched her own.
He had to be in there somewhere. Like Sebastian inside his glass prison. There had to be some way to reach him.
Lilith was watching Simon as he bent over Sebastian, her dark eyes wide and fixed. Clary and Jace might as well not have been there at all.
“Jace,” Clary whispered. “Jace, I don’t want to watch this.”
She pressed back against him, as if she were trying to snuggle into his arms, then pretended a wince as the knife brushed the side of her throat.
“Please, Jace,” she whispered. “You don’t need the knife. You know I can’t hurt you.”
“But why—”
“I just want to look at you. I want to see your face.”
She felt his chest rise and fall once, fast. A shudder went through him, as if he were fighting something, pushing against it. Then he moved, the way only he could move, so swiftly it was like a flash of light. He kept his right arm tight around her; his left hand slid the knife into his belt.
Her heart leaped wildly. I could run, she thought, but he would only catch her, and it was only a moment. Seconds later both arms were around her again, his hands on her arms, turning her. She felt his fingers trail over her back, her bare, shivering arms, as he spun her to face him.
She was looking away from Simon now, away from the demon woman, though she could still feel their presence at her back, shivering up her spine. She looked up at Jace. His face was so familiar. The lines of it, the way his hair fell across his forehead, the faint scar over his cheekbone, another at his temple. His eyelashes a shade darker than his hair.
His eyes were the color of pale yellow glass. That was where he was different, she thought. He still looked like Jace, but his eyes were clear and blank, as if she were looking through a window into an empty room.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
He stroked her shoulder, sending sparks winging through her nerves; with a feeling of sickness she realized her body still responded to his touch. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She stared at him. You really think that, don’t you? Somehow you can’t see the disconnect between your actions and your intentions. Somehow she’s taken that away from you.
“You won’t be able to stop her,” she said. “She’s going to kill me, Jace.”
He shook his head. “No. She wouldn’t do that.”
Clary wanted to scream, but she kept her voice deliberate, careful, calm. “I know you’re in there, Jace. The real you.” She pressed closer to him. The buckle on his belt dug into her waist. “You could fight her. . . .”
It had been the wrong thing to say. He tensed all over, and she saw a flash of anguish in his eyes, the look of an animal in a trap. In another instant it had turned to hardness. “I can’t.”
She shivered. The look on his face was awful, so awful. At her shudder his eyes softened.
“Are you cold?” he said, and for a moment he sounded like Jace again, concerned about her well-being. It made her throat hurt.
She nodded, though physical cold was the furthest thing from her mind. “Can I put my hands inside your jacket?”
He nodded. His jacket was unbuttoned; she slid her arms inside, her hands touching his back lightly. Everything was eerily silent. The city seemed frozen inside an icy prism.
Even the light radiating off the buildings around them was still and cold.
He breathed slowly, steadily. She could see the rune on his chest through the torn fabric of his shirt. It seemed to pulse when he breathed. It was sickening, she thought, attached to him like that, like a leech, sucking out what was good, what was Jace.