Lilith’s snake eyes darted back and forth furiously. Clary, disentangling herself painfully from the hedge, saw that each of the snake heads had two eyes of its own, glittering and red. Clary’s stomach turned as the snakes moved, their gazes seeming to slither up and down Jace’s body. “Cutting my rune apart. How crude,” she spat.
“But effective,” said Jace.
“You cannot win against me, Jace Herondale,” she said. “You may be the greatest Shadowhunter this world has known, but I am more than a Greater Demon.”
“Then, fight me,” said Jace. “I’ll give you a weapon. I’ll have my seraph blade. Fight me one on one, and we’ll see who wins.”
Lilith looked at him, shaking her head slowly, her dark hair swirling around her like smoke. “I am the oldest of demons,” she said. “Iam not a man. Ihave no male pride for youto trick me with, and Iam not interested insingle combat. That is entirely a weakness of your sex, not mine. I am a woman. I will use any weapon and all weapons to get what I want.” She let go of him them, with a half-contemptuous shove; Jace stumbled for a moment, righting himself quickly and reaching to the ground for the glittering blade of Michael.
He seized it just as Lilith laughed and raised her hands. Half-opaque shadows exploded from her open palms.
Even Jace looked shocked as the shadows solidified into the forms of twin black shadowy demons with shimmering red eyes. They hit the ground, pawing and growling. They were dogs, Clary thought in amazement, two gaunt, vicious-looking black dogs that vaguely resembled Doberman pinschers.
“Hellhounds,” breathed Jace. “Clary—”
He broke off as one of the dogs sprang toward him, its mouth opened as wide as a shark’s, a loud, baying howl erupting from its throat. A moment later the second one leaped into the air, launching itself directly at Clary.
“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.” 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 skinwas verypale, and beneathitAlec 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?”
“Apparently she’s summoned Simon to meet with her,” said Alec. “They’re somewhere in the building.”
Camille stared a moment longer, then laughed. “A true irony,” she said. “She never mentioned him to me, and I never mentioned him to her, and yet both of us were pursuing him for our own ends. If she wants him, it’s for his blood,” she added. “The ritual she’s performing is most assuredly one of blood magic. His blood—mixed Downworlder and Shadowhunter blood—would be of great use to her.”
Alec felt a flicker of unease. “But she can’t hurt him. The Mark of Cain—”
“She’ll find a way around that,” said Camille. “She is Lilith, mother of warlocks. She’s been alive a long time, Alexander.”
Alec got to his feet. “Then I’d better find out what she’s doing.”
Camille’s chains rattled as she tried to rise to her knees. “Wait—but you said you would free me.”
Alec turned and looked down at her. “I didn’t. I said I would let the Clave have you.”
“But if you leave me here, nothing prevents Lilith from finding me first.” She tossed her matted hair back; lines of strain showed in her face. “Alexander, please. I beg you—”