Cassandra Clare - City of Fallen Angels

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 woman whimpered. It was a very slight sound, but Isabelle saw Alec’s eyes narrow. He had always been the 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?”

“You don’t understand.” The woman sounded hoarse, dreamy. “I had 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?”

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 call button. “If Lilith was really Adam’s first wife, and Cain was 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.

Clouds had rolled in over the river, the way they sometimesdid 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.