Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (223 page)

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.

“I doubt she’d want me touching her.” Jace stood up, as if he couldn’t bear to remain in one place. “If you could—”

His voice cracked, and he turned away, staring at the place where Lilith had stood until a moment ago, a bare patch of stone now silvered with scattered molecules of salt. Clary heard Simon sigh—a deliberate sound—and he bent over her, his hands on her arms.

She opened her eyes the rest of the way, and their gazes met. Though she knew he realized she was conscious, neither of them said anything. It was hard for her to look at him, at that familiar face with the mark she had given him blazing like a white star above his eyes.

She had known, giving him the Mark of Cain, that she was doing something enormous, something terrifying and colossal whose outcome was almost totally unpredictable. She
would have done it again, to save his life. But still, while he’d been standing there, the Mark burning like white lightning as Lilith—a Greater Demon as old as mankind itself—charred away to salt, she had thought,
What have I done?

“I’m all right,” she said. She lifted herself up onto her elbows; they hurt horribly. At some point she’d landed on them and scraped off all the skin. “I can walk just fine.”

At the sound of her voice, Jace turned. The sight of him tore at her. He was shockingly bruised and bloody, a long scratch running the length of his cheek, his lower lip swollen, and a dozen bleeding rents in his clothes. She wasn’t used to seeing him so damaged—but of course, if he didn’t have a stele to heal her, he didn’t have one to heal himself, either.

His expression was absolutely blank. Even Clary, used to reading his face as if she were reading the pages of a book, could read nothing in it. His gaze dropped to her throat, where she could still feel the stinging pain, the blood crusting there where his knife had cut her. The nothingness of his expression cracked, and he looked away before she could see his face change.

Waving away Simon’s offer of a helping hand, she tried to rise to her feet. A searing pain shot through her ankle, and she cried out, then bit her lip. Shadowhunters didn’t scream in pain. They bore it stoically, she reminded herself. No whimpering.

“It’s my ankle,” she said. “I think it might be sprained, or broken.”

Jace looked at Simon. “Carry her,” he said. “Like I told you.”

This time Simon didn’t wait for Clary’s response; he slid one arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders and lifted her; she looped her arms around his neck and held on tight. Jace headed toward the cupola and the doors that
led inside. Simon followed, carrying Clary as carefully as if she were breakable porcelain. Clary had almost forgotten how strong he was, now that he was a vampire. He no longer smelled like himself, she thought, a little wistfully—that Simon-smell of soap and cheap aftershave (that he really didn’t need) and his favorite cinnamon gum. His hair still smelled like his shampoo, but otherwise he seemed to have no smell at all, and his skin where she touched it was cold. She tightened her arms around his neck, wishing he had some body heat. The tips of her fingers looked bluish, and her body felt numb.

Jace, ahead of them, shouldered the glass double doors open. Then they were inside, where it was mercifully slightly warmer. It was strange, Clary thought, being held by someone whose chest didn’t rise and fall as they breathed. A strange electricity still seemed to cling to Simon, a remnant of the brutally shining light that had enveloped the roof when Lilith was destroyed. She wanted to ask him how he was feeling, but Jace’s silence was so devastatingly total that she felt afraid to break it.

He reached for the elevator call button, but before his finger touched it, the doors slid open of their own accord, and Isabelle seemed to almost explode through them, her silvery-gold whip trailing behind her like the tail of a comet. Alec followed, hard on her heels; seeing Jace, Clary, and Simon there, Isabelle skidded to a stop, Alec nearly crashing into her from behind. Under other circumstances it would almost have been funny.

“But—,” Isabelle gasped. She was cut and bloodied, her beautiful red dress torn raggedly around the knees, her black hair having come down out of its updo, strands of it matted with blood. Alec looked as if he had fared only a little better; one sleeve of his jacket was sliced open down the side, though
it didn’t look as if the skin beneath had been injured. “What are you
doing
here?”

Jace, Clary, and Simon all stared at her blankly, too shell-shocked to respond. Finally Jace said dryly, “We could ask you the same question.”

“I didn’t—We thought you and Clary were at the party,” Isabelle said. Clary had rarely seen Isabelle so not self-possessed. “We were looking for Simon.”

Clary felt Simon’s chest lift, a sort of reflexive human gasp of surprise. “You
were
?”

Isabelle flushed. “I . . .”

“Jace?” It was Alec, his tone commanding. He had given Clary and Simon an astonished look, but then his attention went, as it always did, to Jace. He might not be in love with Jace anymore, if he ever really had been, but they were still
parabatai
, and Jace was always first on his mind in any battle. “What are you doing here? And for the Angel’s sake, what happened to you?”

Jace stared at Alec, almost as if he didn’t know him. He looked like someone in a nightmare, examining a new landscape not because it was surprising or dramatic but to prepare himself for whatever horrors it might reveal. “Stele,” he said finally, in a cracking voice. “Do you have your stele?”

Alec reached for his belt, looking baffled. “Of course.” He held the stele out to Jace. “If you need an
iratze
—”

“Not for me,” Jace said, still in the same odd, cracked voice. “Her.” He pointed at Clary. “She needs it more than I do.” His eyes met Alec’s, gold and blue. “Please, Alec,” he said, the harshness gone from his voice as suddenly as it had come. “Help her for me.”

He turned and walked away, toward the far side of the room, where the glass doors were. He stood, staring through them—at the garden outside or his own reflection, Clary couldn’t tell.

Alec looked after Jace for a moment, then came toward Clary and Simon, stele in hand. He indicated that Simon should lower Clary to the floor, which he did gently, letting her brace her back against the wall. He stepped back as Alec knelt down over her. She could see the confusion in Alec’s face, and his look of surprise as he saw how bad the cuts across her arm and abdomen were. “Who did this to you?”

“I—” Clary looked helplessly toward Jace, who still had his back to them. She could see his reflection in the glass doors, his face a white smudge, darkened here and there with bruises. The front of his shirt was dark with blood. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Why didn’t you summon us?” Isabelle demanded, her voice thin with betrayal. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming here? Why didn’t you send a fire-message, or
anything
? You know we would have come if you needed us.”

“There wasn’t time,” Simon said. “And I didn’t know Clary and Jace were going to be here. I thought I was the only one. It didn’t seem right to drag you into my problems.”

“D-drag me into your problems?” Isabelle sputtered. “You—,” she began—and then to everyone’s surprise, clearly including her own, she flung herself at Simon, wrapping her arms around his neck. He staggered backward, unprepared for the assault, but he recovered quickly enough. His arms went around her, nearly snagging on the dangling whip, and he held her tightly, her dark head just under his chin. Clary couldn’t quite tell—Isabelle was speaking too softly—but it sounded like she was swearing at Simon under her breath.

Alec’s eyebrows went up, but he made no comment as he bent over Clary, blocking her view of Isabelle and Simon. He touched the stele to her skin, and she jumped at the stinging pain. “I know it hurts,” he said in a low voice. “I think you hit your head. Magnus ought to look at you. What about Jace? How badly is he hurt?”

“I don’t know.” Clary shook her head. “He won’t let me near him.”

Alec put his hand under her chin, turning her face from side to side, and sketched a second light
iratze
on the side of her throat, just under her jawline. “What did he do that he thinks was so terrible?”

She flicked her eyes up toward him. “What makes you think he did anything?”

Alec let go of her chin. “Because I know him. And the way he punishes himself. Not letting you near him is punishing himself, not punishing you.”

“He doesn’t
want
me near him,” Clary said, hearing the rebelliousness in her own voice and hating herself for being petty.

“You’re all he ever wants,” said Alec in a surprisingly gentle tone, and he sat back on his heels, pushing his long dark hair out of his eyes. There was something different about him these days, Clary thought, a surety about himself he hadn’t had when she had first met him, something that allowed him to be generous with others as he had never been generous with himself before. “How did you two wind up here, anyway? We didn’t even notice you leave the party with Simon—”

“They didn’t,” said Simon. He and Isabelle had detached
themselves, but still stood close to each other, side by side. “I came here alone. Well, not exactly alone. I was—summoned.”

Clary nodded. “It’s true. We didn’t leave the party with him. When Jace brought me here, I had no idea Simon was going to be here too.”

“
Jace
brought you here?” Isabelle said, amazed. “Jace, if you knew about Lilith and the Church of Talto, you should have said something.”

Jace was still staring through the doors. “I guess it slipped my mind,” he said tonelessly.

Clary shook her head as Alec and Isabelle looked from their adoptive brother to her, as if for an explanation of his behavior. “It wasn’t really Jace,” she said finally. “He was . . . being controlled. By Lilith.”

“Possession?” Isabelle’s eyes rounded into surprised Os. Her hand tightened on her whip handle reflexively.

Jace turned away from the doors. Slowly he reached up and drew open his mangled shirt so that they could see the ugly possession rune, and the bloody slash that ran through it. “That,” he said, still in the same toneless voice, “is Lilith’s mark. It’s how she controlled me.”

Alec shook his head; he looked deeply disturbed. “Jace, usually the only way to sever a demonic connection like that is to kill the demon who’s doing the controlling. Lilith is one of the most powerful demons who ever—”

“She’s dead,” said Clary abruptly. “Simon killed her. Or I guess you could say the Mark of Cain killed her.”

They all stared at Simon. “And what about you two? How did you end up here?” he asked, his tone defensive.

“Looking for you,” Isabelle said. “We found that card Lilith
must have given you. In your apartment. Jordan let us in. He’s with Maia, downstairs.” She shuddered. “The things Lilith’s been doing—you wouldn’t believe—
so
horrible—”

Alec held his hands up. “Slow down, everyone. We’ll explain what happened with us, and then Simon, Clary, you explain what happened on your end.”

The explanation took less time than Clary thought it would, with Isabelle doing much of the talking with wide, sweeping hand gestures that threatened, on occasion, to sever one of her friends’ unprotected limbs with her whip. Alec took the opportunity to go out onto the roof deck to send a fire-message to the Clave telling them where they were and asking for backup. Jace stepped aside wordlessly to let him by as he left, and again when he came back in. He didn’t speak during Simon and Clary’s explanation of what had happened on the rooftop either, even when they got to the part about Raziel having raised Jace from the dead back in Idris. It was Izzy who finally interrupted, when Clary began to explain about Lilith being Sebastian’s “mother” and keeping his body encased in glass.

“Sebastian?” Isabelle slammed her whip against the ground with enough force to open up a crack in the marble. “
Sebastian
is out there? And he’s not dead?” She turned to look at Jace, who was leaning against the glass doors, arms crossed, expressionless. “I saw him die. I saw Jace cut his spine in half, and I saw him fall into the river. And now you’re telling me he’s
alive
out there?”

“No,” Simon hastened to reassure her. “His body’s there, but he’s not alive. Lilith didn’t get to complete the ceremony.” Simon put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off. She had gone a deadly white color.

“‘Not really alive’ isn’t dead enough for me,” she said. “I’m
going out there and I’m going to cut him into a thousand pieces.” She turned toward the doors.

“Iz!” Simon put his hand on her shoulder. “Izzy. No.”

“No?” She looked at him incredulously. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t chop him into worthless-bastard-themed confetti.”

Simon’s eyes darted around the room, resting for a moment on Jace, as if he expected him to chime in or add a comment. He didn’t; he didn’t even move. Finally Simon said, “Look, you understand about the ritual, right? Because Jace was brought back from the dead, that gave Lilith the power to raise Sebastian. And to do that, she needed Jace there and alive, as—what did she call it—”