Isabelle Lightwood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seveninchmotto) wrote2015-01-24 12:19 am
seveninchmotto) wrote2015-01-24 12:19 am
Around New York, Late Friday Evening
There were no messages stuck to Jordan's apartment door, nothing on or under the welcome mat, and nothing immediately obvious inside the apartment, either. While Alec stood guard downstairs and Maia and Jordan rummaged through Simon's backpack in the living room, Isabelle, standing in the doorway of Simon's bedroom, looked silently at the place he'd been sleeping for the past few days. It was so empty — just four walls, naked of any decoration, a bare floor with a futon mattress on it and a white blanket folded at the foot, and a single window that looked out onto Avenue B.
She could hear the city — the city she had grown up in, whose noises had always surrounded her, since she was a baby. She had found the occasional quiet of Fandom terribly alien without the sounds of car alarms, people shouting, ambulance sirens, and music playing that never, in New York City, quite went away, even in the dead of night. But now, standing here looking at Simon's small room, she thought about how lonely those noises sounded, how distant, and whether he had been lonely himself at night, lying here looking up at the ceiling, alone.
She turned back toward the rest of the apartment, but paused when she heard a low murmur of voices coming from the living room. She recognized Maia's voice. She didn't sound angry, which was surprising in and of itself, considering how much she seemed to hate Jordan. "Nothing," she was saying. "Some keys, a bunch of papers with game stats scrawled on them." Isabelle leaned around the doorway. She could see Maia, standing on one side of the kitchen counter, her hand in the zip pocket of Simon's backpack. Jordan, on the other side of the counter, was watching her. Watching her, Isabelle thought, not what she was doing — that way guys watched you when they were so into you they were fascinated by every move you made. "I'll check his wallet."
Jordan, who had changed out of his formal wear into jeans and a leather jacket, frowned.
"Weird that he left it. Can I see?" He reached across the counter.
Maia jerked back so fast she dropped the wallet, her hand flying out.
"I wasn't..." Jordan drew his hand back slowly. "I'm sorry." Maia took a deep breath."Look," she said, "Italked to Simon. I know you never meant to Turn me. I know you didn't know what was happening to you. I remember what that was like. I remember being terrified."
Jordan put his hands down slowly, carefully, on the countertop. It was odd, Isabelle thought, watching someone so tall try to make himself look harmless and small. "I should have been there for you."
"But the Praetor wouldn't let you be," Maia said. "And let's face it, you didn't know anything about being a werewolf; we would have been like two blindfolded people stumbling around in a circle. Maybe it's better you weren't there. It made me run away to where I could get help. From the Pack."
"At first I hoped the Praetor Lupus would bring you in," he whispered. "So I could see you again. Then I realized that was selfish and I should be wishing that I didn't pass on the disease to you. I knew it was fifty-fifty. I thought you might be one of the lucky ones."
"Well, I wasn't," she said, matter-of-factly. "And over the years I built you up in my head to be this sort of monster. I thought you knew what you were doing when you did this to me. I thought it was revenge on me for kissing that boy. So I hated you. And hating you made everything easier. Having someone to blame."
"You should blame me," he said. "It is my fault."
She ran her finger along the countertop, avoiding his eyes. "I do blame you. But... not the way I did before."
Jordan reached up and grabbed his own hair with his fists, tugging on it hard. "There isn't a day goes by I don't think about what I did to you. I bit you. I Turned you. I made you what you are. I raised my hand to you. I hurt you. The one person I loved more than anything else in the world." Maia's eyes were shining with tears. "Don't say that. That doesn't help. You think that helps?"
Isabelle cleared her throat loudly, stepping into the living room. "So. Have you found anything?"
Maia looked away, blinking rapidly. Jordan, lowering his hands, said, "Not really. We were just about to go through his wallet." He picked it up from where Maia had dropped it. "Here."
He tossed it to Isabelle. She caught it and flicked it open. School pass, New York state nondriver's ID, a guitar pick tucked into the space that was supposed to hold credit cards. A ten-dollar bill and a receipt for dice. Something else caught her eye — a business card, shoved carelessly behind a photo of Simon and Clary, the kind of picture you might take in a cheap drugstore photo booth. They were both smiling.
Isabelle took out the card and stared at it. It had a swirling, almost abstract design of a floating guitar against clouds. Below that was a name. Satrina Kendall. Band Promoter. Below that was a telephone number, and an Upper East Side address. Isabelle frowned. Something, a memory, tugged at the back of her mind. She held the card up toward Jordan and Maia, who were busy not looking at each other. "What do you think of this?"
Before they could respond the apartment door opened, and Alec strode in. He was scowling. "Have you found anything? I've been standing down there for thirty minutes, and nothing even remotely threatening has come by. Unless you count the NYU student who threw up on the front steps."
"Here," Isabelle said, handing the card over to her brother. "Look at this. Does anything strike you as odd?"
"You mean besides the fact that no band promoter could possibly be interested in Lewis's sucky band?" Alec inquired, taking the card between two long fingers. Lines appeared between his eyes. "Satrina?"
"Does that name mean something to you?" Maia asked. Her eyes were still red, but her voice was steady.
"Satrina is one of the seventeen names of Lilith, the mother of all demons. She is why warlocks are called Lilith's children," said Alec. "Because she mothered demons, and they in turn brought forth the race of warlocks."
"And you have all seventeen names committed to memory?" Jordan sounded dubious.
Alec gave him a cold look. "Who are you again?"
"Oh,shut up,Alec," Isabelle said, inthe tone she onlyever took with her brother. "Look,not all of us have your memory for boring facts. I don't suppose you recall the other names of Lilith?"
With a superior look Alec rattled them off, "Satrina, Lilith, Ita, Kali, Batna, Talto—"
"Talto!" Isabelle yelped. "That's it. I knew I was remembering something. I knew there was a connection!" Quickly she told them about the Church of Talto, what Clary had found there, and how it connected to the dead half-demon baby at Beth Israel.
"I wish you'd told me about this before," Alec said. "Yes, Talto is another name for Lilith. And Lilith has always been associated with babies. She was Adam's first wife, but she fled from the Garden of Eden because she didn't want to obey Adam or God. God cursed her for her disobedience, though — any child she bore would die. The legend says she tried over and over to have a child, but they were all born dead. Eventually she swore she would have vengeance against God by weakening and murdering infant humans. You might say she's the demon goddess of dead children."
"But you said she was the mother of demons," said Maia.
"She was able to create demons by scattering drops of her blood on the earth in a place called Edom," said Alec. "Because they were born out of her hatred for God and mankind, they became demons." He shrugged. "It's just a story."
"All stories are true," said Isabelle, quietly. This had been a tenet of her beliefs since she was a child. All Shadowhunters believed it. There was no one religion, no one truth — and no myth lacked meaning. "You know that, Alec."
"I know something else, too," Alec said, handing her back the card. "That telephone number and that address are crap. No way they're real."
"Maybe," Isabelle said, tucking the card into her pocket. "But we don't have anywhere else to start looking. So we're going to start there."
-----
"I told you that address didn't mean anything," Alec said.
Isabelle ignored him. The moment they had stepped through the doors of the building, the ruby pendant around her neck had pulsed, faintly, like the beat of a distant heart. That meant demonic presence. Under other circumstances she would have expected her brother to sense the weirdness of the place just like she did, but he was clearly too sunk in gloom about Magnus to concentrate. "Get your witchlight," she said to him. "I left mine at home." He shot her an irritated look. It was dark in the lobby, dark enough that a normal human wouldn't have been able to see. Maia and Jordan both had the excellent night vision of werewolves. They were standing at opposite ends of the room, Jordan examining the big marble lobby desk, and Maia leaning against the far wall, apparently examining her rings.
"You're supposed to bring it with you everywhere," Alec replied.
"Oh? Did you bring your Sensor?" she snapped. "I didn't think so. At least I have this." She tapped the pendant. "I can tell you that there's something here. Something demonic."
Jordan's head snapped around. "There are demons here?"
"I don't know — maybe only one. It pulsed and faded," Isabelle admitted. "But it's too big a coincidence for this just to have been the wrong address. We have to check it out." A dim light rose up all around her. She looked over and saw Alec holding up his witchlight, its blaze contained by his fingers. It threw strange shadows across his face, making him look older than he was, his eyes a darker blue.
"So let's get going," he said. "We'll take it one floor at a time."
They moved toward the elevator, Alec first, then Isabelle, Jordan and Maia dropping into line behind them. Isabelle's boots had Soundless runes carved into the soles, but Maia's heels clicked on the marble floor as she walked. Frowning, she paused to discard them, and went barefoot the rest of the way. As Maia stepped into the elevator, Isabelle noticed that she wore a gold ring around her left big toe, set with a turquoise stone.
Jordan, glancing down at her feet, said in a surprised tone, "I remember that ring. I bought that for you at —"
"Shut up," Maia said, hitting the door close button. The doors slid shut as Jordan lapsed into silence.
They paused at every floor. Most were still under construction — there were no lights, and wires hung down from the ceilings like vines. Windows had plywood nailed over them. Drop cloths blew in the faint wind like ghosts. Isabelle kept a firm hand on her pendant, but nothing happened until they reached the tenth floor. As the doors opened, she felt a flutter against the inside of her cupped palm, as if she had been holding a tiny bird there and it had beaten its wings.
She spoke in a whisper. "There's something here."
Alec just nodded; Jordan opened his mouth to say something, but Maia elbowed him, hard. Isabelle slipped past her brother, into the hall outside the elevators. The ruby was pulsing and vibrating against her hand now like a distressed insect.
Behind her, Alec whispered, "Sandalphon." Light blazed up around Isabelle, illuminating the hall. Unlike some of the other floors they had seen, this one seemed at least partly finished. Bare granite walls rose around her, and the floor was smooth black tile. A corridor led in two directions. One ended in a heap of construction equipment and tangled wires. The other ended in an archway. Beyond the archway, black space beckoned. Isabelle turned to look back at her companions. Alec had put away his witchlight stone and was holding a blazing seraph blade, lighting the interior of the elevator like a lantern. Jordan had produced a large, brutal-looking knife and was gripping it in his right hand. Maia seemed to be in the process of putting her hair up; when she lowered her hands, she was holding a long, razor-tipped pin. Her nails had grown, too, and her eyes held a feral, greenish gleam.
"Follow me," Isabelle said. "Quietly."
Tap, tap went the ruby against Isabelle's throat as she went down the hall, like the prodding of an insistent finger. She didn't hear the rest of them behind her, but she knew they were there from the long shadows cast against the dark granite walls. Her throat was tight, her nerves singing, the way they always did before she walked into battle. This was the part she liked least, the anticipation before the release of violence. During a fight nothing mattered but the fight itself; now she had to struggle to keep her mind on the task at hand.
The archway loomed above them. It was carved marble, oddly old-fashioned for such a modern building, its sides decorated with scrollwork. Isabelle glanced up briefly as she passed through, and almost started. The face of a grinning gargoyle was carved into the stone, leering down at her. She made a face at it and turned to look at the room she had entered.
It was vast, high-ceilinged, clearly meant to someday be a full loft apartment. The walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, giving out onto a view of the East River with Queens in the distance, the Coca-Cola sign flashing bloodred and navy blue down onto the black water. The lights of surrounding buildings hovered glittering in the night air like tinsel on a Christmas tree. The room itself was dark, and full of odd, humped shadows, spaced at regular intervals, low to the ground. Isabelle squinted, puzzled. They weren't animate; they appeared to be chunks of square, blocky furniture, but what ––?
"Alec," she said softly. Her pendant was writhing as if alive, its ruby heart painfully hot against her skin. In a moment her brother was beside her. He raised his blade, and the room was full of light. Isabelle's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh, dear God," she whispered, feeling her stomach turn. "Oh, by the Angel, no."
-----
Isabelle moved silently among the stone pedestals. Alec was with her, Sandalphon in his hand, sending light winging through the room. Maia was in one corner of the room, bent over and retching, her hand braced against the wall; Jordan hovered over her, looking as if he wanted to reach out and stroke her back, but was afraid of being rebuffed.
Isabelle didn't blame Maia for throwing up. If she hadn't had years of training, she would have thrown up herself. Really, she still wanted to. She had never seen anything like what she was looking at now. There were dozens, maybe fifty, of the stone pedestals in the room. Atop each one was a low crib-like basket.
Inside each basket was a baby. And every one of the babies was dead.
She had held out hope at first, as she walked up and down the rows, that she might find one alive. But these children had been dead for some time. Their skin was gray, their small faces bruised and discolored. They were wrapped in thin blankets, and though it was cold in the room, Isabelle didn't think it was cold enough for them to have frozen to death. She wasn't sure how they had died; she couldn't bear to investigate too closely. This was clearly a matter for the Clave.
Alec, behind her, had tears running down his face; he was cursing under his breath by the time they reached the last of the pedestals. Maia had straightened up and was leaning against the window; Jordan had given her some kind of cloth, maybe a handkerchief, to hold to her face. The cold white lights of the city burned behind her, cutting through the dark glass like diamond drills.
"Iz," Alec said. "Who could have done something like this? Why would someone — even a demon —"
He broke off. Isabelle knew what he was thinking about. Max, when he had been born. She had been seven, Alec nine. They had bent over their little brother in the cradle, amused and enchanted by this fascinating new creature. They'd played with his little fingers, laughed at the weird faces he made when they tickled him.Her heart twisted. Max. As she had moved down the lines of little cribs, now turned into little coffins, a sense of overwhelming dread had begun to press down on her. She couldn't ignore the fact that the pendant around her neck was glowing with a harsh, steady glow. The sort of glow she might have expected if she were facing down a Greater Demon.
She thought of what Clary had seen in the morgue in Beth Israel. He looked just like a normal baby. Except for his hands. They were twisted into claws... With great care she reached into one of the cribs. Careful not to touch the baby, she twitched aside the thin blanket that wrapped its body.
She felt the breath puff out of her in a gasp. Ordinary chubby baby arms, round baby wrists. The hands looked soft and new. But the fingers — the fingers were twisted into claws, as black as burned bone, tipped with sharp little talons. She took an involuntary step back.
"What?" Maia moved toward them. She still looked sickened, but her voice was steady.
Jordan followed her, hands in his pockets. "What did you find?" she asked.
"By the Angel." Alec, beside Isabelle, was looking down into the crib. "Is this — like the baby Clary was telling you about? The one at Beth Israel?"
Slowly Isabelle nodded. "I guess it wasn't just the one baby," she said. "Someone's been trying to make a lot more of them. More... Sebastians."
"Why would anyone want more of him?" Alec's voice was full of naked hatred.
"He was fast and strong," Isabelle said. It almost hurt physically to say anything complimentary about the boy who had killed her brother and tried to kill her. "I guess they're trying to breed a race of super-warriors."
"It didn't work." Maia's eyes were dark with sadness.
A noise so soft it was almost inaudible teased at the edge of Isabelle's hearing. Her head jerked up, her hand going to her belt, where her whip was coiled. Something in the thick shadows at the edge of the room, near the door, moved, just the faintest flicker, but Isabelle had already broken away from the others and was running for the door. She burst out into the hallway near the elevators. There was something there — a shadow that had broken free of the greater darkness and was moving, edging along the wall. Isabelle picked up speed and threw herself forward, knocking the shadow to the floor.
It wasn't a ghost. As theywent down together in a heap, Isabelle surprised a very human-sounding grunt of surprise out of the shadowy figure. They hit the ground together and rolled. The figure was definitely human — slight and shorter than Isabelle, wearing a gray warm-up suit and sneakers. Sharp elbows came up, jabbing into Isabelle's collarbone. A knee dug into her solar plexus. She gasped and rolled aside, feeling for her whip. By the time she got it free, the figure was on its feet. Isabelle rolled onto her stomach, flicking the whip forward; the end of it coiled around the stranger's ankle and pulled tight. Isabelle jerked the whip back, yanking the figure off its feet.
She scrambled to her feet, reaching with her free hand for her stele, which was tucked down the front of her dress. With a quick slash she finished the nyx Mark on her left arm. Her vision adjusted quickly, the whole room seeming to fill with light as the night vision rune took effect. She could see her attacker more clearly now — a thin figure in a gray warm-up suit and gray sneakers, scrambling backward until its back hit the wall. The hood of the suit had fallen back, exposing the face. The head was shaved cleanly bald, but the face was definitely female, with sharp cheekbones and big dark eyes.
"Stop it," Isabelle said, and pulled hard on the whip. The woman cried out in pain. "Stop trying to crawl away."
The woman bared her teeth. "Worm," she said. "Unbeliever. I will tell you nothing." Isabelle jammed her stele back into her dress. "If I pull hard enough on this whip, it'll cut through your leg." She gave the whip another flick, tightening it, and moved forward, until she was standing in front of the woman, looking down at her. "Those babies," she said. "What happened to them?"
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 almost dropped from Isabelle's 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 hissed. "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 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.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! From City of Fallen Angels. Warning for unpleasantness with dead children.]
She could hear the city — the city she had grown up in, whose noises had always surrounded her, since she was a baby. She had found the occasional quiet of Fandom terribly alien without the sounds of car alarms, people shouting, ambulance sirens, and music playing that never, in New York City, quite went away, even in the dead of night. But now, standing here looking at Simon's small room, she thought about how lonely those noises sounded, how distant, and whether he had been lonely himself at night, lying here looking up at the ceiling, alone.
She turned back toward the rest of the apartment, but paused when she heard a low murmur of voices coming from the living room. She recognized Maia's voice. She didn't sound angry, which was surprising in and of itself, considering how much she seemed to hate Jordan. "Nothing," she was saying. "Some keys, a bunch of papers with game stats scrawled on them." Isabelle leaned around the doorway. She could see Maia, standing on one side of the kitchen counter, her hand in the zip pocket of Simon's backpack. Jordan, on the other side of the counter, was watching her. Watching her, Isabelle thought, not what she was doing — that way guys watched you when they were so into you they were fascinated by every move you made. "I'll check his wallet."
Jordan, who had changed out of his formal wear into jeans and a leather jacket, frowned.
"Weird that he left it. Can I see?" He reached across the counter.
Maia jerked back so fast she dropped the wallet, her hand flying out.
"I wasn't..." Jordan drew his hand back slowly. "I'm sorry." Maia took a deep breath."Look," she said, "Italked to Simon. I know you never meant to Turn me. I know you didn't know what was happening to you. I remember what that was like. I remember being terrified."
Jordan put his hands down slowly, carefully, on the countertop. It was odd, Isabelle thought, watching someone so tall try to make himself look harmless and small. "I should have been there for you."
"But the Praetor wouldn't let you be," Maia said. "And let's face it, you didn't know anything about being a werewolf; we would have been like two blindfolded people stumbling around in a circle. Maybe it's better you weren't there. It made me run away to where I could get help. From the Pack."
"At first I hoped the Praetor Lupus would bring you in," he whispered. "So I could see you again. Then I realized that was selfish and I should be wishing that I didn't pass on the disease to you. I knew it was fifty-fifty. I thought you might be one of the lucky ones."
"Well, I wasn't," she said, matter-of-factly. "And over the years I built you up in my head to be this sort of monster. I thought you knew what you were doing when you did this to me. I thought it was revenge on me for kissing that boy. So I hated you. And hating you made everything easier. Having someone to blame."
"You should blame me," he said. "It is my fault."
She ran her finger along the countertop, avoiding his eyes. "I do blame you. But... not the way I did before."
Jordan reached up and grabbed his own hair with his fists, tugging on it hard. "There isn't a day goes by I don't think about what I did to you. I bit you. I Turned you. I made you what you are. I raised my hand to you. I hurt you. The one person I loved more than anything else in the world." Maia's eyes were shining with tears. "Don't say that. That doesn't help. You think that helps?"
Isabelle cleared her throat loudly, stepping into the living room. "So. Have you found anything?"
Maia looked away, blinking rapidly. Jordan, lowering his hands, said, "Not really. We were just about to go through his wallet." He picked it up from where Maia had dropped it. "Here."
He tossed it to Isabelle. She caught it and flicked it open. School pass, New York state nondriver's ID, a guitar pick tucked into the space that was supposed to hold credit cards. A ten-dollar bill and a receipt for dice. Something else caught her eye — a business card, shoved carelessly behind a photo of Simon and Clary, the kind of picture you might take in a cheap drugstore photo booth. They were both smiling.
Isabelle took out the card and stared at it. It had a swirling, almost abstract design of a floating guitar against clouds. Below that was a name. Satrina Kendall. Band Promoter. Below that was a telephone number, and an Upper East Side address. Isabelle frowned. Something, a memory, tugged at the back of her mind. She held the card up toward Jordan and Maia, who were busy not looking at each other. "What do you think of this?"
Before they could respond the apartment door opened, and Alec strode in. He was scowling. "Have you found anything? I've been standing down there for thirty minutes, and nothing even remotely threatening has come by. Unless you count the NYU student who threw up on the front steps."
"Here," Isabelle said, handing the card over to her brother. "Look at this. Does anything strike you as odd?"
"You mean besides the fact that no band promoter could possibly be interested in Lewis's sucky band?" Alec inquired, taking the card between two long fingers. Lines appeared between his eyes. "Satrina?"
"Does that name mean something to you?" Maia asked. Her eyes were still red, but her voice was steady.
"Satrina is one of the seventeen names of Lilith, the mother of all demons. She is why warlocks are called Lilith's children," said Alec. "Because she mothered demons, and they in turn brought forth the race of warlocks."
"And you have all seventeen names committed to memory?" Jordan sounded dubious.
Alec gave him a cold look. "Who are you again?"
"Oh,shut up,Alec," Isabelle said, inthe tone she onlyever took with her brother. "Look,not all of us have your memory for boring facts. I don't suppose you recall the other names of Lilith?"
With a superior look Alec rattled them off, "Satrina, Lilith, Ita, Kali, Batna, Talto—"
"Talto!" Isabelle yelped. "That's it. I knew I was remembering something. I knew there was a connection!" Quickly she told them about the Church of Talto, what Clary had found there, and how it connected to the dead half-demon baby at Beth Israel.
"I wish you'd told me about this before," Alec said. "Yes, Talto is another name for Lilith. And Lilith has always been associated with babies. She was Adam's first wife, but she fled from the Garden of Eden because she didn't want to obey Adam or God. God cursed her for her disobedience, though — any child she bore would die. The legend says she tried over and over to have a child, but they were all born dead. Eventually she swore she would have vengeance against God by weakening and murdering infant humans. You might say she's the demon goddess of dead children."
"But you said she was the mother of demons," said Maia.
"She was able to create demons by scattering drops of her blood on the earth in a place called Edom," said Alec. "Because they were born out of her hatred for God and mankind, they became demons." He shrugged. "It's just a story."
"All stories are true," said Isabelle, quietly. This had been a tenet of her beliefs since she was a child. All Shadowhunters believed it. There was no one religion, no one truth — and no myth lacked meaning. "You know that, Alec."
"I know something else, too," Alec said, handing her back the card. "That telephone number and that address are crap. No way they're real."
"Maybe," Isabelle said, tucking the card into her pocket. "But we don't have anywhere else to start looking. So we're going to start there."
"I told you that address didn't mean anything," Alec said.
Isabelle ignored him. The moment they had stepped through the doors of the building, the ruby pendant around her neck had pulsed, faintly, like the beat of a distant heart. That meant demonic presence. Under other circumstances she would have expected her brother to sense the weirdness of the place just like she did, but he was clearly too sunk in gloom about Magnus to concentrate. "Get your witchlight," she said to him. "I left mine at home." He shot her an irritated look. It was dark in the lobby, dark enough that a normal human wouldn't have been able to see. Maia and Jordan both had the excellent night vision of werewolves. They were standing at opposite ends of the room, Jordan examining the big marble lobby desk, and Maia leaning against the far wall, apparently examining her rings.
"You're supposed to bring it with you everywhere," Alec replied.
"Oh? Did you bring your Sensor?" she snapped. "I didn't think so. At least I have this." She tapped the pendant. "I can tell you that there's something here. Something demonic."
Jordan's head snapped around. "There are demons here?"
"I don't know — maybe only one. It pulsed and faded," Isabelle admitted. "But it's too big a coincidence for this just to have been the wrong address. We have to check it out." A dim light rose up all around her. She looked over and saw Alec holding up his witchlight, its blaze contained by his fingers. It threw strange shadows across his face, making him look older than he was, his eyes a darker blue.
"So let's get going," he said. "We'll take it one floor at a time."
They moved toward the elevator, Alec first, then Isabelle, Jordan and Maia dropping into line behind them. Isabelle's boots had Soundless runes carved into the soles, but Maia's heels clicked on the marble floor as she walked. Frowning, she paused to discard them, and went barefoot the rest of the way. As Maia stepped into the elevator, Isabelle noticed that she wore a gold ring around her left big toe, set with a turquoise stone.
Jordan, glancing down at her feet, said in a surprised tone, "I remember that ring. I bought that for you at —"
"Shut up," Maia said, hitting the door close button. The doors slid shut as Jordan lapsed into silence.
They paused at every floor. Most were still under construction — there were no lights, and wires hung down from the ceilings like vines. Windows had plywood nailed over them. Drop cloths blew in the faint wind like ghosts. Isabelle kept a firm hand on her pendant, but nothing happened until they reached the tenth floor. As the doors opened, she felt a flutter against the inside of her cupped palm, as if she had been holding a tiny bird there and it had beaten its wings.
She spoke in a whisper. "There's something here."
Alec just nodded; Jordan opened his mouth to say something, but Maia elbowed him, hard. Isabelle slipped past her brother, into the hall outside the elevators. The ruby was pulsing and vibrating against her hand now like a distressed insect.
Behind her, Alec whispered, "Sandalphon." Light blazed up around Isabelle, illuminating the hall. Unlike some of the other floors they had seen, this one seemed at least partly finished. Bare granite walls rose around her, and the floor was smooth black tile. A corridor led in two directions. One ended in a heap of construction equipment and tangled wires. The other ended in an archway. Beyond the archway, black space beckoned. Isabelle turned to look back at her companions. Alec had put away his witchlight stone and was holding a blazing seraph blade, lighting the interior of the elevator like a lantern. Jordan had produced a large, brutal-looking knife and was gripping it in his right hand. Maia seemed to be in the process of putting her hair up; when she lowered her hands, she was holding a long, razor-tipped pin. Her nails had grown, too, and her eyes held a feral, greenish gleam.
"Follow me," Isabelle said. "Quietly."
Tap, tap went the ruby against Isabelle's throat as she went down the hall, like the prodding of an insistent finger. She didn't hear the rest of them behind her, but she knew they were there from the long shadows cast against the dark granite walls. Her throat was tight, her nerves singing, the way they always did before she walked into battle. This was the part she liked least, the anticipation before the release of violence. During a fight nothing mattered but the fight itself; now she had to struggle to keep her mind on the task at hand.
The archway loomed above them. It was carved marble, oddly old-fashioned for such a modern building, its sides decorated with scrollwork. Isabelle glanced up briefly as she passed through, and almost started. The face of a grinning gargoyle was carved into the stone, leering down at her. She made a face at it and turned to look at the room she had entered.
It was vast, high-ceilinged, clearly meant to someday be a full loft apartment. The walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, giving out onto a view of the East River with Queens in the distance, the Coca-Cola sign flashing bloodred and navy blue down onto the black water. The lights of surrounding buildings hovered glittering in the night air like tinsel on a Christmas tree. The room itself was dark, and full of odd, humped shadows, spaced at regular intervals, low to the ground. Isabelle squinted, puzzled. They weren't animate; they appeared to be chunks of square, blocky furniture, but what ––?
"Alec," she said softly. Her pendant was writhing as if alive, its ruby heart painfully hot against her skin. In a moment her brother was beside her. He raised his blade, and the room was full of light. Isabelle's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh, dear God," she whispered, feeling her stomach turn. "Oh, by the Angel, no."
Isabelle moved silently among the stone pedestals. Alec was with her, Sandalphon in his hand, sending light winging through the room. Maia was in one corner of the room, bent over and retching, her hand braced against the wall; Jordan hovered over her, looking as if he wanted to reach out and stroke her back, but was afraid of being rebuffed.
Isabelle didn't blame Maia for throwing up. If she hadn't had years of training, she would have thrown up herself. Really, she still wanted to. She had never seen anything like what she was looking at now. There were dozens, maybe fifty, of the stone pedestals in the room. Atop each one was a low crib-like basket.
Inside each basket was a baby. And every one of the babies was dead.
She had held out hope at first, as she walked up and down the rows, that she might find one alive. But these children had been dead for some time. Their skin was gray, their small faces bruised and discolored. They were wrapped in thin blankets, and though it was cold in the room, Isabelle didn't think it was cold enough for them to have frozen to death. She wasn't sure how they had died; she couldn't bear to investigate too closely. This was clearly a matter for the Clave.
Alec, behind her, had tears running down his face; he was cursing under his breath by the time they reached the last of the pedestals. Maia had straightened up and was leaning against the window; Jordan had given her some kind of cloth, maybe a handkerchief, to hold to her face. The cold white lights of the city burned behind her, cutting through the dark glass like diamond drills.
"Iz," Alec said. "Who could have done something like this? Why would someone — even a demon —"
He broke off. Isabelle knew what he was thinking about. Max, when he had been born. She had been seven, Alec nine. They had bent over their little brother in the cradle, amused and enchanted by this fascinating new creature. They'd played with his little fingers, laughed at the weird faces he made when they tickled him.Her heart twisted. Max. As she had moved down the lines of little cribs, now turned into little coffins, a sense of overwhelming dread had begun to press down on her. She couldn't ignore the fact that the pendant around her neck was glowing with a harsh, steady glow. The sort of glow she might have expected if she were facing down a Greater Demon.
She thought of what Clary had seen in the morgue in Beth Israel. He looked just like a normal baby. Except for his hands. They were twisted into claws... With great care she reached into one of the cribs. Careful not to touch the baby, she twitched aside the thin blanket that wrapped its body.
She felt the breath puff out of her in a gasp. Ordinary chubby baby arms, round baby wrists. The hands looked soft and new. But the fingers — the fingers were twisted into claws, as black as burned bone, tipped with sharp little talons. She took an involuntary step back.
"What?" Maia moved toward them. She still looked sickened, but her voice was steady.
Jordan followed her, hands in his pockets. "What did you find?" she asked.
"By the Angel." Alec, beside Isabelle, was looking down into the crib. "Is this — like the baby Clary was telling you about? The one at Beth Israel?"
Slowly Isabelle nodded. "I guess it wasn't just the one baby," she said. "Someone's been trying to make a lot more of them. More... Sebastians."
"Why would anyone want more of him?" Alec's voice was full of naked hatred.
"He was fast and strong," Isabelle said. It almost hurt physically to say anything complimentary about the boy who had killed her brother and tried to kill her. "I guess they're trying to breed a race of super-warriors."
"It didn't work." Maia's eyes were dark with sadness.
A noise so soft it was almost inaudible teased at the edge of Isabelle's hearing. Her head jerked up, her hand going to her belt, where her whip was coiled. Something in the thick shadows at the edge of the room, near the door, moved, just the faintest flicker, but Isabelle had already broken away from the others and was running for the door. She burst out into the hallway near the elevators. There was something there — a shadow that had broken free of the greater darkness and was moving, edging along the wall. Isabelle picked up speed and threw herself forward, knocking the shadow to the floor.
It wasn't a ghost. As theywent down together in a heap, Isabelle surprised a very human-sounding grunt of surprise out of the shadowy figure. They hit the ground together and rolled. The figure was definitely human — slight and shorter than Isabelle, wearing a gray warm-up suit and sneakers. Sharp elbows came up, jabbing into Isabelle's collarbone. A knee dug into her solar plexus. She gasped and rolled aside, feeling for her whip. By the time she got it free, the figure was on its feet. Isabelle rolled onto her stomach, flicking the whip forward; the end of it coiled around the stranger's ankle and pulled tight. Isabelle jerked the whip back, yanking the figure off its feet.
She scrambled to her feet, reaching with her free hand for her stele, which was tucked down the front of her dress. With a quick slash she finished the nyx Mark on her left arm. Her vision adjusted quickly, the whole room seeming to fill with light as the night vision rune took effect. She could see her attacker more clearly now — a thin figure in a gray warm-up suit and gray sneakers, scrambling backward until its back hit the wall. The hood of the suit had fallen back, exposing the face. The head was shaved cleanly bald, but the face was definitely female, with sharp cheekbones and big dark eyes.
"Stop it," Isabelle said, and pulled hard on the whip. The woman cried out in pain. "Stop trying to crawl away."
The woman bared her teeth. "Worm," she said. "Unbeliever. I will tell you nothing." Isabelle jammed her stele back into her dress. "If I pull hard enough on this whip, it'll cut through your leg." She gave the whip another flick, tightening it, and moved forward, until she was standing in front of the woman, looking down at her. "Those babies," she said. "What happened to them?"
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 almost dropped from Isabelle's 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 hissed. "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 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.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! From City of Fallen Angels. Warning for unpleasantness with dead children.]