"I don't remember us having a basement." Jace told them.
Eliza shined her witchlight into the darkness. She could see that the walls were made of a slimy dark stone. An odor drifted up and she recognized it as moisture. It was mixed in with something else she couldn't recognize. It smelled slightly metallic.
"I wonder what's down there." Clary wondered.
Eliza didn't say anything as she started to descend the stairs. "Be careful, they're slick." She warned them. Jace asked if she was sure she wanted to go down first. "Oh, you ask after I've started down the stairs?" She muttered.
She adjusted, holding the journal under her armpit and using her newly freed hand to keep her balance by holding the wall. When she glanced back, she saw Jace behind her and Clary behind him.
The further they went, the closer the spiral of stairs came together. The passageway became tighter and tighter. The more stairs they went down, the stronger the metallic stench got.
At the bottom of the stairway, the steps widened into a large room. The dark stones of the wall were stained with rusty looking streaks. Strange markings were etched onto the floor. She recognized that some of them were Marks. Small white stones were strewn seemingly haphazardly around the room.
She heard something crunch behind her. "These are bones." Clary whispered.
"Hold this." She took the book from under her arm and offered it back to Clary. Clary pocketed it along with the recipe book. She bent over and softly touched one of the bones. They were all different sizes and different kinds of bones. Bones from different people. They weren't shaped correctly to be animal bones. Not all of them, anyway.
He was sick. Disgusting.
"Oh, my God. What was he doing in here?" Clary's voice was shaking.
Eliza stood up straight. She didn't want to say it. And she didn't have to. "Experiments." Jace told her. "Just like the Seelie Queen told us."
The fey couldn't lie. They all knew that. Somewhere, deep down, Eliza had hoped that Valentine had been lying to the Seelie Queen. She had hoped that she was wrong about it all. But the secret room and the journal entry confirmed everything she had thought.
"Maybe we should go back upstairs…?" Clary proposed.
It wasn't an idea that Jace or Eliza supported. Jace lifted his witchlight stone, illuminating the rest of the room. The room was square. Three of the four corners of the room were barren. The fourth corner was covered by a dark curtain hanging. The curtain was carelessly thrown over something. Or…someone?
"Guys, what is that?" Clary uttered.
Jace had taken out a seraph blade. Eliza took out her sword. "Clary, stay back." Eliza told her. Jace went forward, not heeding Clary's pleads for him to leave whatever it was alone.
Jace yanked the curtain forward and it fell. The curtain fell to the floor in a heap at Jace's feet.
He staggered back, nearly falling, dropping his witchlight stone. Eliza's hands jutted out and grabbed onto his arms, balancing him before he could fall to the floor. He turned his head, making eye contact with her. His face was sheet white, his eyes wide and dark.
Clary had grabbed his witchlight and picked it up from the floor. Eliza gazed past Jace, who refused to look at whatever he had seen.
"Oh, God."
It was a man, tightly clinging a white rag around his shoulders. He was kneeling on the floor, manacled to the wall by his ankles and wrists. Rays of light bounced off the walls of the room. Once it focused again, she saw that he was impossibly thin. His limbs were covered in thick scars.
Her back burned.
The man's head moved and he was staring at them. Eliza jumped back a few inches. The man's eye sockets were voids of black. A rustling noise made her start to turn before she realized that the noise was coming from the rags around the man. And that the rags weren't actually rags. They were lifting from around his shoulders and spreading out.
No, not rags.
Wings.
"Jace, you said there were no angels." Clary uttered in a small voice. "You said no one had ever seen one before."
Jace's lips were moving, but Eliza couldn't make out any of the words he was saying. He moved away from Eliza. He took a few steps forward towards the man- no, the angel- and stumbled back again.
Eliza glanced at the floor, seeing the carefully drawn pentagram that surrounded the angel. "We can't go past the runes." She stated rather dully.
"There has to be something we can do." Jace persisted.
The angel lifted his head once again. In the lighting, Eliza realized that his hair was eerily similar to Jace's. The same golden crown of curls. He looked awful, his face cut up with scars. His mouth fell open, emitting a shrieking sound.
She recognized it as pain, but it sounded melodically beautiful. It was high-pitched, sweet sounding and soul-piercing.
Eliza's witchlight clattered to the floor as she covered her ears. Her mind flashed with images that she couldn't piece together. She squinted her eyes shut.
The images came together, showing the picture of an empty wine cellar. There was a large rune carved into the middle of the floor. Next to the rune, stood a man. In his hands he held a torch and an opened book. It wasn't any man, she realized. His hair was a pale white in the light of the torch.
Valentine.
He looked different, more careless than she remembered. He was younger. His mouth moved, reciting words she didn't know.
Fire encompassed the rune on the floor and when the flames died down, they had been replaced by a heaped body. Bloody wings were spread on the floor.
Again, the scene changed.
Valentine and a redhaired woman were standing in front of a window. Jocelyn, Eliza realized. Both were young and beautiful. Jocelyn was wearing a flowing white nightdress, her stomach bulging. Pregnant. Valentine wrapped his arms around her in an embrace.
"Jocelyn, the Accords have been the worst idea that the Clave could have created. An impending disaster to the Nephilim. Just the idea that we should be tied to Downworlders is sickening, but to legalize it means our doom." Valentine was spewing, angry and tempered.
Her mother smiled kindly up at him and Eliza's heart stung. "Enough politics, Valentine. Please?" She turned cautiously in his grasp, tangling her arms around his neck. Jocelyn's expression was pure adoration. She noticed the same on Valentine's face, but there was something worse, something darker in his eyes.
The image dissolved into something else.
A circle of tall trees, Valentine kneeling in the middle of them. The full moon in the sky lit the area. A dark pentagram had been chalked into the grass. In the center of the pentagram, she saw a woman with long black hair that shone. Skin as white as snow. The woman was beautiful.
The woman extended her hand to him and she released her fist, showing a deep cut on her hand. The blood trickled down into a silver chalice that rested at the edge of the pentagram. She wished the image would go away. She didn't want to see it anymore. She didn't want to see any of it.
"I promise you," the woman spoke with an alluring tone, "the child that is born with my blood will surmount with power. Stronger than the Greater Demons of the worlds between the worlds. More powerful than the Asmodei. Mightier than any demon." The woman's blood seemed black in the chalice. Maybe it was black. "With the proper training and guidance, the child will be unstoppable. I must warn you, though." Her voice dropped into a low tone. "This is poison. The blood will turn the humanity in the child to ash."
She wanted out! She didn't know how much more she could take.
Valentine nodded once. "I give you all my thanks, my Lady of Edom." Valentine leaned down and carefully picked up the chalice. He held it with both hands.
For the first time, the woman lifted her face to the light. Rather than eyes, slithering black curls protruded from her sockets.
It vanished, shifting into something else.
Jocelyn stood in a room, her face written with distress. She was slim, her stomach no longer bulging out. She was talking hurriedly to someone that Eliza couldn't see. "Ragnor, I can't do it anymore. I can't stay in that house with him." Her voice was panicked. "I found one of his books and went through it. The things he did to our children, my children! I knew how horrible he was, but I never thought he was capable of this." The man- Ragnor- asked what she meant. "He used demon blood on the children. They're not…I don't think they're human anymore. Monsters, he turned them into monsters."
Before she could hear anything else, it changed again. Eliza felt light-headed. Dizzy. Nauseous. She wanted out of whatever lucid dream she was trapped in. No, not a dream. A nightmare.
She saw Valentine pacing angrily through in a room, his steps measured over a circle of Marks. He grasped a seraph blade in his hand, his knuckles white. He turned his head furiously. "Speak!" He shouted. "Give me what I want!" He roared out viciously.
He raised the knife and brought it down, stabbing it into something. She saw the same angel that was chained to the wall. A golden liquid spilled out from the wound. She felt the pain raging in the same spot on her body, burning into her.
"Your blood will do me more good than any answer you could give me anyway." Valentine hissed.
The scene shifted again.
They were in the library of Wayland Manor. Streams of golden sunlight paned through the colored windows. She could hear voices and light music coming from another room. She saw Jocelyn on the floor near one of the bookshelves. She was looking around the room furtively, green eyes wild. She drew a book from her pocket and slipped it onto the shelf among the other books.
Once again, the image changed.
She was seeing the cellar again. The pentagram was still on the floor, its appearance seeming fresher than she remembered. The same angel was huddled inside. Valentine stood outside of the pentagram, staring down at the angel with contempt. She knew the look all too well. He appeared older than he had in the other visions. He twisted a seraph blade in his hands, the same way she knew that she did.
"Oh, Ithuriel." He sighed heavily. "The two of us, we've grown close over the years. When I found you, trapped in those ruins, I could have left you there to continue rotting, but I didn't. I brought you here. I've taken care of you. Now, you must tell me what I need to know." He drew closer to the angel, the angel blade gleaming in his hand. There was a worn and tired look on her father's face. "I summoned you with the hope that you would give me the answers I so desire, old friend. I need to know why the Nephilim were designed. Why Raziel sought to create us. Yet, he brought us forth without the strength of Downworlders, without their powers. The Moon Children have their speed, the Night Children have their endurance, the magic of Lilith's Children, and the eternal life of the Fair Folk. We are powerless except for the Marks he gave us to burn on our skin." As he spoke, his words became thicker, his voice more fanatic. He spoke like a madman. "What about this seems fair to you, Ithuriel? How could we not be as strong as them, when we are better than them?"
Throughout it all, the angel never spoke. He never moved. He sat before Valentine, statuesque and beautiful. His wings were folded around him like a shield. She saw the inexplicable sorrow in the angel's eyes.
She watched her father's face grow cold in expression. "If you must be that way, then so be it." He snarled. "I shall ask him myself. My time grows near, old friend. I possess the Angel's Cup and soon enough, I will also have the Sword. Yet, I still lack the Mirror. We both know that I cannot summon him without the Mirror. I need all three of the Mortal Instruments in my possession." He sounded crazy. His words were rushed and frantic. "Grant me the knowledge of the Mirror's location and I will grant you the gift of death."
It shattered. The scene broke apart into several pieces. Darkness tinged her vision. Familiar images fluttered past her. Jace and Jonathan, Valentine behind them, his hands on their shoulders. The moonflowers from the greenhouse back at the Institute. The cottage. A Malachi Configuration. Her bones grew cold as the images went by quicker and quicker. Her sword, joined by the others, Heosphoros and Phaesphoros. Black blood spilling from a chalice.
A child of Hell. Of the realm of Edom itself.
She knew it was the voice of the angel, of Ithuriel.
In a room, she saw two small children. A boy and a girl, maybe around a year old. Both had the same pale white hair. They both looked up at the same time, seeming to stare right at her. Both had the same dark eyes, dark enough to be black.
She felt like she was falling through the air.
Eliza crumpled to the floor, landing hard on her knees. She struggled for breaths she couldn't quite get to, her chest heaving.
"Liz." Jace's voice was urgent, echoing and blurry.
She held her hands out. "Don't. Don't come near me." She hissed at him.
He took a step back, panic in his eyes. Worry was written over his face. It passed quickly and he turned to Clary.
Eliza couldn't look at them. She didn't know how. Instead, she trained her eyes on her hands. She stared down at the blue-green veins. It was true. She had hoped and hoped that it wasn't true. But it was. The angel had confirmed everything.
Well, almost everything.
She had been wrong about one thing. It wasn't Lucifer's blood running through her veins. She didn't know who's it was, but it didn't belong to the Prince of Hell who had given blood for her sword. A woman, the Lady of Edom, had also been generous.
Monster.
Her own mother had said it about her. She had seen Jocelyn tell Ragnor Fell that she and Jonathan were monsters. Created at the hand of Valentine.
She squinted her eyes shut and when they opened, she felt the warmth of tears. She scrambled to her feet, Jace and Clary looking back at her. She looked behind them, tears blurring her vision. But she saw the angel clearly.
Ithuriel had told her himself. A child of Edom. Just as the Seelie Queen had said.
Without a word, she sprinted from the room. Her feet pounded against the stairs as she ran up them. She burst back into the manor library. She fell against one of the shelves, panting heavily.
Monster. Monster. Monster.
She saw herself as a child, her eyes black. Jonathan's black eyes. Her father's black eyes. He had made them into monsters. Deliberately demonized his own children.
Beneath her, the floor shook. An earthquake? Could the day get any worse?
She pushed off the wall, peering down into the passageway. Jace and Clary were running up it. She saw the stairs beneath them wavering and buckling, folding away. Smoke rose up from the cellar.
She grabbed them both and yanked them from the stairway just as the stairs fell away.
The shelves of books began to shake, books falling down to the floor. They needed to leave, and fast.
Jace picked up a chair, shaking it deftly in his hands. He threw it at the window. She covered her face as glass rained out around them. "Go!" He shouted at her.
He pulled Clary out of the way just in time as a shelf fell from the wall and collided into the floor.
Eliza peered out of the window. It wasn't a short way down, but it wasn't as high as jumping off the roof of the Institute. Without a second thought, she jumped.
Her feet landed unsurely on the grass and she stumbled forward. She fell. She tumbled down the grassy knoll until she reached the end. She sat up, just in time to see Clary rolling down the hill, Jace behind her.
The manor was imploding on itself.
"Get down!" Jace shouted. He covered Clary with his own body.
Eliza sat. She stared up at Wayland Manor, watching it, eyes wide with curiosity. As it exploded, it sent a roaring noise and a column of fire and ash into the sky.
Around them, debris began to fall like rain.
She looked over at Jace and Clary. "What the hell did the two of you do?" She breathed.
Jace looked at her. She couldn't read the expression on his face, but she definitely saw traces of anger. "Ithuriel. I gave him my seraph blade and he killed himself. The manor was tied to him so when he died…"
"The manor died too."
Clary sat up, wiping the soot off of her face. "Oh, crap. Jace, I think I dropped your stele somewhere…" He told her it didn't matter. They had gotten out alive.
Eliza got to her feet. She shook the debris and grass from her hair. "I have to go." She said abruptly.
Clary frowned. "Where? We need to give the book to Magnus so we can wake Mom up."
She couldn't suppress the snarled look on her face. The same woman who had called her a monster.
"No, Clary. You have to. You and Jace. I can't be anywhere near you. I have to get as far from you as possible."
Clary stood up. "Liz, what's the matter?"
Liz. Clary had never called her that before. Her heart panged. "You know." She said tightly. "You saw. We all saw. Ithuriel confirmed everything that I thought was true."
Clary nodded unsurely. "Yes, I saw."
Eliza ran her hands through her hair. "I'm not- I can't be around you. I'll hurt you. I'm a monster." The word felt unclean in her mouth, rolling from her tongue like poison. When Jace stood, he took a step close to her and she took several steps back. "Don't." She held her hands out. "Stay back."
His eyes softened. "Liz, we're the same." He told her. "We're both…We both have it in us. The demon blood. He did it to both of us."
She shook her head. He was wrong. The lie was getting worse. The web she had weaved was becoming too entangled. "We are not the same!" She shouted at him. Her face grew hot with anger, her eyes fading darker and darker. "We have never been the same." The words were there, stuck in her throat, ready to say.
But she couldn't. If she spoke the truth, it was as good as killing someone. Clary, Alec, Izzy, anyone.
"Guys, it's not that big of a deal." Clary said softly. "Warlocks have demon blood too. Magnus, Liz. Magnus is good. He isn't a monster."
Magnus. Good and kind Magnus. Eccentric and bold.
"It's different, Clary. You heard what that demon woman said." Eliza said. "It's not any regular old demon blood. It's that from a Greater Demon. The kind of blood that burns away the humanity until nothing is left."
Clary insisted that it didn't make sense. "You're both good. You have humanity, I've seen it. I know it."
Eliza felt her shoulders slump down. "She's right, Clary. What we saw explains everything. It makes everything clear." Jace spoke.
"You mean, it explains how amazing the two of you are?" Clary asked. "How you're the best Shadowhunters and how you're truthful and good and loyal to the core? How you're exactly everything that demons can't be?"
"Truthful?" Eliza laughed mirthlessly. "That isn't a word I would use to describe myself, little sister. Every friendship I have is built on a lie that I created. Built on a person I've pretended to be. Hell, even my relationship is built on a lie."
Words she hadn't meant to say. Dangerous words. Deadly, maybe.
She heard Jace suck in a breath. "No, it explains why I feel the way I do." He said in a quiet voice.
Her head snapped in his direction. He was staring at her, his eyes dark. She shook her head, silently begging him to not say anything. Not in front of Clary, the girl who thought he was their brother.
"I don't know what that means." Clary told him.
Eliza wanted to punch him. Wrap her hands around his neck and choke him until he passed out. Don't, she mouthed. Keep your mouth shut.
"I mean, it explains how I feel for my twin sister. Why I feel a way no brother should feel about his sister." She inhaled sharply. He was dooming them both. "It explains why, when I see Eliza with Declan, I don't feel protective. I feel jealous." His laugh was hollow, empty and void of anything at all. "I see him and wish it were me."
She looked away quickly. She didn't want to see the look of whatever disgust Clary had on her face. "What about Aline?" She heard Clary whisper.
She kept herself from looking at Jace, no matter how badly she wanted to.
"I figured that, I should at least try. I mean, Liz has Declan. But-But I realized I didn't want anyone else. I don't think I ever will."
Her heart felt like it was being pulled apart. She didn't want to, but she did. She found herself looking at Jace. "Jace." She breathed lightly.
Clary made an uncomfortable noise. "I'll uh, yeah." Eliza saw her scurry away swiftly. She watched her sit down on the grass, staring up at the sky.
When Eliza looked back at Jace, he had drawn close to her. Their noses were almost touching. He reached out, his thumb tracing down her cheek. "Tell me not to." He murmured. "You have to tell me not to." His eyes were hazy, slanted and deep.
Her tongue swept over her bottom lip slowly. "I can't." She admitted to him. "And I don't want to."
His breath hitched. His hand cupped her jaw. When he pulled her closer, his lips brushed against her cheek. She closed her eyes. "Lizzie." His mouth had moved to her temple. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. "Are you sure?" His mouth brushed against her own.
She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him down. His hand moved to hold the back of her neck. He was gentle against her. She put both her hands on his neck, trying to pull him closer. Some low noise escaped his mouth and his hands traveled down to grip her hips. They were as close as two people could get.
She pulled his jacket off, letting it fall to the grass. In the mess of it, his shirt was discarded. His skin was hot against her hands. She could feel the hard muscle under soft skin, puckered scars decorating his body.
He worked quickly, his hands deft as he took the sword strap from around her torso and pushed down her jacket. Even more so, she could feel the heat of his hands against her.
As he dipped back down to kiss her again, something cold bumped against her chest. She jolted back slightly. "What's wrong?" He asked her. His hands stilled on her hips.
He was wearing a necklace, she realized. A small circle hung from the chain. A ring. It had a pattern of stars etched on the silver metal.
Oh, Jace, she sighed to herself.
The Morgenstern family ring. Her father had worn it and when he had faked his death as Michael Wayland, he had passed it along to Jace.
"I forgot I was wearing this." Jace looked down at it and then back at her.
He reached back to touch her face, but she ducked her face away. "Wait." She said.
He frowned. "Do you want me to take it off?" He asked.
She shook her head. She could see Clary, a few yards away. Possibly oblivious as to what they were doing, but Eliza wouldn't entertain the notion. "We can't." She resigned.
He swallowed. "But-."
"I know." She whispered. "But Clary." She spared a look over at her sister. "And we have to get the Book of the White to Magnus. And-."
"And I'm your brother." She looked up at him. "That's it, isn't it?"
She nodded once. "It matters. I know that you think it doesn't, but it does. We can't do this, we'll be hurting everyone we care about, especially ourselves. It wouldn't end well for either of us."
She expected the anger to be evident on his face. Hard lines and sharp eyes. Instead, she was met with a softness only equivalent to pain. "I don't care." She said that he should. It wasn't just something trivial, their choices affected everyone in their lives. "So, does everything else I do." He muttered.
"What do you mean?"
His eyes never left her, a dark tawny color that could be deep as an abyss. Easy to get lost in. "All of those things I said to Clary yesterday, I wasn't talking about her. I was talking about me. I'm reckless and I ruin everything I touch. I never think before I act because I can't think of anything but you."
Was he…Was he blaming her? "Jace, none of what you've done is on me. I never-."
"Wait. Wait." He shushed her. "I didn't mean it like that. I only meant that now I understand why I'm this way. Why I'm in love with my sister. He made me a monster."
She didn't think that he did. And she couldn't tell him that. With that, came the whole truth and that was too damning to speak aloud to anyone.
"If you're a monster, so am I." She reminded him. As far as he knew, they were twins.
Jace nodded thoughtfully. "But what if you aren't? What if, somehow, it didn't get to you?" She asked what he meant. He was losing her. "Sometimes, if there are two fetuses, one absorbs more nutrients than the other. What if that happened to us and I took in all of the demon blood?"
She scoffed at him. "No. That isn't how it works, I don't believe. Besides, if it did, I think I would be the unluckier of us. I always have been."
Hope for him, none for her. Jace was too good, his own soul was too pure for him to have any sort of demon blood in him. Whatever Valentine had done to him, it didn't involve demon blood. She was sure that if she asked Simon what Jace's blood was like, the young vampire wouldn't say he had choked on it. He wouldn't call it vile or sour like he did her own.
She turned away from him, looking at Clary. Another good soul. She wondered…Valentine had trapped Ithuriel in the cellar for years. He had said that the angel's blood would do him good. If he had used demon blood on Jonathan and Eliza, there was no saying he hadn't done the same to Clary, but with angel blood.
His experiments. His children.
Monster.
I'm a monster, she told herself. Created to be evil. Born to be the devil. He said so himself, in the journal. Made to fight a war. A soldier. He called you nasty and isn't that what you are? Don't you remember all of those moments, killing demons and relishing in the torture. Wondering where the darkness came from and wondering why it felt so good? Now you know why.
"Lizzie? Are you all right?"
When she looked back at him, her eyes were black. He took a small step back, his eyes wide. "Stay away from me, Jace." She told him. Surprisingly, she spoke evenly. She sounded more sure of herself than she felt. "If you know what's good for you, you'll stay away."
Jace snatched his shirt from the ground and put it back on. He shrugged his jacket on, a foul look on his face.
She called Clary back over. It took her sister a few moments to make the walk, in which time Eliza put her own jacket back on. She adjusted her sword onto her back.
"Everything okay?" Clary asked, looking between the two of them.
"Fine." Eliza snapped. "The book I gave you. Give it back." She held out her hand. Clary fished in her pocket and took the small leather-bound journal out. Gently, she placed it in Eliza's palm. She snatched the book from her. "Get the book to Magnus. Save your mom." She told her.
Clary frowned. "Wait, are you not going back with us?"
Eliza said no sharply. Clary asked why not. Eliza stifled a groan. "I don't want to. Tell Magnus…Tell him I said I'm sorry."
"Why are you apologizing? For not going with us to give him the book?"
She ground her teeth together. "No. For not being the person he thought I was." She held the journal tightly in her hands, her knuckles white.
Before either of them could say anything else, she was walking away from them.
"Liz, you're the only one with a stele." Jace called out. "Without you, Clary can't make a Portal to get us back."
She looked over her shoulder. She half-considered leaving her stele behind for them to use but decided against it. "That doesn't seem like my problem." She replied.
She saw his shoulders slump over with defeat and she looked straight ahead once again.
At first, she wasn't sure where she was going. It was dark and the witchlight stone didn't provide a ton of light. It was a series of turns and twists and nearly broken ankles.
Once she came upon the cottage, she chastised herself. On second thought, it was the perfect place. No one knew where it was. Not Jace or Clary, not Alec or Isabelle. The only people who knew were Jonathan, her father, and Magnus. And by the time Magnus came for her, it would be too late.
She pushed the door open and then closed it quietly. She didn't want the chance for someone to hear her.
It was the same as she remembered. The door opened to the living room, which faded into the small kitchen. There was a little dining table, big enough for four people. Down the hall, there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. There was also the door that led into the basement.
She tossed her sword and jacket onto the musty couch. Small clouds of dust wafted into the air and she coughed. She made her way down the hall to the first bedroom. Two beds, not a lot of room.
Jonathan had always slept on the left side.
She closed the door gently and went to the next bedroom. This one was bigger, the master bedroom. It had been Marisol's before they arrived. Valentine had resigned her to sleeping on the couch. For however loyal she had been to him, Eliza didn't think she deserved to sleep on a couch for so many years.
She didn't like thinking of Marisol Hardtower. She had been a nice woman, for whatever it was worth. A woman of few words, really. She still remembered what Marisol's body had looked like after Valentine killed her. Peaceful, save for the bloody slash on her neck. He had said it would be a good, clean death for his most loyal follower. But all the blood on the floor didn't seem very clean.
She realized he meant not much effort put into it. That was the day she learned how little it took to slash someone's throat.
He'd killed Marisol after faking his death as Michael Wayland. There was no longer the need to go to stay with Jace for long periods of time. Marisol's usefulness as a live-in babysitter and cover story was gone. And so, apparently, was her need to live.
Valentine's room was dusty, but still well-kept as it always had been. He liked things neat and orderly. All of his ducks in a perfect row. She entered the room, leaving the door open. She searched through the drawers, pulling anything and everything from them. She lifted the mattress but found nothing. She looked under the bed and in the closet.
She didn't know what she was looking for, but she would know it whenever she saw it.
"Basement." She told herself.
She stepped carelessly over the mess she had made and left the room. The door to the basement was across from the bathroom. She threw it open, peering down into the darkness below. She held her witchlight stone up and started down the stairs.
It was no winding staircase like the one in Wayland Manor. This descent took only a few moments.
The basement, much like the rest of the cottage, looked the same. Hard concrete flooring and stone walls. Across the room was the door. The door that she and Jonathan had never been allowed to open.
She made across the room swiftly and tried the door. Locked. She made a gruff noise and took out her stele. A hastily drawn Opening rune unlocked the door and it swung open.
The room was small, unusually small even for the cottage. Just enough space for a small desk, littered with journals. She sat down, jerking the drawers open. Pens and pencils rattled. Nothing of importance.
Just as she was closing the drawer, she spotted it. A photograph, old and worn. Not something that anyone would find important. She picked it up, staring down at it.
A family photo, something sentimental. Not a word she would use for her father.
He was in the photographer, but he was a young man. Handsome and sharp. A broad smile on his face. Next to him stood a beautiful young woman with fierce red curls pulled back from her face. She wore a kind and funnily made smile.
Mother, Eliza recognized her. Jocelyn.
She seemed softer in the photo than she had when Eliza first met her. She supposed that running away and believing your children were dead did that to a woman.
No, she thought you were a monster. She didn't care.
She instantly recognized the two small children in the photograph. Around the same age as in the vision from Ithuriel. The boy's hair was long, almost close to covering his eyes. Even for a child, his features were sharp and defining. There was still that infant roundness to his cheeks.
Her fingers traced over the figure of the small girl. Herself. Hair down to her shoulders in waves, the ghost of a smile on a chubby face. Held in the arms of their father, Jonathan in the arms of their mother.
She folded the photograph up and stuck it in the pocket of her pants.
Outside, she heard screams. She kicked back from the desk and ran through the basement, up the stairs.
Out of the window above the kitchen sink, she saw horror. Black smoke, high flames of fire surrounding the demon towers. The protective spires, she realized, no longer seemed to shimmer. Instead, she saw that they were a deadly white color.
Surely not….
Alicante was burning.
She raced back down the stairs and searched the basement.
Weapons, weapons.
They lined the walls. Knives, throwing stars, spears, staffs, Valentine had possessed it all. She had two knives already on her but decided that a few more wouldn't hurt. She took four small throwing knives from the wall and tucked them into her belt. She grabbed two seraph blades and made quick work of Marking them and naming them, sliding them onto a loop on her belt.
She ran back up the stairs and pulled her jacket on, throwing her sword over her back. With one last look, she ran out of the cottage.
People screamed and ran into the streets. With heaviness, she realized that these people were helpless. All of the adults were up at the Gard. They had left the children, the sick, and the elderly without protection. Which, in their defense, they couldn't have guessed that demons would ransack the city.
It was impossible. Until it was no longer.
The streets, she saw, were already starting to be littered with a few lifeless bodies. She saw a large shape headed for a group of small children. She saw that the demon was tall, grey and scaly with an elongated body. It looked almost human, except she could feel that it wasn't. Except for hands, it had eels on the ends of its arms.
"Get back!" She shouted at the kids. She saw them scramble back.
The Vetis demon turned its attention to her. Its ruby eyes glowered and she saw the point-sharp teeth in its mouth. She took out one of the seraph blades and it sprung to life, glowing brightly in the darkness. With her other hand, she grabbed her sword from her back. "You picked the wrong night to burn the city down. I'm in a bad mood." She smirked at the demon.
It charged toward her, whipping its serpentine arms wildly. She ducked down and jabbed her seraph blade out. It stuck into the demon's leg and she heard it howl out. She stood, looking back at the demon.
"Shadowhunter." It hissed.
She huffed a breath. She looked over at the group of kids. "Run!" She told them. "Get out of the city!" The demon took the chance and knocked her to the ground. Her head hit the cobblestone and her vision blurred. She struggled to properly grip her weapons and wriggled under the demon.
A whip cracked. She saw something luminescent wrap around the demon's throat and it was yanked off of her.
She scrambled to her feet. Isabelle Lightwood was standing over the demon, her electrum whip wrapped around its neck tightly. Eliza gave her a grateful smile before plunging her sword into the demon's chest.
It burned, sizzling as it fell to ash at their feet. Izzy's whip hung limply at her side. Izzy enveloped her in a tight hug.
"Where are Jace and Clary?" She asked her.
"They aren't with you?" Eliza asked, pulling away. The worry in her eyes said no. "Where's Alec?"
"We were attacked at the Penhallows. Aline got pulled out the window and I went after her. Alec took Max and ran. I haven't seen them since."
Her heart was thumping hard in her chest. Clary would be safe, so long as she was with Jace. He was good, almost better than her. He could protect the both of them. Alec was strong, he could protect Max.
"Iz, where is Sebastian?" She asked lowly.
Her mouth twitched. "Um, I'm not sure…? Why? Is something wrong?"
She wanted to double over. She wanted to scream. She had been so stupid. Actually believing he was just keeping an eye on her. That his threats of harm were hollow until she stepped out of line.
She had already stepped out of line, the second they had realized she betrayed them after being sent to New York. There was no going back.
"No." She lied, looking Izzy in the eye. She gave her the most assuring smile she could muster up. "We'll be fine. Look, Iz, we've got to split up." Izzy protested immediately. She said they'd be safer together. How wrong she was. "There's something I have to do and it's better if I do it alone. You might get hurt and I won't be able to live with myself if something happens to you."
She drew Isabelle close, hugging her. "Find your family, Iz. Find Jace and Clary and get out of the city."
"Liz-."
"There's a cottage just about a mile outside the city. There's a big willow tree, you'll know it when you see it. Stay there, send a fire message to Magnus, he'll help you."
Izzy's brown eyes were wrought with confusion. "What about you? Where are you going to go?" Eliza assured that she would be fine. They stared at each other, chaos swarming around them. "Your eyes…they used to be green." Izzy murmured. "They're black. Are you sure you're okay?"
Eliza smiled at her, pushing away from their hug. "Yeah. I'm just…I'm becoming who I'm meant to be."
She turned, running off.
She stepped over dead bodies with a delicacy in her step that was unneeded. Fallen Nephilim, too weak to fight against the hordes of demons her father had sent to slaughter them.
Her sword and seraph blade were slick with ichor, the thick black liquid coating the blades. In her wake she left the discarded ashes of demons. She took down as many as she could, saving as many lives as she could.
If you were a monster, would you do that? Save your fellow Shadowhunters? No, you'd leave them to die.
She told herself that she wasn't going out of her way to save them. She was going out of her way to kill demons.
She felt good. She recognized the cruel darkness, having felt it so many times before. Adrenaline pumped in her blood. Her vision tinged red.
An Oni demon came from nowhere. Its spade hands were extended towards her, wide mouth gaping open. As it raced toward her, she didn't bother to sidestep. She extended her sword arm, striking the Oni right in the chest. Ichor spattered onto her clothes and a little burned on her throat.
She yanked the sword out and switched, shoving her seraph blade in its place. The demon began to crumple around the blade and she pulled it out. She didn't bother watching, walking away as the Oni fell to dust behind her.
She rounded the corner to another street, smacking into someone. She gave a little scream, jumping backwards.
"Liz! Thank God." The person breathed.
She made him out in the darkness. Alec. She threw her arms around his neck, hugging him. "Wait. Where are Izzy and Max?" She asked, looking behind him.
She drew away. Alec was alone. "I left them at the Penhallows with Sebastian. I came to find Aline. What are you doing out here alone? Where are Jace and Clary?"
She knew that Jace was at least still alive. Alec would know if Jace were dead. He would feel it. And if Jace was okay, that meant Clary had to be okay too.
"I'm not sure." She told him. His words registered. "Hold on. Izzy and Max are back at the house. Alone with Sebastian?"
He frowned. "Yeah. He's boarding up the house."
Shit.
"Look, Liz, go back to the house. Get inside. I'll find Jace and Clary." He told her.
She nodded numbly. She would do exactly that. She put her hand on Alec's cheek. "I told Izzy about a safe place. The cottage I used to live in. After you find Aline, Jace, and Clary, come to the house and get Izzy and Max. Take them there. Get a message to Magnus. I told Izzy about it all but…"
"Liz." Alec stopped her. "What's going on? Do you know something?"
"Yes." She blurted. His blue eyes widened. Damn it. No going back. "My father. Valentine. I think it's Valentine." She said in a hurried voice. "That's why you have to get out of the city."
"What about you?" He asked.
She shook her head. "Please, Alec. Promise me that you'll keep them safe."
"Okay. I promise. Just go back to the house, okay?"
She whispered that she would.
Alec hugged her once more before running off into the darkness. She ran down the streets, weaving in and out of darkness until she got to Princewater canal.
She spied the Penhallow house just a few yards away.
She stopped at the front door, suddenly afraid of whatever was on the other side. She swallowed and kicked the door open. The hinges screeched as the door went in. She stepped into the darkness of the house.
Unfinished warding runes were on the walls, wooden boards over the windows.
"Izzy? Max?" She called out. "It's Eliza." Only silence answered. "Sebastian?" Gratefully, nothing.
But if he wasn't there, where were Isabelle and Max?
Broken glass was strewn over the floor and she looked to the living room. It was empty. She made her way to the kitchen. Small specks of blood were spattered on the wall and her heart clenched.
She looked down.
Izzy was lying on the floor, unconscious. A hammer was on the floor near her, blood on the head of it.
"Damn it." Eliza hissed. She dropped to her knees and took out her stele. She found the place where past Healing runes had been made and quickly carved one over it. She put her free hand over the injury on the back of Izzy's head and waited. She began to feel the wound closing up, the blood flow ebbing away. "You'll live. I have to go."
Izzy's blood was on her hand, dark and sticky. Where the hell was her brother?