The Mortal Instruments City Of Bones novel Chapter 32

But Raphael was laughing. “You missed,” he said, and grinned for the first time, showing pointed white incisors. “You missed my heart.”

Jace tightened his grip. “You moved at the last minute,” he said. “That was very inconsiderate.”

Raphael frowned and spit, red. Clary stepped back, staring in dawning horror.

“When did you figure it out?” he demanded. His accent had faded, his words more precise and clipped now.

“I guessed in the alley,” Jace said. “But I figured you’d get us inside the hotel, then turn on us. Once we’d trespassed, we’d have been out of the protection of the Covenant. Fair game. When you didn’t, I thought I might have been wrong. Then I saw that scar on your throat.” He sat back a little, still holding the blade at Raphael’s throat. “I thought when I first saw that chain that it looked like the sort you’d hang a cross from. And you did, didn’t you, when you went out to see your family? What’s the scar of a little burn when your kind heal so quickly?”

Raphael laughed. “Was that all? My scar?”

“When you left the foyer, your feet didn’t leave marks in the dust. Then I knew.”

“It wasn’t your brother who went in here looking for monsters and never came out, was it?” Clary said, realizing. “It was you.”

“You are both very clever,” Raphael said. “Although not quite clever enough. Look up,” he said, and lifted a hand to point at the ceiling.

Jace knocked the hand away without moving his glance from Raphael. “Clary. What do you see?”

She raised her head slowly, dread curdling in the pit of her stomach.

You must imagine this staircase the way it was once, with the gas lamps burning all up and down the steps, like fireflies in the dark, and the balconies full of people. They were filled with people now, row on row of vampires with their dead-white faces, their red stretched mouths, staring bemusedly downward.

Jace was still looking at Raphael. “You called them. Didn’t you?”

Raphael was still grinning. The blood had stopped spreading from the wound in his chest. “Does it matter? There are too many of them, even for you, Wayland.”

Jace said nothing. Though he hadn’t moved, he was breathing in short quick pants, and Clary could almost feel the strength of his desire to kill the vampire boy, to shove the knife through his heart and wipe that grin off his face forever. “Jace,” she said warningly. “Don’t kill him.”

“Why not?”

“Maybe we can use him as a hostage.”

Jace’s eyes widened. “A hostage?”

She could see them, more of them, filling the arched doorway, moving as silently as the Brothers of the Bone City. But the Brothers had not had skin so white and colorless, nor hands that curled into claws at the tips ….

Clary licked her dry lips. “I know what I’m doing. Get him on his feet, Jace.”

Jace looked at her, then shrugged. “All right.”

Raphael snapped, “This isn’t funny.”

“That’s why no one’s laughing.” Jace stood, hauling Raphael upright, jamming the tip of his knife between Raphael’s shoulder blades. “I can pierce your heart just as easily through your back,” he said. “I wouldn’t move if I were you.”

Clary turned away from them to face the oncoming dark shapes. She flung out a hand. “Stop right there,” she said. “Or he’ll put that blade through Raphael’s heart.”

A sort of murmur ran through the crowd that could have been whispering or laughter. “Stop,” Clary said again, and this time Jace did something, she didn’t see what, that made Raphael cry out in surprised pain.

One of the vampires flung an arm out to hold back his companions. Clary recognized him as the thin blond boy with the earring that she’d seen at Magnus’s party. “She means it,” he said. “They are Shadowhunters.”

Another vampire pushed her way through the crowd to stand at his side—a pretty blue-haired Asian girl in a silver foil skirt. Clary wondered if there were any ugly vampires, or maybe any fat ones. Maybe they didn’t make vampires out of ugly people. Or maybe ugly people just didn’t want to live forever. “Shadowhunters trespassing on our territory,” she said. “They are out of the protection of the Covenant. I say we kill them—they have killed enough of ours.”

“Which of you is the master of this place?” Jace said, his voice very flat. “Let him step forward.”

The girl bared her pointed teeth. “Do not use Clave language on us, Shadowhunter. You have broken your precious Covenant, coming in here. The Law will not protect you.”

“That’s enough, Lily,” said the blond boy sharply. “Our master is not here. She is in Idris.”

“Someone must rule you in her stead,” Jace observed.

There was a silence. The vampires up in the balconies were hanging off the railings, leaning down to hear what was being said. Finally, “Raphael leads us,” said the blond vampire.

The blue-haired girl, Lily, let out a hiss of disapproval. “Jacob—”

“I propose a trade,” Clary said quickly, cutting off Lily’s tirade and Jacob’s retort. “By now you must know you took home too many people from the party tonight. One of them was my friend Simon.”

Jacob raised his eyebrows. “You’re friends with a vampire?”

“He’s not a vampire. And not a Shadowhunter, either,” she added, seeing Lily’s pale eyes narrow. “Just an ordinary human boy.”

“We didn’t take any human boys home with us from Magnus’s party. That would have been a violation of the Covenant.”

“He’d been transformed into a rat. A small brown rat,” said Clary. “Someone might have thought he was a pet, or …”

Her voice trailed off. They were staring at her as if she were insane. Cold despair seeped into her bones.

“Let me get this straight,” Lily said. “You’re offering to trade Raphael’s life for a rat?”

Clary looked helplessly back at Jace. He gave her a look that said, This was your idea. You’re on your own.

“Yes,” she said, turning back to the vampires. “That’s the trade we’re offering.”

They stared at her, white faces nearly expressionless. In another context Clary would have said that they looked baffled.