City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3)(144)

What is that to me? A thousand years for an angel pass between one blink of an eye and another.

“The Nephilim you created were a great race of men. For many years they valiantly battled to rid this plane of demon taint. But they have failed due to weakness and corruption in their ranks. I intend to return them to their former glory—”

Glory? The Angel sounded faintly curious, as if the word were strange to him. Glory belongs to God alone.

Valentine didn’t waver. “The Clave as the first Nephilim created it exists no more. They have allied themselves with Downworlders, the demon-tainted nonhumans who infest this world like fleas on the carcass of a rat. It is my intention to cleanse this world, to destroy every Downworlder along with every demon—”

Demons do not possess souls. But as for the creatures you speak of, the Children of Moon, Night, Lilith, and Faerie, all are souled. It seems that your rules as to what does and does not constitute a human being are stricter than our own. Clary could have sworn the Angel’s voice had taken on a dry tone. Do you intend to challenge heaven like that other Morning Star whose name you bear, Shadowhunter?

“Not to challenge heaven, no, Lord Raziel. To ally myself with heaven—”

In a war of your making? We are heaven, Shadowhunter. We do not fight in your mundane battles.

When Valentine spoke again, he sounded almost hurt. “Lord Raziel. Surely you would not have allowed such a thing as a ritual by which you might be summoned to exist if you did not intend to be summoned. We Nephilim are your children. We need your guidance.”

Guidance? Now the Angel sounded amused. That hardly seems to be why you brought me here. You seek rather your own renown.

“Renown?” Valentine echoed hoarsely. “I have given everything for this cause. My wife. My children. I have not withheld my sons. I have given everything I have for this—everything.”

The Angel simply hovered, gazing down at Valentine with his weird, inhuman eyes. His wings moved in slow, undeliberate motions, like the passage of clouds across the sky. At last he said, God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son on an altar much like this one, to see who it was that Abraham loved more, Isaac or God. But no one asked you to sacrifice your son, Valentine.

Valentine glanced down at the altar at his feet, splashed with Jace’s blood, and then back up at the Angel. “If I must, I will compel this from you,” he said. “But I would rather have your willing cooperation.”

When Jonathan Shadowhunter summoned me, said the Angel, I gave him my assistance because I could see that his dream of a world free of demons was a true one. He imagined a heaven on this earth. But you dream only of your own glory, and you do not love heaven. My brother Ithuriel can attest to that.

Valentine blanched. “But—”

Did you think that I would not know? The Angel smiled. It was the most terrible smile Clary had ever seen. It is true that the master of the circle you have drawn can compel from me a single action. But you are not that master.

Valentine stared. “My Lord Raziel—there is no one else—”

But there is, said the Angel. There is your daughter.

Valentine whirled. Clary, lying half-conscious in the sand, her wrists and arms a screaming agony, stared defiantly back. For a moment their eyes met—and he looked at her, really looked at her, and she realized it was the first time her father had ever looked her in the face and seen her. The first and only time.

“Clarissa,” he said. “What have you done?”

Clary stretched out her hand, and with her finger she wrote in the sand at his feet. She didn’t draw runes. She drew words—the words he had said to her the first time he’d seen what she could do, when she’d drawn the rune that had destroyed his ship.

MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN.

His eyes widened, just as Jace’s eyes had widened before he’d died. Valentine had gone bone white. He turned slowly to face the Angel, raising his hands in a gesture of supplication. “My Lord Raziel—”

The Angel opened his mouth and spat. Or at least that was how it seemed to Clary—that the Angel spat, and that what came from his mouth was a shooting spark of white fire, like a burning arrow. The arrow flew straight and true across the water and buried itself in Valentine’s chest. Or maybe “buried” wasn’t the word—it tore through him, like a rock through thin paper, leaving a smoking hole the size of a fist. For a moment Clary, staring up, could look through her father’s chest and see the lake and the fiery glow of the Angel beyond.

The moment passed. Like a felled tree, Valentine crashed to the ground and lay still—his mouth open in a silent cry, his blind eyes fixed forever in a last look of incredulous betrayal.

That was the justice of heaven. I trust that you are not dismayed.

Clary looked up. The Angel hovered over her, like a tower of white flame, blotting out the sky. His hands were empty; the Mortal Cup and Maellartach lay by the shore of the lake, lapped by the subsiding waves.

You can compel me to one action, Clarissa Morgenstern. What is it that you want?

Clary opened her mouth. No sound came out.

Ah, yes, the Angel said, and there was gentleness in his voice now. The rune. The many eyes in his wings blinked. Something brushed over her. It was soft, softer than silk or any other cloth, softer than a whisper or the brush of a feather. It was what she imagined clouds might feel like if they had a texture. A faint scent came with the touch—a pleasant scent, heady and sweet.