Magnus stood in the doorway of his potion room, watching Alec work, Alec's long fingers shaping arrow shafts from the yew wood that he had conjured. He knew by the set of Alec's shoulders that he was worried.

"You know you can't really do that anymore, don't you?" Alec asked, his eyes flicking up to the three tipped arrow that he was replicating. Deciding that it was as close as he was going to get, he grabbed a sheet of sandpaper.

"Do what?" Magnus asked, stepping into the room, making his way over to the back to back workbenches that were now in there to take a seat on his own side of the benches.

"Watch me from doorways. I can hear you coming," Alec said, smiling when he looked up at Magnus, sitting across from him

"You're telling me that I can't watch my husband create a masterpiece?" Magnus asked, picking up an iron arrowhead, spinning it between his fingers.

"You can't sneak up on me," Alec replied, sanding down the shafts, smoothing any nicks out of the wood. "These aren't as good as Izzy's but they are the best I can do," he said, looking down at the three shafts. They would have been better if they were made of aluminum or even steel but a blacksmith he wasn't.

Magnus raised an eyebrow in question when Alec looked up.

"The original arrows are made from aluminum. These will shatter more easily but are easier to work with. I just wish I could strengthen them somehow," Alec said, picking up a hacksaw to create a nock at the end of each shaft.

"Maybe I can come up with something," Magnus said, sweeping the pile of arrowheads into his hand and dumping them into a tabletop cauldron. "Might as well make them as effective as possible," he said when Alec frowned.

"He'll be okay," Magnus said when Alec went back to splitting his arrow shafts. Spinning the ingredient rack on his bench, he started pulling jars out of it, his nose crinkling with distaste as his fingers hovered over a jar of arsenic. It wasn't his favorite ingredient but it worked just as well against demons as it did against humans, so why not?

"This is Simon we're talking about," Alec sighed, putting his tools down to watch Magnus start throwing ingredients into his pot, his eyebrow rising when he saw that Magnus was wearing thick gloves. Magnus never wore gloves, unless he was working with something really dangerous.

"Have a little faith, he's capable of more than you think," Magnus said, rolling his eyes at his husband. "I've spent more time with him than you. Sure, he talks a lot but he is loyal and smart. And he is resourceful enough to find a way past Lilith. That's worth listening to his nervous rambling," he said.

"You never had to listen to the story about how he and Clary were engaged to each other as kids," Alec muttered, setting the shafts into a clamp. Grabbing a handful of dark blue, pre-split shield feathers and a tube of strong glue, he set to work fletching the arrows.

"Believe me, I've heard the story. More than once," Magnus chuckled, his eyes flicking up to watch Alec's tongue flit over his bottom lip, thinking that Alec looked far too cute when he was concentrating.

Shaking himself off, Magnus took up a glass stirrer and set to mixing his concoction. Snapping his fingers, he heated the mixture up gently, carefully measuring the amount of heat he applied to the volatile mixture.

"What if he gets hurt? Or caught?" Alec asked, setting a feather into a helix clamp and applying glue to it to press the feather to one of the shafts. It had been a long time since he had worked with wooden arrows, these were a mixture of traditional techniques and new.

"Careful, Alexander, you're in danger of sounding like you care," Magnus said, unable to help the smirk that tugged at his lips when Alec rolled his eyes.

"I don't hate the guy, Magnus. Actually, Izzy could do a lot worse. She has done a lot worse. As you said, he's loyal and he has done a lot for me, for us," Alec said, reaching for the next feather. "Anyway, she will kill us if anything happens to him," he said.

"Uhuh," Magnus muttered, not fooled for a minute by Alec's blasé attitude. He knew when Alec was worried.

Magnus took the heat away from his potion when it was complete, using his magic to lift the arrowheads from the cauldron. Snapping his fingers, he produced a wire rack and set them down before magically curing them.

"They are safe to touch," Magnus said, picking one up to inspect it and sliding the rack across the benches so Alec could use them. The arrowhead had a soft luminous green glow to it, harmless to the touch but deadly when it came into contact with the bloodstream.

Alec turned the clamps around and picked his hacksaw up once more, splitting the tips of the arrows so he could set the arrowheads in place. He inspected the arrowheads when the shafts of the arrows were prepped, finding that they were still solid, perfectly intact, trying to take his mind off of Simon's mission. It wasn't working.

"Maybe we should just...?" Alec started before Magnus cut him off.

"Stop worrying, Alexander. He has a plan, we'll only fuck it up if we show up," Magnus said, watching Alec set the arrowheads in place in the shafts.

"Fine, we'll leave him to it. As long as he doesn't fuck it up," Alec sighed.

Alec handed the arrows over to Magnus when the arrowheads were set in place, watching his husband start carving spells and symbols into the shafts with a small carving knife, trying not to think of all the ways Simon could fuck up.

**

Simon crept down one of many dingy hallways in Lilith's castle, using every heightened sense that he possessed not to fuck up and draw Lilith's attention. He thanked the angel, almost out loud, for his perfect night vision. No goggles required.

Simon had come up with a plan, with Magnus and Alec, that was rather simple. Portal as close to the castle as possible without setting any wards off that Lilith might have in place, look around without getting caught, and if possible, find Cain and convince him to escape.

"Easier said than done," Simon muttered to himself, plastering himself to a wall when he reached an intersection of hallways on the fifth floor. As cautiously as he could, he peeked around the corner, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw that the next hallway was empty.

The castle was huge. And creepy. No electricity here, just sconces on the walls that bounced Simon's shadow back to him and almost restarted his heart every couple of minutes. He hadn't seen much of anything yet. A load of dusty empty rooms in the lower levels, silence filling the maze of corridors.

But the higher Simon had climbed through the castle, the more activity he had heard. Every sound was unnerving, each echo through the halls convincing him that he was about to get caught and strung up by one of Lilith's minions.

Simon was halfway down the hallway when the sound of approaching footsteps caught him off guard. Panic set in for a moment, his eyes darting around, looking for an escape. Putting on a burst of speed when he saw a doorway, a little further up the corridor, he dashed towards it, stupidly running towards the sounds.

Of course, the door would be locked. But that was nothing that Simon's superior strength couldn't take care of. Gripping the handle tightly, he pushed with all of his strength, eyes darting back up the hallway as the footsteps grew louder, and forced the door open. The sound of groaning metal made him want to kick himself in the balls for how loud it was but the door was open with one shove.

With barely a few seconds to spare, Simon dashed into the room, just about having the presence of mind not to slam the door closed after him, praying that the room wasn't locked because someone was in there. Pushing the door closed as gently as he could, he pressed his ear to the wood, his stomach bouncing when he heard whoever it was pause outside the room. Before they thankfully moved on.

Luckily for Simon, the room was empty. It looked like some sort of chamber of horrors but it was empty, he realized when he looked around. The room was even creepier than the rest of the castle if that was possible. Mostly because there was one small window in the far wall with bars on it that let an eerie orange glow fill up a small portion of the room, the rest of it left to shadows.

A single bed, made of iron, that looked more like a cage than anything else stood in one corner of the room. A closet with the doors ripped off built into one wall and a chest of drawers against another. The drawers and the closet doors had long scratches, that looked suspiciously like claw marks made by human hands, gouged into them, only freaking Simon out more.

But those couldn't hold Simon's attention for long. What did capture his attention was the pictures on the walls. Hand-drawn with what looked like charcoal. His eyes widened as he moved around the dingy, unkempt room, staring at drawing after drawing. Most of them were of Clary.

There were some that looked like crude child's depictions of his best friend, pictures that Simon still recognized as Clary. He had spent enough time with Clary to recognize any picture of her. Most of the drawings, however, were better, as though the artist had improved over the years, perfect life-like depictions that captured Clary's eyes or lips, or her high cheekbones perfectly.

The gallery of creepiness was also interspersed with drawings of a man that looked a lot like Valentine, a boy that could have been Jace and a few that looked vaguely like Joselyn. Those were even creepier than the pictures of Clary. Each drawing depicted Valentine, Jace, and Joselyn with demonic eyes, every one of them scratched out, as though the artist wanted to erase the subjects of the pictures.

"This was Jonathan's room," Simon muttered, a shiver running down his spine. It seemed that Clary's brother had also inherited Joselyn's artistic talent. Jonathan had certainly gotten enough practice in. Every wall was littered with them.

No wonder he's so fucked up, Simon thought, picking the ragged, musty blanket up off of the cage bed, wondering if maybe it could be used to track Jonathan when he returned topside.

Simon let out a full-on squeal -that he would deny till his second dying day- when something skittered out from under the blanket. He jumped backward, clear across the room, with a hiss. The creature looked like a bald rat with six legs and large teeth, the size of a small chihuahua, with mottled gray and pink skin. And it was heading straight for him.

Deciding that he had enough of a tour of Jonathan's bedroom, Simon kicked out at the creature before dashing back out of the door and closing it behind him as best as he could. Luckily, he hadn't heard any sounds coming from the corridor outside. Which was empty.

Simon jumped when a thud hit the door behind him, positive that he would be having a heart attack if his heart still worked. The sound of vicious snarling and scratching at the door had him leaving the room behind, quickening his pace up the corridor in case the creature found a way through the wood.

Pausing at the corner of the corridor, Simon shrugged his backpack off and stuffed Jonathan's moldy blanket into it, checking that the bottles of blood that he had brought for Cain were still intact while he was there.

That wasn't all Simon had brought. Alec had insisted that he bring weapons with him, just in case. Magnus had given him a load of round bottles, filled with a volatile mixture of ingredients that would explode upon impact. The thigh holster that was wrapped around his leg was totally badass, something that he was definitely keeping. It had a couple of daggers stuffed into the sheaths and he had a quiver of arrows hanging from his right hip.

The expression on Alec's face had been hilarious when Simon had explained that he was good with a bow. It had only gotten better when Alec had demanded a demonstration. He had sunk twenty arrows into Alec's targets before Alec was convinced that his perfect shot hadn't been a fluke. Thank the angel for summer camp. The recurve bow that Alec had lent him was strapped to his backpack, ready for if he needed it.

Simon climbed two more floors, occasionally having to hide in unlocked rooms whenever he had heard someone coming before he found a promising looking corridor. All of the doors in the narrow hallway looked like medieval cell doors. Wood with bars across the top of each door.

Simon had to stand on his tiptoes to peek through the bars. Most of the rooms were empty.

Most of them.

He almost shit his pants when he looked into the fifth one, expecting it to be empty, and found a demon, roughly humanoid-shaped, its body bent at odd angles and covered in Ichor, clinging to the wall opposite him.

Simon hit the wall behind him hard when the demon jumped at the door, a snarl ripping from its throat. The arm that reached for him through the bars had him sidestepping to get away, wishing the thing would shut up. It was bound to call attention to them.

The second and the third time the same thing happened had Simon seriously considering just turning around and going home. His still heart and churning gut couldn't take it. The second demon had been huge, bat-like wings carrying it forward towards the door. The third had looked like some sort of leprechaun with razorlike claws and teeth.

They would make interesting characters in a graphic novel but Simon had no desire to get any closer to them in real life. Thankfully, the second to last cell in the corridor was what he had been searching for.

"Cain?" Simon called softly, staring through the bars at the Vampire, Cain lying on a slab of stone that he supposed was meant to be a bed. Dismay shot through him when he saw how unkempt Cain looked, hair and clothes filthy, pale and thirsty. Cain looked like shit.

"Simon Lewis? What are you doing here?" Cain asked -his voice croaky from disuse- when he looked up at the sound of his name, to see Simon peering through the bars of his cell.

"I've come to get you out of here," Simon said, nodding encouragingly when Cain sat up.

"Go home, Simon. I am where I'm meant to be," Cain said over the din his neighbors were making, unable to meet the other Vampire's gaze.

"In this rat hole cell with this lot?" Simon asked incredulously, staring around the small, filthy room as he jerked his thumb in the direction of the other cells' occupants.

"It is what I deserve after what I did," Cain muttered, shame lacing every word.

"You mean when you kept your brother around after Lilith brought him back?" Simon asked, feeling awful when Cain's head shot up to meet his gaze. "I understand why you did it. I have a sister, Rebecca. I'd want to keep her around too if it was me," he said.

"He was an abomination. I should have destroyed him the second Lilith brought him back," Cain said harshly, angry with himself and Lilith for what they had done to Abel.

"Why didn't you?" Simon asked, searching for a handle to get the door open and coming up empty-handed.

"Because I missed him. Because I didn't want to destroy him a second time. Because I was selfish," Cain muttered, staring down at his hands.

"Wanting to keep someone that you love alive isn't selfish," Simon said, setting his shoulder against the door, trying to shove it open with all of his might. It refused to budge.

"It is if they are a shell of a man. I knew he wasn't right, that it wasn't him. But I was selfish, I told myself that I had another chance with him. To make things right," Cain said.

"Lilith tricked you, it wasn't your fault. Nobody blames you for wanting to keep him with you. The important thing is that you let him go in the end," Simon said, giving up on trying to force the door. "Why won't this thing budge?" he muttered, scratching his head.

"It is secured with magic, Lilith's magic," Cain said, forcing himself to stand and cross to the door. "Go home, Simon. Escape while you still can," he said, peering out through the bars.

"Not without you," Simon said stubbornly. Seeing Cain open his mouth, clearly about to protest, he raised a hand, stopping Cain from speaking. "My friends need your help, Cain. Lilith is bent on killing them. You know must things that could help them and they could use all of the help that they can get. Just come with me and meet them," he said, almost pleading.

"Your friends? You mean the ones who defied Lilith?" Cain asked, shaking his head when Simon tried to get through the door again.

"Yes. They can help you," Simon said, giving up on the door, looking up into Cain's eyes. "You don't deserve this, Cain. It is my fault you're here," he said, guilt clear in his tone.

"Why would they help me?" Cain asked. He didn't blame Simon in the slightest. If he hadn't fallen for Lilith's tricks again, he wouldn't be there. That wasn't Simon's fault.

"It's kind of what they do," Simon said with a rye grin. Cain looked super hungry this close up so he shrugged his backpack off and dug out a bottle of blood and handed it over. "You don't have to stay here. This doesn't have to be your life. Don't let Lilith ruin it anymore than she already has. You don't owe her anything," he said.

"I'm in a cell, that is where murderers belong," Cain said quietly, fingering the cap of the bottle.

"Don't you think you've punished yourself enough?" Simon asked, urging Cain to drink the blood. The guy really did look like he hadn't had a good meal in weeks. "You exiled yourself from humanity for centuries out of guilt. It's time to take your life back. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for the memory of your brother," he said.

Cain just shook his head, his lips pursed. The hopeful expression on Simon's face had him wondering why Simon even cared. With a deep sigh, he unscrewed the lid from the bottle and gulped down the contents when Simon urged him to drink, surprised by how fresh the blood was. In truth, he hadn't had a drink in a while.

Simon dug through his bag once more, looking for something that could help him get Cain out of the cell. His fingers brushed one of the bottles that Magnus had given him, thinking of using them, just as the sound of approaching footsteps reached him.

Cain's head snapped up at the same time as Simon's. He could also hear the pounding footsteps, even over the noise that his fellow prisoners were making.

"We need to get you out of here, now!" Simon muttered, pulling one of the small bottles from his bag and slinging the bag back across his shoulders.

"Go, leave me here. You can save yourself," Cain said, hastily shoving the empty bottle back through the bars. "Go, I will distract them," he urged.

"I'm not leaving without you," Simon insisted, weighing up his potion grenade, the footsteps coming ever closer. "You know what Lilith will do if she finds me. You are my only way out," he tried when Cain looked like he was going to argue further.

"How do you figure that out?" Cain asked, straining to see the door at the end of the corridor. The footsteps were now echoing up the stairs that led up to the cells, from the floor below.

"You have the mark. I can use you like a Vampire shield and escape," Simon said with a nervous chuckle. "Lilith won't attack you. So I'm safe. As long as you and I stick together," he said. It was low, to put his safety on Cain's shoulders, but if it worked, it would be worth it.

Cain silently stared at Simon. Simon had come to Lilith's castle, at great risk to himself, to rescue him. Which meant that he was now responsible for Simon. Including making sure that Simon escaped in one piece.

"Fine, but whatever you plan on doing, do it now. They are almost here," Cain muttered, moving back from the door when Simon gestured for him to stand back.

Simon backed up when Cain did, dashing back the way he had come, just about evading the arms that reached for him from between the bars of the cells. Deciding that he was as far away as he was able to get, he took aim and launched the potion grenade in the direction of Cain's cell door, praying that he wouldn't set Cain's mark off and incinerate himself.

They were already busted, might as well go out with a bang.

And what a bang it was. It still boomed in Simon's ears, even with him covering them.

Cain dashed through the wreckage of the door, wondering if someone was looking out for him. How he hadn't been touched by the blast, he didn't know. But he was unharmed. Using his heightened senses, he listened for the approaching footsteps coming from the stairwells on either end of the hallway, realizing that whoever was coming for them was closer on Simon's end.

"This way," Cain said, gesturing to the door opposite the one that Simon had come from. Seeing Simon dash forward, he turned for the door and bulldozed his way through it, just as the door at the other end of the hallway crashed open.

Simon almost let out a yelp when he looked behind him to see three demons heading their way, all of them vaguely human in shape but with terrifying, distorted features. Deciding that he wanted no part of seeing them up close, he followed Cain through the other door, copying the other Vampire's movements when Cain leaped over the heads of the three demons that were bounding up the stairs.

"Shit, they can climb the walls!" Simon muttered, landing with a thud behind Cain and making a second jump down the next stairway. One of the demons had started scaling the wall when he had jumped, sending a shudder skittering down his spine. It had been bad enough when they had been on the ground.

"There's worse than that here," Cain muttered, barely touching down before swinging himself around the banister and leaping down the next staircase. Taking the stairs would just slow them down and the demons were hot on their trail.

Simon stopped at the bottom of the fifth staircase and poked his head over the banister to look up, practically shitting his pants when he realized that the three demons from earlier had joined the ones chasing them.

"Move!" Cain yelled, grabbing the handle on the top of Simon's backpack to drag him along. Simon was going to get them caught, they weren't the only ones leaping down the staircases. "Down here," he said, pulling Simon through an arched doorway.

Simon followed Cain down a draughty hallway, glancing over his shoulder at the stairwell that he had expected them to take. He hadn't passed down this one when he had arrived.

"What about those stairs? We still have two floors to go," Simon asked, confused about why they weren't taking the last two staircases and getting the fuck out of there.

"I'm trying to lose our friends back there," Cain said, not bothering to look over his shoulder, he could hear the demons coming. "We would have had to run the circumference of the bottom floor to get out that way, this is a shortcut," he said.

Simon was pretty sure he would have had to stop for a rest by now if he was still human. The amount of running they had done so far probably would have finished him off already.

The reason for the draught in the hallway became apparent when Simon followed Cain through another arched doorway and emerged into what might once have been a small ballroom or maybe just an extra-wide hallway, longer than it was wide.

"Meet Lilith's army," Cain said over his shoulder when he heard Simon's gasp from behind him.

"What the fuck?" Simon muttered under his breath, more creeped out than he had been all day when he clapped eyes on Lilith's army. His eyes darted around, taking in the freaky men and women, around twelve or fourteen of them, all standing stock still, gazing at nothing. Even as they dashed through the room, weaving through the small crowd. He quickened his pace, expecting them to turn on him and Cain at any moment.

"These are the poor souls that Lilith has "brought back to life"," Cain said, his eyes firmly on the door at the end of the room. One more hallway and two stairwells and they were home free.

Simon's head snapped around when he heard the sound of claws scrabbling on granite behind him. Not only had the six demons that had been chasing them appeared in the doorway, but they had been joined by a few more.

Out of sheer desperation, Simon yanked the backpack off of his back, his hand diving inside for a couple of Magnus' potion grenades. Not bothering to aim for anything, he threw them in the general direction of the demons - when the demons started threading through the still, silent crowd- and hot-footed it through the door after Cain.

The explosion was deafening but Cain didn't stop running, barreling down the short hallway and leaping down the first stairwell, closely followed by Simon.

"We're almost there," Cain said, hoping Simon's bombs had done some serious damage. He took the last stairwell in one huge leap, clearing a good ten foot of hallway in the process, and bounded for the front door.

Simon skidded to a stop in the doorway, just shy of barreling into Cain's back when Cain stopped dead in front of him. The reason for Cain's sudden stop became apparent when she spoke.

"Going somewhere?" Lilith asked through gritted teeth, her eyes narrowing when she saw the Vampire behind Cain. This wouldn't do at all.