How It All Goes Down
Hotel Dumort
- Inside the Diamond Street Catholic church, Jace uses his stele to extract some weapons from under a stone: holy water, knives, crucifixes, you know, standard vampire-slaying accoutrement.
- Clary and Jace talk a bit about belief in God—or lack thereof, in Jace's case—before hopping the train to the Hotel Dumort, where Simon, in rat-form, is being held captive by a group of vampires. Yep, this is happening.
- It would be too easy if they could just waltz inside the front doors, so Clary and Jace search for an alternate entrance.
- A boy around Jace's age interrupts them as they're getting ready to overturn a dumpster, hoping to find a ground-level entrance hidden under it, because, let's face it, underneath a dumpster is as good a place as any to look for a door.
- The boy, whose name is Raphael, helps them find a grate that can gain them access. He goes with them because he says his brother tried to attack the vampires but never returned.
- They explore the dilapidated hotel for a spell but don't find anything.
- To spice things up a bit, Jace throws his knife at Raphael, plunging it up to its hilt in his chest.
- Okay, okay, so he wasn't bored. He just realized that Raphael was a vampire who had been sent to lure them inside.
- Suddenly, dozens of vampires emerge from the shadows to size up their prey.
- A tense standoff commences between Jace, with his knife to Raphael's heart, and Lily, Elliott, and Jacob, three vampires who have poor little rat Simon.
- The vamps want Jace to "swear on the Angel" (14.218) that he won't hurt Raphael. If he swears, they will release Simon.
- This goes back and forth for a while before Clary just flings herself at Elliott and snatches Simon from his hands.
- All hell breaks loose, ending with Jace and Clary (and rat Simon) surrounded by a circle of vampires.
- Just as Clary wraps her fingers around the dagger in her belt and prepares to go blade-to-fang with some angry vampires, many windows in the hotel suddenly shatter.
- Dozens of werewolves leap into the building.
- In case you've lived under a rock (or, conversely, in permanent sunlight) over the last decade or two, werewolves and vampires don't exactly get along.