Magnus POV
I try to open a Portal, and it doesn't work. I assume it's because I'm tired, but then I remember that I'm not tired. Not by a long shot. I slept in this morning, and was asleep by like ten last night.
I flip open my phone to call Ragnor Fell, but then I realize that Tessa Gray and her husband, James Carstairs are in the area, so I call Tessa. "Hey, Tessa." I say, and she answers in a slightly mad voice.
"What do you want." I raise an eyebrow, not that she can see, but I pretend she can.
"Um, I can't do magic for some reason. Can you come help?" I can hear her eye roll.
"Ask Catarina if you want to find out why you can't do magic, Magnus, not me. Goodbye."
"I don't want to find out why I can't, I just want to get home to my boyfriend and kids." I mutter to myself. But I call Catarina anyway.
"Magnus. I have patients, and I have no time for your love life. Call me when you have an emergency."
"I do."
"Oh. What is it?" She says, sounding suddenly intrigued. I glare at my phone.
"I can't do magic. And I'm not tired, and I don't remember any demon encounters."
"Just because you don't remember them doesn't mean they didn't happen." She said darkly, probably remembering the time she lost her magic due to a meeting with her father she didn't know she had had. "Cat, just come help." I hear her growl at the old nickname I had made for her in Peru. Before I was banned, that is. Definitely after-I mean before I was banned. But anyway. "I'm on my way. . .Hi Magnus." And I look over to see my blue-skinned friend standing next to me. "Open a Portal." She instructs.
"I can't." I inform her. "That's kinda why I called you. So you could help me with that." She nods. "Uh-hu. Open a Portal." I growl, but I attempt the Portal. And fail. Miserably. Catarina grins, trying not to laugh. "Catarina…" I said dangerously. Her mouth twitches.
"Yes, Magnus?"
"Open the Portal. Just open the Portal, please. Take blood, do what you need to do, just get me home." She sobered.
"Yeah, okay." She puts a hand up, and moves it in a circle, forming the frame of the Portal. Some whispered words create the actual Portal. I imagine the loft I live in with my boyfriend. I step through, and I'm there. Alec's waiting for me. I step in the room, and he visibly relaxes. "Magnus! Where were you?" I smile at him, and sit on the bed next to him. "I was held back. Catarina needed my help." I don't know why I'm lying, but I don't feel like getting into it. I will tell him, I promise myself. Alec pulls me close to him. "Magnus, you look traumatized. Are you okay?" I smile at his perceptiveness.
"Yeah, just scared." I don't know why I said it, but what's done is done. Alec's brows furrow, and so I reach up and smooth them carefully. But before I take my hand away, Alec cups it in his. I kiss him, and he relaxes against my mouth. "You can't escape my newfound wanting to find out what's wrong. What happened, Magnus?" I sigh.
"Alexander, I wasn't completely truthful when I said that Catarina needed my help. It was the other way around. I needed her help, because I can't do magic. I don't know what happened, but I'm going to find out. I promise." Alec's face goes red.
"Magnus! I'll help you! Whatever it takes, I promise!" I flush, his compassion embarrassing me. I kiss him, and he flushes. I wink, and say thank you. He nods, then pushes me gently back onto the bed. "Go to sleep, Bane." he says quietly, using the pet name that he uses only when angry at something that happens to me, but when he's feeling lovey. I smile, kiss his ear, and lie back. In minutes, I'm sleeping. When I wake up the next morning, it's early. I can tell that, even though I'm not really looking, because I'm trying to stop the pain in my side. It gets worse and worse, until I break and cry out. Alec wakes immediately, and with Shadowhunter speed he jumps out of bed and is by my side in a minute. I try to smile at hi, but it comes out as a grimace. I cry out again when a particularly sharp pain bursts through my side. "Alec," I gasp out, "What does being stabbed feel like?" I'm inquiring because I have know demons to instill a voodoo doll with magic and use it to torture people without their knowing it. It's brutal, but i know how to find out who's doing it. I just need Catarina. I tell Alec all of that, and convince him to leave me for a second and call her. He does, and I lay there, the pain subsiding until another pain explodes, but his time in my leg. I look down and see blood. I realize that whatever is happening, it happening nearby. From a long distance, the blood wouldn't show up. I would just feel the pain. Which I definitely feel, but I'm additionally bleeding. As I lie there, biting my tongue as not to scare Alec more by crying out, he walks in with my blue-skinned friend. "Cat." I whisper. "Help." She doesn't acknowledge the nickname, or maybe she doesn't hear it, but she kneels by me, and sends Alec away. "No!" He protests loudly. "He's my boyfriend. I'm not leaving him." Catarina sighs.
"He'll be in a lot of pain. You can stay, but if you tell me I'm hurting him, or to stop, I will force you to leave. Understand?" He nods, his face gray. Catarina leans over me, and tells me to focus on the pain. "Focus on the fact that it hurts." She instructs. "You know how to track it, I'm just here to do the magic." She places her hand on my shoulder, and pushes. I focus on the pain, and then the spell. I've done this a hundred times before, but never when I was in pain. I scream, seeing the street name, and the house number, and then the occupant of the house. I start in the vision, seeing an unbelievable sight. "Ithuriel." I whisper, and Catarina brings me out. But before she does, the angel sticks a knife in the clay doll in his hands, and I can feel it. I scream, and he laughs at the pain he knows I'm feeling. He pulls my right elbow the wrong way, and I scream, hearing and feeling the crack. I'm back in the loft, and Alec is looking over me, concerned. Catarina is healing me, which I should be doing, but I obviously don't argue. "It's the angel, Ithuriel. The one we freed from the Morgenstern mansion basement. He seems to have gone mad." Alec's shocked. I can see it on his face. He's not taking it well. Ithuriel has saved Alec's life more than once. He can't believe that Ithuriel's gone mad. I know, though. "Alec, he took my magic. I think that unless we kill him, I'm not getting it back." I didn't want to tell him, but I did because I needed to. "Alec, I know how hard this for you, but this really is the only way. Unless, of course, you would father have a mad angel wandering the streets, and for me to have no magic. That's not very okay, but if you would rather that, I'd do it for you." Catarina rolls her eyes.
"Okay, lovebirds, let's figure out how to stop the maniac." I nod.
"What are his weaknesses?" I ask Alec, and he looks thoughtful for a moment. Then he looks up at me, his eyes sorrowful but determined.
"The Morgenstern mansion basement. He hates remembering the time when he was that helpless. If we remind him of it, we should have a minute when he's beating himself up about it. We'll have to work then." I nod slowly, impressed.
"We can get Jace and Clary to help." Catarina suggests, but Alec shakes his head vehemently. "No. I'm not bringing Clary, Simon, or Isabelle into this. Jace only because I'm his parabatai. I'll fight better with him, and he won't let me fight without him. And Magnus, you're staying home. Catarina, will you just monitor him? Don't let my boyfriend die." Catarina nods, and I'm furious. "You can't do that! I'm helping you!" Alec glares at me. "Alec, I love you. I don't want to lose you." Alec's face softens.
"Magnus, I promise you won't lose me. If it makes you feel better, you can put protection spells on me, and Jace will be there. You know he would rather lay down his own life than let me die. It'll be fine, I promise." And I give in. Alec's little speech convinced me. And he's right, Jace would rather die than have Alec die. So I let my boyfriend go fight an angel, while I sit back and cast spells to ensure his coming home to me.
Alec POV
I can't believe that Ithuriel has gone mad, but I trust Magnus enough to go fight him. I look at the text he sent me with the address and a side note. … Side Note: I love you, please come back to me. If you don't I will die. :)
So there's that. I text him back, promising to come home alive. Then Jace and I head to the address. At the house, I text Magnus to make sure I have the right house. He texts back immediately, saying it's the right one. I raise an eyebrow, because it looks like a deeply average couple lives in it, and loves gardening, but Jace and I move in anyway. I push the door open, and Jace peeks in. "There's no one in the first room." He reports, and so I walk carefully in, hand on my seraph blade. Jace has his pulled out. "Sachiel."
He says quietly, but I pull the seraph blade out of his hand, throwing it out an open window. "What the…?"
"I don't want to be noticed." I reply curtly. "Now let's go." He nods, looking taken aback at my shortness. We move further into the house, and Jace moves ahead of me. "Wait. Alec, I can feel something, like a ward. Give me a seraph blade, a really good one." I don't, instead moving in front of him. I can feel the ward, blocking us from the next room. Through the blur of an Angel-made ward, I can see Ithuriel holding a little doll, and a knife. "Ithuriel!" I yell, with a seraph blade in my hand. He looks up.
"Oh, the little Shadowhunters have come to stop me." He teases. And I grit my teeth. He looks at my hand, which to him would be glowing because of the witchlight in it. The witchlight is hiding the glow of my seraph blade. I read somewhere that if an angel puts up a ward, then it can be broken with seraph blade named after the angel. But each angel looks exactly the same, and so you have to know which is which really well. I brace myself, and throw myself against the ward, seraph blade first. The ward crumbles to the ground, and Jace and I jump over it. Ithuriel hasn't noticed us yet, too busy poking pins in a doll that I recognize as Magnus.
Magnus POV
I feel little pins going in and out of my body, and I whisper, "Come on, Alec." Then I feel another knife, and I scream. Catarina's face goes white, and she stumbles to the bathroom again. I hear a barfing noise, and when she comes out, she looks pale, scared, but determined. "Come on, Alec." She mutters to herself, and I scream again in pain.
Alec POV
I can practically hear Magnus scream, and I pull out another seraph blade, naming it as I run. "Malik!" As I'm running, I hear Jace call out Uriel behind me. I slam the blade into the angel, crying. Jace holds back, just for a moment. Then, as Ithuriel turns, Jace moves in from Ithuriel's unprotected side. The angel turns again, this time to look at where the blade went in. I don't think he noticed my blade in his side yet. Angel ichor runs down Ithuriel's side, and he looks amazed. " Y-you hurt me. You hurt an angel! How could you? I have saved your life over and over again, and this is how you repay me?" His voice rises in volume as he rants. I don't know what to say to him, and Jace knows it. "Maybe if you stopped killing my parabatai's boyfriend, I wouldn't have to." I gape at Jace, while he smirks at me. He knows I wouldn't have said that, and now he's assuming he's my hero, or something. I close my mouth and ignore him, and while Ithuriel is trying to heal his wound, I pull my bow off my back and shoot him. Again, and again, and I hear each arrow go in. It hurts him a lot, you can tell. He gasps, and cries out in pain, and I relish it. I want him to scream the way Magnus did, so I shoot again, over and over, until he's screaming, and I'm crying, but I don't stop, because he hurt Magnus, and I need him to die! I lose myself, just shooting and shooting, until Jace pulls me away, saying that it's over, that Ithuriel is dead. I'm crying, and gasping for breath, and my quiver is empty. Jace looks astounded. "What was that?" he demands, laughing just a little bit. I'm not laughing.
"I have no idea." I lie. I do know. It was Magnus, my reaction to him being hurt. Jace knows it, but he also knows that I just want to get home to Magnus and not talk about it. He lets me. We walk back in silence, and my breathing steadies. I contemplate what happened, and when we get back to the loft, I've stored it in the "Magnus Memories Not To Open" part of my head. Magnus is lying on the couch, with Catarina kneeling over him. He's pale, but looks okay. Jace throws a glance at Catarina, and she gets the message. They quietly exit the room, leaving Magnus and I alone. I hear a door close, and I realize that they left the apartment. "Catarina was pretty shaken by that. She's known me for forever, and never seen me in that kind of pain." I cut his next sentence off, whatever it might have been, by kissing him. His mouth curves against mine, surprised but happy. I close my eyes, loving him. "I don't know what I would do if you died." I murmur against his mouth. "I would blame myself, and never forgive myself." He smiles over my words. "Good thing I didn't die then, huh?" And In response I kiss him harder. When we break, we're both gasping for breath, and Magnus looks back to normal. I sigh, and lie down next to him, laying my head on his chest, and I fall asleep after a long day.
Magnus POV
Alec lays his head on my chest, and he's asleep within seconds. I stay awake for a moment, listening to my boyfriend breath, the sound steady and comforting. After a minute or two, I'm asleep.
