Hey guys :) So I know this has been done a lot, but I really liked the idea of it. So, this is the City of Bones from Jace's point of view. I hope you enjoy it :D
Disclaimer for the whole story: I do not own any of this. Cassandra Clare does, I'm just putting how I think Jace felt during the whole thing.
I gazed across the crowded room, watching the blue haired boy with narrowed eyes. My gaze followed his every move carefully, not missing a single little flick of a wrist or turn of the head. He watched his surroundings with a clear intent to find something. Suddenly, the boy jerked up, standing up straight and alert.
Isabelle. I smirked as I watched her give the freak a seducing smile. Her white, old-fashioned dress covered almost all of her skin, a stark contrast to those around her who wore as little as possible. With a back-handed smack to Alec's arm, I began to sneak silently behind the enthralled boy, my close friend hot on my heels. I watched Isabelle lead him into a door marked NO ADMITTANCE. I stopped just outside, Alec halting at my side.
I looked to him with a smirk. "Three, two, one," I whispered, pulling a large knife out from my jackets pocket.
I pushed the door open and slipped inside, Alec shutting it quietly behind me.
"I haven't seen you here before," the boy said.
I watched her carefully as she responded.
"You asking me if I come here often?" I rolled my eyes as Isabelle giggled, reaching up one hand to cover her mouth, her sleeve slipping down as she did, to reveal the curling dark lines of her speed rune.
I watched as green-eyes caught sight of the mark. He froze.
"You-"
Isabelle cut him off, slamming her palm roughly into his chest, knocking him off balance, but not really doing damage. Before he could come to his senses, she had her golden whip out. She cracked it with a flick of the wrist and it wrapped easily around the unfortunate boy's ankles. In one swift movement, she had jerked back on the whip, knocking him down to the ground. She laughed over the boy, who seemed to be disoriented. With one last securing yank of the whip, she grinned.
"He's all your boys."
I laughed while Alec and I stepped up behind him and I grabbed him roughly by the shoulders, slamming his back against a pillar. Alec grabbed his hands and tied them with wire found on the floor of the room. I walked around the pillar to stand before the demon. He struggled uselessly against his bonds.
"So, are there any more of you?"
"Any other what?" The boy asked.
I almost grinned.
"Come on now." I lifted my arms up, allowing my black sleeves to fall down to reveal the bold inking all over my arms and hands and giving him plenty of time to take the runes in before slipping my hands into my pant pockets.
"Shadowhunter," the demon hissed, almost spitting the word.
This time I did grin.
"Got you."
Alec and Isabelle stood behind me silently. I crossed my arms over my chest, pacing back and forth in front of the Goth boy.
"So, you still haven't told me if there are any other of your kind with you," I stated calmly.
"I don't know what you're talking about," the boy said, his tone sounding slightly higher in pitch than before.
Whether it was from pain or lying, I couldn't distinguish.
Alec spoke up behind me, "He means other demons. You do know what a demon is, don't you?"
The demon turned his face away from us, his jaw moving-probably his second set of teeth making an appearance. Eidolon demons all have them, no matter what form they had shifted into.
"Demons," I said lazily, writing out the word in the air. "Religiously defined as hell's denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our home dimension-"
"That's enough, Jace," Isabella cut in.
"Isabelle's right, nobody here needs a lesson in semantics-or demonologoy," Alec seconded.
I lifted my head and smiled, seeing the fear spike up in the demon's eyes at my predatory gesture.
"Isabelle and Alec think I talk too much. Do you think I talk too much?" I asked, the smile still in place.
The demon remained silent, not giving me an answer for a minute and I was just about to speak again when he finally talked, still working his mouth against the grind of his second row of teeth.
"I could give you information. I know where Valentine is," he said pleadingly.
I glanced back at Alec to see him shrug. Valentine's name brought up all kinds of violent feelings in Shadowhunters. Too bad this demon didn't seem to be aware of that.
"Valentine's in the ground. The thing's just toying with us," I said firmly.
"Kill it, Jace, it's not going to tell us anything," Isabelle said, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
I grinned and raised my blade, a crystal knife with a hilt inlaid with blood-red stones.
The demon tugged furiously at the wire binding him to the pillar. "Valentine is back! All of the Infernal Worlds know it-I know it-I can tell you where he is-" he pleaded pathetically.
I felt fury rush up quickly, my blood heating up.
"By the Angel, every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim you know where Valentine is. Well, we know where he is too. He's in hell. And you-you can join him there," I spat, tilting the blade in my hand.
"Stop! You can't do this," a female voice cried.
It had surprised me so much that I whipped around, my blade slipping from my grasp and clanging on the bare cement floors. I caught Isabelle and Alec turning as well. How had someone snuck up on us so easily?
"What's this?" Alec declared, stunned and slightly angry by the sound of it.
He looked from the girl who had just appeared in sight to Isabelle and I, as though we were supposed to understand what the hell a mundie was doing here. I looked her over, my eyes narrowing. She was short, red, frizzy curls framing her heart-shaped face. Her eyes were a bright green, shining in the dim light of the room. I relaxed myself easily. She's clearly just a mundie, nothing to worry ourselves about.
"It's a girl. Surely you've seen girls before, Alec. Your sister Isabelle is one." I took a step forward, looking the girl over carefully, making sure she wasn't armed even though I was sure she wasn't any danger.
It pays to be cautious, as I've always been taught. If you're not cautious you could end up with a blade in your back. Or any other part of your body. That's perfectly possible too.
"A mundie girl," I said. "And she can see us," I added as an afterthought.
The girl looked indignant.
"Of course I can see you. I'm not blind, you know."
"Oh, but you are," I said, crouching down to retrieve my weapon. "You just don't know it."
I stood back up to look at her once again. It's only fair to give the girl a warning.
"You'd better get out of here if you know what's good for you."
I saw her set her jaw. "I'm not going anywhere. If I do, you'll kill him," she said, pointing directly at the stupid demon.
I twirled my knife through my fingers, cocking an eyebrow.
"That's true," I confessed honestly. "What do you care if I kill him or not?" I was curious.
Mundies will watch the news every day and see people missing, dying and dead but they don't bat an eye. So why does this little mundie care about saving a boy she doesn't even know, endangering herself to do so?
"Be-because you can't just go around killing people," she stuttered, her eyes flickering to the demon.
"You're right. You can't go around killing people," I acknowledged before gesturing to the demon.
His eyes were nearly closed and I ignored his attempt to look weak.
"That's not a person, little girl. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person. But it's a monster," I said.
"Jace," Isabelle hissed in warning. "That's enough."
I watched as the mundie began to back away from me hastily.
"You're crazy. I've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second," she threatened.
"She's lying," Alec called from behind me, although there was a slight hint of doubt in his voice. "Jace, do you-"
A sharp, ear piercing wail came from the side and I turned just in time for the blue-haired demon to slam into me. We tumbled to the ground, my back hitting painfully. We rolled across the cold, hard floor and the demon began to rip at me with hands tipped with wickedly sharp claws, glinting claws. I saw movement to the side out of the corner of my eye, where the mundie girl had been, but didn't bother to acknowledge it, focusing instead on the demon who-in this position- had every chance to kill me. I heard Isabelle screeching while the demon sat on my chest. He clawed at me, breaking through my fighting clothes and into my skin. A stinging pain lingered wherever his claws raked down my chest. Finally, the thing got smart and pulled his hand back for a stronger blow, this time to my face. I flung my arm up to keep my face from getting slashed and felt his claws shred into the skin of my forearm, feeling like a red hot blade was being dragged across my skin. Warm blood splashed from my arm as the demon pulled back to attack again.
Just before his talons came into contact with my body, a golden lashed across the demon's back, causing him to emit a high-pitched shriek and tip off of me and to the side. Before the demon could even move, I had rolled to the side and stabbed my knife into the demon's chest. Ichor, the black blood of demons, splattered disgustingly around the hilt, coating me in a large amount. The demon's back came up off the floor as he writhed around in agony. Ichor leaked from his lips and I felt somewhat like kicking him in the ribs childishly.
I stood up painfully, noticing both my blood and the demon's coating my clothing. I yanked my knife out of the quickly fading demon. The thing's eyes zeroed in on me, burning with rage.
"So be it. The Forsaken will take you all."
I twisted my face up into a snarl and watched while the ugly thing disappeared entirely, back to his home dimension. Hopefully for good.
Alec marched over to me and took my injured arm. He whipped out his stele, pushing my shredded sleeve up to reveal the ugly wounds. He sighed and burned a healing rune into my skin. I felt the wound began to close up a little, the blood flowing much slower although it was still stinging painfully. I heard the familiar sound of Isabelle's golden whip cracking through the air. I twisted my body around to face the sound and saw Isabelle's whip wrapped tightly around the mundane's thin wrist. It was already stained with ichor and if there was nobody to intervene, there was going to be mundie blood on it as well.
"Stupid little mundie, you could have gotten Jace killed," she spat through her teeth.
I was about to tell her to lay off, that I was fine, when the girl spoke.
"He's crazy. You're all crazy." I ignored that she was blatantly insulting us and focused instead on the whip tightening on her skin, realizing that Isabelle was getting a little out of control.
It's not like the girl knew what she was doing. She had actually been pretty brave, for a mundie. Most wouldn't even think of trying to save a life if their own was in danger, but not only had this girl tried to stop us, but now she was standing up to Isabelle with barely a flinch.
"What do you think you are, vigilante killers?" I resisted the urge to chuckle. "The police-"
"The police aren't usually interested unless you can produce a body," I finally cut her off.
Holding my arm tightly to my chest, I carefully made my way across the cluttered floor toward the girl, hearing Alec follow behind me only because his footsteps were heavy, signaling his anger. I followed the girl's eyes to where the Eidolon demon had disappeared, not leaving even the slightest trace of its existence. If only the blood disappeared from clothes like it did from everywhere else when the demons died. It would make cleaning gear and weapons so much easier.
"They return to their home dimension when they die, in case you were wondering," I said, seeing the confusion and shock in her face.
"Jace, be careful," Alec hissed at me.
I drew my arm away and watched the girl. She was pretty, I have to admit. Not in Isabelle's kind of way, but in a way uniquely hers. Isabelle was tall and dark, absolutely stunning and she knew it. She used her looks as well as her own whip, while this girl was pretty in a completely untraditional way.
"She can see us, Alec," I pointed out. "She already knows too much."
"So what do you want me to do with her?" Isabelle asked sharply.
"Let her go," I said quietly.
The girl didn't know what was going on, why should she be attacked based on ignorance? Isabelle looked at me in shock and anger, but complied, the whip releasing the red-head, who rubbed her wrist as though in pain. I felt like glaring at Isabelle. What's the point in hurting someone who was no danger to us? I started for a second when I realized that I was being protective of the girl.
"Maybe we should bring her back with us," Alec suggested. "I bet Hodge would like to talk with her."
"No way are we bringing her to the Institute," Isabelle almost snarled. "She's a mundie."
She spat the last word and I raised a brow. It seems like Isabelle is treating this girl like a vicious demon more than a confused little girl.
"Or is she?" I said, quietly. "Have you had dealings with demons, little girl? Walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you-"
"My name is not 'little girl'," the girl cut me off, speaking crossly. "And I have no idea what you're talking about."
I thought I detected a hint of doubt in her voice as she continued. "I don't believe in-in demons, or whatever you-"
"Clary?" A male voice called out.
I peered behind the girl, who spun around to face the boy. He was geeky and not too attractive, wearing a MADE IN BROOKLYN t-shirt and jeans. He wore glasses and had dark hair. A brawny bouncer stood with him, looking bored to tears around the empty room-at least as it appeared to him.
"Are you okay?" the boy asked, looking closely at the mundie girl-Clary. "Why are you in here by yourself? What happened to the guys-you know, the ones with knives?" I fought the urge to smirk.
Her gaze flicked from the boy to behind her, resting on Alec, Isabelle, and I stood. I grinned and gave her a half-mocking, half-apologetic shrug. I didn't expect anything else, but I did feel bad for her having to explain why she was in a room all alone, talking to herself after apparently pointing out two guys with knives. I hoped that she didn't end up in an asylum.
She didn't seem to be surprised by the mundies' reactions. She slowly turned back to the boy, clearly struggling for an explanation that wasn't going to get her committed.
"I thought they went in here," she said weakly. "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry." Her eyes flickered back and forth between the bouncer and her friend and I bit my lip to hold back a chuckle.
The boy's expression shifted from concerned to deeply embarrassed. The bouncer looked irritated.
"It was a mistake," she finished.
Isabelle giggled by my side and I elbowed her in the ribs. She scowled at me while the small group of mundanes exited the room.
Hope you like it :D I already have a couple more chapters written so if you want more, review and let me know!
-Cass