Prologue

"Quick, get out of here now!" he screamed on the top of his lungs. "Dean, take Sam and Clary outside now!" He ran into Sam's room screaming stop it. I could smell burning. Everything was hot and it felt like my lungs were on fire.

"Run!" I barely heard Dean say it. Everything was moving so fast. Before I knew it we had sprinted down the stairs and ran outside. Already outside were Jon and Chase. From here we could see the house covered in an orange blanket of flames. My Dad ran out of the house as fast as he could. By now, he had tears running down his face uncontrollably. We all watched in silence as our house burnt down.

"Daddy, Where is Mummy?" I asked the question that would haunt me for the rest of my life, but what was worst was the answer.

"Your Mum's dead, Clary. I'm sorry. A demon killed her."

We all stood still as we processed the news. She's dead. I would of cried like waterfalls coming from my eyelids but I was used to this news. Everyday people would die around us. It was nothing new. That's what it's like being one of us. Slowly, I unconsciously let a tear fall down. But I wiped it away before anyone could see. I thought I got away with it, but Dean saw and he had done the same. The others weren't as controlled as us. All of my brothers except for the two of us were crying hysterically. Like rain falling down their cheeks. Dad was like us, controlled. But, I knew he was dying on the inside. We stood there waiting for others to come, quietly, just watching our house be burnt down to the ground.

That's when I woke up. That's when I always wake up. I always have that dream. Or nightmare should I say. No one knows except for Dean. Out of all my siblings, he's the one I'm closer to. I don't talk about it much. I can't. No one here knows the truth about me except for my team. People here think I'm a 17 year old dhampir novice who has killed two Strigoi. They think my name is Rosemarie Hathaway. They are all wrong. My real name is Clary Rosemarie Winchester. And I'm not a dhampir. I'm a hunter.

There are more than just humans on this world. There are demons and vampires, werewolves and shapeshifters, and many more. But also there are the Moroi and dhampirs. Moroi are mortal vampires who can control one of the five elements. The dhampirs are half Moroi and half human. They protect the Moroi from the Strigoi, a type of immortal vampire. Their kinds are at war. A war they are losing. But, then you have the Hunters and the Elementals. That's me. The Elementals are a race who can control one or more elements each. Us, the Hunters, are half Elemental and half human. We, like the dhampirs, protect the Elementals from all the supernatural creatures who want both our kinds dead. But whereas the Moroi let the dhampirs do the work and die for there safety, the Elementals fight alongside us. But instead we can have abilities passed down to us, whereas the dhampirs are just stronger. Moroi and dhampirs are at war with our kind. They are hunting us down and killing us all. I don't know why they are doing this. That's the whole reason I'm here. We don't hurt them when they attack. We don't need to. We are much more skilled than them. It's obvious. That's why they only get a kill every few years and even then they are just luck. But, there are still much less of us than them. Our kind is still trying to recover from the events of 500 years ago, when the war started. Our numbers took a drastic fall. I'm here to find out why they are doing this and to figure out how to stop it. We infiltrated them by posing as seven young dhampirs and Moroi and since then we have been gathering information to help us stop this war.

No one here knows what we truly are. Not even my best friend and bondmate, Vassilissa Dragomir, or my mentor and the guy I love, Dimitri Belikov. If they did, they'd kill me...