A cold dread crept up his spine as Alec made his way farther down the deserted hallway. The longer he stayed in the dimly lit space, the more firmly the sense of wrongness about the place settled over him. He glanced over at Isabelle and saw a look on her face somewhere between anxiety and excitement. She could always sense a fight before it was on them. Jace's eyes were alight with anticipation of whatever lay in wait for them. Alec had been trying to ignore this gnawing paranoia in the pit of his stomach since they had left the Institute. Something was wrong tonight. He could feel it. A rustling somewhere behind them caused Alec to give a start.
"Alright there, Sparky?" Jace asked. "What's got you so jumpy on this one?"
"Am I making you nervous?" Clary asked, the nerves in her own voice ringing out like a bell. Demons, she could handle, but her fear of failing on their first hunting expedition was almost more than she could deal with.
"Of course it's not you, Clary." Alec assured her. "I have complete confidence in you. I've just got a bad feeling about tonight, this place. It just puts me on edge."
"Would everyone just mellow out already? Everybody's lack of confidence is bleeding into my belief that we can handle this situation." Isabelle interjected.
"We are so sorry for upsetting your self-confidence, Izzy. Next time one of us is having issues, we'll do what other families do and bury them deep down to flare up, ruining special occasions for years to come." Jace remarked.
"Hardee har har" Isabelle responded, rolling her eyes.
Jace smirked before tensing as an overwhelming smell of garbage inundated the room. He took a moment and glanced at Clary.
"You alright?" He asked.
Clary bit her lip but gave a tentative little smile. "I think so." She said, a little more confidence in her voice than had been there before.
Jace pulled out his seraph blade and Isabelle unwound the whip from around her wrist. Pounding footfalls approached from around the corner before a Ravener burst out from around the corner. Isabelle struck the venom sac and watched the Ravener collapse and perished. Raum and Spider demons followed and Clary and Jace set on them as an Oni demon followed and Isabella attacked it in that swift manner she had. That left Alec with a Kuri and a Scorprios demon. The Kuri wasn't much of a challenge but the Scorprios was putting up a bit more of a fight. He had just managed to gain the upper hand when something unlike anything Alec had seen before entered the room. Losing focus for just a moment, the Scorprios managed to scrape him on the shoulder. The poison would need to be attended to quickly, but they still had time to finish with the demon in the room.
The only problem was he couldn't take his eyes off of the new demon in the room. He knew full well she was a demon but he couldn't manage to think of anything but how she seemed to emit a sort of music in her very presence. It called to him like a siren song; a siren song; a Siren. That was it. She was a Siren. Even armed with this information, Alec could not raise his hand against her, could not move at all as the facts would have it.
Distantly he could hear Isabelle and Jace shouting at him; could hear Clary asking what was going on. She was approaching him now and he knew she wasn't beautiful; quite the opposite actually. She was really quite hideous with her protruding fangs, talon fingers, greenish skin with every vein visible, and bright red eyes. She should terrify and disgust him but he was frozen, gazing into her horrible eyes. He knew somewhere in his mind that Isabelle was trying to get to him past the injured Scorprios demon and that he should use his seraph blade to attack the Siren and somehow none of it mattered. Jace was running at him full force but the Siren dematerialized and reappeared just behind him.
At first it felt as though she were simply reaching up to caress his face but the Shadowhunter knew better than that, even as she kept him immobile and unable to fight against her will. This was the moment he had always feared. He had failed. He was weak and disappointing. Alec had only one way to retaliate now. Two words managed to escape his lips. "I'm sorry." The Siren's talon ran across his throat and blinding pain tore through him, followed by terror and then a deep tired weakening of his body, his limbs turning to lead and pulling him to the floor. Why was it so cold? But of course he knew the answer to that. Then he felt two warm hands on either side of his face and he looked up to gaze into the familiar cat eyes. There was so much he wanted to say to that person with eyes the eyes that had always managed to see him even when he was invisible to the rest of the world but only a gurgling noise came from his throat with another surge of searing pain.
"Shhh." The voice he knew so well was quiet and gentle at his ear. "It's going to be alright now. I'll fix it. I promise."
Alec focused on using the strength he had left to lift his hand to reach the warm, comforting hand on his cheek. Knowing what he wanted, he felt the fingers of the hand he had held so many nights tangle with his and squeeze reassuringly, because somehow it was reassuring even though he knew it was the end and the world began to dim and wink out around him. He felt lips press comfortably against his and despite the taste of blood in the back of his throat, his mouth was inundated by the sweet flavor of those lips even now. Everything was black now and, as if in an echoing tunnel, he heard the greatest thing he could have ever hoped to hear in this moment; three simple words that made it all bearable somehow,
"I love you."
