HEY GUYS! So here is the first chapter of my first Mortal Instruments story! Please review, and I'll keep writing! You guys are awesome :D
Chapter 1
Clary Fray
"Dry your eyes, don't be afraid."
-Dashboard Confessional
Jace held the door for me.
"Thank you." I said, and we entered the lobby of the building. The ceilings were several floors high, balconies from each floor seemed to be protruding from the walls. My Converse squeaked on the marble floor, my hair rustled from the air conditioning. The chandelier was beautiful glass, bending and twisting into elegant arcs around the several witchlight runestones, a juxtaposition of the two things I thought of most when I thought of this building. Beauty and grace, contrasted with the hard rock of battle.
He wrapped an arm around my waist and lowered his lips to my ear. "It's going to be fine."
"No it's not." I whispered, and we proceeded toward the desk in silence.
"How many times do we have to tell you?" Jace said, looking angrily up at the man in the dark suit. They'd strapped him down after he'd tried to jump at the man, and he wasn't happy about it. "I didn't know she was related to him."
I watched through the one way glass, willing myself not to cry. "Can I please talk to him?" I asked the woman who stood guard at the door once again. Her arms were inked all over with runes, like she was going into battle. Like I was capable of anything like that. If this didn't go well, all of my training would have been for nothing anyway.
"I'm sorry Miss. Morgenstern, but I can't allow that."
"Stop calling that. That isn't my name."
"What would you prefer to be called?" She looked genuinely interested.
"Clary. Clary Fray."
"Of course," She paused, "Clary."
"So can I."
She sighed. "I'll see what I can do." She disappeared through a door and appeared in the dark room where they were holding Jace a few moments later. She whispered something to the man in the suit. He nodded, and the woman loosened Jace's ties enough so he could pull his hands out. He didn't take his eyes off them, looking like he would murder someone. The woman said something too soft for me to hear, and Jace dashed for the door.
A second later he was in the room with me, pulling me into an embrace like he was trying to pull me into him, make us one person.
"Are they letting you go?"
"For now. We can go home, but they want us back tomorrow, and they want to talk to you."
I grimaced.
"We can get out of here. We can go back to New York, we can stay at your mom and Luke's." He spoke in a soft, rushed tone.
"No. That's like admitting we know where he is. And you know we can't get out of here without them knowing." I took his wrists and frowned, pulling out my stele and drawing a small healing rune on each of the abrasions from pulling at the straps. They began to heal slowly.
"They didn't hurt."
I smiled. "Of course not. Let's go home." I said, taking his hand and pulling him towards the door. I opened it to the familiar corridor we had come from, several guards stationed at doorways. They stared as we passed. The daughter of Valentine Morgenstern and his angelic creation together was good gossip, I suppose. I laughed under my breath as I walked, thinking of gossip- such a trivial thing at a time like this. Shadowhunters being pulled from their stations back to Idris to guard the Glass City. We all knew what was brewing past the borders, on every continent, in every country. We all knew we were the world's last defense.
"Look Clary-" Jace said to me as we stepped outside. I shivered in the October air. "We need to get out of here. We need to get Isabelle and Alec, and go back to New York. There's nothing for us here."
"There's the future of the Nephilium, Jace, there's nothing for us in New York but demons and rogue downworlders."
"The future is out there, with Valentine." He pointed towards the front gates and the forests ."So we go somewhere else. We're of no use here. They'll only let Alec fight, the rest of us are too young. We're better out in the world trying to find him. There is nothing for us to do here but answer questions they already know the answers to."
"I got a letter yesterday." I said. "It was from him."
"What?" He spun and stopped me. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want you to overreact."
"We can put a trace on it."
"He'll have thought of that."
"It's a place to start." His golden hair blew around his face. I stood up on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his.
"Fine."
We hurried back to the house we were renting with the Lightwoods, down three blocks and to the left. It was a small white house, with three bedrooms. It was one of those old houses with fireplaces in every room. Isabelle and I shared a room, while Jace and Alec shared one. Their parents had the last, but I hadn't seen them in days. They were always in and out of meetings, leaving early and coming home far past the time we had all gone upstairs. They were ghosts, sharing the house, but never present. Isabelle was curled up on the couch when we entered, a book balanced on one of her knees. Alec was nowhere to be found.
"Isabelle?" I said, and she raised her head.
Her beautiful face stared at me. "Yes?"
"We're leaving."
"Well it's about time you agreed to it." She said, standing up and smoothing out the wrinkles in her short black skirt. She wore fishnet tights with it and I could see several daggers sticking out of her boots. Her whip was wrapped around her wrist- she was ready to go.
"What do you mean?" I asked, looking around the room for Jace to clarify. He was gone, presumably upstairs to find Alec.
"Jace has been on us for days now. He just needed you to agree to make the portal."
I shook my head. "Of course he did."
I hurried up the stairs and threw all of my clothes into one of Isabelle's may patterned duffel bags that were piled neatly on her bed. I sighed and pulled out the trunk full of weapons from the closet. Isabelle had left mine, but had packed hers. I grabbed two daggers, a sensor, and my extra stele. I shoved one dagger in my pocket, another in my jacket pocket. I shoved the two steles in my back pocket and pulled my hair into a ponytail. Isabelle had straightened it this morning, and the strands kept falling into my face. I lugged Isabelle's bags to the stairs landing, where they each got kicked down the stairs despite Isabelle's protests.
When I got downstairs, everyone's things were set up along an empty wall, and Jace, Alec, and Isabelle were gathered in the kitchen.
"Okay," Jace said, coming towards me. "Let me see that letter."
"Do we really have to read it?"
"Clary it's going to help us find him." He stood in front of me, staring intently down into my eyes. "Don't you want to find him?"
I dug into my pocket and pulled out the paper, folded into eighths and creased thoroughly. I handed it to him, and he slowly unfolded it. The cursive was slanted and smudged- he was left handed. It was written in black ink on old fashioned paper.
Clarissa,
Don't forget who you are. You're my creation. I will find you, and utilize your talents to the best of my ability. Too bad your Jace can't protect a treasure that isn't his. I'll find you, my daughter, and you will help me, whether you wish to or not. I cannot forgive your betrayal.
Your Father
"Clary why didn't you tell me about this?" Jace said through his teeth, his hands curling into fists and wrinkling the paper.
"It didn't seem important- we're here, safe in Alicante with every shadowhunter protecting the city, there's no one who can get in here without permission."
"This isn't anyone, this is Valentine. This man will stop and nothing to harness your abilities. He's going to break in and take over, and he's going to take you prisoner and kill everyone who doesn't go along with him." He gripped my wrist and stared deeply into my eyes. "I have this idea I can't get out of my head that you're the center of his whole plot." I saw that this was one of the rare times I ever got to see Jace's real self under all the walls he put up. He lowered his voice. "I need to find him now."
"You?"
"I can't take you with me knowing he's going to be hunting you every second we are outside of Idris."
"But he'll think we're here. It's better to get out of here. Jace- you have to trust me."
"Will you stop?" Isabelle interrupted. "Clary's coming, Jace, there's nothing you can do."
"I could tie her to something."
I glared and hit him on the arm. "No you wouldn't. You'd miss me."
"I don't know." He said, grinning and resting his hands on my hips. "I don't think I would." He pulled me up towards him, our lips about to touch…
And I quickly maneuvered away from him and pinned him on the floor. He was so caught off guard I almost laughed. "Maybe I will miss you." He laughed and pinned me on my back, then helped me up. "Come on." I patted the wall. "Draw us that portal."
I took my stele from my pocket, engraved all over with designs of angels and swords, and started drawing the swirling pattern into the wall. The paint peeled back as the black marks appeared, and after a few moments of concentration, it was done. Isabelle grabbed two of her bags in her arms and gracefully jumped through the portal, her long black hair was the last I saw of her. Next went Alec, then Jace and I threw all the bags through the portal. I don't know what Isabelle planned to do with all of her things, but Jace and Alec shared just one bag together. Jace took my arm, and we jumped in together, falling through the black abyss until I felt that we were falling down and not just falling. I landed next to Jace at Isabelle's feet in a large field.
The grass was entirely green, and the ground was spotted with white and yellow flowers. The sun bright, but not high, indicating it was later in the afternoon, and there were few clouds in the sky. It was cold, however, and I found myself digging through one of Isabelle's bags and pulling out an old sweatshirt. I noticed the scent of fall and realized we couldn't be far from Idris. It felt like early October back in New York, and as we picked up and began to carry our bags, the wind started to blow. "Where are we?" I asked, walking next to Isabelle behind the boys.
"Outside of Bari, Italia." She said, punctuating her words with hand gestures like an Italian.
"Il primo posto per iniziare la ricerca di Valentino." Jace said in fluent Italian, not looking behind himself. He grinned as he crested the top of a hill, and we all stopped to admire the city. The old buildings and blue water were beautiful, but I had no idea what he had said.
"The first place to look for Valentine," Alec translated for me. "This is his second favorite city on earth."
"We used to come here all the time." Jace said, staring at the blue water and the boats coasting along the shore. "He loved this place. No better city to start in, other than Alicante."
We all stared down at the old streets, the ancient buildings, and the rocky coast. No better place to start.
We in the city in an hour, and Jace was arguing with an Italian man who was renting boats. I couldn't understand anything, but I found entertainment sketching the architecture around the square. The outline of a building was almost finished when Isabelle sat next to me on the old wooden bench. "I've always wondered why some people get things like artistic talent, and others don't."
"You can teach someone to draw. I can teach you." I didn't take my eyes off the paper. A smudge there, a few straight lines, the arch of a window, the reflection of the water, and the addition of a person walking through the door made it perfect. By instinct, I signed my name at the bottom and flipped to the next page.
"No, I have no talent at all." I turned to look at her, and was surprised by the light hitting her hair, the darkness of her eyes, and I froze.
"Don't move." I said, getting off the bench and sitting against an old stone wall across from her. "Stay right there." And I began to draw. "It starts with a sketch." I said, drawing the outline of her jaw, the gentle waves of her hair. "And then you fill it in, and draw the shadows, and…" I trailed off, drawing the shape of her eye, filling it in with only a slightly lighter shade than her hair. We sat in silence a few minutes, Jace's argument filtering over. He said a few things the man seemed to take umbrage at, but I didn't pay much attention.
"I've never wondered about talent." I said as I started on the other eye. "I wonder about beauty."
"Don't get all sappy on me Clary Fray. The grass is always greener."
"But don't you ever wonder?" I asked. "How someone can look like you, and how someone can look like me?"
"You say that like you're ugly."
I didn't respond, I was drawing the curl of her lips and the shadow where they met. She wore bright red lipstick, and I dug into a bag until I found a single red colored pencil, and shaded in her full lips.
"Its genetics Clary, you should know that better than I do, you went to a regular American school."
"I don't know what I know anymore. Angels, Demons, Nephilium, and the Downworld tend to change your view on everything. It just doesn't make sense sometimes."
"Ladies." Jace said, interrupting. "We have a boat." He held a pair of keys in one hand and a form in the other. He pointed to the docks.
When Jace said a boat, he really meant a yacht. Three floors, all white, four different bedrooms, larger than those at the institute. It was like a mansion. My bedroom, I found, had a king sized bed, a large vanity table, and a porch. I opened the screen doors and stepped outside, looking out at the water that was so different from the water at home. No Hudson water here, far from it. I continued down the hall and found Isabelle's room, and the next room over, Jace's. He wasn't there. I went up the grand staircase, and found the rest of the living space. The kitchen was large and the living room was so big we each could lie down on our own couch and be completely comfortable. And I think the place that Jace enjoyed the most, was the control tower. It was raised above the deck with one spiral staircase. As we roamed about, I found him up there, playing with the controls and sitting in the Capitan's chair.
"Hey." I said, and he turned around.
"Hey." He responded, gesturing for me to sit next to him.
"Do you think we'll find him?" I said after a moment.
"No. I don't think he's here."
"Is that why you got us a boat?"
"Portable, and big enough to keep all of Isabelle's things in, and I've always thought boats were cool. I mean, how irresistable am I in this captain's chair."
"Somehow, I am able to resist." Said a voice, coming from behind us. Isabelle. She held a large folded object, and she unfolded it, placing it against the wall and drawing a binding rune on each corner. It was a map, and it stuck to the wall like she had used tape. She produced a marker from her back pocket and un-capped it. Only then did I realize this world map was one of the actual world, not the mundane world. Idris was on the map, and for some reason there was a large island off the coast of Greenland. I decided not to ask. Isabelle took the marker and wrote a large red 'x' over Alicante. She stood back and studied the map, every small place Valentine could be. "This is gonna take a while." She sighed, then produced another marker as her brother walked up the steps. "Any ideas?" She asked him.
Alec listed several other cities, one on the unidentified island, three in North America, Jace added two more in Europe, and Isabelle added one in Asia and one in Australia. In the end we had nine cities to check including where we were now, and those were just our first ideas. Isabelle circled each area in green marker.
"We're hopeless." I said, hugging my knees close to my chest.
"Not hopeless." Jace replied. "Just in over our heads."
"Jace finally admits we have no idea what we're doing." Alec said, studying the map.
"I say we stay here until nightfall." Isabelle said. "There's plenty to do." She grinned down at the pool and hot tub on the main deck.
"Fine." Jace said, and Alec and I nodded.
"Come on Clary, I'll lend you a bathing suit." She pulled my by my wrist, and I shot a look at Jace and mouthed 'help me!'
He just smiled and shook his head. "I'll see you down there."
Isabelle pulled me to her room, saying something to herself about which bikini would look best on me. "Isabelle, I do have my own bathing suit."
"No you don't." She said, digging through her dresser. Apparently she'd already unpacked.
"What do you mean?" I asked, starting to run towards my room and my favorite one piece.
"I destroyed it before we left. It's not there."
"Come on, Isabelle, really?"
"Yes really." She held out two bathing suits to me- one black strapless one with rhinestones in the middle of the top, and the other was green and seemed to be made of triangles of fabric. I went into the bathroom and tried on the green one first, quickly taking it off when I saw how ridiculous I looked in it, and then I pulled on the black one, which wasn't bad. I studied myself in the mirror. I looked like I had some cleavage, and some kind of figure. I stepped out of the bathroom and found Isabelle in a bikini similar to the one I tried on first, but it was maroon and complimented her skin tone perfectly.
"I knew you'd choose that one." She said, smiling. "And damn, Clary, you look hot." I felt myself blushing, and she quickly did her hair while I studied myself in the mirror. My carroty hair didn't look nearly as bright against the black, and I could see the few marks I had along with the scars of the marks along my skin.
"Stop staring at yourself, Clary, the boys are waiting." She started down the hall and up the stairs, her long black hair flowing behind her like a sheet. Ifonlymyhairlookedlikethat. I thought, touching my red hair self-consciously. I followed her to the hot tub, which was next to the pool and the water flowed over like a waterfall. Jace and Alec were playing with dials on the wall next to it, and they looked behind them when they heard me coming (Isabelle had silence runes on the soles of her feet- I should ask her about those).
Jace blinked, as if not knowing what he was seeing. He then proceeded to grin and stare. He walked over to me, his eyes sizing me up. "You look-" He started, but he never finished that sentence because at that moment Alec and Isabelle pushed us both in the pool, and Jace pulled me into his arms in midair and we splashed into the pool. We came to the surface and I glared at the siblings. "I had to leave Matthew at home, and Alec had to leave Magnus in New York. We don't want to watch you being all into each other. You stay there, we'll be in the hot tub." And with that Isabelle climbed the few steps into the hot tub and sank in, contenting herself with the hot water. Alec soon followed and Jace and I stared at each other, then started laughing.
I couldn't touch the bottom of the pool, so I treaded water and Jace and I talked- just talked. After a while, I got tired of treading water and we sat next to each other on an underwater bench by the waterfall.
"Clary?" He said, tracing lines all over my hands and wrists, like large runes that meant meaningless things.
"Yeah?"
He didn't respond to me, just brought his lips to mine and kissed me. It started off light and simple, then became more passionate, and his lips pressed harder on mine and his fingers twined in my hair. When we finally came up for air, our foreheads rested against each other, his golden eyes glinting. "I like that bathing suit- don't give it back to Isabelle."
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