"Ri, c'mere." The mellow tenor of my voice sounds like an explosion compared to the quiet of my bedroom, a sort of unspoken tension hanging in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife. I've been trained to develop a sixth sense my whole life, and there's something that just isn't right that I can't quite place. It hums in time to the constant whine of the Sensor perched on my desk, levels whirring abnormally high and in relatively close proximity to the Institute. Whatever it is, something's broken through the Wards, it's nearby, and it most likely is not friendly. My brother hovers nervously over the device, already in full gear and seemingly shut off from the rest of the world as his eyes lock onto the fluctuating levels, apprehension visibly swirling behind disks of amber-brown identical to my own. "Riley!"
He starts noticeably, head jerking up in my direction. "Sorry, what?"
"I need you to do these Marks for me," I mumble, throwing my gear down on top of my bed and shrugging off the soft cotton of my v-neck. "I'd rather you Mark me if the levels are going to be acting like that, extra boost on the power from my parabatai doing them and whatnot."
"Yeah, sure, what do you want?" Riley answers, pulling a stele out of his pocket and walking over.
"Strength, Speed, Agility, Stamina, Precision... Equilibrium if you can draw it right and I don't end up falling on my face like I did last time."
"That was an accident!"
"I know, I'm kidding, twerp," I snort, the sound turning into a hiss as the tip of Riley's stele settles between my shoulder blades, a dull burn spreading over my skin in the shape of a Strength rune. I can see him in the reflection of the mirror over my dresser, expression knitted into a look of concentration and eyes riveted on his work from behind the frames of his glasses, but there's a sort of inherent worry etched into his features that I have come to sense both from knowing him my entire life and the permanent Mark seared into both of our forearms. "You're worried."
A few beats of silence, the finishing touch on an Agility rune before the fresh burn of Stamina flares to life on my shoulder. "Yeah. I don't like this, Kae. There's something... off about it."
"You're being paranoid, I'm sure it's nothing," I lie, swallowing my own unease as the last Mark sears under my flesh and Riley takes a step back to get a look at his work. I roll my shoulders slowly, trying to rid them of the lingering ache from that first Strength rune (in a delicious twist of irony Riley's always been good with them, and if it's powerful enough to still be hurting I have no doubt I'd be able to flip a mid-size car now without much exertion) as I scoop up the gear from my bed and slip it on hastily, tight black pants and long-sleeved shirt covered with toughened leather armor emblazoned with defensive runes, shin and arm guards and a breastplate that buckles up the sides. Not enough to stop me from getting eaten alive by a Hydra, but in many cases total safety has to be compromised by ease of movement when it comes to armor. When I look up from buckling my weapons belt into place, the familiar and almost comforting weight of a seraph blade and a set of electrum-bladed throwing knives settling across my hips, Riley is paler than usual and looks for all the world like he might faint. Despite the fact that he is the cause for most of the strife in my life, the golden standard I can never meet, I feel something that isn't quite pity for him so much as indignation at the parents whose expectations have forced us to pretend to be things we're not. I'm supposed to be straight. He's supposed to be the most amazing Shadowhunter the world has ever seen. Neither of us will ever live up to those expectations, so we help each other pretend. Riley keeps my secret with the utmost loyalty, and in exchange I don't begrudge him (or at least I tell myself I don't) taking the credit for any mission's success while any blame is sure to fall on my head, no matter whose fault it actually was. We work like that, I suppose, a functional symbiosis that comes from being brothers and parabatai at once. Not ideal, but functional. It's not so pleasant and it's not so conventional and it sure as hell isn't normal, but we deal.
"Here." My hand closes around his wrist, turning his arm so that the silver-blue latticework of veins beneath the pale skin faces upward, the clear lines of Marks I drew a few minutes ago a stark contrast to his nervous pallor. I fish around in my pocket for my stele, wordlessly pressing it against his pulse point and drawing the gently curving slopes of a Serenity rune there. "Can't have you slipping into a nervous breakdown for no good reason. It's not good for your scintillating reputation."
I make sure not to let him see the smirk slip from my face as he leaves the room, and I certainly make sure he doesn't see me rucking up my sleeve and carving the same Mark into my own wrist. While worry is something that comes with the territory of Riley Lightwood, it's something I cannot afford.
"Where's Gal and Jake?" I ask, thrown off by the fact that only Kiera and Avon's silhouettes await Riley and I as we step out of the Institute's doors.
"Guard duty," Kiera replies, looking startlingly different with her untamed curls pulled back in a tight braid that keeps them out of the way, boredly twirling a sai dagger between her fingers. "Just us four on this one. Ain't life grand?"
I snort lightly, sharing a smirk with Kiera before pulling the still-thrumming Sensor out of my belt. "They're missing out. Looks like a big one, not too far from here, north a few blocks, up around Dearborn Station, probably. Shall we?"
The Sensor hums in my hand with increasing frequency the farther we travel, finally bursting into a paroxysm of activity by the time the four of us reach the old rail station, practically wailing the closer we get to the mouth of a darkened alleyway. Sighing, I switch the device off, sticking it back in my belt and pulling out one of the electrum daggers. While we're all Stealth-marked and glamored within an inch of our life, even the stupidest mundanes might notice the angel-light of a seraph blade blazing in the middle of the street, despite the fact that it's almost three in the morning and the area is virtually abandoned. I grumble something vague about wishing I'd used a Night Vision Mark before we left, squinting into the shadows while hurriedly scrawling the rune over the permanent Voyance mark on the back of my hand. In an instant the darkness comes into focus, a single, weak-looking form writhing in the depths. "What the hell?"
"What is it?" Avon asks sharply, singers flitting over the hilt of a delicately curved electrum falchion at her hip. "Do I need to go get Gal and Jake for backup?"
"No, that's the thing," I reply, confusion etched into my face as I pull the Sensor out of my belt again, turning it on briefly and feeling it go apoplectic in my hand, the levels far too high for what I see in front of me. Scoffing irritably, I switch it off and put it back in place. "It's just a Croucher Demon. A tiny one. But the readings... this Sensor must be on the fritz. Goddammit, we came out here for nothing. Kiera, want to take care of this?"
"On it," she says with a nod and a feral grin, pulling one of the sais out of her belt and trotting into the shadows with her braid swinging behind her like a banner on the wind. That nagging sense of something being wrong is back again, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end as Kiera closes in on the demon's huddled form, unusually still in the alley - Crouchers are about as stupid as they come, but they're still smart enough to run when they see a Nephilim coming at them with a weapon out. The odd sense of impending doom, the faulty Sensor, the little demon sitting there almost like it's daring us to come get it... None of this adds up.
"Kiera, wait!" She stops about ten yards short of the thing, the thin blade of her knife already drawn back in preparation for the blow. Kiera turns briefly and looks at me with an expression of utmost annoyance, but I brush it off in favor of jogging down the alley after her, Riley and Avon close behind. The four of us must look like a collective of the stupidest Shadowhunters ever, standing in a semicircle engaging in a stare-down with a demon that isn't even capable of anything more than a simple thought process. The other three look at me with expressions ranging from confusion to irritation - Riley with the former, Kiera with the latter and Avon somewhere in between - seeking an explanation as to why I'm holding this up. "I don't like this. Why isn't it running?"
"Because it's a Croucher and it's dumber than a fucking stump?" Kiera snarls, glaring at me through narrowed eyes. "Now move over and let me kill the damn thing so we can go home."
"But the Sensor -"
"You said the Sensor was broken," Avon pipes up in her neutral monotone of an alto, clearly as ready to get this over with as her parabatai.
"Since when do Sensors just break,though?" I say with more than a hint of exasperation, brandishing the aforementioned device in the hand that isn't holding my knife. "They're magically engineered, it's not like the battery's dying. Whatever's going on here, that thing's baiting us. It wants us to get within range to attack it for a reason."
"Don't be an idiot, Kae, Crouchers aren't smart enough to strategize like that."
"Then explain this." I readjust my grip on the knife, holding the blade in a position to throw it and drawing my arm back, taking careful aim, the Precision rune on my upper back flaring to life. The little demon has a fleeting spark of realization in its beady eyes and immediately turns tail, running down the alley. The Strength and Speed Marks that Riley drew flare into existence as well as my arm snaps forward, sending the knife pinwheeling through the air and burying itself in the Croucher's skull with a sickening squish for a split second before the demon dematerializes in a shower of inchor. "It ran when it figured out I was going to throw the knife, but it was sitting there waiting for you, Kiera. Why is that?"
Kiera scowls, but doesn't offer anything in response, knowing that I was right about there being more going on here than just a screwy Sensor and an exceptionally idiotic demon. Speaking of the Sensor, I pull it out again, switching it on and noting grimly that it's still all but shrieking at the amount of demonic energy in the immediate vicinity. "All right, let's figure out what's really happening. Everyone fan out, but stay a few yards clear of where that demon was sitting. Avon, cover the alley entrance. Riley, be a doll and go fetch my knife. Kiera, see if you can get up to that rooftop and give us an aerial view. I'm going to look around down here and see if I can find some kind of dimensional rift that might be causing the spike in the readings. Ready, set, go."
Everyone launches into motion, Avon headed back to where the streetlights gleam at the end of the alley, Riley carefully skirting around where the Croucher had been sitting and chasing after the faint glimmer of my dagger's blade in the darkness, Kiera doing a graceful one-two vault onto the top of a nearby dumpster and then up to the roof of the old railway station. Content that the rest of them are now reasonably out of harm's way, I shuffle a bit closer to the demon's perch, hunkering down until I'm at what would be its eye level and surveying the area carefully. No trip wires, no telltale haze in the air that would note a dimensional rift or a Portal, nothing out of the ordinary to speak of... but there!A smaller alley branching off of the main one, winding off into the darkness with such a distinct air of malice emanating from it that I don't need the wailing of the Sensor to tell me that this is where our anomaly is stemming from. Eyes narrowing speculatively, I straighten back up into a standing position and take a few steps down the little alley, definitive chills rocking me to the core. The shadows seems to shift, to whisper, and although I know it's probably all in my head it unnerves me nonetheless. Kiera shouts something that sounds like a question from the rooftop, but it sounds muffled and far-away, like she's standing at the bottom of a well. With every step I take the alley grows darker, to the point I can't see where I'm going, and I stop to dig around in my hip pouch with a grumble, fingers closing around a smooth stone surface.
Something terrifying finally hits me as the witchlight flares to life in my hand, barely making a dent in the inky darkness. I have a Night Vision Mark. There is no earthly darkness that I shouldn't be able to see through. And if this is no earthly darkness... Slowly, apprehensively, I look up into the small circle of illumination cast by the witchlight, only to see its glimmer reflected into hundreds of pairs of eyes.
"Out..." I try to shout, but it comes out as more of a terrified croak, my Fortitude rune taking longer than it should to kick in enough for me to find my courage and my voice, turning on my heel and sprinting out of the side alley as fast as my legs will carry me. "Out! Everybody out!That thing has friends!"
They're hot on my heels when I re-emerge into the main alleyway - more demons than can easily be counted at first glance, mostly Molochs and Kuris, but I know for a fact that the biggest goddamn Scorpios Demon I've ever seen in my life is in the throng somewhere. The night instantly explodes into a torrent of unearthly shrieks and battle cries and a single, rather girlish scream of terror. Oh for the love of the Angel, Riley, man up, I think with an eye roll as I whirl around to face the closet Kuri Demon, all slinking and black with a million legs, the hilt of my dormant seraph blade steady in my hand. "Habniel!"
The blade flares to life in a blindingly bright streak of angelic energy, slicing cleanly through the Kuri's neck before it has time to react, dissolving into inchor and a cloud of sulphur-scented vapor. After that, I fall into a steady pattern - see, aim, kill. There isn't much I'm good for in the world, but I'm a damn good Shadowhunter. Fighting is as easy as breathing, and there's a sort of freedom in it that I crave in my long days of oppression in a home where I can'tfight back. At first the volume of demons crowding the alley is so thick that I can't see the others through the chaos, but after a minute or so I manage to spot Avon carving out her own niche, seraph blade in one hand and the electrum sword in the other. Cutting down demons as I go, I make it to my sister's side within a few seconds, standing back to back with her and swiping at a Moloch that comes flying in my direction. A rage-filled roar of a battle cry resounds from a few yards away, and I see three or four demons go flying backward through the air before exploding out of existence. I smirk darkly, cutting another Kuri out of the air. "Kiera's doing all right, then. Have you seen Riley?"
"Last I saw of him he was on the far end of the alley fighting one of those big Raveners." Even though she can't see my face, Avon must instinctively know the color has drained from it. "He was holding his own though; pretty sure I saw him take it down before I lost sight of him. Go find him, I'll cover you."
She must do a good job of it, because I manage to make it through the chaos mostly un-accosted except for a single Moloch demon that manages to land a swipe on me with its claws, shearing away the fabric of my shirt and opening a long gash down my arm before I cut it down with a backhanded swing. Everything is confusion and it's nearly impossible to make sense of anything I see, but just ahead I spot the bright arc of a seraph blade carving through the air. A particularly big Kuri falls to the grown and explodes, revealing the boy who ended it, white-as-a-sheet face and messy hair with glasses askew, a small cut bleeding freely on his forehead but otherwise looking none the worse for wear. "Not bad, Ri! How many was that one?"
He looks at me like I must be insane (I probably am, but it's more fun this way) for turning this into something where we keep score. "Three."
"Amateur. I'm on twenty-seven... twenty-eight! Step it up or else be ready to face - twenty-nine! - all sorts of taunting from m- on your left!" That huge Scorpios Demon, the one I had seen back in the side alley, is closing in on Riley with absolutely unreal speed, barbed tail with a stinger comparable to a decent-sized piece of metal piping reared back and ready to strike. Riley's head darts to the side, eyes widening, but I can already see from my vantage point that it's too late. He won't have time to turn, won't even have time to raise his blade. For some insane reason, I think fleetingly of what my mother told me the day before Riley and I took our Parabatai Oath. He's your little brother. It's your job to make sure he's safe. If you're good for one thing, it's protecting him.
I move so fast that the Speed rune flares once and then dies out, completely spent, knocking into Riley hard enough that he flies backward into the wall of the alley with a whoosh of an exhalation as the air is knocked out of him. Now it's me who doesn't have time to react, who can't even think as that huge Scorpios Demon closes the final inches between us lightning-fast and the most agonizing pain rips through my whole body, a scream so painful that it doesn't even sound human tearing out of my throat even as I jam my seraph blade into the demon's torso and it disappears back to the void from whence it came.
The world is silent and murky, my vision fraying at the edges as I sway on my feet. Riley swims into my view, hazy and distorted, shouting something I can't hear as the earth seems to tilt sharply and I stagger, finally looking down at the demon stinger jammed through my chest, poison sizzling at the rune-marked armor there like it's nothing more than paper. I blink sluggishly, my mind refusing to work, eyes crawling from the stinger to Riley to the puddle of inchor where the Scorpios Demon had been a second ago.
"Thirty," I whisper just before the world goes black.
"Don't just stand there!"
"What am I supposed to do!?"
"You're supposed to fucking Mark him, you dolt! You're his goddamned parabatai, your iratzes will work better than ours!"
Consciousness returns in bits and pieces, the first inkling of it nothing but faraway voices swirling in the darkness: Avon, Riley, Kiera. That's how I know I'm not dead, at least not yet.I feel like I'm outside of my own body, only the phantom pressure of a stele against skin that isn't really mine, still trapped in the cataclysmic blackness behind my eyelids.
"How the hell is he alive? If the injury didn't kill him the poison should have."
"The stinger didn't puncture his lung, it went through under the diaphragm. heavy bleeding, definitely, ruptured spleen, most likely, but that's a hell of a lot easier to deal with than a busted lung. Armor must have taken care of most of the poison. See, the runes on his breastplate are all used up."
"I didn't see, it all happened so fast... hey, he's waking up!"
A phantom breath, a phantom mutter over lips that aren't really mine, and then suddenly they are. My eyelids snap open to the smog-filled haze of the Chicago night sky, and for two seconds, everything seems blissfully peaceful. And then the pain hits.
The sound that comes out of me is somewhere between a scream and a sob, white-hot agony searing in my veins to the point that I can't breathe, can't think, can't remember my name or where I am or what I've done, only that I want it to stop hurting please stop oh god please.More of that phantom pressure, my skin is no longer my own because no body can possibly hold this much agony, and then it dissipates. Doesn't disappear by any means, I still feel like I'm being ripped open from the inside out, but it becomes manageable enough that I see faces hovering in my hazy field of vision, Avon's face a hardened mask of worry and Riley looking utterly horrified, eyes wide behind his glasses frames. "Kae? Kae, by the Angel, I thought you were... are you all right?"
"I've been better," I croak, even the effort of speaking sending a stab of pain that radiates through my whole body. There is no stinger protruding from my chest anymore. In its place, there is now Kiera, pressing bundles of cloth to a ragged wound that come away saturated in red faster than I would have thought possible.
She looks up at Avon grimly, face kept carefully impassive. "We've got to get him back to the Institute. There's not much we can do for him here. Think you can stand, Kae?"
"No."
"Excellent. Up you get." I'm hauled to my feet and that's all it takes to bring on another blinding paroxysm of pain that lasts until another Mark is scrawled across my skin. I can't breathe and my face feels wet and nothing makes sense, but by some miracle I manage to move enough on my own that Kiera and Avon don't have to literally drag me back through the street, each step giving way to a sob, my body going through Painless runes so fast that they have to stop at least once every minute to let Riley draw a new one. An hour ago, I could have sworn that I hated the Institute, loathed the stone walls and everything within them with every fiber of my being, but now I have never been so happy to see it in my life. The stairs are the hardest part, the last of the super-charged Strength rune flickering out and sending my legs buckling beneath me, no longer capable of supporting my own measly weight. There's another blank lost under the white noise of misery, Avon's whispered mantra of I'm sorry I'm so so sorry it's almost over we're almost therethe only thing tethering me to reality as they find some way to haul me up to the door, Riley clambering up in time to draw another Mark to steal some of my pain as the doors open. My mother and Casper are standing inside, not nearly expecting the sight they are greeted with.
"What took so long? I know the levels were fluctuating, but - oh, by the Angel." Even through the searing misery of demon poison licking away at my veins, I find myself latched onto the worry in my mother's eyes, near frantic as she steps toward me with arms outstretched. Could it be that after everything I've been through, everything that made me believe otherwise, she actually does care? I latch onto that worry and hold it close, strengthened more by the impossible idea that the tears brimming in her eyes represents than any Mark could ever do for me. "My baby boy..."
"Mom..." I half-whisper, hating how lost and quite literally wounded I sound, slumped against the sturdy structure of Avon's frame as my own crimson essence drips in a splattered rain across the tile. It takes effort, so much effort, but I manage to reach out for her just as she runs right past me.
"Riley, sweetheart, oh my God, your head,that awful cut! What happened?!" My heart falls. After years of this, you'd think I would know better than to hope.
It may be the first time in my life I have ever seen Riley look truly disgusted. "Mom, are you kidding?! Forget my head, Kaelen's bleeding to death! We need to get him to the infirmary, someone needs to call the Silent Brothers, we need to -"
"I hardly think we need to bring the Brothers into it, he'll be fine," Casper cuts him off, eyes steely-blue and coldly surveying the carnage that's just fallen through his door.
"But Dad -"
"You're overreacting, Riley, he'll be fine.What I'd like to know is how this debacle happened."
I realize that he's looking at me when he says this. Riley sputters incoherently, forever unable to speak up for himself, Kiera is in a barely-controlled state of rage that she knows will break if she opens her mouth and Avon has shifted to her default, silent deadpan, finding it easier to turn herself to stone than deal with the man who taught her to do so. Gritting my teeth against the encroaching pain that comes with the fading Mark, I try to make it as short of a story as possible. "Set-up... only saw one demon in the alley and knew something was up, got the others out of the way and went looking myself... hundreds, Casper, I've never seen so many... Huge Scorpios was coming at Riley and I knocked him out of the way."
"You led your team down an alley with demonic energy levels that high without calling for backup?"
"There wasn't time -"
"Oh, and I'll wager you thought you'd look so good,coming back with that kind of victory under your belt. You could have very well gotten them all killed with your stupid publicity stunt, Kaelen."
"But I wasn't -"
"When are you going to grow up and realize that your teammates' lives, your brother's lifeis worth more than you getting the chance to rest on your laurels?!" Casper snaps, his glare every bit as icy as mine has grown to be. "I don't know why we keep hoping you're going to get better. You're a disappointment."
The Mark finally gives out, and I collapse into another fit of screamingsobbingbeggingfor it to stop, Riley flying across the room in a flash and drawing yet another. When my vision swims back into focus, Casper looks none to impressed, and my mother is still fretting over the cut on Riley's forehead. "Take him up to the infirmary. He'll be fine once the poison works its way out of his system and the healing runes kick in."
Kiera calls Casper every rude thing imaginable (along with some titles I think she made up on the spot) under her breath as she and Avon haul me back the main hallway and onto the elevator, the quiet sound of whirring gears and faint muttered curses and my ragged, wheezing breaths forming into a sort of cacophonous symphony of almost-silence. The girls manage to get me into the infirmary with little trouble, leaving me with Riley to help me get out of my ruined gear and get the wound properly bandaged.
"I am so sorry," he says softly, pressing a cloth soaked in antivenom that stings like an absolute bitch over the puncture wound.
"Trust me, it doesn't hurt as bad as the poison when those pain runes wear off."
"No," Riley shakes his head, reaching up on a shelf for a clean roll of bandages. "I mean about my dad. About not seeing the stupid demon in the first place. About everything, I guess."
"It's okay. I'm used to it," I mutter, wincing as the tension of the bandages presses against the wound.
"You shouldn't have to be."
For something so simple, it strikes a chord somewhere in me. I don't do affection, any expression of caring from me is rarer than a blue moon, but although it causes a twinge of agony to move in the slightest I reach forward and grasp his forearm against mine, the same way we did in our parabatai ceremony. "No, I shouldn't. But the fact that someone else thinks that makes it a lot more bearable. I know you think I'm only your parabatai because it's what Mom wanted, but I'll tell you something, Ri."
It takes a ridiculous amount of effort, but I manage to call a real, genuine smile to pull at the corner of my lips. "When I shoved you out of that thing's path, I didn't do it for Mom. I did it for you."
Riley blinks a few times, agape, like he doesn't quite know what to say. So instead of speaking, he picks his stele up off the bedside table and draws a fresh Painless rune on my arm, followed by the complicated Mark for Sleep.
As the last of my consciousness slips away, I could swear I hear a quiet thank you.
A/N: Thanks for reading, and as always, reviews are appreciated! If you're interested, this was written for Until The Sun Goes Down, a Mortal Instruments RPG that I run. If you'd like to go check it out, come visit us at .com (yes, without the 'n' at the end. Yours truly was stupid and screwed up the url).