Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and you know, all the other crap people put in disclaimers. Rated T. This is "Pandemonium" (The first chapter of city of bones) from Jace's perspective. Enjoy, or don't, I don't really care
Pandemonium
"Get up!" She screamed, slapping at his bare chest. "You stupid idiot, I'm never coming here again."
"Fine by me," Jace said mutinously. He'd had enough of her already. He couldn't even remember the name of the waifish girl he had met at Taki's last night.
"You don't even remember my name do you?" she said with a look of disgust evident on her face. Crap, Jace thought, it was like she could read his mind, although, if she was part fey, like he'd suspected, she may well be able to.
Looking back at last night, at the haze of whiskey, sushi, and what had then seemed her magnetic gaze through the drunkenness, he swore inwardly. There was no such pull in her eyes this morning. Whether part selkie, kelpi, or nixie, it seemed she wanted to behead him with the forcefulness of her stare. She got none too gently out of bed, wearing a pair of panties, a silk bra, and nothing else. He couldn't think, couldn't even recall the events of last night to try to reason with her.
"Are you going to tell me why you're acting like an irate werewolf, or shall I guess instead?" he drawled. It was always like this the morning after. Him not clear on what had happened, her either upset or infatuated with him. He usually preferred the former; it was much easier to get rid of them then.
"You fu-" she started, but Jace was saved from her tirade by the door to his room flinging open, almost knocking the girl to the floor. As it was, she stumbled and nearly fell before he was out of bed. He had caught her and set her on the bed roughly in less than an instant, not wanting physical contact when she was wearing almost nothing. Before, maybe. Now he just wanted her to leave.
Isabelle stood framed in the doorway, wearing a long, white dress and her electrum whip wrapped around her slim waist. The look of amusement she wore could only mean one thing.
"Time to go, Mr. Player." She said with a grin.
"I am not," Jace said loftily, "a player. A player screws multiple girls over at the same time; I kill them softly with my good looks one after the other." But he was grinning as well. They had this well planned out. When she heard shouts coming from whatever room he and his companion were in, she came and interrupted before there were tears on the girl's face and blood on his. He couldn't count how many times he had been smacked to within an inch of his life by a random girl in his bedroom. Well, he thought wryly, maybe not within an inch of my life, but close enough.
As it were, Isabelle looked at the girl with distaste. "A call came in a few minutes ago," she said, speaking to Jace but still staring pointedly at the almost naked girl on the bed, her eyes beseeching, as if she refused to go on in her presence. The dawn light that Jace was expecting turned out to be the late night light of Manhattan. It cascaded around the room, throwing shadows around the three of them and the bright white duvet. It sharpened the planes of the room, making Isabelle look even more dangerous than she usually did.
"I was just leaving." The girl said, Jace suddenly remembered that her name was Kerry, but decided not to mention it for fear of her forgiving him for whatever travesty he had committed while in intoxicated.
"I thought as much," said Isabelle, smirking. "Anyway, Jace" she continued when the girl was safely out of earshot in the bathroom, presumably making herself decent, "we're leaving in fifteen minutes. We're heading to Pandemonium, there were a flock of Eidolon demons spotted and we're free to hunt with everyone else in Idris."
Jace snorted delicately. The Accords would be signed soon, which meant less work for them, in turn meaning less excitement. He wasn't looking forward to this, he was dreading it.
"Fine, I'll be there."
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He met Isabelle and Alec in the lobby of the Institute with twenty seconds of his fifteen minutes to spare. He was dressed in standard shadowhunter garb, the leathery material he knew fit him like a glove, and he enjoyed it.
Alec was dressed his twin, runes included, apart from the weapons he carried. A strong looking bow was strapped across his back and a featherstaff was nestled in his belt.
Jace on the other hand was armed twice as heavily as Alec and Isabelle combined, as usual. He had several daggers hidden around his person, along with two seraph blades, Ithuriel and Samael, arm and leg guards, wrist gauntlets, and his standard demon hunting shoes, black high tops complete silence runes embedded into the soles.
As they set of toward the train, he began to get increasingly excited. The thrill of the hunt always excited him, this was without fail. He fell into the regular practice of saying his blessings to the Angel and thinking back to the lessons his father had taught him years ago. "Get behind them," he used to say. "Get behind them and show no mercy. No matter what they tell you, what they offer you, how much they beg. They don't deserve to live. Leave no trace behind." He had always thought that Michael Wayland was a predatory man. Not ruthless, as many would say, but instead quick and calculated. He never acted without thinking about in length first. Ruthless men would kill without rhyme or reason. "Killing in cold blood," he used to amend, "is not the same as killing without thought or mercy."
His father's voice rang through his head as they drew near Pandemonium. He was on alert, the way he always was in these situations.
The street lights cast an eerie glow around the street. The building was dilapidated and painted a bright, poisonous green. He saw the long snaking line around the front of the club and pitied any mundane who danced inside, the place was a demon attack waiting to happen.
Wrapped in glamour, the three of them waltzed through the front door, past the mundane security guard, and into the pulsating club. House music blasted through the invisible speakers, seeming to come from the walls themselves. All manner of downworlder was present, vampires in the back, drinking suspicious Bloody Mary's, warlocks, impressing counterparts under heavy veils of glamour, and the children of the moon dancing in sweaty congregations.
He stood idly for several moments, taking in his surroundings, something shadowhunters always did in order to gather a forward advantage, when he noticed two mundanes dancing awkwardly near the center of the dance floor. Hardly any of their kind came to Pandemonium, the place usually attracted several homicidal or suicidal human teens a night, true, but these two look perfectly ordinary. They are mundanes, he thought, perhaps they have no sense of self preservation.
But there was something that attracted him to the girl in the duo, she had a shock of ginger hair falling down to her waist, and seemed to be lost in her own mind. No, he thought, she wasn't lost in her head, she was staring after something.
With a slight turn, deftly avoiding a pool of vomit that had collected in the corner where they were standing, he followed her gaze. Ah, he thought, here we go. "Alec!" He had to shut to be heard above the music, he pointed to the demon prowling along one of the darkly painted walls, no doubt looking for some life form to extinguish.
Alec laughed nervously, no matter the weapons he carried or the Marks he bore, he was always more of a student than a demonstrator. He tugged on his sister's arm, saying, "Isabelle, it's your time to shine" with a laugh, but his eyes betrayed his fear. He had never liked the fact that she was the bait, he had said as much before.
"Isn't that all the time?" she said with a sly wink, and crossed the room swiftly.
"Not with me in the room baby." Jace called, but she had already fallen into the crowd.
Jace and Alec, Alec with baited breath and Jace with a bored expression, waited while she caught the attention of the demon, and Jace returned his attention to the girl in the center of the dance floor. She seemed upset at something, but resigned, and he even thought he caught a trace of wistfulness in her stare.
Of course, the demon had disguised itself as a human, and a good looking one at that. Not that teenage boys were his preference, no, that was Alec.
But the demon's gaze was fixed on Isabelle. Jealousy was such a pointless emotion, he had manipulated it many times before, but he felt strangely protective of the mundane girl, as if he could stop her from looking at the creature she was so clearly lusting after.
Rage flared within him, but he remained calm on the outside. Turning away from the mundane girl, he and Alec moved toward the storage closet where Isabelle was beckoning to the monster. It licked it's lips hungrily, and they both slipped inside the room. It didn't seem to notice them straight on his heels.
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He raised his already drawn blade as he and Alec stalked into the room, faintly realizing that Isabelle was talking to the demon. He pulled Alec into the shadows behind a pillar caked in grime, up and over the electric cables that were carelessly strewed cross the floor. This was the part Isabelle liked best, he knew, and he would let her have her fun.
"You're asking me if I come here often?" she giggled, and, in typical Isabelle fashion, covered her hand with her mouth like a coy schoolgirl, letting the sleeve of her dress slip down over her elbow.
This did not escape the notice of the demon, as it shouldn't have; he drew in a sharp intake of breath, seemingly trying to form a coherent thought behind the panic in his eyes. He didn't get the chance. Isabelle dropped a blow to his chest that would have made her mother proud, knocking the demon to the floor. They were behind her in an instant, but she was already prepared for the demon's retaliation. With a sharp flick of her wrist she bound the boy, or rather, the thing, and secured him to the nearest pillar.
Large amounts of dust were upheaved as the boy tried to free himself to no avail. Jace stepped forward, "are there any more with you?" he said calmly, with the same bored expression.
"Any other what?" it replied frostily, but there was blood on the demons wrists and Jace could tell he was weakening.
"Come on now. You know what I am." Jace replied, and copying Isabelle, bared his forearms at the boy.
He seemed to shrink back, not in terror, but in revulsion, and a single word hissed through his lips, "Shadowhunter."
Jace let slip his bored façade and wore a mask of triumph and amusement. "Got you. That's right big boy," he dropped a wink, "And we came just for you."
"Bound his feet, Iz," Alec said lazily, "We can't have him crawling away from us." Jace had to commend him, though he knew his friend well, knew that he was scared, he knew Alec had the cool reflexes of a great warrior in battle. Even though they were only chasing a single demon in a dank hut in a decaying nightclub, he supposed these senses still came in handy.
"So," Jace said tauntingly, "You still haven't told me if there are any other of your kind with you." He began to pace, crossing his arms over his chest to hide the adrenaline coursing through his veins and making his fingers tremble slightly. They had never done so out of fear, only excitement.
"I don't know what you're talking about." The demon boy replied haughtily, but his voice betrayed the pain he felt.
Alec seemed to have lost patience, "He means other demons, you do know what a demon is, don't you?" he said in a bored manner. The thrill of the chase meant nothing to Alec.
"Demons," Jace said, tracing the word in the air to emphasize his point, point being that they had all the time in the world to torture him. "Religiously defined as Hell's denizens, the servants of Satan," he had the pleasure of watching the boy look at him defensively, demons did not correlate around the biblical stories; they usually came to this dimension of their own accord, and tended to get temperamental when people thought otherwise. "But," he continued, "Understood here, for the purposes of the Clave to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension-"
Isabelle cut him off, "That's enough Jace." He hardly thought it was fair, had he not let her have her fun?
"Isabelle's right," Alec amended, shooting him a withering look. Jace responded with a dangerous smile, one he knew attracted girls and terrified boys. It had the intended effect. The demon and Alec both looked paler, Alec sounding slightly more hesitant when he said, "Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics- or demonology."
"Isabelle and Alec think I talk too much, do you think I talk too much?" he said to he boy, whose hair was spiked around his head in a halo of blue. That's ironic, Jace thought, a demon with a halo.
The demon swore, his words sounding like crackling flames, then, in English, it said, "I could give you information, I know where Valentine is." Hatred towards the man who had killed his father, and in turn towards the thing writhing against it's restraints rose up inside him. He looked toward Alec to calm himself, succeeding as Alec turned to him, shrugging. "Valentine's in the ground," he said. "The thing's just toying with us."
Isabelle managed to supremely unconcerned about this piece of potential information. She flipped her hair and said, "Kill it Jace, it's not going to tell us anything."
Jace was glad to comply, he raised his hand, the gleaming seraph blade he was holding throwing contrasts through the small room.
"Valentine is back!" the thing gasped. He was twisting, trying to get further toward the small window set in the roof of the storage room. "All the Infernal Worlds know it-I know it- I can tell you where he is!"
Rage once more swelled within him. He refused to believe this horrible, ugly thing, because it didn't belong in this dimension, because that hit too close to home. His father had taught him to let nothing close to his heart. Show no mercy. No matter what they tell you, what they offer you, how much they beg. They don't deserve to live. Leave no trace behind. His father's words fueled the hate in his tone. "By the Angel! Every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim to know where Valentine is!" And it never fails to anger me, Jace thought. A feeling of self loathing enveloped him. He started flipping the blade between his fingers, a nervous habit of his. "Well," he said, with a devastating grin, "we know where he is. He's in hell. And you, you can join him there."
"STOP!" the voice was not familiar. Jace whirled, so startled that he dropped the blade. He swore, not much surprised him, but this was new. It was the mundane girl he had been watching from the entrance. "You can't do this!" she cried.
Her eyes were frantic, and her expression was of horror, unlike the masks of astonishment that met them from around the room.
"What's this?" Alec hissed, looking at him and Isabelle. Isabelle seemed lost for words, her mouth gaping open. Jace gained his composure faster than the others and responded sarcastically as he usually did in situations that made him uncomfortable, "It's a girl Alec, surely you've seen girls before, your sister Isabelle is one." Isabelle flashed him a look of annoyance that he usually took to mean he was forgiven. But the light tone of his voice didn't match the astonishment he felt. "A mundie girl," he said, his voice softer. "And she can see us."
"Of course I can see you," the girl responded. Her voice was high and clear as a ringing glass, and flecked with annoyance. "I'm not blind you know."
"Oh but you are" Jace said, in that same inexplicably soft voice. He couldn't understand what brought him to speak like this, it couldn't be sheer amazement. He picked his knife up off of the floor, just for something to distract him from her gaze. He straightened up, looking towards her with and expression he hoped didn't show the curiosity he felt. "You better get out of here, if you know what's good for you."
"I'm not going anywhere. If I do," she pointed at the demon, "You'll kill him."
"That's true," Jace said, almost, but not quite apologetically. Her sudden presence had driven thoughts of his father from his mind, but now they were back in full force. He began playing with his seraph blade again, it gave him a sense of normalcy that the girl took from him. A thought occurred to him, "What do you care if I kill him or not?" Maybe she was an enemy of the Clave. He ought to be less trusting.
"Be-Because, you can't just go round killing people!" she spluttered.
Jace smirked, she's clearly just a mundane, and yet this thought perturbed him more than when he had thought she may be an enemy. "You're right," he smirked, "You can't just go around killing people. That's not a person little girl." As he pointed toward the demon on the floor, who still seemed beyond the ability to speak coherently, whether in pain or astonishment, he didn't know, he realized he had no idea what her name was. "It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person." He drew the word "bleed" out until the demon regained its wits, just in time to blanche and avert it's eyes. "But it's a monster."
"Jace," Isabelle said reprovingly. She looked at him and her eyes seemed urgent, like they were cursing him and questioning his motives at the same time. "That's enough."
"You're crazy," the girl said, backing away, toward the far wall and the door. "I've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second." Jace could feel the fear coming off her in waves, and realized with a start that it was because of them, not the demon standing bound behind them.
"She's lying," Alec said doubtfully. "Jace do you-"
But he didn't finish his interruption of Jace's reverie, because the demon, taking advantage of Jace's momentary inattentiveness, tore free of the whip and manacles bounding it, its hands curving into claws, and its sharp teeth bared. It fell upon Jace with a screech, knocking him to the ground. Jace whipped around, flinging himself on top of the boy, he was faintly ware of the girl falling too, as if she were tripping over something. He didn't have time to wonder, because at that moment the demon rolled on top of him, all the while clawing at him, sending blood spurting everywhere. Jace threw an arm up to protect himself and the thing clawed at it, sending a raking pain up his arm.
A flash of gold struck cross his vision and the demon toppled howling, freeing Jace from under it's weight. There was already a seraph blade in his hand as he righted himself, and in one graceful movement he sunk the blade into the boy's chest, right where his heart would be. Blood streamed from the wound, and the demon began to fold in on itself, heading back to whatever hellish dimension it came from.
Jace straightened with a look of disgust. He had never liked this part, everything seeming to implode, leaving nothing of the battle behind but bruises and injuries on his part. He reached down and plucked the knife from between the demons ribs, it was coated from tip to hilt with black blood.
The demon opened it's eyes, and just before disappearing screamed, "So be it. The Forsaken will take you all." Jace half grinned. Let them try, he thought.
He turned around, and realized with a jolt that the girl was still there. Isabelle had apparently had the same notion. She flicked her wrist angrily and caught the girl around the wrist, who had up until then been turning as if to flee.
"Stupid little mundie," she growled. "You could have gotten Jace killed!"
"He's crazy." she said. "You're all crazy. What do you think you are, vigilante killers? The police will-"
"The police usually aren't interested unless you can produce a body." Jace said, though if the police are from Chinatown they might understand, he felt like chuckling darkly under his breath for added effect, thinking of the werewolf encampments in the abandoned precincts, but felt it was somewhat out of place. Holding his injured arm, he walked towards the girl, skirting cables and fallen daggers. He heard Alec trailing him, though he couldn't make himself care. He focused on the girl, now glancing in the direction of the demons disappearance, and said, "They return to their home dimensions when they die. In case you were wondering.
"Jace," Alec said warningly, "Be careful."
"She can see us Alec, she already knows too much." Jace said gingerly. Best not to upset Alec's fragile temperament at a time like this.
Isabelle seemed outraged at his lack of hostility towards the girl, in some part of his mind he realized that she felt how he should, but he couldn't make himself feel anything but raw curiosity. "So what do you want me to do with her?" She said eagerly, she clearly wanted to kill this girl where she stood for disrupting their hunt.
"Let her go." He said, and he was using the same soft voice he had before. Isabelle looked at him angrily as if he had lost his mind, but released the girl from her bindings. The whip slipped away, leaving a circular welt on the girl's wrist. Her incredulity hung in the air, and fueled Jace's curiosity even more. He wondered why he cared. He shouldn't care what happened to her. He should feel the cool distaste that Isabelle clearly felt. But there was something that made him want to calm this girl down and tell her that everything was fine. He didn't.
"Maybe we should bring her back with us," Alec said, and for the second time in five minutes broke Jace out of thoughts of the girl. "I bet Hodge would like to talk to her." Jace was about to protest, Hodge would surely question this girl to the point of breaking, but Isabelle beat him to it.
"No way are we ringing her to the Institute," she said. "She's a mundie." She dragged out the last word like it should pain everyone in the room to hear it.
"Or is she?" said Jace quietly. His curiosity was more than should be warranted, he didn't just want to interrogate this girl, he just wanted to know her answers. "Have you had dealings with demons, little girl?" That was all she was, he told himself. No matter if she could see them. She was just a little girl. He became brusquer when he asked, "Have you walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you-."
But she cut him off, seeming truly angry as she said, "My name is not little girl, and I have no idea what you're talking about." He was just about to ask her what her name was when he realized her voice was doubtful, her eyes seeming to give her hesitance away as she said, "I don't believe in- in demons, or whatever you-"
The door flew open behind her and she whirled around, caught off guard. Jace's gaze flicked upward. The boy she had been dancing with earlier was standing in on the threshold, a look of something, protectiveness for the girl, Jace realized, plastered on his mundane face. With him stood a burly bouncer, his arms roped with muscle, looking tough but whom Jace was sure he could dispatch with one blow if he felt a mind to.
"Clary," the boy said, his voice rough with worry for the girl, for Clary, he corrected himself. Jace found himself wondering against his will whether or not they were romantically linked. "Are you okay? Why are you in here by yourself? What happened to the guys- you know, the ones with the knives?" Jace laughed quietly to himself behind the girl, she had seen two heavily armed teenage boys running through a Manhattan nightclub at midnight and the best she could do was one bouncer? She didn't seem to notice, but she turned around, staring at Jace, Isabelle, and Alec in turn before assuming a resigned look and facing her friend again.
Jace was already halfway to the window, dragging Alec and Isabelle after him, when she spoke again. He knew she had realized that only she could see them and wondered whether she thought she was going crazy or not. Then he thought of the welts Isabelle had left on her wrists, leave no trace behind.
"I thought they went in here," the girl said, "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry."
Isabelle giggled partway to the window, loud enough for Clary to hear. As they crawled through the window and out into the smoggy Manhattan air, one thing ran through Jace's mind. Just her name.
Clary.
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Done, if you guys like it ill continue, if not, then I guess ill figure that out by myself lol don't be TOO harsh though, please, this is the first time ever writing for me, much less posting it on the internet. Hope you liked it, please review and comment on whether you want it to continue.