Chapter 1 – In the beginning

Disclaimer: I do not own Mortal Instruments.

Jace POV

The scent of pizza wafting from the Institute's kitchen roused me from my sleep. I turned lazily on the bed, taking my blankets with me as I misjudged the distance of soft bedding I had left and landed on the cold, hard floor of my room. It was amazing how uncoordinated I could be when half of my brain was asleep while the rest of it seemed unwilling to move off the Clary topic. I seemed to be infatuated with Clary more than ever these few days. Perhaps it was because I had just turned eighteen and was eligible to marry under mundane law as well as Clave law. Not that I had any intention of 'pilfering Clary's purity' as Jocelyn had put it the last time I had made a joke about marriage.

Pulling myself from my musings, I untangled myself, pushed my blankets back onto the bed and set off down the hall in search breakfast. I had been living with Izzy's poor attempts at cooking long enough that I could tell the smell coming from the kitchen definitely wasn't burnt, soaked or drowned in tomato sauce. I also knew that it also definitely wasn't made by Izzy. All this was proved when I stepped into the kitchen and was greeted by Alec, Izzy and Clary sitting around the table which sported a take-away pizza box. Stifling a yawn, I sat down next to Clary, reached for a slice of pizza and raised an eyebrow, "You order pizza at five in the morning? You do realise that the amount of fat floating around in the form of 'aroma' has the potential to put my whole training schedule off track."

"So don't eat it", was Izzy's biting reply.

"Don't blame us; it was all Magnus' fault. He though Alec was getting too skinny, apparently, and decided to fatten him up", Clary said, coughing slightly to cover her laughter.

I glanced over to Alec who seemed slightly horrified at the thought. No doubt, he thought that someone as stubborn as Magnus probably wouldn't stop until his weight became a four digit number.

Alec looked away and made a feeble attempt to change the topic, "Izzy got dumped by that faerie, by the way."

So that was why she was in such a sour mood. I blinked, processing the morning's events.

Then, slowly and deliberately, I dumped my slice of unbitten pizza back in the box and shoved it towards Alec, gesturing for him to take it. The crimson blush on his cheeks deepened as I padded back out of the room and headed to my room to shower and change.

I had just finished my shower when there was a soft knock at the door and a second later, Clary rushed in.

"Do you wish your mother an early grave?" I asked innocently. Jocelyn had come down pretty hard when she found out about us. And since then, Clary and I had tried our best not to induce insomnia on her poor battered soul. This included obeying section three of the 'If Clary was to date Jace' manual which basically said that we were not to hang out in each other's rooms (unless we were accompanied by an adult – sometimes, we had to use Alec as that 'adult').

"Jace, you know my mum doesn't dislike you that much. Anyway, we're leaving now! Magnus just called. He said that there's something big going down near Taki's. Since it's so close and there're going to be so many Shadowhunters with us, I'm allowed to go!" she gushed and promptly flounced out of the room.

Wow, she must be really happy. Clary never flounced. But still, I was worried. She said it was something big. Big things usually had the potential to hurt her. Almost instantly, I corrected myself – big things usedto have the potential to hurt her, but not anymore. She had trained hard. I knew that. She could be counted as a Shadowhunter now, a lethal weapon. I knew that too. And I knew more than anything that she deserved enough respect not to be treated like a little kid.

Sighing, I dressed in my gear, slid a handful of seraph blades into my belt and left the room to find everyone standing in a line in the hallway, waiting for me.

"The prodigy finally decides to grace us with his presence", Izzy's voice was thick with sarcasm.

I allowed myself a small smile, "Of course, wouldn't want to keep the Clave waiting".

I wondered, not for the first time, if I was the only one who marvelled at how true that statement was. We were Shadowhunters, bound to the Clave. When the Clave called, we came, like obedient puppies.

The ride to the 'crime-scene' was bumpy at best and the other times… well, it could only be described as 'soul-jarring'. We were still two streets off when the first sounds of battle reached our ears, which were more sensitive than most. Then, the smell hit us. It was a mixture of the smell of something (no doubt something foul) rotting and burning. It made my stomach hurl and I counted myself lucky that I hadn't had anything to eat this morning. I won't be hurling pizza anytime soon.

We rounded the corner and came to a halt about twenty metres away from Taki's. Someone had had the good sense to put up some police tape to avoid having to fight whilst trying not to disturb the mundies. I felt my gut tighten as I scanned the fight. Here and there, seraph blades still gave off glowing sparks but most of what I saw was wounded Shadowhunters and blood – Shadowhunter blood, mixing with the thick ichor of the demons, running in rivets along the street and mingling in the gutters.

Everywhere we looked, there were demons of all size and shape. Their harsh voices bounded off the concrete buildings which encased us, echoing until they became the cries of something alien, something unfamiliar. Even at this early stage, it was evident that the Shadowhunters were outnumbered. It seemed that the amount of demons gathered here could have rivalled even Valentine's army. Yet while Valentine's demons had been controlled and sent to attack at the Clave's weakest points, these demons didn't seem to have a mastermind behind them. They were wild and untamed in a way that reminded me of the attack on Alicante. These demons weren't sent here to attack for any specific purpose. They had been sent to wreak havoc and stretch the Clave's ability to defend ourselves as well as the mundanes.

The sharp cry of a Shadowhunter as he thrown against a brick wall drew me back to the battle. I winced inwardly; brick walls were hard, very hard if you were to be thrown against them. I drew a seraph blade and threw myself into the thick of the fighting, landing squarely on the back of a Raum demon. It spun around under me, trying to jab me with its spikes. I balanced cautiously, all my senses burning with awareness and as I swung by, decapitated a Ravener and effectively saved the life of a fellow Shadowhunter. I mercilessly plunged them into the demon underneath me. As it started folding in on itself, preparing to journey back to its own dimension, I leapt, landing on the sidewalk and dug my heels in, skidding to a stop in the thick, gooey ichor which was still stained with rivets of scarlet.

An ugly demon with two heads sidled up to me, grinning with both its mouths. I felt a grin tug at the corners of my own lips.

"Weren't there any shuttle buses to take you back home? Fine, I'll give you a lift." The grin was still on my lips as my hand snaked forward, the blade sliding up under the diaphragm. I gave a satisfied nod as I heard the harsh crack of bone and the demon sagged and hit the ground.

It was at that particular moment that I heard a shrill cry that echoed off the buildings on either side of us. The cry was a familiar to me as my own. Clary! I whirred around, searching hard, desperate to find her within the fighting crowd. But she was nowhere to be seen. I started to feel the panic build in my chest as I searched harder, wishing that my eyes had deceived me. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I had twenty-twenty vision. That Clary wasn't just missing from my view… she was simply gone.

I glanced around frantically. Nobody seemed to have noticed the shrill cry; they were all too caught up in their own fighting. Narrowing my eyes into slits, I concentrated on Clary. Sometimes, if I concentrated hard enough, I could hear her angel blood calling to mine. No such luck this time.

The panic was beginning to rise again. Goddammit! Where was she? I scanned the fight again. We were winning, we were definitely winning. And yet, a terrible sense of dread was building in the pit of my stomach. And suddenly, just as sudden as the cry had been, something latched onto my back. I whirled and lashed out with my foot but not even a second later, the thing had launched itself at me. It barrelled into my side and we tussled as we rolled, coming to a stop by the mouth of a dark side alley. The sun was blocked out here and all I could see were shadows. Not a great advantage in a fight, I must say.

Then, as sudden as the thing had barrelled into me, it pulled on my arm, hauling me to my feet. Now, that's a much better position to be in when fighting. Unfortunately, that also meant that I didn't have enough time to duck and my head hit the side of a thick steel pipe with a hollow thud. "Oh great Angel", was the last though that went through my head before I passed out cold.

Clary POV

There was something so very peaceful about passing out, especially as someone had been trying to choke me to death. And even more especially, as I suspected that no one else could even see that specified someone. Yes, it was definitely peaceful.

And then, I woke up… to find myself staring into a pair of eyes; one blue, one green. Hurriedly, I scrambled backwards, trying not to show my fear. It was the man from the battle. He wasn't a demon exactly, but he seemed to give off demonic pulses. And his eyes were cold and calculating, in a way that reminded me of the eyes of someone I knew should be well and truly dead – Sebastian. For a moment, I felt puzzled. Did someone try to create a creature like Sebastian and succeed? I tilted my head slightly, trying to place where exactly I had seen him before.

"Don't you remember me, little sister?" he drawled.

No. No, that can't be… He was dead. But then, if I looked carefully…

His jaw was more prominent and his hair much darker than the pale blonde it had been before. The panes of his face seemed harder, as if he was truly chiselled out of stone. And… the colours of his eyes were different, strangely so. The most deceiving thing about his façade was that he held himself differently somehow. Before, his graceful movements had reminded me of a panther, crouched and ready to spring. Now, his movements were jerky, stiff and looked as if he had practiced them for hours on end in front of a mirror, trying to get them to look like the movements of a human. Yet, he was still the same person.

Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern.