Author's Note: Hi guys! So the trailer for 3B dropped and let me just say, it looked absolutely stunning! I can't wait to mold my story around it. I really liked that glimpse of a darker Clary, and Jonathan IS BACK BABY and raring to f*k things up again!
But on a serious note, I'm so sad that this is the last season. I have a feeling it's going to be one of the best though. It's clear to see from that kickass trailer just how the series has grown since the pilot of season one.
I can't wait!
Special thanks to everyone who left reviews :)
Heir Of Angels
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Chapter Two: Consequences
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"Ooh sounds like we've got a Vetis on our hands," said Isabelle, reading through the report on her phone as she and Clary boarded the subway. "Face-planting into the road, unexplained claw marks, and missing jewelry. Could be wrong though. What do you think?"
Clary looked back at her friend, tearing her gaze away from the baby who was smiling gummily at her from her mom's lap. They grabbed ahold of the pole in front of them as the subway rolled into motion. "Yeah, definitely sounds like a Vetis," Clary replied, absently.
They were dragon-like creatures. Scaly, black and elongated with only a mouth on its otherwise blank face. They liked to crawl into tight spaces and horde anything that has a shine to it. The good thing was that they were relatively dumb and easy to deal with, driven solely by their need to steal and store shiny things, from common junk to valuable jewelry, it was all the same to them.
"Hey, don't look so worried. You've dealt with the little jerks before, they're easy peasy." Isabelle assured her, acknowledging the tense look on the redhead's face.
"I'm not worried."
Isabelle narrowed her dark eyes at her. "Then what is it? Something with Jace?"
In a way.
"No, of course not. What makes you say that?"
She shrugged. "You both seem a little distant today. Not to mention he just took off from the party last night. Did you get into a fight already? You've barely been back together five minutes."
"We haven't. Jace and I couldn't be in a more perfect place. It's just..."
"Just what?" Isabelle prompted, expectantly.
For a fleeting moment, Clary was tempted to tell Isabelle about the fear spinning around in her mind but thought the better of it. There was a time and a place to blurt out something like that. And just before a mission on a busy subway train was not it. Besides, what if she was getting herself all worked up over nothing? It was just three days and the morning's previous nausea had now subsided. Still, she made a mental note to buy a test as soon as she got the chance.
"Nothing. It's just one of those days."
"Are you sure? Because you can tell me anything, you know."
"Thanks, Iz," Clary told her, gratefully. "I'm sure."
Isabelle nodded before her attention moved to the baby who had begun to cry after dropping her teddy bear on the floor. Isabelle bent to pick it up and handed it back to the little girl. The child's mother thanked her kindly.
"Isn't she adorable?" Isabelle said to Clary, smiling at the little girl in awe. "I remember when Max was that small...and loud."
"How is Max? I heard he went back to the Academy," said Clary, eager to divert the conversation.
Isabelle winked playfully at the baby before looking back at Clary. "Yeah, he's doing okay actually. He's convinced that he's completely healed but he's still not a hundred percent. I know Mom had a hard time letting him go back but I think he was starting to miss his friends. He wrote to us last week though and apparently, all his classmates want to hear about his encounter with, well, you know. He said he doesn't mind the new attention but wishes it didn't cut into the free-time he usually spends reading his comic books."
Clary smiled sadly. "Classic Max."
She had been told that he'd had a rocky recovery. After sustaining what the Medics back in Idris classed as a 'grade three concussion' he'd had a hard time getting back on his feet in the wake of nosebleeds and headaches that went on for a whole week straight. And then after finally regaining his strength, Max had started struggling with his balance and short-term memory.
When Isabelle had told her, it had been yet another blow to Clary's guilty conscience. What Jonathan did to Max was evil, and it made her feel so ashamed for feeling sorry for her sibling. For the person who could have been; her big brother, who'd been corrupted before his life had even begun. On the other hand, she also felt guilty for being related to him, for watching both he and Valentine hurt innocent people in a seemingly endless cycle and never being able to stop them.
Anyway, it didn't matter anymore. The cycle was finally broken and Valentine and Jonathan were gone. Clary needed to put this second-hand guilt to rest before it began to consume her. But she knew it was going to take time.
Several stops later, the subway rolled into Penn Station and a mischevious grin stretched across Isabelle's matte-red lips as the doors slid open. "That's us. Time to kick some Vetis ass...and maybe get a bracelet or two out of it."
"We can't—"
"I'm kidding, jeez!"
Clary and Isabelle swiftly activated their glamor runes as they turned a corner, baffling a businessman who, upon reaching the corner himself found that they had vanished. The confused man blinked in puzzlement and glanced back at the crowd of approaching commuters to see if anybody else saw it. Nobody had. He looked down accusingly at his cup of coffee before tossing it in a nearby trashcan.
Invisible, the girls climbed the stairs leading up onto 34th Street and naturally, the mundanes around them steered obliviously clear of the two Shadowhunters.
"It's probably nesting in a storm drain," predicted Isabelle. "They do love their storm drains...and sewers. God, I hope it's not a sewer."
Fortunately, she was right about the storm drain part. They stopped at the cornered off part of the road marked on Isabelle's phone and Clary drew an audible rune on the top of her hand, keeping her eyes trained on the small gap where the demons dwelled. She concentrated hard, and soon enough, the hubbub of the city muted until the only sounds she could hear were coming from the storm drain. High pitched noises, similar to squealing piglets except a lot more unpleasant, attacked her ears. Wincing in discomfort, Clary quickly deactivated the rune on and the welcomed sounds of the city returned to her.
"From what I could gather, there's at least three down there."
"Okay," began Izzy as she studied the narrow slit in the edge of the sidewalk and uncurled her whip from around her wrist. "I'm throwing the Witchlight in, on three."
In response, Clary slid her seraph blade from her belt and twisted it around her fingers, feeling the pulsing thrum of the Adamas.
"Ready?" asked Isabelle, receiving an affirmative nod from her partner. The Witchlight stone glowed through the cracks of her fingers. "Three...two...one."
Isabelle tossed it into the drain, and like a bucket of water hitting hot coals, the Vetis demons hissed shrilly. One by one, they squeezed frantically through the gap. Gnashing their rows of razor-sharp teeth and scuttling straight toward them. One leaped at Clary, but it lost its head before it could attack in a single swipe of her blade and both ends of the demon hit the ground with a wet slap, before burning up and vaporizing.
"Clary, on your six!" Isabelle exclaimed as she wrestled with a screeching Vetis on the end of her whip, she stomped on its back, holding it in place. And in the flicking motion of her wrist, the whip became a spear; she drove it forcefully through its neck.
Clary spun around just as the third began to scuttle right for her, bringing down her sword with a grunt. It dodged the blow and skidded away from the blade on its eel-like legs. She swore and brought the seraph down again, sloppily this time in her panic. She missed once again, but before it could lunge, Isabelle, was there. Impaling it through the wings with the end of her spear. The demon gave a piercing shriek, writhing on the sharp point before turning limp and vanishing.
After taking a moment to catch her breath, Isabelle gave another flick of her wrist, transforming the spear back into her whip.
The girls relished in the absence of the shrill demonic screeching, and, sighing in accomplishment, Isabelle flicked the tar-like ichor off of her spear before asking Clary, as if they were but chatting over lunch, "So I was wondering, I still need to pick out a dress for your rune ceremony tomorrow? I was thinking we could go look at some if you're down?"
She didn't hear her.
After two years of demon slaying, Clary considered herself to be used to the unpleasant smell of ichor. Except now her experience with it seemed to have gone straight out the window. It was as strong as the night she first smelled it; pungent and suffocating. It sent a monstrous wave of nausea over her and the seraph blade in her hand went clattering to the ground.
She fled, desperate to get away from the suffocating stench.
"Clary!" Isabelle called out, curling her whip around her arm. She bent to pick up Clary's discarded weapon and rushed after her, frowning when she found her slumped over a trashcan. Arriving at her side, Isabelle wasted no time pulling the curtain of loose red curls away from Clary's face.
"Are you okay?" She asked when Clary moved away from the trash with a shiver.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Must've been last night's champagne coming back to haunt me," she lied, hiding her embarrassment.
Isabelle handed the seraph blade back to her and the redhead held her breath so as not to get another whiff of the substance. "Thanks," she told her, breathlessly, quickly sliding it back into the sheath at her hip.
"In that case, we'd better get you home. I'll make you one of my special drinks, it'll cure your lightweight-itis in no time."
Clary ignored her friend's light teasing and checked the time on her phone, though only for the purpose of illusion. "Actually, you know what? I just remembered, I uh, told Luke I'd meet up with him at nine."
Isabelle raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure? You just spilled your guts in a dirty trashcan."
"I know, but I feel a lot better now. See you later, Iz!"
The smile vanished from her lips as she turned and walked off in search of the nearest drugstore.
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X.X.X
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He was losing his mind. Jace was sure of it.
He was working in the library, buried in all the mission reports he'd fallen behind on when he saw him. Jace's head snapped up instinctively from the laptop and his eyes landed on the stranger who'd seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He was leaning nonchalantly against one of the bookshelves, arms folded tightly across his chest, his smile curving like a scythe.
Jace jumped from his seat, his indrawn breath as sharp as the blade he tore from his belt.
Somehow, his face was eerily familiar, but he couldn't quite work out where he knew it from. He was tall, with hollow cheeks and low eyebrows. Jace couldn't work out what it was about him that freaked him out more, the fact that he had just appeared out of nowhere or that somehow, despite never seeing this man in his life, he recognized him.
"Who are you?" Jace demanded, narrowing his eyes in scrutiny as his mind groped for a rational explanation. "How did you get in here?"
The stranger paused, before saying in a venomous tone, "Oh, don't worry about how I got in. Worry about how you're gonna get me out." He moved away from the book-shelf and approached the table, leaning against it on his knuckles, his eyes boring into him. Jace tightened his grip on the pommel of his sword. "You'll pay for everything, Herondale. Believe you me. Your world will burn."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Jace asked, unsettled.
But in the blink of an eye, the auburn-haired stranger was gone.
He was never even there in the first place. Jace realized, aghast.
He fell back onto the chair, running his hands across his face as he struggled to wrap his head around what he had just seen. He couldn't help but think back to what he'd told Clary last night. That bringing someone back from death always came with a price. Was this his price? To slowly slip into insanity?
"Hey Jace, can I borrow you for a moment?"
He startled. Springing up from the chair once again, seraph blade at the ready.
Alec threw his hands up.
"Woah, what are you doing?"
"Sorry," Jace apologized, letting down his paranoid guard at once. He returned his seraph blade to his belt. "What did you want me for?"
Alec studied him, alarmed. "Are we just going to ignore the fact that you were about to ram your sword through my chest?"
"I wasn't about to—" Jace sighed. "I just...thought I saw something through the window."
Alec hesitated. "One of the weapon compartments in the training room is jammed again. I'd deal with it myself but I need to be in a meeting in half an hour."
"Right, yeah sure, I'll fix it," Jace told him, brushing past his brother's shoulder to leave the room, which all of a sudden felt hot and stuffy. He knew Alec had picked up on his distress, but he said nothing. Just observed him in silent concern as he took strode down the hall.
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X.X.X
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The anticipation was almost painful as she paced the length of her room with all the anxiousness of a caged panther.
She never thought she would ever be in this position. After all, being protected was not something Clary took lightly. The constant lectures she had gotten from her mom over the years had seen to that. But lately, her head had been all over the place what with chasing after her father and brother night til dawn. She had been so focused on hunting them down that the small yet extremely important pills sitting at the back of her drawer had completely slipped her mind.
She cursed herself for it. How the hell was she able to remember the intricacy of every rune in the codex and more, but not how to swallow a damned pill? If she didn't feel so doomed, she might have laughed.
Clary's anxious eyes flitted to the digital clock on her nightstand.
One minute to go...
It'd happened the night of Jonathan's death. She remembered it with perfect clarity, the way his stunning eyes had bored into hers, glazed over with desire. It was enough to liberate all the emotions she had kept under lock and key for so long as she gazed back at him, hot-blooded. How they'd rushed hand in hand out of the infirmary where she'd healed the last of his cuts.
He'd slammed her against the elevator mirror, hard but not too hard, kissing with urgency, as if they were making up for all the time they'd lost believing Valentine's cruel lie.
She remembered how he'd swept her up in one swift movement after stumbling breathlessly into his room, only ever tearing his mouth away from hers to drop her onto the mattress.
"Where are you going?" She'd asked when he turned toward the door, but she realized what he was doing not a moment later as he ran his stele across the door, working a silencing rune into the mahogany. Clary giggled in excitement as he walked back over to the bed, grinning devilishly as he tossed his stele aside. It landed on the floor with a clatter.
"I think you broke it," she'd told him as he crawled over her.
"I'll ask Izzy to fix it.'
His breath had felt hot against her neck as his lips brushed across her iratze. Clary moaned, arching her back as her hand came to tangle in his soft blond hair.
Splat.
Clary swore, dragged from her thoughts by a tube of black oil paint bursting beneath her shoe. She pulled off the soiled combat boot and snatched up a rag from the ledge of her easel. Getting down on her knees, she blotted at the stain but it was of no use. White vinegar was the only chance it would stand. That was of course if she wasn't about to have a much bigger problem to worry about.
She checked back at the clock, her arm pausing its movements. 10:34 it read, marking the end of the two minutes. The ugly black stain on the rug was soon abandoned as she got to her feet, swallowing thickly as she looked over at the dresser where the little white test sat. She approached it like she would a Greater Demon, slowly and shaking with adrenaline.
She closed her eyes when she arrived.
Now or never, Clary thought to herself before forcing herself to look down.
Pregnant. It read in bold blocky letters.
Her heart sank.
X.X.X
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-FloraFleur