Chapter 2

Isabelle Lightwood

"I've never been one to walk away, but I've had enough,

And it's breaking my heart."

-The Cab

I did not want to know what they were doing down there. Alec and I had a good time in the pool. He complained about missing Magnus, I complained about missing Matthew. It was a good time. Not. Clary and Jace, on the other hand, seemed to be having a great time. We had all gone to our respective rooms to get ready. I leant Clary some sheaths and a set of silver runed daggers infused with holy water: great for killing almost anything- vampires, mundanes, shadowhunter, werewolves, and it would definitely put a dent in a demon.

I pulled on my worn hunting gear, strapping on my leg gaurds and a chest cover. I shoved three seraph blades into my belt, coiled my whip around my wrist, and shoved two knives in my boots. Standing in front of the vanity, I braided the fronts of my hair, pulling them back and clipping them together. A few minutes later I was ready, walking down the hallway to the kitchen, where Alec, Jace, and Clary were eating a bag of chips someone must have brought from home.

I was surprised to see Jace looking happy, most likely because of Clary, who was sitting on the counter next to him, staring at something I couldn't identify. She had pulled her hair into braids and a few strands came out, making her look as beautiful as ever. He held her hand, and the pure look of adoration in his eyes made me long to have someone look at me like that. Clary was oblivious, so oblivious it hurt me to see her. She caught my eye and smiled. I tried my hardest to smile back.

Don't get me wrong- I love Clary like my sister, but she is so infuriating sometimes. She doesn't understand that Jace would rather kill himself than lay a finger on her. He would jump in front of anything that threatened her, he wouldn't be able to live with himself if she died. She doesn't realize how deep his feelings lie- that she is the only girl he's ever looked at that way. Sure, she loves him too, but she doesn't understand. What I would do for someone to feel that way about me.

"Ready?" Alec asked me.

"Yeah." I said, flipping my hair over my shoulder and out of my face.

Jace helped Clary down, and we started for the porch. We were floating in the middle of the bay, a few hundred yards from the docks. I climbed up the railing and balanced on the top bar before doing a flawless dive into the water. It was cold, so I started towards the shore, not waiting for the others. Alec quickly caught up with me, and we swam together, nearing the shore. We were glamoured, so we didn't need to worry about anyone seeing us- well except demons. I found myself climbing out of the water and onto a smooth black rock. My hair was ruined. Great.

I pulled up my sleeves and started to mark myself for battle, marks for silence, swiftness, bravery, strength, and several others I was so used to writing now that I didn't have to think about them. Clary swam up next, Jace and Alec just behind her. I marked Alec, and Jace and Clary exchanged marks.

"Let's go." I said, wringing out my hair and pulling it up into a ponytail. We started down the street, sticking to the alleys and dark sidewalks on small streets, winding our way through the city's complicated matrix of buildings. We didn't pass any mundanes, and the few downworlders we saw avoided eye contact and ducked into the nearest doorway. That was a good sign. If the downworlders avoided the shadowhunters, they didn't have a good relationship. Who hated downworlders? Valentine.

After a few streets of nothing, my red pendant started to vibrate, like a tiny drumbeat. I threw out my hands. "Stop." The street was dark, shadows falling everywhere that were as thick as night. The lone source of light was a window open in the third floor of a building. I couldn't see anything inside the room, but the yellow light was dull and didn't illuminate much. I took a few steps and peered down the nearest alley.

"Gotcha." Jace whispered dashing down the alley at lightning speed and pinning it before any of us got halfway down the alley. Luckily we'd caught a good one- capable of speech. It appeared to be human, like the demon we had killed the first time we had seen Clary. It was girl, however, with long blue hair flowing down to the small of her back. She had pale skin and eerily bright green eyes. She was average height and weight, and she had a pretty face that was distorted into an emotion between disgust and hatred.

"Get off me." She said in accented English, calling Jace's mother several rude things. He pulled out a seraph blade, whispering its name and pointing the tip at the demon's throat. Just a drop of black blood fell from the wound, like a tear. She seemed to realize he meant business.

"Valentine." Jace said. "Where is he?"

"How am I supposed to know?" She spat, trying to pry her hands out from behind her back. "But I'm going to get you, shadowhunter, as soon as he releases me from my service, I'm going to get you. I'm going to hunt you down and murder you slowly." A hand escaped, which was quickly held down by Alec, kneeling next to Jace now. Her hails were sharp, like knives. They dug into the pavement, almost as if she was trying to dig her way back into hell.

Jace's blade didn't shake, at all as it dug deeper through her skin. "You want to tell me now?" Jace growled, a stream of black falling down each side of her collarbone. "Tell me where he is. Valentine. I know you know." He repeated it in Italian, his speech filled with hatred.

I could practically see her mental battle painted across her face, trying to hold it in, but demons had no loyalty, no sense of duty. "Athens." She finally coughed out. She began to speak, but was silenced by Jace's blade across her throat and another angel blade in her torso. Her body dissolved and was gone in several seconds, leaving no trace of existence except for the smear of black ichor on the blade, quickly wiped on his leg guard, and four thin scratches on the pavement from her sharp nails. I tore my gaze away and shoved my hands in my pockets.

"To Athens we go." I muttered, walking with my head up down the alley and turning into the deserted street. There was a church down the street, and I headed towards it, the large ornate façade staring me right in the face. I couldn't resist- I needed to have a good weapon in my hand. The others saw where I was going and quickly fell in step behind me.

I held a hand against the doorway, muttering the words that had been drilled into me since childhood. "In the name of the Clave-" I started, listening for the lock to click open. It did, and I pushed through the door, up the steps, and towards the altar.

"This place is creepy." Clary muttered, sitting herself down in a pew off to the left. I continued forward until I reached the raised platform. I searched around for a moment, then found the rune, etched into the wood like a whisper.

"Got it." I said, opening the compartment and shifting through its contents. I tossed an angel blade to Jace, who named it Anfiel. I sifted through the vials of holy water and jars of silver powder and finally found what I wanted. A long black knife that glinted when the witchlight Alec was holding caught it. The grip was covered in runes. I held it in my hand slashing out to test it. Perfect balance. I shoved it into the pocket I had sewn to the inside of my boot and continued shifting through the small compartment. Another angel blade, and a vial of holy water later, I closed up and Alec doused the witchlight. Clary locked up the church behind her with a locking rune and we headed back to the docks. The walk was shorter when we weren't trying to find demons.

We all stood on the shore, staring at the water. "Do we really have to get wet again?" I asked, turning to Clary. "You have awesome powers. Do something."

"Well I've been working on a couple." She said, taking my wrist and drawing a small, simple rune on the inside "This will probably work.". She proceeded to do the same to Jace and Alec, and then to herself. She walked up onto a dock and jumped.

"I thought we wouldn't be swimming." I complained.

"You said you didn't want to get wet." She said, and she started doing a lazy backstroke towards the boat. When I stared at her, however, I could tell she was dry. Her hair wasn't in flat, wet sheets around her face but perfectly dry. Her clothes hadn't darkened in color and didn't seem to be weighing her down at all. She grinned, and I dove in after her.

I studied my skin and hair, how they stayed dry despite the water. It was like it was being repelled from my skin, and when Jace jumped in and headed after Clary, the drops from his dive seemed to go the other direction. It was fantastic.

We returned to the boat, and Clary and Jace disappeared towards the deck. Alec and I turned on the television and sat on the enormous couches. Alec, somehow, had managed to find himself a PS3, and was playing some game on the screen. I sighed. No matter mundane, Shadowhunter, or downworlder, guys loved video games. "Give me a controller." I said, and he tossed me one. We sat on the couch, feet propped up on the ottoman, for hours, it seemed, and soon it was morning, and the night was gone. Alec and I were tied when Clary walked in, hair in a messy updo and wearing a flannel shirt, one she must have stolen from Luke to sleep in, and a pair of plain black shorts.

"Have you guys been here all night?" She asked, attempting to brew herself some coffee. She was tired, I could see the sleep in her eyes, and she kept yawning.

I paused the game and looked at her. "Yes. Yes we were."

"Okay." She didn't seem to mind. She shuffled back down the hall towards the bedrooms, returning a second later with Jace behind her, who looked uncharacteristically sloppy. His hair was messed up, his grey t-shirt rumpled. He wore jeans- at least he had gotten dressed- but he also looked tired.

"Late night?" I asked him, and he looked up like he hadn't been listening.

"You could say that." He grinned and winked at me, but then Clary hit him across the back. He pretended to be hurt.

"Clarrisa-" He gasped.

She looked at him over her cup of coffee. She sat on the counter exactly where she had the night before. "That won't work for you Jace."

"It doesn't have to- my face does all the work."

Clary didn't respond. Alec and I went back to playing video games, and for a second, it almost seemed like we were back in New York.

"Well." Clary interrupted the silence. "I found a wall we can use for the portal." She recounted her plan to us, and we all nodded. She came back in the bikini I had given her with a loose shirt over it a minute later. "Ready?"

Alec and Jace nodded, and headed up to the control tower to start up the boat. I followed Clary down to the lowest deck, where she proceeded to point out a large wall built into the face of a hill that had been eroded by the water. It was just big enough for the boat to get through. Soon enough we were off towards the wall, and Clary was gone from beside me, catapulting herself off of the side of the boat like a bat out of hell. She swam towards the wall, and I saw a flash of metal- her stele- in her hand. She drew several large marks along the wall before the wall shimmered into a portal. She moved so she was several feet away, and started swimming. She disappeared into the portal, and was gone.

The engine started, and the boat shot forward, and through the portal. For a second everything was weightless, like we were falling, and then we were speeding across ocean a different color, lighter, and clearer, the water a crystalline blue, like glass. I looked behind myself, at what seemed like thin air. There was nothing. The portal was gone.

Clary shouted from the water below. "Welcome to Athens!"