A/N: Thanks so much to anyone that has left reviews or favourited, it means a lot and spurs me on. I'll try my best to update frequently as it is currently summer, so please keep reading! Read and review.
Chapter 3: A Day in the Life of a Gunman.
"Finally!" Maia and Kaelie turned their heads to the source of the noise, spotting Eric standing with his head high, clutching a deposit box- two boxes.
"Took you long enough." Maia said sarcastically, and rolled her eyes. Kaelie on the other hand, looked mildly impressed.
"Why's there two boxes?" She asked, watching as he heaved them to the ground, spindly arms shaking.
"Well, they have the same source code on the base, see." He pointed out a small serial number, and continued. "That means that they both have one key that unlocks them, like a dual barrel lock, so when you unlock one you unlock the other. I though there might be something important if it was a joint box."
He slumped down cross legged on the ground and began to rifle through the boxes. Maia went over to help him, surprised that the computer game nerd had actually paid attention to how the bank worked during induction.
Kaelie stayed at her spot beside Jordan- she had cleaned away some of the blood and was trying to bind up his wound again; she couldn't remove the bullet, snd it was definitely still in there, so she had used the practically lethal grade moonshine to sanitise before covering him up again. He had been cussing like a sailor, but none of them knew how long they would be there, and the last thing he needed was an infection.
"Are you sure that shit is safe to use on me?" Jordan muttered, clenching his teeth.
"Yes. Now shut up and stop being a baby."
They sat silently, Bat dozing off with his head against the wall. Jordan had his head resting on his jacket of the floor, and Bat's legs were numb, like his head. He felt desensitised to the entire situation, and it was scary.
He could hear Maia and Eric talking quietly in the corner, and he could sense a body sit down next to him. He opened one eye to see Kaelie sat nest to him, and his best friend slumped on his other side, hopefully sleeping.
"Thank you." Bat muttered, looking into Kaelie's blue-green eyes. Over the years he had learned not to judge on appearances, and Kaelie's dim witted attitude at the start had obviously been a ruse.
"My pleasure." She replies softly, and she felt curiosity swell inside her.
"If you don't mind me asking." She started. "What's the deal with the two of you? All scars and tattoos, BFF's."
Bat chuckled slightly and looked to the ground.
"We've been best friends for… I don't know, nearly twenty years. We met when I was four, we were neighbours, and I've known him forever. " He stared wistfully at his friend. "He was there when I was being bullied for having a weird birth mark. And when I was twelve and some of the older kids on our street held me down and tried to burn it off, he was the one that got arrested for trying to burn their house down."
Kaelie gasped, but Bat just laughed.
"We were from a bad area. But we made it out alive- moved to the Big Apple, opened a bar. We were doing alright."
He blanched, his tan skin paling and the mark on his cheek standing out.
"We were doing alright."
Kaelie watched him carefully and reached out to take his hand, letting his large warm palm envelop her own small one.
"Like I said." She whispered. "I don't want to die here."
"Oh my God. Oh my God!" Maia was yelling, and Bat and Kaelie started, turning round to look.
Eric's eyes were bright and wide, and he and Maia were staring at each other in disbelief.
"Who the hell keeps this stuff in a freaking deposit box? I knew it would be big if it was a joint box, but this…"
"This is insane."
"Guys." Bat asked sleepily. "What is it?"
Maia and Eric gave each other last look before Eric raised his hand, pulling an object out of the box.
In his hands was a medium sized, almost completely bejewelled, golden cup. A cup that looked expensive.
A cup that Bat recognised.
"The Mortal Cup." He breathed. "What in the hell."
Maia was staring at it, and all of them were shocked. Why was something so valuable in a deposit box in New York? It looked like it belonged in a museum.
"You know what this is?" Eric asked.
"Yeah." Bat replied, eyes still fixed to the cup. "When I was a kid there was a robbery from a museum near where I lived. It was a cup- that cup. I think it's some kind of legendary European artefact, something religious, I'm not sure. I do know for a fact it shouldn't be here. What else was in the boxes?"
Eric shuffled some papers and pulled out two glocks.
"Holy shit." Kaelie said, springing to her feet to look. "I don't know whose box this is, but they saved our asses." She clicked he safety out of one of the guns.
"They're both full." Maia said, with her head buried in the papers.
"We reckoned the next time someone comes we can get out, go and find Clary and Jace." Eric said, and Bat cringed. He had pushed the other two from his mind, not wanting to think of what was happening; now Bat had a knife, and they had two fully loaded guns, things were looking up.
"If they ever open the door." Said Kaelie, and she walked back to Jordan and took a seat.
"Oh, they will." Said Maia, and she pulled out the purse sized black backpack that had held the Cup and began filling it with the remaining jewellery, the Cup and the papers.
"What makes you so sure Maia? And what are you doing?" Kaelie enquired.
"I'm getting ready- we have something they want. I think I've figured out why this robbery is taking so long, why they wanted Clary." She pulled one of the papers out of the bag and handed it to Kaelie.
"Take a look at the name on those birth records."
/
"I don't know where else to look." Said Sebastian to Valentine, holding back the edge in his voice. "It isn't here; we checked every single high security vault inn this place; the Cup isn't anywhere, nor are Clarissa's records. What is we're in the wrong place?"
Valentine looked up sharply and gave his apprentice an appraising look.
"It's here. And there are still places we haven't looked."
/
Clary thought that she might be sick again. How could this be happening; this couldn't be real. There was no way she had actually just walked in on a dead body, dumped like trash beneath the stairwell.
"Oh God, please." She sobbed into Jace's chest. He was standing hard and stiff, his strong arms clutching her, revealing his true shock. This couldn't be real.
"This is my fault." She whispered.
And like that, Jace unfroze. Hugging her tighter before pushing her away to look at her face, scanning her eyes.
"This isn't your fault Clary. I don't know what would make you say that, but none of this is your fault, none of it is our fault." He was in shock, he could feel himself shaking, but Clary was practically being torn apart by guilt.
She pulled herself away.
"No, no you don't get it. You don't want to touch me."
She pushed past him trying to get as far away as possible from the door, tugging at her hair. Jace followed, reaching out again but Clary just shook him off again.
"What do you mean? What do you mean I won't want to touch you?"
Clary turned to face him, tears streaming down her face in rivers of gleaming water. She looked to the ceiling.
"It's my father." Clary said, not wanting to watch. "My father is currently keeping us hostage. He wants something from the bank, and he wants me, and in order to get me he killed a man and shot one of us and… my father is a criminal, and he did all of this to get me. If I just went with him, if I just gave myself up maybe we'd be okay…"
Jace just stood still, watching her. Then he pulled her into him again, not letting her go.
"My dad, my biological father, he killed my mother when I was ten." Clary gasped and looked up at him. "He was a bad guy, and he ruined my life- and I'm sure you get what I mean by that." He stroked her face, trying anything to calm her erratic breathing. He wasn't used to this. "What our parents do, it doesn't define us. It doesn't make us evil. I blamed myself for years, for not stopping my father- but it wasn't my fault. Just like it isn't yours."
"He wants to blow the place up Jace, with us inside. All he needs is what he's looking for, then we are gonna be dead."
Clary looked at him with watery eyes.
"I'm gonna fix this."
Jace looked confused.
"I'm gonna get us out of this." She said decisively, pulling away and going back to the desk at the door. Jace nodded.
"I'll do my best to help."
/
Alec Lightwood used to be in love with his brother. Not in a weird way, and it was his adoptive brother, but Alec Lightwood had been in love with Jace Lightwood since he was thirteen and had realised he was gay. When he was fifteen, Jace had figured it out. He wasn't mad, he wasn't grossed out, he was kind and wise and told Alec that he loved him too, just not in the same way. And Alec had understood. Five years later Jace had introduced his brother to the love of his life, Magnus Bane, and they had been together ever since.
Alec had never thanked Jace.
"Izzy." Alec said groggily; the two of them had been sat with their mother on the couch, waiting for another phone call from the police. Their youngest brother was in bed, all of the other guests had left and their mother was asleep on the opposite couch.
"What." She replied sleepily. She hadn't cried yet; Isabelle barely cried, and she was saving it.
"I never thanked Jace. For introducing me to Magnus."
"So?" She replied.
"What if I never do."
Isabelle reached out for her brother, wrapping her long arms around him.
"Don't say that, Alec. It's all gonna be fine. Jace is gonna be fine. And if he's not, I'll kick his ass."
Alec laughed through the tears burning his eyes, and fell asleep in the darkness in the arms of his sister.
/
"What are you looking for?" Jace asked as Clary continued to rummage through the desk. Every time she shut a drawer the desk would shake, rattling the door and it was setting Jace on edge.
"Anything sharp, or hard. Anything weapon like really." She shook another drawer and Jace jumped in to stop her.
"Okay, calm down. They'll hear us. Look, we have that flick knife, right? We just need one more thing, maybe some scissors."
She looked up at him dazedly.
"Yeah, yeah okay. But I've looked in every drawer and I can't find anything."
Jace moved forward and began rifling though a drawer, running his hand across the hard back of the drawer. He pulled back to start on another drawer, jolting a locked one, only to let out a yell of surprise when the door started to rattle. He heard a yell, and he and Clary jumped back as the door started shaking and banging, someone pounding their fists. Then they heard a familiar voice, and Clary tightened her grip on the flick knife.
/
"This is… this is Clary's birth certificate?" Kaelie said, and Bat ripped it from her hands.
"What does this mean?" Bat asked, looking at the document. "Are you saying she's involved?"
"No." Maia said, strapping the bag to her back tightly. She needed to keep the contents safe. "It means, I'm pretty sure the name on the bottom of the paper is the person responsible for this robbery."
"Valentine Morgenstern." Bat said.
"Shit."
Everyone jumped at the voice, and they turned to see Jordan sitting upright, face looking pale and drawn.
"As in, the murderer?" Jordan said, making a move to stand up.
"Jordan, you need to rest." Kaelie said, reaching out for him. Instead of allowing her to push him down, Jordan just grabbed her hand and pulled himself up.
"Whatever, you guys woke me ages ago. If you have some fancy, heist jewellery crap, as well as those papers, I'm pretty sure someone is gonna come looking for them soon. So I need to get up, and we need to get ready."
Maia nodded, and turned to kick another box.
"We have two guns and a knife." Eric said. He held out the gun to Jordan, and he too it. Kaelie had the other one and Eric reached out for it, but Kaelie pulled it back.
"Wow there, how much gun training have you had? Cos my Dad taught me when I was sixteen."
Eric looked deflated, but nodded and went to help Maia.
"Sexist." She muttered.
It took a while for them to get another box out, and when they did all they found were photo frames and money,
"We're running out of time." Jordan said. "Just use that." His face was still paler, and Kaelie was pretty sure he was on the verge of passing out, but he just reached for a frame and cracked it against the ground. He shoved the gun- stupidly- into the waistband of his jeans and ripped a piece of fabric from his jacket, wrapping the fabric round some glass and handing it to Eric.
"Careful dude." He said, and Eric just gulped.
Maia shoved the remaining boxes back into the wall; Bat now had the knife, both Kaelie and Jordan had guns. Eric had a shank made of glass and Maia just picked up the abandoned bottle of moonshine. It was pretty hefty, and she trusted that she would get one hard blow out of it before it shattered. That was the best they were gonna get, and when the heavy chamber of the vault door finally let out a thump, they were standing on either side of the door, gripping their make shift weapons as though their life depended on it.
"There are two other rooms on this side of the lobby. One is a store cupboard- that's
first on the left. The other is Hodge's office, and it has a fire door with a stairway to the roof- head for that room, its second on the right, kay?" Maia said softly. "The only other rooms are full of deposit boxes. Second on the right- if it's locked, Jordan go first and shoot off the lock."
Jordan nodded and Maia closed her eyes. The barrel in the door dropped again- they had a plan, they knew what to do.
"Shit. Shitting shit." Eric was cussing to himself, clutching the glass as though it would kill him if he let go. Which, being honest, it might.
Kaelie prepped their guns, pulling their hands together in a defiant pose.
"There can't be more than five." Said Kaelie. "And theirs five of us. One each, yeah?"
They murmured a response, and then the door burst open.
It was like the pin of a grenade had been let out, and time had stopped at the same time. Three figures came charging in, guns raised and immediately Maia stepped forward, gripping the skinniest one around the neck. There was a feminine screech and Maia kicked the person's knees, pulling them down beneath her. She could hear chaos behind her, but this one was hers. She struggled as the person beneath her began to reach for the gun they had dropped, but she smacked her head against their forehead. They collapsed beneath her, charcoal lined eyes the only thing visible through her mask as Maia smashed the bottle on the woman's head.
"Son of a bitch." She muttered.
It was a woman.
Anger surged in her, and Maia rose up to help Eric. He was being held by the neck by Meliorn, his glass and Meliorn's gun nowhere in sight. She still had a grip on the broken neck of the bottle, so she took it and shoved it into Meliorn's neck, ignoring his cry of anger and the blood that spurted onto her face. She watched as Eric kneed him where it hurt, and the two of them burst off running.
She heard another gunshot, followed by two more. The third man had punched Jordan in the gut, and Jordan was about to go down as Bat pulled him out of the way and stabbed him somewhere, not looking back. They were all out of the room now, running down the hallway like maniacs. It was dark, dimly lit, and Eric and Kaelie were both limping.
"Hurry! We're nearly there." Maia said. She reached the door third after Bat and Jordan, and they were frantically banging on the door. Jordan shot at the lock twice, Maia standing back as it happened, and she could hear the others behind her.
Then a searing pain shot through her leg, and she went down like a rock.
/
Bang. Crack.
"Jace. What the hell are we gonna do."
The door was rattling like crazy, and Jace strained to here.
There were multiple voices, and he recognised them. Then they both heard the voices of their fellow captives.
"Maia!" "Everyone get back!"
"Oh God." Jace sprung into action, throwing the chair off the desk and preparing to move it. "Quick, help."
He was crazy, Clary thought.
"Jace, what the hell are you doing! Are you crazy!" He stared right at her, molten eyes burning.
"It's the others! They're out, I just heard Jordan. Help me move this."
Clary shoved the knife into her pocket and moved to help Jace, yelling out to them as she finally recognised Maia's voice cussing.
"Guys it's us! It's Clary."
On the other side of the door Bat was holding up Maia as she swore into his ear, her hot breath coming out shortly.
"That was Clary. Shoot the door again." She wheezed, and Kaelie finally came running up, shooting at the door. There were voices coming up the hallway and the five of them were huffing desperately.
Finally Jace and Clary managed to move the desk and they moved out the way quickly as the door came smashing open; Jordan had shoved his shoulder into it desperately, most likely cracking it in the process. Clary and Jace watched in shock as the five of them filtered into the room, and as they heard the yells of their captors through the crack in the door, Jace, Clary and Kaelie all moved forward to slam the door and push the desk in front.
"That should hold it." Maia wheezed. Suck it up, Roberts, she thought to herself as the others looked to her. The door rattled, and they sprang into action.
"Up those stairs." Jace coughed out. "Just don't look under them."
The other's looked at him confused, but Clary just pushed past and held the door open.
"Hodge is dead and those men are planning to blow up the place the second that they are done; lets move, I'm pretty sure that there is a door up there."
Kaelie held back a sob, and everyone just looked shocked. Maia had been shot in the leg, and it was bleeding badly. Jordan's wound had opened up again, and Kaelie was pretty sure there was a shard of glass in Eric's hair. But instead of focussing on that, the mismatched group of hostages rushed to the stairs.
Clary leant forward to grip onto Kaelie who was hobbling badly; Jace dragged Jordan and followed Eric who was leading ahead carrying Jordan's gun. None of them questioned it; they just followed as quickly as they could. They had made it up three flights of stairs when they head a blow beneath them, and Jace yelled out to Maia, heart beating wildly.
"How much further?" He shouted as the metallic staircase began to shake, and they all heard the yelling.
"Two flights." Maia moaned, but kept moving. "Go, Eric."
Eric sprinted up the stairs two at the time, reaching the top just in time to throw the door open before a man standing outside dragged him out by the neck.
He knew it was the guy with the black eyes, he could tell, and he began to wildly shoot out as he was spun onto the fire escape.
"Bitch!" He heard a yell.
He was tossed over by the man, and found himself without his gun, his neck pressed against the cold railing.
"You should've stayed where you were, dude. This is gonna be way worse."
Eric's vision was darkening, fuzzy at the edges, but just as Sebastian was about to crush his trachea the others burst onto the landing.
Jace dropped Jordan to lean against the wall and slammed a fist into Sebastian's face, watching in satisfaction as he passed out cold.
"That was for Clary, asshole."
And with that the rest of the hostages hurried down the stairs, the less injured helping everyone move forward. There was yelling behind them, and they were in an alleyway beside the bank, but none of it mattered any more because the cops were there, tons of them, and they were free.
A few at a time the hostages reached the cops, being pulled into safety. Jordan was first, and they began saying something but the noise was too much.
Kaelie dragged Eric out of the alley with her toward the cops and they were home free, followed by Maia and Bat; Jace was gripping Clary's hand as they ran, Clary slower than she would have liked due to the burning in her abdomen, but there were cops coming toward them now. Jace could've sung, or screamed, or burst into tears.
They were going to be fine.
And then, like smoke, Valentine Morgenstern stepped out into the alley.
And he raised the gun he has used to kill Hodge Starkweather.
And he pointed it straight at his daughter.
Bang, bang.
