To Hunt For Enemies
Chapter song: Monsters by Ruelle
Idris, 1998
The first time Jace saw Seraphina in full Shadowhunter battle regalia, he choked on his own saliva.
Seraphina was, to all appearances, for lack of a better description, a little girl. She was young, she looked young, and despite the fact that she certainly didn't act young, this was her defining trait. She was a child, just as much as Jace. Children should not look threatening.
Then again, he knew that he himself looked threatening. So why should she look any different?
But even if he'd been expecting her to look. . . somewhat imposing, even then he wouldn't have been prepared for the reality of her.
Her ginger hair was brutally tied back in two plaits, so tight he imagined it would make any other seven year old squirm with discomfort, in a way that made her eyes bug out of her head. But it didn't look as pathetic as one would expect; quite the opposite actually. Her wiry limbs were clad in the black leather all Shadowhunters wore, and any exposed skin was more ink than it's original colour; the amount of runes she bore even outnumbered her freckles with ease. Round her chest and her waist were two leather straps, each one with a different type of dagger or weapon tucked in. Tight but comfortable boots encased her feet and when she narrowed her eyes at him, he found himself trembling.
So, suffice to say, yes, she did look very threatening.
"Coming, Jacey?" Seraphina taunted, but there was no malice behind it. Jace was never sure why - though he would never question it; he was very grateful for that fact - but she'd taken a liking to him even after the rockiness of their first meeting. They just had the same sense of dry humour, and the same attitudes towards things.
So he wasn't surprised to find he was comfortable enough to smirk back cockily and quip, "I've been waiting for you, Sera. You're the fussy one who insisted on not having a single hair out of place when you go out hunting."
She narrowed her eyes further as he chuckled, before her face cleared, like sunshine had wiped away all the clouds. The abruptness of it unnerved him. "Fine, Jacey," she replied airily. "Laugh all you want. But it'll be my turn when a demon grabs your head by your abnormally long hair and pulls a chunk of it out, then using it in some sort of spell to give you an extra set of arms."
Her certainty was slightly nerve wracking, but he assumed an unaffected air. "An extra pair of arms may be quite handy in a fight actually," he said, then snickered at his own pun.
She smiled darkly, waving her arm. His attention was drawn to a scar that ran from the base of her thumb to wrap round her arm to her elbow, and he wondered where she'd gotten it. "Not when their growing out of your. . ." She paused, then her smile turned to a full blown wicked grin. "Neck."
He blanched. "Yikes."
She laughed, then her hand went to the sheath at her hip and listened to the squeal as she pulled out a sword that was so beautiful he couldn't help glancing at it. The metal was a dark silver, stamped with stars. He mentally compared it to the ring he wore, and wondered why she bore a sword with his family crest on it.
She smirked at him, noticing the subject of his attention. "Yikes is right, Jace H- Wayland."
He never noticed the hesitation at the time, and didn't for a good few years.
New York, 2007
Clary tucked the simple sword into the scabbard at her hip and slashed a glamour rune onto her wrist. She bounced up and down on her heels, looking around the busy street as she waited for the Lightwoods to show up. She studied the long queue to get into Pandemonium, and sighed with relief at the knowledge that not only did she know the werewolf bouncer as a lycanthrope from Luke's pack, but that her runes would also grant her a free pass in.
"You showed," lilted an amused voice. She huffed, and turned to face the owner.
"Obviously," she drawled. She turned to meet the playful stare of Jace, and the irritated stares of Alec and Isabelle.
"I'm pretty sure Jace told you to meet us at the Institute," Isabelle snapped, folding her arms over her chest. This simple action drew Clary's attention to the gear Isabelle wore, or lack thereof. Instead of gear, the taller girl had donned a long flowing dress the colour of snow, that gleamed painfully under the fluorescent bulbs in the streetlights. She cringed at the colour, but even so, Clary couldn't help but notice how out of date the style was, or the way it covered every inch of her skin - of her runes. "Can you not follow simple instructions?"
Clary looked up coolly. "I can. I just choose not to most of the time." A pause, then she spat out her scepticism: "You're wearing white to seduce the demon? Don't you think that's a bit. . . sacrilegious? Risky?"
Isabelle smirked in response, and Clary felt respect for this young woman flutter in her heart. "Don't you think you're being a bit superstitious?" Clary had to give her that one. "Besides, if it's white, the demon will be less inclined to think it's a Shadowhunter, for the very reason you just said. It'll be easier to fool it."
Clary nodded to show she conceded the point. "That's actually kind of smart."
"Glad to know you approve of our precautions," her brother butted in then, dryly. "Either way, let's get in there before the Eidolon makes one of these mundanes a snack or something."
Jace nodded, though he hadn't moved his aureate eyes from the two girls, where they'd been flicking back and forth like he was watching a mundane tennis match. "I agree. Let's go." He gave her a crooked half smile that for some reason had her heart skipping in her chest. "That is, if you girls have stopped bickering."
Isabelle flicked her hair over her shoulder, a lock of it hitting Jace in the nose and making him sneeze. Clary brought up a hand to stifle a giggle, and found she couldn't summon alarm when Jace's eyes momentarily flicked over the scar on her wrist she'd had since an unfortunate incident in training when she was six. "Never," Isabelle vowed, and looped her arm through Clary's, before they sashayed towards the queue in unison.
And Clary could have sworn that even Alec snorted with barely suppressed laughter at that.
Once they were in, Clary forced herself to ignore the constant urge to join the swathes of people in the middle of the dance floor, moving along to the music like one giant rippling limb. She'd only ever been to Pandemonium twice since she'd come to New York - once with Simon in an attempt to get him to loosen up a bit, once with Maia - but then she'd been warned that the New York Shadowhunters frequented this place just as much as they did Taki's, and she'd been sure to stay away. She hadn't been here in over a year.
But nothing had changed.
The atmosphere was still electric, lighting gunpowder in Clary's veins and sending her nerves tingling and muscles contracting in an effort to get her to dance, like the effects of what happened when one consumed faerie juice. She felt her heart tune to the beat in the music oozing from the speakers over head; heard her pulse pounding out the same beat in her ears. Isabelle parting from their group to walk out on her own. A lone white star amongst the sea of figures.
They passed a number of Downworld denizens as they tracker deeper, to the back of the club where shadowy alcoves lined the walls. Of course there were Downworlders, Clary chided herself mentally; this place was a collision of the mundane and Shadow worlds, where everything fused together in smoke an fluorescence. Much like Clary herself.
Perhaps that was why she liked it here.
"He's seen her," Jace muttered suddenly, jerking his head towards where Isabelle danced where she stood, radiant, and then at a blue-haired boy Clary had seen trying to convince the bouncer to let him in outside. She'd thought there was something suspicious about how green his eyes were: they were so bright, the colour of antifreeze. "And she's got him," Jace continued as Isabelle gracefully nodded her head in the direction of a door that said staff only on the front. "Let's go."
Clary knew he was saying the words for her benefit, because one glance from him and his parabatai had mobilised as well, ready to head it. She pulled out her own blade, practice ensuring it didn't make a sound, and quietly stalked after the boy as Jace took the lead. Alec circled behind them, bow drawn and arrow notched. She supposed they'd always hunted in this formation, with the reckless one on the offence and the cautious on the defence.
It was effective, she had to admit.
Isabelle smiled seductively at the demon, which, unconsciously, licked its lips, accidentally revealing the silver flash of needle like teeth as it did so. Its eerie eyes were fixed on Isabelle's face - or, more accurately, the thrumming pulse at the juncture between her head and neck. It stepped forward, oblivious to the set of silvery gold bangles round its prey's wrist starting to elongate into an electrum whip, or the three teenagers who slipped in the room after him.
Clary resisted the urge to grin as Isabelle's eyes met hers over the demon's shoulder, a barely detectable flicker of the dark irises, but enough to amuse the girls enough for Isabelle to lift her brow a fraction, so her face displayed a sardonic curiosity.
The demon cocked its head, interested in her change of emotion, the change in her heartbeat he surely picked up on as she allowed the adrenaline to race through her veins. "I haven't seen you here before," it commented, its voice nothing more than a low hiss that even a mundane would have trouble mistaking for human. "What's your name?"
Isabelle let some of her amusement seep into her giggle as she brought her hand to her mouth, and raised her brow to a height where the inquiry was noticeable. "You're asking if I come here often?" She twirled a lock of her hair round her finger and Clary took note of how it further loosened the whip coiled round her wrist. "I'm Isabelle."
"That's a pretty name," it growled, and then Isabelle brought her hand to her mouth, flicked her thumb over the grip of her whip, and allowed the sleeve of her dress to fall down slightly, exposing the night-vision rune etched onto her skin.
The demon froze. "You-"
A flash of gold, too fast for the human eye to process, but not fast enough for a demon or Shadowhunter to miss, smacked the demon in the chest in a blow that would have felled any mortal.
But the demon only staggered back, disoriented, as black blood poured in a sheet down his chest, the ichor dissolving the plastic casings of the wires around his feet, causing sparks to jump across the floor. Another snap and Isabelle's whip had wrapped round his torso like wire round a tree, and she was stepping forward and tugging on the bindings, making sure they were secure as she shoved him against the pillar. The demon snarled and snapped at her, but missed.
Isabelle stepped back and surveyed him, the way a cook might proudly survey a meal they'd painstakingly prepared. Her smile glittered like light shining off bubbling poison. She still wore her smile, but it had blossomed, similar to a blown bubble. "He's all yours, boys," she sang, then added, "and girl."
Apparently, Jace didn't need any further prompting, as he barrelled forwards, planting himself before the bound demon like a lion in front of a cornered deer. He grinned at him, and for a moment his tawny eyes turned to flame.
"So. . ." He drawled, like being there was an inconvenience, even though Clary could see the thrilling spark in his eye, and the curve of his smile. "Are there any more of you?"
The demon struggled against its bonds, wrists slippery with blood, but it maintained the gall to feint ignorance. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Its reticence didn't seem to throw Jace. If anything, it only fanned the glowing embers into flame. He lifted his hands and the demon's eyes skipped over the skin there: more ink than not. "Come now," Jace chided, and a piece of his wicked grin was in his voice, like a chip of salt dissolved in water. "You know what we are."
The demon clenched its jaw, then its eyes travelled over Jace, to Isabelle, standing with her hand on the tail end of the whip, to Alec, standing stoically behind his siblings, to Clary. Something sparked in its gaze when it laid eyes on Clary, but when it turned back to Jace, its expression of what would have been hope on any human dulled into a sneer. "Shadowhunters," it spat.
It was Isabelle who replied, her face resembling the Cheshire Cat's. "Got you."
The demons face could have terrified a mundane to death.
Jace stepped forward again. "You still haven't told me if there are any more of you." His fingers caressed the hilt of the blade.
Clary's breath hitched when she saw the blade he used. It was a kindjal, with a red stone set in the handle and a star stamped onto the blade.
A Morgenstern blade.
The demons eyes surveyed the company again, seemingly assessing who would most likely give it mercy. It was met with ruthless, blank stares, but nevertheless its eyes lit up when they flicked to its left - to Clary. "Spare me!" It choked. "I can give you information! I know where Valentine is!"
A chill snaked its way down her back, accompanied by the lingering echoes of what Dorothea had said. Valentine is in New York. . .
Her comrades, it seemed, had no such qualms with the information. Alec gave a grunt of annoyance, and Jace scoffed.
"By the Angel, every time we capture one of your kind you claim to know where Valentine is. Well, guess what?" He leaned closer to the demon; spittle flew out and hit its face. It closed its eyes. "We know where he is too. In Hell." He raised his kindjal, and Clary took a moment to appreciate the undeniable irony of it all: the adopted son of Valentine Morgenstern insisting the man was dead, going to kill the one who dare claimed he wasn't with an heirloom of the hated family. "And you can join him there."
"Stop!" The demon cried weakly. Its eyes flicked to, and locked with, Clary's. "Surely you of all people would want to know where-" Clary had drawn her sword and sliced its head off before it could finish the sentence.
Black blood burned her hand and she wiped her blade on her gear, feigning indifference in an attempt to hide how shaken she was at how close the demon had come to revealing who she was.
"Good riddance," Isabelle broke the silence. "It doesn't do, listening to them. They'll drive you insane. Tell you your greatest fears are reality, just to get to you."
Clary nodded mutely in response. Jace was scrutinising her a little too much for her liking.
It probably wasn't safe to say what she was about to say. But she had to know. "What it said. . ." She trailed off. "What you said. What do you mean every time you catch one it claims to know where Valentine is? He's dead."
"Yes he is, Clarissa," Jace filled in sarcastically. "Do you not know who he is?"
"Oh no, I just happen not to have heard of the most notorious Shadowhunter who nearly destroyed the Accords." She drawled in response. "I was just wondering how long has this been going on for."
Surprisingly, it was Alec who filled in his commentary, then. Jace was still examining her intently. The archer shrugged. "About a month? I can't be sure. But around that."
Clary nodded warily. "So if that's how long he's been "back"-" She used air quotes to show her scepticism, "then why hasn't he acted sooner? Why would there be only rumours?"
"Because he's not back?" Jace suggested dryly. "But as long as we're playing the what if game, then I suppose it makes sense he's waiting. He waited to attack the Clave, didn't he?" She nodded, acutely aware of Alec and Isabelle's thoughtful gazes. "Maybe he needed something to proceed with his plans then. Maybe he needs to same thing now. That might be why he's waiting." Jace thought for a minute, then laughed. "I can't believe I'm even considering this. He's in the ground. He's gone. End of story."
Clary shrugged in response, though her mind was racing, even as they turned to leave the club, even as she waved goodbye to the Lightwoods and went to make a Portal, even when she arrived home and went to bed, unable to sleep.
Because Jace's words had rung a bell in her. She knew how obsessed Valentine was with a certain object. She knew how many pains he'd put himself through to obtain it before. She knew that she and Jocelyn were perhaps the only two who knew where that object was.
Because she knew that if it came down to it, if she stood between him and the Mortal Cup, she knew her father would not hesitate to run her through.
It was inevitable.
Clary only hoped she had the chance to spare her loved ones before the time came.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. I am not Cassandra Clare.
Sorry for the lull in updating, I don't have any excuse so... here it is.
In fact, in this chapter there's a key point that's absolutely vital to Jace finding out who Clary is. I'm wondering if anyone spotted it...
What did you think? Review?