The air of Pandemonium was thick with the smell of sweat and expensive perfume as Clary and Simon squeezed their way in through the narrow door of the poorly-lit, pack-jammed club. They both stuck out as a sore thumb among the pierced, tattooed and funky hair colored crowd, in their rather nerdish, plain clothes, but Clary was trying not to think about it too much.
It didn't matter how awkward and out of place she felt each time she came, there was just something about the club that she loved so much, she couldn't help dragging Simon there over and over. The alternative music, the eerie mist, the dancing lights, the whole atmosphere felt like a dream, and one she would love to be a part of. But it was not like she actually had the courage to interact and talk to anybody besides her friend.
Clary found it strange how all the outlandish people she'd never seen out in the streets of New York City gathered here every night, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. It almost made her wonder if a portal to another dimension hadn't opened, and all these people hadn't simply come flowing out directly to the dancefloor. Not that it made any sense.
There was one person in particular Clary's eyes couldn't help but settle on as she and Simon danced, or at least attempted to, in the middle of the jam packed room. The girl was the type Clary loved to draw: tall and slim, probably a bit older than her, and also absolutely gorgeous. A curtain of obsidian hair flowed over her dainty, pale shoulders, in stark comparison with the floor-length white dress she wore, who looked like she'd borrowed it from a Victorian lady's closet, with black lace-up boots peeking from underneath it. She looked like she'd come straight out of the cover of a Gothic Beauty magazine, with her porcelain skin and the dark makeup that covered her exquisite features. The kind of girl that all guys adored and all girls wanted to be. Also the kind who would never in a million years give her a second glance, Clary thought to herself as she admired her.
The girl was browsing the dance floor with a purpose, looking for someone, probably her proportionally hot date and, Clary noticed, she was also wearing a silver necklace with a ruby pendant hanging from it, seemingly pulsing against the lights like a second heart. She brought a hand up to her face to brush a lock of her long hair away, her lace sleeves lowering when she did, exposing the skin on her arms, which Clary saw were covered in very peculiar tattoos. Bold, black, intricate spirals and designs twirled around her wrist and up her arm, only adding to her dark allure, visible even from this side of the room. She had this kind of enigmatic beauty, and such a confidence to go with it, Clary wouldn't have been surprised to learn she was the lead singer of a symphonic goth band, or something equally as cool.
Clary saw the gothic girl start to head towards a room with a sign that read NO ADMITTANCE, the slightly ajar door showing a glimpse of stacked boxes and tangled electrical wires, but not before turning around to scan the dancefloor, a mischievous smile on her lips, like a secret invitation.
It would be easy to slip away from her friend and swerve through the crowd to reach the girl, maybe start up a conversation. Clary wondered what the girl would say if she saw her there, if she would introduce herself, or just rudely dismiss her for being uncool.
"Hey, Earth to Clary? Are you listening to me?" she heard Simon say through the loud music and she realized he'd been trying to have a conversation with her for a while, and she'd tuned him out, too busy daydreaming about the mysterious girl.
"Yeah, sorry. It's really loud in here" she shouted back at him, gesturing to her ears for emphasy, to which he nodded
"Great tunes tonight, don't you think? DJ Bat is doing an exceptional job." Simon said, accentuating the word
She mentally rolled her eyes. Simon hated coming here, yet for some reason he always tried to pretend he was having the time of his life.
"Yup. Totally. I'll be right back okay, Simon?" Clary answered, already turning away
"What, wait, where are you going?" she heard him shout over the noise behind her
"Uh, the bathroom. Just wait here" she lied, not waiting for his answer, already pushing and shoving through the dense crowd with an irrational frenzy, like she was possessed by something.
Clary rushed to the storage room, completely under the spell of the girl, who had slipped into the dark room through a curtain of smoke like a translucent, incorporeal ghost, silently beckoning her to follow.
She pushed the door open, and was surprised to find the room completely deserted, even though she'd seen the girl go in with her own two eyes. It makes no sense, she thought to herself, as she wandered deeper in the room. The only light came from tall, barred windows, and the usual city noises spilled faintly from them, along with a cold breeze. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust, and the whole room smelled like it hadn't been used much in a while. It was a completely normal storage room, Clary realized, no secret doors or passages. And the girl was nowhere to be seen.
In her panic, she didn't notice the numerous wires directly in front of her, and had to stop to untangle her green sneaker from them, before she tumbled to the floor, again. But out of nowhere, voices rose up, a girl's laugh and a boy answering sharply. And all of a sudden she saw them, right in front of her, where a second ago nothing could be seen.
The girl was miraculously there, in her long pale gown, but now she was accompanied by a blue-haired boy Clary remembered seeing at the entrance making a fuss with the bouncer about some fake weapon. But now the punk kid was on the floor, tied to a pillar with some kind of metallic wire, an expression of fear distorting his features as the girl stood over him, a dagger in her hand, and a predatory look on her face.
Her relief and excitement at seeing the beautiful girl only lasted a second, and was now replaced by panic and confusion, as she ducked around the pillar instinctively. Clary knew Pandemonium was a bit freaky and eccentric, and she loved it for that, but this? This was on a whole other level.
The tall brunette crossed her arms over her chest, slowly pacing in front of the boy, like a lazy cat toying with its food. "So, we can make this quick, or we can make it hurt" she said to him in an icy tone, as she twirled the dagger in her hand "Your choice"
"I don't know what you're talking about" he pleaded with her
A rich, hearty laugh rose from the girl, surprising Clary.
"Please. Don't insult me. You know exactly what I'm talking about. In fact, I think you should tell me if there are other weasels of your kind out there"
Your kind? Clary thought to herself, wondering if she'd stumbled into some weird gang war. She could sort of picture the girl as a gang lord, both beautiful and tyrannical, like some mistress of evil.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked her, his eyes wide with fear, yet somehow, Clary noticed a slight defying, almost rebellious tone to his voice
"It would be really smart to answer me, I'm starting to get bored, you know." she gave a long sigh, as she tossed her hair over her shoulder "I'll ask again, are there other demons with you, boy?"
More like some kind of satanic cult, Clary thought to herself.
The blue haired boy simply turned his head away from her, refusing to answer.
"Well, I tried. Goodbye, then" she said with a shrug, before lowering the dagger towards his heart, in a swift motion, ready to pierce his skin, too fast for Clary to react
"Wait! I can tell you where Valentine is! All Infernal Worlds know that he's back" he frantically said, making her pause
The girl made a thoughtful expression, the dagger still in her hand, hovering over the boy's heart. Clary noticed it was a very peculiar blade, completely transparent, like it was made entirely from a shard of glass.
"Mmmhh, let me think about it…" she trailed off, before breaking the most beautiful yet terrifying smile Clary had ever seen "No, don't believe it, sorry"
She lowered the dagger again as a scream started to raise from his throat, an expression of utter panic on his face...
"Stop!" Clary cried, suddenly stepping out from behind the pillar "You can't do this"
The tall girl turned around, so surprised the blade fell from her hand, clattering on the concrete floor and landing in the pile of tangled cables. The punk boy looked at her too, his breath ragged and hard as he struggled against his bonds.
The girl's eyes narrowed as she looked in her direction, and suddenly Clary felt very much like a butterfly caught in a spiderweb, vulnerable and defenseless. "What are you doing here?" the girl said in what could only be described as a menacing tone
"I, uh, I followed you. From the dancefloor" she said, mentally facepalming herself at her poor choice of words "You can't just kill him, I know he didn't do anything"
"Of course you would. You're just a mundie." she said sarcastically, pronouncing the last word like it disgusted her. "Get out of my sight" she added, making a shoo-ing motion towards her like she was some insect pestering her, her long manicured nails gleaming in the poor lighting.
"No, you'll kill him if I go. And I'm not some 'mundie'. Whatever that is. My name is Clary" she said, feeling insulted
"I don't know why you can see me, little girl, and frankly, I couldn't care less. But you better get out of here before I make you" Clary didn't like the threatening look the girl was giving her, nor the fact that she was calling her 'little girl' when they were clearly around the same age.
But Clary didn't have time to say any of that, because the punk boy she'd almost forgotten about was lunging for the girl with a battle cry, free from his restraints, taking both of them completely by surprise.
They fell to the ground with a loud thud, rolling together as the boy teared at her chest with hands that turned into sharp, angled claws right in front of Clary's eyes, suddenly not looking so innocent. The girl shrieked and grunted with effort as she tried to pry him off her, reaching for the golden wire that was still attached to the pillar next to them, but it was stuck.
Clary panicked, still frozen in place at the sight of the boy's claws stained with blood, not understanding any of what she was seeing, but the girl called out to her, snapping her out of her shock.
"Kill it! Or pass me the dagger, you!" she said, her voice rising in pitch as she dove and swerved around the creature's razorlike claws, narrowly escaping his killer blows
Clary walked over to where they'd been standing before, uselessly rummaging around the cables on the floor for the blade the girl had dropped.
"I can't find it" she said with panic, but the girl had finally managed to disentangle the wire, and was brandishing it like a whip towards the monster, making him shriek in pain, as the golden rope coiled itself around his shoulders, digging deeply into his flesh.
Just as she saw that, Clary felt with her fingertips a cool, sharp object, and lifted it up to see that it was the strange, luminescent dagger the girl carried, on her fingertip a drop of blood from the surface cut she barely even noticed.
"Come on, pass it to me, you useless girl!" the tall girl said, breathing hard from the fight, a hand outstretched in Clary's direction. Clary complied and saw that the boy was covered in a thick, dark substance where the bounds had cut into him. Blood.
The girl sank the dagger into his chest effortlessly, like she'd done it a thousand times, as more of the black liquid exploded around its hilt, and the boy twitched and gurgled with pain. She reached down to yank the knife out of him, splashing more strange blood around.
The boy's bright green eyes flickered open, staring into the girl's, as he hissed between his teeth "So be it. The Foresaken will take you all"
But then his eyes rolled back into his head, and his body began to jerk wildly, as he folded into himself, becoming smaller every second, until he disappeared without a trace.
The girl got up, recoiling the whip around her arm like a snake, with a flick of the wrist, splattering Clary with the creature's blood in the process, and eerily reminding her of Wonder Woman and her Lasso of Truth.
"Ugh, you stupid mundie, you almost got me killed! And you made me ruin my dress!" she hissed, that last part packed with even more fury than the rest, as she examined the fabric of her dress stained with the viscous black liquid
"Sorry, I guess. I mean what...What are you? And what was that?" Clary asked her, still confused, as she wiped the blood off her face with the back of her hand, discovering that it stung slightly
"It's a demon, you idiot! I don't even know why I'm explaining this to you. I'm a shadowhunter. And you just interrupted me in the middle of my work" she shook her head, like she couldn't believe Clary had the audacity to do such a thing, before wiping the dagger on her already sullied dress, making a face.
"Well, excuse me for not letting you murder someone in peace. Or what looked like someone…" she trailed off
"Doesn't seem so innocent now, does it? Which is why you should stop meddling with things that don't concern you."
"But what happened to him? He just...vanished" Clary still couldn't believe even a fraction of what she had seen.
"It went back to its dimension. Like I said, not your business"
"And why did you say you didn't know why I could see you? Are you supposed to be invisible?"
"Usually, to humans, yes. And it's done precisely to avoid you pesky people from meddling with our affairs. Guess it didn't work on you" she said dismissively, but Clary noticed a tinge of uncertainty creeping into her tone
Clary was about to ask the girl about it when the door flew open, the lights and music pouring in, as a familiar face with scraggly hair and tiny glasses stood on the doorway.
"Clary! There you are! I've been looking for you all over. You said you went to the bathroom but you went the opposite way, so I thought maybe you were lost and...why are you in here all by yourself?" Simon said, looking around the room with a puzzled expression
Clary turned around and peered behind her, where Isabelle stood pale under the dim lights, her long dress stained with the monster's blood, a dagger in hand, an eyebrow arched on her beautiful face, like she was saying 'See? I told you'. Yet Simon couldn't see any of it.
Slowly Clary turned back around to face him, not as surprised by his apparent blindness as she should've been, considering all the impossible things she'd seen up to that point. Clary wondered how she must look to him, standing alone in the dark storage room, with her feet tangled in the plastic wires. "Sorry, I was looking for the bathroom. Obviously I couldn't find it. It's uh, it's nice and quiet in here" she ended up saying.
Simon was looking at her with a quizzical expression, his face full of suspicion, like somehow he knew she was lying, only he didn't know what about. I guess it's not so surprising, Clary thought, we've known each other for years, but better he thinks of me as a little eccentric rather than just completely losing my mind.
"You sure? You kind of look like you saw a ghost or something" he asked her and his voice was etched with concern. You're not that far off, Clary thought.
"I needed some fresh air, is all" Clary added in hopes it would convince him, and his expression changed, a hint of pity appearing in his features
"Okay, I guess. I mean, not that it isn't nice in here, you know. It's got a nice uh, musty smell and everything. It's got some character to it" he said, obviously trying to make her feel better, as he gestured to their banal surroundings, but only making her more embarrassed that it was all happening in front of the girl.
Because, even if Simon couldn't hear it, behind her the enigma girl was laughing softly, still listening to their every word.
A/N: Thank you so much for reading !
I'm so happy about the first chapter of this new fic, and I hope you enjoyed it :) Plan on making this a bit of a longfic.