The potatoes needed salt, but other than that, the food wasn't bad. Jace didn't even mind having to eat steak with his fingers.

Jonathan hadn't brought him silverware, knowing that he would either use his fork to pick the lock of his manacle or stab him with it. Or both in that order.

Pretty smart move on his part, Jace thought as he licked his fingers clean.

There was suddenly a loud click at the door and Jace hastily set the tray back on the table and sat on the edge of the cot to face whoever was coming in.

Jonathan quietly shut the door behind him before hurrying over to Jace, keys in hand. Jace frowned at him as he started unlocking his manacle.

"What are you doing?" Jonathan's jaw was set and he wasn't looking at him.

"Come on. We don't have time to chat."

the manacle fell off and Jace looked down at it before he was yanked up off the cot by his arm. Jonathan started pulling him to the door but Jace pulled his arm out of Jonathan's grip, spinning the other boy around to face him with the force of the motion.

"Wait, where are we going what's happening?" Jonathan gave him a deeply annoyed look.

"What part of 'we don't have time to chat' didn't you understand? We need to go right now. I mean…" he gave him a dark look, "Unless you want to stay here." Jace shook his head.

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me why you're acting so weird."

"By the Angel…" Jonathan swore as he pressed his palms into his eyes. "If we get caught, it's gunna be on you…" Jace took a few steps towards him, his eyebrows coming together as his frown deepened.

"Get caught doing what?" Jonathan dropped his hands.

"Look…I thought about all that you said. And I guess…well I guess I'm suicidal too." Jace stared at him, half believing that his steak had been drugged and that he was hallucinating.

"Wait, so you're gunna help-?"

"Yes, now will you come on? We literally have two minutes." Jonathan turned to the door and peered out into the hallway, beckoning Jace to follow him.

The boys crept silently through the house, backs pressed to the walls, with Jonathan in the lead and shushing Jace every time he tried to talk. They rounded a corner and Jonathan took them down a flight of stairs.

"Where are we going?" Jonathan threw him a furious look over his shoulder, but answered him only because he knew Jace would just keep asking.

"We aren't going anywhere. You are. I'll tell Father you jumped me when I came down to get you and that you took off. He'll be pissed so get as far away from here as you can."

Jace frowned; there were so many holes in that plan already.

"Wait why aren't you coming with me?" Jonathan stopped outside the cellar door and turned to him.

"I said I was going to help you. And I'm going to." he pulled out another key and slid it into the lock of the door. "Remember that time you asked me how I got to Alicante and I told you 'don't worry about it'?" Jace hooded his eyes.

"Yeah that was a fun night."

Jonathan smiled and pulled open the door. He looked over at Jace with a secret glitter in his eyes.

"Well you're about to find out how I did it. Come on." Jonathan disappeared into the dark room and Jace followed, wondering what he was talking about.

"Shh, be quiet and close the door." Jonathan's voice came from the darkness at his left. Jace silently closed the door and blinked rapidly when the light suddenly came on. "Over here, quick."

Jonathan was leaning down at the base of a long metal table, brushing aside some dirt on the floor. Jace went to his side. Jonathan stood and gestured down at their feet.

"There's a trap door around here we just have to find it under all this dirt." he looked around as Jace started kicking aside puffs of dirt. "Wait I think I see part of it." Jace looked.

"Where?" Jonathan pointed.

"Right there."

As Jace leaned down to see where he was pointing, Jonathan grabbed him and slammed his head down into the metal edge of the table with so much force it knocked him unconscious.

For the second time in too short a time, Jace awoke to a pounding head and one wrist securing him down to a piece of uncomfortable furniture. This time it was a metal table.

Jace shot upright with difficulty as he felt hands tightening another leather strap around his forearm. Jonathan pulled him back down and secured the strap to the table, whistling merrily as he did it.

Then he strolled down to Jace's feet, adding a little skip to his step before he started strapping Jace's ankles down.

Jace kicked out at him, hating how peppy he was and just hating him in general. Jonathan dodged his kick with a wide eyed, amused look.

"Hey now. None of that." he said as he finished with his other ankle.

Jace felt like he was going to be sick. What had happened? he thought with his eyes closed.

Jonathan laughed then, slow and arrogant. Jace opened his eyes. Jonathan had come up to stand by his face, a cocky grin pulling up one corner of his mouth.

"God you were easy. I thought I was going to have trouble getting you down here…but you basically skipped on after me." Jace groaned low in his throat.

"You were never gunna help me…"

"Oh I am going to help you, just not in the way you were wanting."

Jonathan disappeared from his sight then, but returned not a second later with a pair of scissors. He slipped them under the edge of Jace's shirt and started to cut it off. Soon his shirt was gone; nothing but pieces of dark cut up fabric that Jonathan pulled away from his skin and tossed onto the floor.

"Would it be too clichéd of me to say that this is for your own good little brother?" Jonathan said with a dark gleam lighting his eyes. Jace just laid there frozen for awhile.

"He got to you didn't he."

It wasn't a question, and Jace practically spit it at him. Jonathan chuckled lightly in response. Jace fought to keep the desperation out of his voice but failed as he said,

"He's poison, Jonathan. Why can't you see that?" Jonathan looked over at him.

"Funny, he said the same thing about you."

"Oh yeah? What else did he say? Did he say that I was the black sheep set out to destroy your perfect little family? Come on, Jonathan. I can't believe you don't see him for the snake that he is."

"He said you were persuasive. And you are. So who's to say the rest isn't true too?"

"God, your reasoning sucks. You're so blinded and controlled by him you can't see what's right in front of you, it's sad it really is." Jonathan leaned down and spoke close to his face.

"Well we can't all be perfect sighted Angel Boys now can we?" his black eyes burned into Jace's golden ones and Jace suddenly felt a hollowness in his chest.

"Why are you doing this?" Jace asked, his voice coming out quieter than he had expected it to.

Jonathan tossed the scissors away before leaning his palms back down on the edge of the table, his face creasing into a thoughtful frown.

"Let's see, why am I doing this…" he dropped his eyes down to Jace's and stared at him darkly for a few seconds.

"It's because I know what I am. And guess what? I like it. I like being bad. Makes me happy." Jonathan murmured before he circled around Jace's head.

Jace clenched his teeth and tried to stop the rising feeling of dread that was threatening to envelop him at his current situation.

"And can you honestly say that if the situation weren't reversed, and it was me on that table, that you'd just…walk away?" Jonathan asked him.

"You know, yesterday I might have. But now…"

Jace raised his eyes up to his brother's and Jonathan could see a hateful and bitter desire for revenge in them that made him smile.

"Well, well. Looks like you've got a little devil in you after all." Jonathan said with a touch of pride. But then his smile faltered, and the sparkle in his eyes dimmed as he said in a quiet voice that betrayed a hint of regret,

"Too bad it won't be enough to save you."

Just then there was a loud bang behind Jace's head at the door as it opened, and Jonathan gave him one last dark look before moving away out of his sight.

Valentine entered the cellar, and though Jace could not see him, the atmosphere of the room seemed to change like then man's energy brought a sick darkness to the surroundings.

His father pushed a small wheeled cart over to the table and though he was curious to see what was on it, he wasn't that curious because he knew he would find out soon enough anyways.

Jace counted to three before flicking his eyes over to his father's face. Valentine chuckled.

"Well if looks could kill, I'd be in trouble." he said with a patronizing smile.

Jace felt goosebumps erupt on his arms as it hit him with stunning force exactly how much he hated this man. Valentine looked down at the assortment of objects on the cart in front of him.

"But unfortunately for you, looks do not in fact kill. There are many things in this world that do kill, as you know. This for instance." he held up the bone handled dagger with the lethal tip.

Jace wasn't impressed and Valentine could tell; he'd seen many a blade in his lifetime. Valentine smiled and lowered his eyes in amusement as he placed the knife back on the cart.

Valentine flicked his eyes back up to Jace's, who blinked as he saw the sudden deadly gleam in them.

Valentine then raised up a jar of thick, purple tinged fluid for Jace to see, his eyes never leaving his son's face.

"And then there's this." he murmured.

Jace looked at it, trying to remember where he had seen it before. Valentine grinned.

"Know what it is?" Jace flicked his eyes back over to his father's.

"Grape Kool-Aid?"

Jonathan pinched the bridge of his nose. Valentine's grin faded as his eyes darkened with annoyance.

Jace couldn't stop the smirk of conceit; Valentine had walked right into that one.

He knew it was probably bad that he loved how it enraged his father to know that Jace was not afraid of him, and could in fact find humor in situations like this.

Valentine looked down at the arrogant smile on his son's face before swirling the contents of the jar around like wine in a glass. Go ahead and enjoy that smile now, Angel Boy, cause it'll be your last.

"This is the blood from a very rare demon," he said finally, looking through the glass of the jar like the liquid inside was melted down gemstones. "One that you've never seen, one that I've only seen once. It's blood is so toxic, so poisonous, the Children of Lilith hunt them down for it because it makes for a great weapon, a very effective…" he looked down and met Jace's eyes, "Tool."

Valentine set the jar back down on the cart. "The only problem is that it's so deadly. But the warlocks, they came up with a solution to that. They can be very ingenious at times; who'd have known?"

Jace clenched his teeth against the annoyance at his father's words just as Jonathan came around the table with a syringe in his hand. Before Jace had time to react, Jonathan stabbed it into the vein at the crook of his arm with surprising skill and injected him with it. Jace threw him a furious glare as Jonathan pulled out the needle and smiled with dark humor.

"Sorry I don't have any lollipops to give you." he said as he turned away.

Jace rolled his eyes and looked back at his father who had picked up a small timer and had set it to twenty minutes. Jace sneered.

"Is that how long I have until the bomb detonates?" Valentine looked at him with a slightly amused expression as he unscrewed the lid of the jar of demon poison.

"No. That's how long you have before the antidote runs out of your system. And besides…" he picked up the dagger and dipped it into the jar, coating the blade with the blood before looking back up into Jace's eyes.

"I doubt you'd last much longer than twenty minutes." he said seriously, with no hint of ridicule in his voice.

Valentine then pushed aside the cart and approached the table with the poisoned knife held lightly in his hand, his eyes scanning Jace's chest like a bear scanning the surface of water for a fish.

"I'll do my best to avoid your Marks, but what I hit we can always just go back and fix later." he said with an amused shrug. Jace glared at him.

Valentine lowered the knife to a point centimeters above his skin and Jace had to stop himself from trying to sink down away from it into the table as his father glanced over his shoulder at Jonathan, who pressed the start button on the timer and backed away towards the wall.

Valentine looked back at Jace, who suddenly couldn't pull his eyes away from the timer. Nineteen minutes and fifty-six seconds had never seemed like such an enormous chunk of time before.

Valentine chuckled, seeming to read his mind, or more like the dread in his eyes as he tore them away from the agonizing and dispassionate numbers.

"Now, the funny thing about this poison…" Valentine pressed the blade down to his skin and drew a six inch line down his chest.

Jace tensed, feeling the sharp pain of the knife cut him but thinking reflexively, well that's not so bad as Valentine lifted the blade back up again and stared down with interest at the cut he had made.

"Wait for it…" Valentine said with a small smile.

Jace gasped loudly. The cut suddenly felt like it was on fire; like someone was holding a white hot piece of steel against his chest and he couldn't pull away from it.

Jace glanced down at his chest, not believing that all he was seeing was a little cut when what he felt was a sharp, burning ache that made him think his skin was bubbling like super heated wax.

Jace groaned when he realized that the pain was not fading, but sinking deeper down into his chest and spreading fire into his muscles and veins.

"God, that's not funny at all." Jace groaned. Valentine made a tsk sound as a look of mocking bliss swept his handsome features.

"Aw Jace… I've waited so long to hear you say that." he laughed as he turned to dip the blade again.

Jace couldn't stop the despaired sound that escaped his throat as he dropped his head back down on the table and shut his eyes; eighteen minutes and forty-two seconds.