Sebastian's eyes widened behind his mask.
Whoever it was that he was expecting tonight, it hadn't been Jace.
But then his eyes relaxed and a cruel smile settled on his lips, and it filled Clary with a horrible, cold sensation that spread through her limbs, through her hair, to her toes, freezing her fingertips.
She felt Magnus and Alec moving in, she could hear Jace's order not only in her earpiece but also in his mind, and she could hear both Magnus and Alec getting up from their respective tables and moving forward, carefully coming from two different directions. Clary focused everything she had back on Sebastian, trying to change her focus on him, coming in through Hodge's mind and what she could get from the womans—from Kaelie's, as Hodge had called her. She caught a glimpse of telepathic blocker bands around both of his wrists, and they were a lot sleeker and a lot more advanced that any blockers she had seen, which would be why they were working so well. Usually she could still see something when someone had a mental block or telepathic blockers, even if it was only hazy, but clearly these worked a whole lot better.
You need to get the bands off him, she projected to the whole team, and from the way that Gretel winced, she guessed that it was probably a bit louder than it should have been. But she was panicked, and she wanted to help, and the only way she could help specifically with Sebastian was if those bands were off his wrists. Even if it's just one of them, she added, quietening her thoughts a bit.
"Shit," Gretel murmured, and she pulled her purse closer to her, snapping open the clasp and reaching inside. Clary was still focusing on Sebastian, and she wished that Alec and Magnus could get there faster. If they weren't in such a crowded place, Alec would portal right to Sebastian's side, but given how many innocent people there were, they were trying to keep victims to a minimum. Clary picked up on something in Kaelie's mind, and her head moved, using her eyes to search rather than her mind.
"Over there," she said quietly as she saw a couple of men dressed in identical dark suits moving in from the sides of the building. She easily slipped into their heads, and they were responding to some sort of signal from Sebastian.
"I count three," Gretel said quietly into her earpiece and she stood up, moving to stand behind Clary's seat, still holding her purse in one hand, the other hand inside the purse, grasping her gun. She tried to make it look natural, the way she was standing, as though she was just stretching her legs, but it wasn't going to take Sebastian long, not someone who knew what they were looking for. He had already spotted Jace, and he knew that there were going to be more spread throughout the room.
"They're mutants," Clary quickly realized, and she bent her head forward, speaking into her headset rather than sending her thoughts out to anyone because it was likely that they would just be a jumble. "They're mutants and they're the same person." That drew Gretel's attention back to the the three men, who they had all looked at but none of them had properly examined.
"Shit," Gretel muttered. "He's a replicator."
"Doesn't change anything," Jace said abruptly. "We knew that he would bring protection. We need to get Sebastian out of here, away from these people. We want to limit the amount of people involved." Clary slipped into the mans mind, but she was instantly hit with a whole lot of mixed up thoughts. Her head jerked and Gretel put a hand on her shoulder.
"You alright?" Gretel asked quietly.
"I thought that they would just be exact replicas," Clary winced as she tried to differentiate between the three mens thoughts. "But they're not—they've all got individual thoughts but they're still merging together, they're telepathically linked, so they're sharing all their thoughts." But then she heard a very clear thought.
Gun.
Clary was about to cry out, but Jace was already on top of it. Each of the of the men—his name was Emil Pangborn, Clary was able to figure out, even though that was just a useless fact—had pulled out a gun, and they were coming from three different directions, their main focus was Jace, but Jace's fingers snapped, and suddenly all three guns were soaring toward him. He seemed to make a split second decision that Clary agreed with, and that was flicking those guns up toward the ceiling and squeezing the trigger with his power, sending three bullets upward, the sharp bangs alerting everyone to the danger.
Everything got crazy from there—people started screaming and crying out, and they were running toward the exits in a panic. They were looking around frantically, and the overwhelming feeling of fear and dread was in the air and it made Clary's head ache at just how loud their thoughts were. She tried to block them out, finding Kaelie again, and looking through her eyes at Sebastian and Clary grabbed Gretel's hand as Sebastian lashed out, reaching toward Hodge.
"Oh god," Clary let out a heavy breath, her words drowning out in the chaos around them. "They—"
"We need to get you out of here," Raphael was suddenly at Clary's side, grabbing her arm and pulling her to her feet. Clary was glad that Isabelle had told her to wear fancy flat shoes rather than heels with her dress, because she wasn't sure she would be able to stand in heels right now.
"Sebastian killed Hodge," Clary managed to say. Raphael's mouth was in a grim line as he nodded, acknowledging what she had said but not verbally answering. "Wait—you should be helping Jace!" Clary protested as Raphael pulled her into the sea of people that were trying to get out the front door.
"No, I need to get you out of here. Bosses orders," Raphael snapped, and as Clary looked over her shoulder, she realized that Gretel was no longer with them. She had guessed that Jace probably had a plan for her to get out of there if—when—shit went down, but that didn't mean she was happy with it.
Alec and Magnus were closing in on Sebastian, and that was when Kaelie transformed, becoming completely made of diamond again. There were gasps from the people who realized what was happening, and Alec and Magnus just started moving faster. Kaelie moved first, throwing out spikes of diamond, like the one that she had thrown at Jace and had hit Clary, back when all of this had first started. Clary gasped as they went flying toward the two men, but both Alec and Magnus were faster. Magnus' hands came up and created thick panels of ice in front of the spikes, while Alec dodged around them. Hodge's body was on the ground, and there were two bartenders behind the bar who looked as though they were frozen as they watched the events unfold in front of them.
"Raph," Clary jerked on his arm. She couldn't leave. Not when there were so many people still inside. Not when she could still help. "I can't."
"Clary—" Raphael's eyes were wide as they were jostled by people still trying to get out the narrow exits. If he really wanted to, he could throw Clary over his shoulder and have them out of here in a blink of an eye. With his superhuman strength and speed, the pace that they were going at was only because he didn't want to leave. It wasn't that he didn't want to get Clary somewhere safe, it was just that his boss and his friends were still in danger.
"We can help," Clary told him urgently. She was shoved forward by a man who was eagerly trying to reach the exit. "We can help." Raphael looked at her for a long moment before reaching forward and wrapping an arm around her waist. She wasn't sure what he was doing for a moment, but then they were moving through the crowd, her feet off the ground, and when they settled back on the floor, they were safely in the corner of the room.
"I'm not leaving you," Raphael told her firmly. Clary nodded.
"Cover me," she said to him before she tried to blanket everyone's thoughts. There had been so many people packed into the room, and there was the VIP section above which was a balcony that wound its way halfway around the building where people were still trying to come down from. Even though so much had happened since Jace had fired off the warning gunshots, only a few minutes had passed by and the building was still over half full. People were scared, and fear caused panic, and that was sending people scrambling for exits and not thinking, causing traffic jams of human bodies.
Clary scrunched up her nose as she tried to reach out to the minds of the people who were scared, who had nothing to do with the war that was breaking out between the two brothers, trying to settle their minds and sending them calmly toward the doors. There were so many people that she was trying to reach, though, and she had to try and exclude Jace and his people and that made it a bit more difficult, so she was only able to capture part of the people in the room.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Magnus' hands raise and she felt the temperature in the room suddenly decreasing rapidly. Clary wanted to know what his plan was, but she was focusing too hard on trying to get everyone to safety she couldn't spare any part of her mind to move to his.
She saw Jace and Will engage with the replicators, and she saw Isabelle and Alec move toward Kaelie. Kaelie was still in her diamond state and she was sending spikes at them. Isabelle's beautiful, purple wings unfolded from her back, over the top of her dress and she darted up toward the ceiling to get out of the way. She landed on the other side of Kaelie and threw a punch, and Clary couldn't help but feel her pain as her hand connected with the diamond and it seemed as though the diamond wasn't just skin deep, it must go all the way through.
"Clary!" The shout came from Magnus, and Clary's concentration on the innocent people faltered as she looked toward Magnus. Sebastian was looking at her directly, and Clary felt her body tense up at the way he was looking at her. She couldn't help it—her gaze flickered to Jace before back at Sebastian and Sebastian followed her gaze, his lips twisting upward as though he had realized who she was.
But Clary had realized something as well.
The reason Magnus had called out to her was because while he had been lowering the temperature in the room, he had been trying to focus it on the blocker bands around Sebastian's wrists. Even though his mind wasn't completely clear, she could catch a few thoughts.
There was a loud creaking noise, and Clary's eyes widened as she looked around, and there were cracks working their way up the large concrete pillars around the room. She suddenly felt his thoughts loud and clear and her mouth fell open as she realized that he was planning on bringing the whole structure down, burying those inside. She vaguely wondered how he was planning on saving himself, but then he was telekentic and could potentially create some sort of barrier to keep himself safe, but the fact he remained, he planned on killing everyone in this room.
Including Jace.
Clary panicked, her heart beating hard in her chest as she looked around frantically. Raphael was still crowded in close to her, asking what was wrong, but Clary's mind felt like it was going to explode as she heard the cracking noise get even louder. The splits in the concrete pillars were spreading quickly, and it was only going to be seconds before the pillars came down, collapsing the building on all of them if Sebastian's mind kept on working at them. Kaelie was at his side, and she was human again, and there was blood dripping from her shoulder, and Clary noted that Isabelle and Alec must have managed to trigger her change back.
Clary's eyes went to Jace, who had taken down one of the replicators and moved on to a second one, and he was completely unaware of what was happening.
One more look at Sebastian, Clary's fear suddenly triggered something inside of her and her mind exploded, reaching out to every single person in the building—perhaps further—and everyone froze.
I hope you guys enjoyed the update :)
My top 10 songs for this week;
1) Kissing Other People - Lennon Stella. 2) No Time To Die - Billie Eilish. 3) Mikrokosmos - BTS. 4) Euphoria - BTS. 5) Is It Just Me? - Emily Burns. 6) Parents - Yungblud. 7) Cherry - Lana Del Rey. 8) In Case You Don't Live Forever - Ben Platt. 9) Hope Is A Dangerous Thing - Lana Del Rey. 10) Homesick - Dua Lipa.
I've only been watching old stuff recently, like Criminal Minds and Hawaii Five-O...My husband has big plans tonight though, and has suggested that we get high and watch Little Mermaid, so that sounds brilliant and like exactly what I need for the end of my week. If you guys have any suggestions for animated movies, send them my way, because we need all the good stuff we can get in the world right now! Ooh, if I can suggest a twitter thread, actually, there's one posted by a user PAYOLETTER which is just...A feel good time about how so many people now have their pets as colleagues now that they're working from home. Making the best of a bad situation. The thread is filled with pictures of animals, if you need fluff, that's where to go!
Love you all x