Hello.
I did try to get this published as soon as possible, but juggling three assignments, swimming and rowing commitments is never easy. School is a PAIN. So yeah. Pretty much all of us know how terrible school is. Seriously, who invented homework? I may feel the need to run them over with a mac truck. Kidding, kidding! But I got moved up to the top squad of my swimming club, so I'm really, really happy! Like, super hyper at the moment. But there is an important Author's Note at the bottom, so PLEASE READ IT! Enjoy chapter 8 of Triton and Atlanta!
CLARY POV
My breath rushed out of me as if I'd been hit. Jace was gone in a flurry of bubbles and one more wide-eyed glance at the starlit sky. And I think I know why he's gone. The dark, almost pulsing blob of malevolence under the cobalt water darted swiftly away, as if daring me to follow. To mundanes, the blob may be easily mistaken as a shark, but any Calypsaï with a sliver of common sense would know to stay away; because the tell-tale murky energy was easily recognisable as the life force of a fairly powerful Eulysae.
I knew that I had to go after my boyfriend, in Calypsaï form. My inadequate, clumsy human limbs would enable the unknown Eulysae to escape within seconds of my pursuit. I hastily glanced over to Izzy and Ella, trying to focus less on the pity and worry in their eyes, visible even from 100m away, and more on the task at hand; saving Jace. I tried to convey my message in a slight tilt of my head in the direction Jace disappeared in.
I'll be back.
Believe it or not, the whole silent conversation took about five seconds, and I think – at least, I hope – that they understood what I meant. I duck dived into the heavy swell, dark, Eulysae induced storm clouds gathering in the dark sky above me as I took one more furtive glance at the sky as I swam deeper into the ocean, mid-Change.
The Change took over my mind and body in powerful racks of shudders and uncontrollable pins and needles all over my body, concentrated especially on my legs and feet. A feeling of absolute lightness and serenity washed over me as my Royal tail appeared, shimmering in the diluted moonlight, making me totally visible to anyone – or anything – on the shoreline or cliffs. I knew that Ella would have my neck, and I would have a lot of explaining to do to the mundane members of our party. My spines rose along the back of my tail, scales hardening into a defensive barrier as another mythical presence neared me. I sighed a pearly trail of bubbles out of my mouth, focusing on inhaling and exhaling water using my mouth and gills. The feeling of my gills flexing and tickling against my throat is indescribable, and one of the main reasons I loved being part fish.
I flicked my tail in impatience and raced off in the direction the Eulysae had disappeared to. Ella followed me, also in Calypsaï form, explaining the mysterious presence I'd sensed before, and I smiled despite the daunting situation Jace's life may be in. But – Jace must be drowning! Unless he's Calypsaï, he'll be dead in minutes! I piled on a burst of speed until my destination was in my sight.
The murky blob swam erratically before me, yanking mercilessly on the now unconscious Jace's arm. Jace, being deadweight, clearly slowed the Eulysae down, and the onyx blob was leaking wisps of black smoke – Eulysae blood – so Jace had clearly done some damage while conscious. I felt a swell of pride, pushing it back down as I stealthily snuck closer and closer to the pair.
I was now close enough to smell the Eulysae. Their magic takes on strange forms during sunlight, such as unexplained shadows and strange storm cloud formations, but I had never been close enough to a Eulysae to feel the blood. Black smoke curled around my body, latching in my hair and wrapping around my tail spines before spinning off into oblivion. Ella shuddered next to me in disgust, and I understood what she meant – I had just touched Eulysae blood.
I could also see Jace very well. His gold curls gently undulated around is head in an unlikely halo. A trickle of bubbles curled around his strong jaw line and over his cheekbones, getting lost in his hair and floating to the moonlit surface. Beams of diluted moonlight fell across his face, creating strange patterns and effects with his angular bone structure. Dark, almost indiscernible gashes fluttered open and closed on the sides of his neck; the source of his bubbles.
Dark gashes opening and closing on his neck.
With a start, I registered the fact that Jace had gills. I reached out to him, but a deadly whirlpool of murky, magical, watery sludge picked Ella and I up and flung us over the grainy sand and slimy kelp before dumping us into the calm waves on the shoreline of Alicante Cove.
IZZY POV
I was worried sick about Jace and Clary. I was, however, a little insulted as Ella merrily pranced off with Clary to rescue Jace, subsequently leaving me behind to babysit the mundanes. Ugh. However, the looks of complete awe on their faces at Clary and Ella going to the rescue made the experience completely worth it. Simon's geeky glasses hung askew on his slightly hooked nose, his delicate jaw hanging slack and coffee-brown eyes locked onto the place that Clary's lustrous tail had been moments before. Sebastian's eyes were bugging out of his head, probably at the realisation that his crush may not be one hundred per cent human. Jordan was staring at the water, blinking and rubbing his eyes, clearly trying to convince himself that he'd imagined it all. Alec was gaping at the water, before turning to me and fixating on my legs as if I would randomly sprout a tail. But… As entertaining the atmosphere was, something that I'd seen – or maybe something that I hadn't seen and should have been there – was off. And I wanted to find out what exactly.
But I pushed the doubt out of my mind and tried to find something – anything – else to focus on, my eyes locking onto Maia. She seemed the least affected by the sudden transformation out of all of us, not including me, of course. She squinted at the ocean before spinning away from Jordan to face me.
"Did I just see Clary with a fish tail?" Blunt as usual, but I appreciated the normality because at the moment, nothing else was normal and it was comforting to find something that was. I cringed internally and smiled sheepishly, shrugging as if to say, What can you do? I mentally cursed Clary's indiscretion and decided to get the explanation over with – about our DNA differences, abilities, et cetera as Simon's expression went from funny to funnier – his eyes going from saucers to dinner plate sized. I ended the overdue recount as quickly as I could, bracing myself for the onslaught of questions that came next. I did my best to answer them, my mind wandering elsewhere as I realised what had been bothering me before – what was 'off'.
Sebastian didn't have grey eyes.
And Jonathan was nowhere to be found.
JONATHAN POV
It had been quite easy to create the Shadowhunter, really.
All that was needed was a floor length mirror, self-confidence (I'm not exactly lacking), Salt of Calypso and an energy source. Namely, that idiot Sebastian fucking Verlac. Ugh. Hate that dude. I'd rather just kill him and get it over with. One down, five to go in my mind.
But I couldn't exactly go against Cecily Verlac's direct orders, could I? Not only does she pay well, she may or may not be related to that asshole so killing him would probably be a big no-no. But she had said that these Calypsaï were intelligent and crafty, and they'd proven her wrong so far. I had almost laughed at how easily detected those little fishies were. They didn't blend in at all – far too attractive. Three model-like girls just happen to have the most amazing grades and achievements in the sporting world? Ha. Please, they're too good to be true.
Anyway, once the Shadowhunter, posing as myself (and I must say, I am rather stunning) was formed, I cast a brief, practically fool proof glamour over my eyes to make them as blue as Sebastian's. Like coloured contacts, just much cheaper and less time consuming. And I also cast a similar glamour over my hair so that it was jet black rather than bleach blonde. After everyone was just concerned with Jace, I had switched the identity of the Shadowhunter to Sebastian's so to not cause unwarranted suspicion.
But the main reason that glamours are a pain to use is that they wear off. So I could look like myself again and not even realise it until it was too late. Not to mention how fucking frustrating Shadowhunters are to control. They want a hamburger, they get a hamburger, whether you tell them to or not. And they're not exactly the brightest of all sparks. I had one who chased his shadow.
And you might ask, how did he chase his shadow? Well, he did it quite literally. A Shadowhunter is an image that looks and sounds real, but occasionally their shadows move independently. So my Shadowhunter was actually chasing his shadow across Times Square. He got hit by a bus and the bus was very confused as to where the body went and why there was a permanent black oil type stain on the front of the bus, covering one of the headlights.
Another big problem with Shadowhunters is the fact that they don't leave footprints on any surface that will give. So they don't work that well on beaches or sandpits, mud, candy floss. Hopefully they would never need to cross candy floss though. Moving on… They also don't disturb bodies of water, so no ripples through puddles and no effect if they're wading through water. Very stealthy, but rather strange if you're with company. They also only speak the first language they hear, and in Japan I was doing some undercover work in the hidden caves of Mount Fuji, and suddenly I have my Shadowhunter babbling in Japanese behind me (a language that I do not speak apart from konichiwa, meaning 'good afternoon') because we passed some Japanese tourists on the way in.
The first Shadowhunter was created by Ulysses and was named 'Shadow Hunter' because much like my Shadowhunter, it lost its shadow, and legend has it that if you stand at a certain point in the Bermuda Triangle at dusk and look at the horizon, you can still see Ulysses' Shadow Hunter chasing its shadow.
But, my mission was nearly completed. I had sent a strong wind generated current under the surface of the water to where my colleague lay in wait with that Jace boy. She deflected the current (clever girl) and added some of her power to it before directing it towards those pesky Calypsaï ladies. Jace was gone, in Cecily's clutches, and the mundanes were pretty much unprotected unless my colleague was an idiot and sent them back into shore. I really hope that she didn't. But it was time to go back to the tide pool to complete my mission once and for all.
Score one for J-dawg.
JACE POV
I groaned, blinking the salt out of my stinging eyes, wincing slightly as the salty water ran down from my hairline into the cut just above my eyebrow that I'd gotten from fighting the shark-like creature – I'm pretty sure that it wasn't any ordinary shark. Dry, rough sand grated against the skin of my thighs and calves and dug into my wrists, bound in some incredibly strong glass contraption binding my hands above my head. I tried to yank at the clear glass manacles, hoping that they wouldn't cut me too badly if they did break, but as long as I could get out of here then I wouldn't complain. At least, not too much.
I took the opportunity to look around my 'jail'. It was a pretty, compact cavern that stank of salt and warm seaweed (the warmer the seaweed, the more potent the stench). There was obviously water nearby, because I could hear it crashing against the outer wall of the cave and sloshing around on the far side of the room. Ripples of light played across the ceiling, pretty patterns made by daylight reflecting off the water. The rock of the wall sparkled, as if they'd been recently wet, and small, shiny crystals that were either clear or blue littered the walls of the cave. Another wave of despair washed over me and I grunted as I pulled at the glass manacles even harder that before.
"I wouldn't bother, Herondale. Those chains are adamas nailed directly into the limestone and granite walls. They're not coming loose anytime soon, because this area used to be volcanic. After the original adamas pins and chains were nailed into the wall, molten granite encased the chains completely into the walls. Try all you might, and I wish you luck to break them." Came the taunting and sarcastically pitiful voice behind me. His voice was almost obnoxiously loud, hurting my ears and bouncing of the walls of the room intimidatingly. But what really worried me was that I recognised that voice. I knew that voice very well, and out of all of my friends, I thought that he would stick with me for most of my life. I breath came quicker as my blonde haired friend stepped into my line of sight and bent down, grinning and waving at me, his expression full of condescension. What was really strange was that there was an almost inky darkness in his hair, leaking out, slipping down his body and disappearing in tiny wisps of smoke on his hands, throat and bare feet. He reminded me of Medusa, the curling snake-like tendrils rolling off his hair and down his body. His eyes seemed semi-blue, but as I watched, more and more grey flowed into them from an invisible source until I thought I had imagined the blue in the first place. He fake pouted at my rubbed raw wrists from that damn adamas, the traitor that he really is shining through that fake mask he had shown to me.
"Jonathan," I said cheerily, really laying it on thick. "Come to save me, I suppose?" Jonathan blinked at me in shock, then roared with laughter.
"You-You… Ha! You're so fucking funny!" He grinned and spread his arms wide. "Welcome to your final resting place, Jace. Unless you can hold your breath for-" He checked his watch, "-an hour and fifty-six minutes total." I was confused. Why the specific timing? Final resting place? Ooh, scary!
"And to answer your question, no. And, by the way, have you noticed your jail mate yet?" Jonathan stepped about a metre to his left, revealing a particularly dank, dark corner of the room that my eyes and briefly skimmed over and then forgotten about when I was looking around the cavern before. Suddenly, what I had thought was a particularly dark shadow moved and groaned, a beam of light from the crack in the ceiling highlighting his ebony black hair, ivory skin tones, closed blue eyes and the stark red blood against his alabaster skin slowly trickling down his forehead, rolling around his brow bone and dripping off his jaw and into the growing puddle of blood that he was sitting in. The lone figure raised his head, and Sebastian Verlac tried to smile weakly but ended up grimacing, the motion of his face causing even more blood to run down his paler than normal face and for him to wince, thus increasing the blood flow even more. I croaked out his name, the syllables getting caught in my throat and ending up just as a wheezed breath. Her
Jonathan stepped back in front of Sebastian, grinning down at me like the cat that got the cream. "I'll be taking your dear friend with me when I leave. Don't bother asking for his help – he's quite literally drained of energy. He was quite useful in that respect – he should be proud. But you, however… You will be staying here for the night. If you're lucky, you might get one last glance at the outside world tonight.
"Jace, this is what Cecily and I call a tide pool." He gestured around himself grandly. Cecily? How is she involved? Shouldn't she be helping her brother? As these thoughts ran through my mind, I wracked my brains of all the information I had on 'tide pools', which amounted to a grand total of... Nothing. But Jonathan continued his speech, oblivious to my thoughts.
"At 11:45am today, the tide pool with begin to fill up with sea water." Realisation turned into panic as I realised what Jonathan meant by 'tide pool'. "By 3pm this afternoon, the water will be up to approximately your waist. And at exactly 5:56 this evening, the water level will reach the top of cavern." Jonathan paused briefly, smirking at me. "Your adamas manacles won't stretch that far." So I'll die before that, I thought. Jonathan grinned. "Moving back in time a touch. At around 5:17 tonight, the water will have reached your jaw, even at the maximum stretch that the manacles can be at. Five minutes after that, you'll die of lack of oxygen and water inhalation. Your lungs are allergic to water, so it'll only take a teaspoon's worth of liquid for you to die, Jace." Jonathan bowed extravagantly before heading back to an unconscious Sebastian and hauling him to where I had heard water sloshing from before. There was a small speed boat moored there that I hadn't noticed before. I frowned, noticing at last the daylight streaming in through the gap and shining into my eyes. Judging by the position of the sun, it must have been about 9am, so I'd been asleep – or unconscious – for quite a while. Once in the boat Jonathan stretched his arms above his head and smiled happily. He spun back around to face me one more time, sitting down and waving merrily. He grinned one more time, before backing out of the cavern. His last words rang through my head repeatedly and filled me with despair.
"Have a nice day, Jace."
CLARY POV
I slumped onto the damp sand, basking in the morning rays of sunlight. My scarlet curtain of hair probably had all kinds of bits and pieces in it, varying from grains of sand to kelp to salt crystals, but I didn't give a shit. I was actually rather depressed at the moment, because after that Eulysae whirlpool thingy, Ella and I spent the rest of the night and half of this morning scouring the Idris coastline for any sign of Jace. We hadn't found anything, and no matter what we tried, we couldn't get back to the place that the whirlpool had hit us from. The black sludge had stuck to my hair and stained my bikini, so I was mad to say the least, but thankfully this Eulysae didn't have acidic magic so my clothing was still fairly intact (believe me, been there, done that). My bikini bottoms had miraculously gotten hooked on one of my tail spines, so I was safe to wander around public beaches without scarring any young children for life.
Ella flopped beside me, obviously spent from the time we spent looking for Jace. It was like he'd disappeared off the face of the planet, but then again, I'd never been patient enough to really thoroughly look for something – or someone. I regret that now. But I was seriously close to giving up now. I wanted to find Jace, and I was worried if we didn't find him pretty soon, it would be too late. I might already be too late, but I really did not want to think about that right now.
"Ella?"
"Mm." I sat up straight and turned to face her. Her blonde hair was spread out around her, and she looked peaceful and serene as she clearly tried to catch up on some lost sleep. I, however, was not having any of that. I shook her shoulder and snapped my fingers in front of her face, needing her to pay attention to what I had to say.
"Do you reckon Magnus will be able to help?" Magnus had always had a bit of a knack for tracking missing people down. Ella's eyes flashed open and she sat up, scrabbling around before getting unsteadily to her feet. She looked down at me, her eyes wide. I wondered if she was mad at me, but I didn't think she would be… What did I say?
"Why didn't you mention that before?!" She hissed at me. I held up my hands, leaning back slightly in defence. Ella could be really scary sometimes!
"I forgot! I'm sorry—" I began. She just rolled her eyes and smiled for the first time in hours. But I was sorry. I was sorry that I hadn't been looking out for Jace. I was sorry that I hadn't sensed the Eulysae nearby. I was sorry that Jace was gone.
But there wasn't anything I could do. I could just hope for the best and get Magnus to track Jace down when we return. A little bloom of hope flowered in my chest at the thought of seeing Jace again. But I felt like I'd been really irresponsible. I felt like I had been babysitting and I had lost the child somewhere in the super market. But the reality was just so much worse.
"It's going to be okay, Clary. We'll find him. But we need to meet up with Iz, remember?" I nodded slowly, following her along trail behind the Idris public beach until we reached the edge of the secluded Alicante Cove. I looked down at the aggressive waves crashing on the faraway rocks, the loud seagulls buzzing around the tall cliffs opposite us. I saw our friends on the beach, waiting for us, asleep. I promised myself that we would find Jace after all, and all will be well. I want to find out if Jace having gills was some crazy hallucination, or if it was true. I wanted to kill whoever stole him from me. But above all, I knew that everything would turn out okay eventually.
I hope.
How did you like the chapter? Thoughts? Suspicions on who is Jonathan's colleague? Yeah? No?
But the important AN that I mentioned at the top is this – as soon as T&A is complete, I have an idea for another story. It's another Clace fic, and it is inspired (though not stolen from) Lalina's 'Let's Get Physical', a Twilight fic. Here is the summary of my story which is NOT identical to hers!
When Clarissa Fairchild, anorexic and bulimic, has a frightening wake-up call, she decides that her health does matter. With the help of her best friend, a goal of gaining 50lbs and a reward of one hot night with her personal trainer, Clarissa is determined to get back on track for good.
Is it worth a shot?
Anyway, thank you very much to the following people:
-Destiny. Angel07 for reviewing
-mortalinstrumentsgurl1 for reviewing all of the chapters so far!
-ByTheAngelIsThatWill Herondale for her once again awesome review!
-Hellgoddessyyh for following
-xmidnight. musex for following
-hungrycaterpillars for following
So once again, thank you all very much for reviewing and following, and don't forget to review this chapter, follow or favourite! (Preferably all ;D).
-Physalie00
