CHAPTER VI

Shadows

I ran recklessly and carelessly and kept running until the party was but a distant memory and heavy drone of the music that beat through it could no longer reach my ears. Uncaring of who I pushed through to get there and how rude I seemed; I didn't stop until I was far down the street where there was nothing to remind me of where I was and what had happened. The scene played over and over through my mind like a song on repeat, cutting me in a thousand different ways anew each time. Surely nothing could hurt more than this. I had been hurt many times before in my life, but I never imagined that, in the end, it would be Octavia who caused me to finally shatter into irretrievable pieces, irreversibly broken. Octavia had been there for me through everything. When I lost my Grandfather, when my Mum and Dad divorced and my Dad moved a whole country away. Each time my Mum was giving me grief, when the world became too much and, finally, when I lost everything I had ever owned, including myself. She made me smile even in those darkest of times, made me laugh when I thought I would never again feel happiness and made me feel like everything would be okay. For that, I had always imagined her to be a bright light, brighter even than the Sun, shining over me, illuminating my path even when everything seemed bleak and that I was the darkness, the shadow of her light. And I was okay with that. Everything I wasn't, I needed, she possessed and gave freely to me and vice versa. I gave her calm, introspect and advice in her otherwise wild and exciting existence, grounding her. I had always thought she needed me, even if it wasn't as much as I needed her. I thought we needed each other. We were opposites, two polar forces working fluidly in unison each making up for what the other didn't have. She let me live that happiness that she thrived on when I was with her, thanks to her I could always be happy even in the darkest, most terrible of times. I was the night, quiet and calm and she was the dawn, bright and promising. She was the light, I was the shadow. One couldn't exist without the other.

It was April of last year when I first felt something begin to sour between us. When her light transformed into the cutting gleam of a knife, slicing ribbons over my skin. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't always like that. Weeks, months could pass in harmony and I would begin to figure that it was all just me. That I was over thinking again and we were fine just the we always were. Then something would happen again. It could be a passing comment, a judgement, a look and suddenly two gears which were previously turning in harmony were grating together in discord.

I've been living in denial, there was no going back now.

Everything has changed.

How could she do that to me?

The night was calming me, enveloping me in her dark blanket of solitude where even my emotions couldn't reach. There was something sublime, something divine about the cool, quiet night that made it untouchable to the physical being, unchangeable to humankind. The only light illuminating the street was from the dim, orange streetlight and the radiance of the Moon and stars above; the dark of the night was shrouding me from view, concealing me from all by her sight. I was evermore grateful of the black costume I had chosen, for it blended with the night's darkness so that myself and the night could not be separated by the human eye. For the time being, the night and I were one and she was protecting her own. It was cold out, I could see my breath, expanding in clouds of fog before me and dissipating into the atmosphere, but I didn't care. I was grateful for the night. A calm breeze tickled my cheeks, making the wet streaks of tears feel like ice against my skin and lifted the stray strands of my hair lift from my face and stretch out to the skies. It made the trees dance and sway peacefully like no one was watching them. The quiet swish of the swaying trees and infrequent coo of owls was indulging my solitude as I raised my head to gaze once more at the stars and Moon above.

How strange it is that the sky remains the same, constant above me as ever it was from the window, and yet everything has changed.

I was deep inside my thoughts, in a world entirely in my mind, where nothing can hurt me but myself. Reality blurred from existence; I was miles from Earth, from the party, from pain and betrayal. My eyes no longer saw the trees or the sky. I was invisible, untouchable...

I didn't hear it the first time, the sound not quite reaching me where I was, but slowly the sound broke through to me, fading into my mind and suddenly I awoke to reality once again.

"Hey, you! Stand ready!" a shout rang through the darkness in the distance.

I had no idea what was going on. I had only just woken from my daydreaming so my mind was a little foggy, still somewhere else and not quite there. Who was this and what on earth were they talking about? Was it a drunken wanderer escaped from the party? They certainly didn't sound drunk, in fact they sound fully sober and alert. I squinted in the direction from which the sound came in an attempt to make out the source of the shout. But for the lack of light I couldn't see anything, nothing but shadows. I was still staring down into the dimly lit road when whoever had shouted moved into the beam of the streetlight.

Though the figure was still partially silhouetted in the night I could just make out the shape of a young girl about my age running like an in pursuit of what looked like an overgrown dog. A flood of blonde hair exploded from her head as she ran, faster than I'd ever seen and her was face set sternly with intent.

Was she a stray dog catcher? Someone from the RSPCA?

The two swiftly moving figures continued running, each second getting closer to where stood while I was still frozen in place trying to process the scene before me.

"Don't just stand there!" the girl yelled, never taking her eyes from the dog. I didn't know what she was expecting, what she wanted from me. What could I do?

"How?" I shouted back, confused.

"What do you think!?" she shrieked at me, her voice rising in anger and irritation. Was I doing something wrong? Was I missing something? I still just stood there, unable to do what she expected, "By the Angel! Stop being such a mundane! Take out your blade and help me get rid of this demon! They don't call it patrol for nothing!"

I was stunned by her words. Angel, mundane, blade. These were words I recognised. I knew them like the back of my hand, and who they belonged to. These words came from the mind of Cassandra Clare. These words were from books. They were fictional.

Did someone spike my drink? No, I know, my fear and pain actually killed me this time and this is my version of heaven, a world of fiction.

I rubbed my eyes and felt my skin. Tangible, real.

Perhaps I'm hallucinating. I've finally gone mad, that's it.

Whilst my mind contemplated this, the girl had impossibly gained on the creature, now almost upon me, and flew at it. Jumping farther with more grace than I had ever seen, even on stage, even at the Olympics. It was ethereal, impossible.

For the second time this evening; time seemed to slow, expand.

Now crouched on top of the writing creature, she stretched her right arm to grab something from from behind her back. She drew back her hand, revealing a long blade now clutched tightly in her palm. It was beautiful. Long, silver and slender. She raised it above her with the grace of an avenging Angel about to enact divine justice. Beautiful and deadly.

Light pierced my eyes and the sword blazed brilliantly with white star shine, catching a beam of Moonlight raised high above the girl's head, giving her long blonde hair the incandescence of seraphs. Thanks to the Moonlight, visibly engraved upon the smooth side of the long, sliver blade there were letters, reading,

"I am Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal."

And suddenly it all became real, this was actually happening. A small voice sounded from the back of my mind.

"But haven't you always believed, even wished that all the stories were true?"

The voice wasn't lying, a small part of me had always believed that everything I had read, every story had had some truth to it. Written but to warn humans of these dangerous creature's existence without telling them, without alarming and scaring them. But as I grew up it became harder to believe, harder to think of these stories as real. If I were to believe, I would appear crazy and childish. In the end logic won out. I had mourned the loss of my fictional worlds for a long time and I never truly belonged to the real world. Always caught up in another world, always clinging desperately to this book and that. It was always real to me. A small part of me remained believing, unable to let go.

Now, with what was in front of me, standing real, solid and true, it could no longer be denied. It was true. The stories were true. The voice chimed again, echoing through my mind and resonating through my thoughts. Finally, it opened my eyes.

A terrible screech ripped though the calm night air, howling forth from the mouth of creature as the girl gorged through its centre. As I watched, astounded, from the sidelines, the dog's form began to shift and jerk before my eyes, transforming. And, at last, I saw.

This creature wasn't a dog. This was a demon.

My eyes widened and I stumbled backwards into the pavement, the gravel cutting at my palms. My breaths became laboured, heavy with fear as it now pulsed though me, seeping likt poison through me veins, waking me up. The demon, though now dying, wrestled free of the girl's weight in a last burst of energy, dragging itself wildly, clumsily towards me.

I did the only thing I could think to do. My hand fumbled, finding the fake seraph blade where it was slung lazily in its holster and drew the blade so it was the only thing remaining between myself and the demon. My last line of defence I sat there, in utter shock, staring at the creature as it crawled up to the blade, drawing level with it the tip just brushed its chest.

It was a ghastly, horrid thing, something distorted and corrupt fashioned from the worst of nightmares and horror stories. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the sight of its long, slimy slug-like body. Its skin was the colour of the most murky depths of the Themes, where long dead bodies lay sleeping under layers and years of putrid mud and hung to the creature's form in sickly layers of slime and gore. Two long, terrible lines of razor-sharp teeth stretched the line of its entire body, daring to crush me and engulf me into the dark vortex of its body, trapped, never to return. I felt that I was gazing into my future. It towered over me in piles oozing slime and saliva sliding over the gravel and black pungent ichor flowed freely from the seeping wound in its upper chest. The demon stared me down, as if daring me to move my arm just an inch closer. My heart was the only part of me moving, racing rapidly in my chest, willing me to live, to survive whilst my body was petrified on the spot with my right arm still stretched out, quivering in fear in front of me, holding my last defence. I was only able to watch as the creature descended upon me.

My fate was decided, I was about to be consumed by the demon. Then a silver gleam of light sliced suddenly and swiftly through the middle of the slimy form before me, cutting it in half and -as easily as if had been made of soot- the demon was reduced to dust, evaporating into the atmosphere. It was over in a matter of seconds, all the while I just sat there splattered in ichor, my knees out in front of me, one arm propped behind my body from where I had stumbled onto the ground and the other still holding onto the fake blade, unable to let go. The girl was now before me, crouched down with on hand on the floor and the other still in the air, sword in hand, her hair splayed around her bent head like a halo. Then, all of a sudden, jolted forward. Her voice called out to me as if through water.

"What do you think you were doing!? Were you just going to stand there, sit there even as the demon escaped?" she was angry, blazing over me like some vengeful deity, "You're a shame to the Shadowhunter race. Where did you train?" Her eyes were caught with the blazing cinders of holy fire as she spat the words at me. However, for all of her anger, her words didn't quite reach me, my pulse was still racing in my ears, my mind trying to process everything that had happened.

The party. Anxiety. Alexander. Octavia. Pain. Betrayal. Demon. Shadowhunter. Fear.

Suddenly all of it rushed over me like a raging storm. A life's worth of fear and anxiety ate at me, fed from me, draining me. A dark cloud came over me, pouring through me, taking away my sight and abruptly, I felt nothing. Numbness. The fake seraph blade dropped from my grasp with a deafening clatter upon the pavement. My eyes rolled backwards into my skull and the events of the day began to fade out of memory as I drifted from existence, though just before I lost all consciousness, my weakened, spent body caught to echo of someone calling my name from a distance.

"November!"

November...

That's right, it's November now. The first day of November. My eighteenth birthday.

Then the shadows descended and I was gone.