Chapter Seven
Rafael woke up and looked at the clock. He had only slept for two hours, yet Max was still fast asleep. This had been the first time Rafael had not had a dream and it frightened him; was something wrong with him or was it because he was lost? As he lay there trying to fall asleep, he heard a loud hysteric laugh come from somewhere in the Institute, followed by a chorus of normal ones. Amongst the laughs, he recognised a sweet one that reminded him of Clary giggling at his jokes.
"I HAVE NEVER DONE THAT!" a voice boomed.
Rafael instantly jumped upon recognising the voice and Max began to wake up while murmuring the word 'dad'. Alec shouting at them was terrifying and made Rafael almost cry, just like the voice he had heard.
"Dad?" Rafael asked himself while looking at Max,
Max nodded as he yawned, "Papa?"
"DAD!" Rafael yelled.
He grabbed Max's hand and ran towards where they had heard Alec while screaming 'dad' and 'papa' at the top of their lungs. They quickly ended up outside the study door and could see Alec and Magnus standing up while Jace, Izzy and Clary were sat down.
"Did you hear that?" Magnus asked,
"I think so. But I still insist that I do not laugh like that when I'm drunk," Alec replied.
Rafael was going to walk in calmly, but Max had spotted his teddy bear which he darted for and held into his chest.
"PAPA!" Rafael ran to Magnus and squeezed his legs,
"Rafael," Magnus smiled as he picked him up.
Rafael hugged him as long as he possibly could while Alec scooped up Max into his arms and tickled him. Losing his real family was absolutely horrible and being lost and away from his new parents made Rafael relive what he felt when he had to wander the streets. He had grown so close to Magnus and Alec in the blink of an eye to the point where he rarely thought about his real family, making losing Magnus and Alec completely out of the question.
"We're sorry dad," Max sniffled,
"It's okay, you're safe now and that's all that matters," Alec smiled,
"We just wanted to win the game," Rafael explained,
"Well, I can safely say that you've definitely won," Jace chuckled,
"I missed you, Jace," Max giggled.
Jace went silent with a face of absolute shock before smiling, taking Max from Alec and hugging him. Max and Rafael rarely showed their love for their aunts and uncles as they were always playing tricks on them or playing games, but they did truly love them and missed them almost as much as they missed their parents.
"I don't know about you, but I'm hungry," Clary sighed as she got up,
"I think I know where the kitchen is," Magnus said before leading them through the maze that was the Paris Institute.
It took a while and a lot of shouting, but eventually, they made something to eat- they being everyone minus Izzy. As they were eating, Esme suddenly burst into the kitchen with two cuts on her cheek and her hair in an absolute mess.
"We need you," she panted.
Alec, Izzy and Jace instantly stood up to attention whereas the boys continued to dig into their food as if Esme wasn't even there.
Magnus looked at Esme, "What's wrong?"
"Demons and forsaken are swarming around Paris and they seem to be coming from a specific place, but we don't know where,"
"Do you have a bow and arrow I could use?" Alec quickly asked and Esme answered with a nod, "then let's go,"
"I'll stay with Max and Rafael," Clary suggested.
Magnus and Alec looked at each other and contemplated if they could trust Clary a second time. The boys were always sensible when it was just Clary and they were most likely going to go back to sleep after eating, so it wasn't like they would have to be entertained. Magnus nodded before kissing both Max and Rafael's heads and promising them that he would be back.
Esme took them to the weapons room which was more like a giant stone cave than a room. As they all took their preferred weapons, they became stunned into silence as Magnus took a sword and attached two daggers to his belt, but there was no time to question whether he even knew how to use them. They followed Esme through the backstreets of Paris until the Eiffel Tower looked small enough to fit in their pockets and they stopped by a café with smashed windows. Theo ran out of the café with his shining lasso around three forsaken. His shirt was ripped, allowing his abs and chest to peak though and he had a few cut, but none of that seemed to faze him as he swiped his blade though the necks of the forsaken. He then turned to them and causally waved.
"They're spreading like wildfire and demons are coming with them. We don't know where they're coming from but we do know that they always come down these streets and 400meters east and west. Magnus go east with Isabelle. Jace go west with Alexander. Try to see where they're coming from and stop them from going any further. Got that?" as Esme gave orders, Izzy became distracted by Theo drawing an iratze on his stomach and then bending over perfectly as he stretched,
"I' sorry, I didn't hear that; I got, erm, distracted," Izzy stuttered,
"Learn to multitask, Isabelle," Magnus tutted as he grabbed her arm and pulled her along, "you're with me."
As they walked, Izzy watched Magnus turn around and blow a kiss at Alec who was about to catch it, but Jace did instead, prompting Alec to call him a dickhead. Whenever Izzy had blown a kiss to Simon, he never caught them; he'd blow one back and say he had already caught too many kiss to store them. She wished Simon could be with her, but they had been spending so much time together that she had insisted on him going on a holiday with his mates. She was now slightly regretting it.
"Earth to Isabelle Lightwood," Magnus tapped her head,
"Sorry, I was daydreaming," she said as she realized that they were on a whole other street.
Magnus chuckled, but was stopped by four forsaken creeping towards them. Izzy had taken down a dozen forsaken before and smirked with confidence as her whip slithered down her arm and into her hand. But her confidence was short lived when five Acanthus demons (large slender demons with deadly thorn covering their humanlike bodies) appeared along with a handful of more forsaken. She grabbed her seraph blade and prayed that she'd at least get a pain au chocolat with hot chocolate after this.
"We half the load. I take three of the prickly bastards down in a couple of minutes as well as some forsaken and we get back in time for breakfast," she spoke unknowingly fast as she swirled the blade in her hand.
She turned briefly to see Magnus conjure up balls of blue sparks in his hands and begin to sing a song in French. When she turned back, a thorn from one of the demons was flying straight for her, but she immediately ducked in time and as she did, she flung her whip towards them which coiled around one of the demons' legs and she pulled it in towards her, allowing it to slide between her legs and stabbed it in the chest. While the demon reduced to smoke, Izzy swiftly moved on to dealing with two more demons and some forsaken. As she fought, she constantly reminded herself not to let the poisonous thorns of the Acanthus demons to touch her which gave her an idea. She defended herself against one of the demons, making sure to get it in a specific place. Soon she spotted two forsaken running towards her from behind and when they pounced, she instantaneously slid to the left, leaving the forsaken to fall into the Acanthus demons' thorns. A foul brown smoke rose from the forsaken as the poison devoured them and the Acanthus demon made a high pitched screech. Izzy beheaded the demon and forsaken. However, her plan hadn't gone accordingly. A large dark shadow descended over her and when she slowly turned around, she was faced with two Acanthus demons that were much larger than the last ones and snarled with brown poison dripping from their ash grey thorns. Izzy jumped back and raised her seraph blade while the demons raised their arms. Suddenly, the towering thorn bodies made high pitched screeches as they trembled before evaporating. Left behind and stained with their brown blood were the two daggers that Magnus had brought with him. He stood on top of a truck with dead forsaken and the smoke of fallen demons surrounding him and he summoned the daggers back into his hands with smirk.
"You're welcome," he said after jumping off the truck,
"How much magic did it take to get those daggers in the dead centre of their chests?" Izzy asked as she scanned her surroundings,
"None. It was all down to training and Alexander promising to do a lap dance if I got twenty bull's-eyes in a row,"
"Tell me you recorded that,"
"Next time I will."
They walked until they found a street where the outer brick walls of a bakery had a long smear of blood along it. When they looked in the direction of where the smear was leading to, they ended up facing the Eiffel Tower. Fog was beginning to set all over Paris, but the fog around the tower was tainted with red.
"The energy coming from that direction feels… like hell," Magnus said,
"Whatever it is, we're not prepared for it," Jace appeared behind them with Alec, Theo and Esme,
"Then we go back to the Institute, call for reinforcements and investigate the tower at night," Esme sounded deadly serious,
"So," Jace sounded as serious as Esme with just one word, "will this count as sightseeing?"