Author's note:

As this is the first action scene, I will add that I am granting some characters a certain "immunity", but this will not be the entire crew. I can grant you that at least Clace will be fine.

Please review! (You'd still be the first!)

Jace and Clary re-entered the Institute at midday, and Jace immediately ran off to get the smell of chlorine out of his hair. Clary watched him, amused. As if that makes you less gorgeous, she noted to herself.

"So," Isabelle began, approaching Clary, "how was your date?"

Clary challenged Isabelle with steady green eyes. "How was yours?"

Isabelle made a face at her. "Could I call in a favour?"

"As long as it's not hunting a Vermithrall demon in high heels."

Isabelle made a face again. "It's this," she said, taking out a brooch. "Do you remember how to draw that rune that helped you track down the Church of Talto?"

Clary's eyes widened. "Is that blood?"

"Never mind that. Do you?"

"Sure," she answered, and Isabelle passed her the (yes, bloodstained) brooch whilst she fumbled out her stele. She then turned the brooch over and noticed the demonic writings, and shuddered. A rune, older than the Book of Gramayre, designed to reveal what lay beneath writings, rather than translate, peeling away everything until comprehensible-

"Done," she announced, passing the brooch back.

Isabelle took it and held it up for inspection. "Thanks," she said hesitantly. "I reckon we should check this place out, you?"

Clary smiled. "I'll go grab my gear."

"I thought Isabelle cancelled Taki's?"

Alec turned to his boyfriend. "She did," he admitted, "but now Clary and Jace have turned up, so she wants to go demon hunting."

"I guessed as much by the gear," Magnus replied, "am I invited?"

Alec hesitated. "She didn't say anything about that."

"Then I'm assuming no."

Alec looked into those beautiful cat's eyes. Magnus's voice was inscrutable, not a trace of bitterness or regret. "You know, you could come along."

"Tag along in the wake of impending doom?" Magnus's eyebrow twitched upwards. "You Nephilim, particularly your Nephilim, tend to brush with death a little too closely for my taste."

"They're not my Nephilim," Alec muttered.

"I know," Magnus answered, "it merely sounded more interesting to say it that way. Regardless, you have a lot to look out for there. I'd rather not join in."

Alec tried to penetrate through the blank facade. "Are you okay with that?"

Magnus kissed Alec, and Alec lost himself in the brief heat of a kiss that smelled of tea and sugar, a spark that was kindled into flames quickly and left a glow behind. "Of course I am," he said easily, laughing a little. "What makes you say that?"

Jace peered through the subway tunnel gloom. "Have we been here before?"

"I have," Alec allowed. "I think Camille was killed here."

"And how would you know that?" Isabelle inquired. "Do tell, Alexander."

Alec shifted uncomfortably, his face closing off. "Mind your own business," he muttered.

"That sounds kinky," Jace teased. "What was involved? A passionate lover's spat? Did Magnus find you out? Did Maureen interrupt it?"

Clary smiled a little and shook her head, but the questions stayed unanswered. Jace didn't expect an answer anyway.

They walked along the tunnel a little further, in silence, hyperaware. Jace took out his seraph blade and smiled himself. He sensed conflict.

"Hey-" Simon called out, and they all turned towards him.

This turned out to be a mistake. One minute they were strolling along an abandoned subway tunnel, the next they were surrounded. Drat Simon, Jace cursed, though he didn't actually mean it. This had all been planned. It had been a stupid idea to go along with Izzy's plan.

"Adriel," he murmured and threw himself at his closest opponent-someone dark-haired and burly, his silhouette lithe, covered in black-and all hell began to break loose. The poor soul he'd thrown himself at fell silently to his seraph blade, and a quick leap and two more were dispatched.

Something unfamiliar flickered in his peripheral vision, and suddenly a third was gone. Jace quickly reoriented himself with a shake of his head, noting he was at the outskirts and three more were approaching him. Another cry escaped him, and he flung himself forward.

This calamity required little of his attention, but he was going fast at the moment. Attacker after attacker went down, and briefly he noticed Alec topple two with his arrows before two more of his own opponents reclaimed his attention. Simon and Clary were fighting back-to-back, shoulder-to-shoulder, surrounded by four, and he worried, fleetingly, but Clary was quick, and Simon might be slower, yet his training was paying off. Someone blocked his view for a moment, then they "bit it", as he'd heard Clary say before. He pivoted, and a scissoring brought down two more who blocked his view of Izzy, whose whip was almost a net as it blurred through the air, and he made sure to remember to stay away from her whilst casually flinging Adriel through another, grimacing a little. One more ran towards him, but Izzy's whip sliced through him in a blur of electrum and a silvery blue glow-

"Enough," a familiar melodic voice commanded from the shadows, and suddenly the remaining attackers stopped. Jace, noting nobody was within arm's reach of any of them anyway, decided to follow suit and he turned to face the svelte figure.

"Your Majesty," he said with irony and a mock bow. He knew well enough that the Fair Folk had actually exiled the fae monarchy. "To what do we owe this pleasure?"

The Seelie Queen's mouth curved upwards a little, a hint of her old pride remaining, and she wore a lavish golden gown. She was still beautiful, Jace noticed distantly, but her day-blue gaze was rusty steel in his eyes, and her auburn ringlets didn't attract him, for they had nothing of Clary's fire. "Well met, Valentine's son," she greeted, head inclined towards him.

Jace hissed. "I am not Valentine's son."

"No?" the Seelie Queen questioned. "Then whose son are you? You never met Stephen Herondale, and as you know, Michael Wayland is a stranger. And if you believe Robert Lightwood to be your father, I would be surprised, given his abandonment of his children."

"Mind. Your. Own. Business," he gritted, repeating Alec's words for the same reason Alec had uttered them-this was private, not to be chatted about so casually, especially not by this inbred fae bitch, who laughed.

"Poor little Nephilim boy," she murmured. "Cutting everything away-"

"We're leaving," Jace interrupted, turning away.

"I would not be so hasty," the Seelie Queen said smugly, freezing him in his tracks.

Jace turned, surprised, and faced her self-satisfied smile. "Why not?"

She laughed again. "You will not be able to come back-"

"Good," he muttered.

"-and one of you is not capable of leaving anyway."