"You're sure this is the right address?" Luke asked, stopping the truck outside an abandoned warehouse.
Jace nodded and then climbed out of the truck, already forming a plan. It bothered him that Jaci wasn't there and he didn't know what the Inquisitor could be doing to her. But he was confident the Inquisitor wouldn't risk harming her. At least, he kept telling himself that as he walked to the edge of the river, kicking aside empty bottles and cans in his path.
His plan was pretty simple and very desperate. The chances of actually succeeding were painfully small but he was determined to try anyway. Searching the shoreline, Jace found a nice piece of driftwood, scrawled a message on it, and threw it into the sea.
"What are you doing?" Clary asked, appearing behind him.
Jace turned to scowl at her. "Sending a message."
"A message to who?" she pressed.
He wanted to ignore her. "The Fey. They might be willing to help us."
"Oh," Clary said softly, and then repeated it again louder as Jace handed her a seraph blade.
"I didn't have a chance to get to the armory, so this is all we've got," Jace said, holding up two other seraph blades and indicating the chakrams in his belt. "Abrariel." He held the named blade out to Luke.
"I'm all right," Luke answered, showing Jace the dagger he had in his belt.
Jace nodded. "You'll want to name your blade, Clary."
She turned the seraph blade over in her hands. "Do you ever use Raziel's name?"
"Never," Luke said shortly. "That's not done."
"Castiel," Clary said, watching with a touch of pride as the seraph blade's colors changed. Her moment didn't get to last very long, an incoming text message interrupted it. "Jace, the Inquisitor gave Valentine until sunset to decide whether he wants you or the Mortal Instruments more. She also hasn't noticed you're gone yet."
Jace glanced at the sky. "Sunset? So she'll find out I'm gone fairly soon." He turned to Luke. "The Inquisitor's son died, didn't he?"
Luke sighed. "How did you figure that out?"
Clary scoffed. "It was pretty obvious."
"Stephen was her golden boy," Luke admitted. "In fact, he was everyone's… everyone who knew him. He was one of those people who was good at everything, unfailingly nice without being boring, handsome without everyone hating him. Well, maybe we hated him a little."
"He went to school with you?" Clary asked. "And my mother – and Valentine? Is that how you knew him?"
"The Herondales were in charge of running the London Institute, and Stephen went to school there. I saw him more after we all graduated, when he moved back to Alicante. And there was a time when I saw him very often… after he was married."
"So he was in the circle?" Clary wasn't sure why she was so curious about the Inquisitor's son, but she was.
Luke shook his head and glanced back towards the warehouse for signs of Magnus. "Not then. He joined the circle after what happened to me. Valentine needed a new second in command and he wanted Stephen. Imogen didn't take it well. She begged Stephen to reconsider, but he cut her off – wouldn't speak to her or his father. He was absolutely in thrall to Valentine. Went everywhere trailing after him like a shadow. The thing is, Valentine didn't think Stephen's wife was suitable for him. Not for someone who was going to be second in command of the Circle. She had – undesirable family connections. Valentine forced Stephen to divorce Amatis and remarry – his second wife was a very young girl, only eighteen, named Celine. Then Stephen was killed in a Circle raid on a vampire nest. Celine killed herself when she found out; she was pregnant at the time. And Stephen's father died, too, from grief. So that was Imogen's whole family. Imogen survived but she turned to ice. When the Inquisitor was killed in the Uprising, she was offered his job."
Jace blinked, taking a second to absorb the whole story. "That explains why she hates Valentine so much. He got her entire family killed."
"Stephen chose to follow Valentine, he wasn't forced into anything," Luke pointed out.
"So now you're defending Valentine?" Jace snapped.
Luke stared flatly at the teenage Shadowhunter. "Think about what you just asked me." He turned his attention back towards the street. "Someone's coming."
"That'll be Magnus," Clary said, staring toward the approaching figure. "But he's not sparkly."
"You look surprised to see me," Magnus said once he was within earshot.
"We did wonder if you were coming," Jace admitted with a very obvious glance at the sky.
"I said I would come, so I came," Magnus replied, catlike eyes narrowed to slits. "I just needed time to prepare. This isn't some hat trick, Shadowhunter. This is going to take some serious magic."
"So we should get started," Luke cut in.
"That's your truck by the factory, isn't it?" Magnus asked him. "It's awfully butch for a bookseller."
The warlock and the werewolf started making their way over toward the truck. Jace was in the process of shrugging off his jacket.
"Clary," he snapped, drawing her wandering attention back to the present.
"Sorry," she responded immediately. "What is it?"
Jace nodded toward her stele. "I want you to put the Fearless rune on me before Luke gets back."
"Why before he gets back?"
"Because he's going to say it's a bad idea but it's the only chance of defeating Agramon. Luke hasn't – encountered it, he doesn't know what it's like but I do."
From his expression, Clary knew better than to ask what it was like. She kept silent as Jace turned his back on her and pulled his shirt up.
"Can you draw it on my shoulder blade?" he asked, even though it came across more as a command than a question.
Wordlessly, she pressed her stele to his back, cringing in response to his flinch. "Sorry," she muttered, letting up on the pressure a bit. "There. You're finished."
Jace pulled his shirt down. "Now it's your turn."
"My turn for what?" she asked.
In response he simply held up his stele. "Push up your sleeves."
Clary watched in fascination as Jace drew two Marks on her arms.
"'And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a Mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him,'" Magnus quoted as he reappeared.
Clary stared at Magnus. "You can quote the Bible?"
Magnus shrugged. "I was born in a deeply religious century. We have to get going."
"Are we going to drive to the boat?" Clary asked, noticing that Luke was pulling his truck over to them.
"What boat?" Magnus asked innocently. "You two, get in the back."
Luke leaned out his window to check that Clary and Jace were properly situated. "I still don't like this. Clary, you're going to stay in the truck with Magnus. Jace and I will go up on the ship. You understand?"
Clary nodded.
Jace surveyed the area around the truck, which had started to move again, and grinned. "This is going to be interesting."
"What's going to be-" Clary started to ask, but before she could finish the question, Luke had begun to drive the truck into the river. Confused, she readied herself to swim before realizing that the truck wasn't sinking. They were driving on the water.
Jace stood up, grinning. "Now this is really going to impress Valentine."
"I don't know," Clary muttered. "Other crack teams get bat boomerangs and wall-crawling powers; we get the Aquatruck."
He gave her an echo of his previous smile in response and then turned his attention to the setting sun. "Looks like the Inquisitor's about to find out that Valentine doesn't want me."
Clary shivered from a cool breeze off the river. "What do you think's happened to Jaci?"
Jace shook his head. "I don't know. I just hope she can convince the Inquisitor to get here soon."
"You don't think the Inquisitor locked her up, do you?" Clary asked, frightened. "Wouldn't that start a war with the Fey?"
He was silent for a moment. "If there's anyone stupid enough to do it, it'd be the Inquisitor."
Clary shivered again.
"Are you cold?"
She nodded. "Aren't you?"
"No." He slid off his jacket and handed it to her. "You're going to stay in the truck like Luke told you to, right?"
Clary nodded again. "I don't think I have a choice."
"You're right," he answered simply. "I promised your sister I'd keep you safe so, no, you don't have a choice."
She sat and watched him for a minute. She still couldn't understand how they were supposed to be related. Jace was tall and athletic with golden eyes. She was short and clumsy with green eyes. Extra emphasis on the short.
"You'll find Simon for me," she said at length. "I know you will."
A muscle in Jace's jaw twitched but he nodded wordlessly, eyes focused on a point out ahead. Clary got to her feet in order to see over the cab at what had caught Jace's attention: Valentine's ship.
It was massive, even from a distance. The sides of the ship were entirely black with a single ladder running up the side to the deck where demons perched, watching their approach. Even from where they were, Clary felt colder.
"Get Castiel out," Jace said, drawing both of his seraph blades. "They're coming."
Clary was glad to note that the blade felt warm in her hand and comforting, like it recognized her fear and wished to sooth it. She closed her eyes briefly as the winged demons perched on the ship spread their wings and one by one leapt into the air. When she opened her eyes again, Jace was standing on the cab of the truck, moments away from taking on the first demon. They looked something like pterodactyls, Clary noted. Then they were upon the truck.
The first one went right for Jace which just proved to Clary that it was stupid. She heard its dying screech but didn't see what had happened, her attention caught by the second demon colliding with the windshield but before that could fully register, a third had chosen her for its target. With a scream and no thought, Clary thrust out Castiel, stabbing the demon through its chest. The thing burst apart into a cloud of black smoke.
"Well done," Jace commented, jumping down beside her to fight another winged beast.
"What are these things?" Clary gasped, swinging Castiel threateningly at yet another demon. She missed and its talens tore into Jace's jacket.
"My jacket!" Jace cried out in rage, leaping to stab the demon that had done it. He didn't miss. "I loved that jacket."
Any response Clary had was chased from her mind by a terrible sound something like nails on a chalkboard. She whirled around to see two demons doing their best to claw apart the roof of the truck. Luke lunged out his window, stabbing one, but the other was successful and flew off with the roof clutched in its claws.
Clary checked that there were no more demons immediately upon them before rushing to the cab. Luke had climbed out onto the hood – no longer needing to drive since they were right beside the ship. Magnus, however, was in his seat looking like he had a bad bout of the flu.
"Are you hurt?" Clary asked, terrified.
"No, I'm just – drained." The warlock slumped further in his seat. "The protection spells on the ship are strong. Stripping them, keeping them off, is – difficult. But if I don't do it, anyone who sets foot on that ship, other than Valentine, will die."
Luke frowned. "Maybe you should come with us then."
Magnus shook his head ruefully. "I can't work on the wards if I'm on the ship, I have to do it from here. That's the way it works. Besides, I'm no good in a fight. My talents lie elsewhere."
"But what if we need-" Clary started to say, but before she could finish, she was snatched by one of the creatures and carried off towards the ship.
"Clary!" someone shouted.
The smell of the river hit me like a wall. Only an instant before I had been standing on the steps of the Institute and it took me a second to get my bearings. We were in the back of a truck. In the middle of the river. Because logic.
"Luke?" I asked, discovering he was the one shouting my sister's name.
"What the hell?" Jace demanded, appearing behind me.
"Jaci?!" Luke's voice again.
Behind him, I saw a demon coming in. Without thinking, I took up my bow, spouted off a stream of Seraphtongue, and shot the resulting Light magic arrow at the creature, instantly killing it.
I met Luke's widened eyes. "How the hell did you do that?"
"It's a long story and I don't exactly have time to tell it right now. By the way, this is Caelia."
The faery nodded in response to my introduction.
"A demon took Clary onto the ship," Jace informed me as he pulled me into an awkward hug so as not to stab me with any of his weapons. "We have to go after her."
I nodded. "How are you for weapons? Caelia and I are set."
Jace held up one seraph blade and one dagger.
Luke held up his dagger. "But I have a reserve force, too."
I nodded again, knowing full well that werewolf teeth and claws could tear into demon flesh.
"Here." I gave Jace two of my seraph blades. "These are Telantes and Gadreel."
He took them and stashed them in his belt. "Are there reinforcements coming?"
"The Conclave is but I'm no longer bound to the Seelie Court so they may or may not help. Caelia's acting on her own will to help us," I explained quickly. "I know Valentine took Clary so we have to move. I should be able to find her once on the ship. But first…" I put one hand on the back of Jace's neck, touching my forehead to his and speaking rapidly in Seraphtongue. It was essentially a blessing, very similar to a defensive Mark but more active and drawing on angelic alliance like a seraph blade and sealed with a kiss. I pressed my lips to his forehead and felt a brief flare of warmth. Quickly, I did the same for Luke. Since it wasn't a Mark, I knew it wouldn't hurt him.
"So that's why the Queen wanted you," Magnus said hoarsely, drawing my attention to him. He looked terrible. "She took my Shadowhunter and turned her into a Mage."
Both Luke and Jace were looking at me with concern and almost a touch of fear.
"I swear by the Angel that I will explain everything later," I promised.
Jace's face cleared away the wariness and he looked prepared to fight. "Later," he agreed and then dove off the side of the truck into the river. Luke followed him.
I balanced on the edge for a moment. Water water everywhere. I could feel the panic rising but I fought it back. Clary needed me.
Before I could jump, a delicate arm was around my waist.
"Think light," Caelia suggested, wings all aflutter as she picked me up and carried me to the ladder.
"Thank you," I said.
I glanced down to where Luke had somehow reached the ladder before Jace and saw Jace in the water, about to start the climb. We could possibly all be going to our doom, despite what I knew and could do, but we were at least going together.
And with that cheery thought, I started to climb.
