Author's Note: This chapter contains mentions of torture and captivity.

Chapter Eleven, Part I

"Clary!"

It was Jace.

Jace was out. He was okay.

He was coming to help her.

She would have cried in relief, but she was too busy trying to keep her feet under her, Sebastian still behind her and moving them rapidly away from the fight, his knife threatening to push into her skin each time she staggered or slowed.

Her hands were still tied tightly behind her back. Everything ached. Everything moved in slow, blurry motions.

"Clary, where are you?!" Jace's voice called out again, strained and cracking, but to Clary, a shining beacon all the same. She tried to twist around and find where the voice was coming from.

"Jace! Jace, hel—" She was cut off by Sebastian's hand clamping over her mouth, his palm catching her cry as he pushed the dagger forward. He hurried them onward, shushing her, almost soothingly, like he was trying to calm a child or frightened animal. New tears blurred her vision as her brother moved them further away from her aid, and a wave of defeat washed over her as she realized she might never escape this. To think that she might have come so close to being free, and yet….

But then she heard Simon calling out.

"We-we're coming, Clary, hold on!"

Sebastian snarled in aggravation, and rushed them around another corner. She startled when several demons brushed past them, but they didn't even seem to register her and Sebastian, moving quickly towards the sounds of fighting.

"Clarissa, I do not want to punish you again. Move—faster," he ordered, and for the first time, Clary thought she actually recognized fear in his voice. Certainly he wasn't scared of running into Izzy and Alec, he'd fought them off before. Losing the hideout itself couldn't be a priority, surely he had an endless number of places he could run off to with the power he possessed.

Somewhere deep down, she knew his fear and desperation was driven by the thought of losing her, as if he really believed he loved her, as if this wasn't just some twisted obsession, and she felt nauseous at the extent to which her brother truly believed that she was his. His possession. A fear that his prize jewel might be stolen away.

He turned the edge of the blade as they moved, and her thoughts spiraled away in pain, her back like a sheet of embers, the low cut of the dress beginning to soak up blood, and she bit her lip until it bled to refrain from whimpering.

Sebastian continued to push her through a maze of halls. The cold floor was hard beneath her, her feet numb and sore. Was he trying to confuse her friends behind them, or get to an exit? No, that couldn't be it, he could simply portal as he wished. So what the hell was he looking for?

Her question was almost answered as she realized her brother was shoving her towards a heavy, wooden door. Whatever was in there, he needed to retrieve it before he fled with her. And that meant as soon as they entered that room, she wasn't going to be able to escape.

The sounds of fighting didn't stray far behind.

Clary had to get away. She had to get free of this demon's hands—right now.

So, Clary pushed the pain and fear back, far back, behind the adrenaline, and love, and her itching craving of freedom.

They were nearly at the door when Clary stopped walking abruptly. Sebastian, moving faster than her, already about to reach for the door knob and fling them into the room, slammed into her from behind at the sudden stop, his knife driving unintentionally into the space just below her shoulder blade. She cried out, but the wound was shallow, maybe only an inch deep, but the shock was clear on Sebastian's face. He hadn't actually meant to stab her—

Clary turned as quickly as she could and threw up a leg, knocking the knife from his hand. She didn't waste time trying to get the knife and instead dodged around Sebastian's grabbing hands, bolting down the hall. She ran with all her remaining strength, never realizing until now that having your arms tied behind you made running so much more difficult and unsteady.

Sebastian called out furiously for her to stop, cursing in that demonic language. But she didn't stop. She ran, and ran, and ran, towards the sounds of clashing teeth and claws and blades.

"Jace! Alec, Simon, Izzy…Anyone!" she shouted when she came to a corner, and immediately Jace's voice replied, "Here!"

She darted toward the sound of his voice, not stopping to see if Sebastian was still behind her. She took a right, a left, another random turn toward the sounds of the havoc her friends were causing.

And then there was a demon blocking her path.

It was tall and tentacled, with purple slimy skin and a pinched head, and its many arms waved at something in front of it, suction cups layering the flesh, wet and puss filled, likely poisoned. She came to a halt, almost turning and running the other way, until she realized it was turned away from her, battling someone she couldn't see around its massive body.

Shattered arrows littered the hall. Alec was there—or had been—and she skipped over the arrow heads, trying not to cut her bare feet as she charged at the unsuspecting demon's back. She ducked as a tentacle swung backward and rammed her shoulder into his leg, driving it forward in shock and imbalance, and it must have given its opponent an opening, because the tip of the blade belonging to the person battling it in front appeared through the monster's back. It screeched and curled in on itself before evaporating in a wisp of slim and dust.

There, in the empty space where the demon had been stood a man with a glowing blade.

He was a sharp, offset skinny that didn't quite match his golden features—golden hair with scarlet streaks of blood, a golden skin to match. But he was torn, literally, by hundreds of lashes and cuts, some scabbed, some open and weeping.

The two stood there a moment, nearly unable to recognize each other, or else frozen in disbelief, and then all at once the man was crushing her into his arms, placing soft and frantic kisses along her face and cutting free her bound hands. She felt suddenly horrified and embarrassed, to be seen in the dress Sebastian had forced her into, but Jace didn't seem to care at all, and he clung to her like a lifeline.

"Jace…" she mumbled into his shoulder, so much relief in her voice it was nearly tangible, and she could feel him smile into her hair. For just a moment, she let herself sink into his embrace, and for the first time in the week that they'd been here, she caught hold of hope. Clary didn't even realize she was crying until she felt her body begin to shake.

Jace began running his hands along her arms, checking her for injuries, fingers pausing as they ran gently over the bloodied lashes on her back, then the wound under her shoulder.

"Oh, Clary…."

"He—he hurt you," she remarked, taking in his wounds at the same time. She'd known Sebastian was torturing him, he'd told her so himself, but it didn't make the sight any easier and her heart felt like it might fall apart in her chest. He was the same old Jace, but she'd never seen him so pained, so…visibly broken, before.

"We need to go," he said, placing a blade in her right hand and taking hold of her left, and any worry seeped out of her as their fingers locked together. They would be okay, if they were together.

"Jace!" Clary heard Magnus yell. "We need to go!" he shouted, echoing Jace's words.

They sprinted together down one hall and a short set of stairs before nearly crashing into a large gold-brown wolf. Clary brought her sword up instinctively, ready to slice into its flesh if it attacked, but Jace pulled her arm down and said, "Maia."

Clary nodded, already out of breath from the short run, and Jace pulled her down into a duck as Maia pounced over their heads to snap at the face of a demon that had managed to come up behind them.

Around another corner, they came face to face with the rest of the group. Alec stood fighting a demon Clary knew she had seen before but couldn't quite put a name to. He had a bad wound at his side, one arm curled over his stomach protectively as he fought. Magnus worked with a dagger and swift, sparking magic, back to back with his boyfriend. Blood ran down his face and into his eyes, nearly blinding him. And there was Simon, fangs fully sprung, swiping at anything that got to close, but mainly focused on shouldering Isabelle. Her head was down on her chest, black hair falling into her face, and Clary couldn't tell if she was conscious or not, though she couldn't see any visible injuries.

There was no time for greetings.

"Where's Sebastian?" Jace asked, cutting down a demon at their right.

"He was right behind me—"

Something wrapped around Clary's arm and jerked her back, nearly pulling the limb from its socket, and she screamed as acid slathered her forearm, blindly swinging at whatever had grabbed her. She felt the tense muscle gripping her loosen as the demon released her, and she shook off the severed flesh of the creature that still clung to her. She and Jace turned around so their backs were to Alec and Magnus, Simon—still holding up Izzy—taking up the left, and Maia the right, the seven of them forming a defensive circle.

They were almost completely surrounded by demons, and a few Endarkened, so they worked their way down the hall, cutting through anything that tried to stop them. They worked slowly, each of them wincing and groaning in pain, but they held each other up as they moved.

"We have to get out of the house to portal out," Magnus wheezed at some point. "There's something shielding this place."

It had been a few minutes of tortuous progress down the hall when Clary realized Sebastian still had not arrived to the fight, and it was just as the thought entered her mind that a demon swooped down from the ceiling.

"Clary, look out!" Jace called, but the warning was too late. The demon, bird-like and winged, hooked its claws into her shoulder and under her arms. With a sudden, forceful flapping of its wings, it lifted her effortlessly off the floor. Jace's blade slipped from her hand as her arms were wrenched up awkwardly, clattering to the floor below. Thrashing and screaming, she fought the thing with all she had, but it was already pulling her back.

A shout sounded from below and Clary looked over to see a tight group of three Endarkened attacking the back of the group. Simon, nearly defenseless while supporting Isabelle, yelled and stepped back. Maia, shifting from the left of the group to take up Simon's side left a gap in the circle. Jace leapt forward to grab hold of her ankle, successfully keeping the winged-demon from dragging her away, but his move left another hole in the group's already weak defenses.

The demons and Endarkend seemed to pour into the gaps, as fast and furious as white water rapids. Alec and Magnus exchanged warnings and Alec became a ball of slashing swords and flying arrows. Magnus practically turned into a sparking tornado, and Maia, snarling and ferocious, perhaps the only one of them without some impairing wound, defended Simon and Izzy.

The demon holding Clary flapped again and Jace was nearly ripped from the ground with them.

"Don't let me go!" Clary sobbed, trying to reach down. Jace scowled in concentration, and maybe pain, clenching onto her ankle tighter. And then something grabbed Jace from behind.

Jace's hands slipped from Clary, and with a single flap of its wings, she was dragged down the hall and away from her friends, each fighting for their life.