Valentine's Arrow

34: One's Trash, Another's Treasure

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

REBECCA

Seamlessly, they worked together, almost like they had been training for this situation their entire lives. Most of them actually had. Isabelle lashed out with her whip as Alec began firing arrows at the speed of light, taking down demons left and right. Simon, however, needed nothing more than his bare hands.

Clary, meanwhile, was undertaking the most important part of the plan - creating a Portal. As she traced her stele on the granite, rune after rune appeared. Small fissures spiderwebbed outwards from the runes, spreading across the granite.

"Clary, for the love of the angel, HURRY!" Isabelle screamed, as she dispatched a demon with her whip. Clary began to work more feverishly, but a tentacled demon grabbed her ankle and yanked her backwards. She went down with a cry, her stele falling to the ground as she tumbled.

"Clary, get out of the way!" Rebecca yelled, grabbing one of her concealed daggers. Clary looked up, saw the dagger in Rebecca's hand, and immediately understood. She rolled out of the way as Rebecca let the dagger fly. The demon that had been holding Clary roared; the tentacle loosened its grasp, and Clary staggered up and to her feet. She hadn't been able to draw a rectangular doorway, so the entrance scrawled on the wall was blazing in a ragged circle, like the opening to a tunnel. Within the blaze, Rebecca could see the shimmer of the Portal - it rippled like silver water.

Jace hurtled by her and threw himself into it. She caught a brief glimpse of what was beyond - the blasted Accords Hall, with the statue still in the center of the room - before an Elapid demon took up all her attention. She could hear Sebastian somewhere behind her, yelling out something in a demonic language. She could make sense of a few words here and there, but nothing coherent.

As Rebecca sliced neatly, severing the Elapid in front of her in half, the Portal swelled with a sudden, incredible light and Jace hurtled back through it. Never before had he looked so much like an avenging angel; his bright hair seemed to glow as he landed lightly and raised the weapon he was holding in his hand. It was Jonathan Shadowhunter's skeptron.

As Jace raised the skeptron, the demons around them began to scuttle backward. Sebastian was leaning over the balustrade, his hands clenched on it, dead white. He was staring at Jace. "Jonathan," he said, and his voice rose and carried. "Jonathan, I forbid-"

Jace thrust the skeptron skyward, and the orb at the center burst into flame - a brilliant, contained, icy flame, more light than heat. Every demon in the room was annihilated instantly; all that was left of them were piles of ashes.

The light intensified, burning so brightly that Rebecca had to shut her eyes. When she felt it was safe to open her eyes, she did, only to find that the entryway was devoid of demons, and Sebastian was seething with rage. "No," he ground out through clenched teeth.

Jace was still standing with the skeptron in his hand; the orb had turned black and dead, like a lightbulb that had burned out. He looked up at Sebastian, his chest rising and falling fast. "You thought we didn't know you were expecting us," he said. "But we were counting on it." He took a step forward. "I know you," he said, still breathlessly. "You took me over, took control of me, forced me to do whatever you wanted, but I learned from you. You were in my head, and I remember. I remember how you think, how you plan. I remember all of it. I knew you'd underestimate us, think we didn't guess it was a trap, think we wouldn't have planned for that. You forget I know you; down to the last corner of your arrogant little mind I know you-"

"Shut up," Sebastian hissed. He pointed at them with a shaking hand. "You will pay in blood for this," he said, and then he turned and ran up the steps, vanishing so quickly that even Alec's arrow, winging after him, couldn't catch him up. It hit the curve of the staircase instead and snapped on impact with the stone, then fell to the ground in two neat pieces.