"You really got your bell rung there, huh?" The voice is firm but lyrical, even though it sounds slightly muffled. Almost like a Seelie's voice but not quite. Jace is still shaking his head clear, trying to regain his composure as he lays on his side, propped up on one arm.
He sees motion and hears the sounds of fighting out of the corner of his eye and he's finally able to shake himself free of the disorientation caused by getting hit by a rogue vamp. It had managed to get a lucky hit in when he'd gotten distracted. And he's pretty sure it's also powered up on something.
The Institute has been getting information about some kind of supernatural steroid, a cocktail of demon blood, angel blood, and who knows what else. They've yet to come across any of the Downworlders using it but it was bound to happen.
Standing up, he catches sight of a girl.
She's wearing tight black pants with a short leather skirt and black over-the-knee boots with a thick, flat sole. Her bright red hair is done in what looks like intricate braids that form a fauxhawk on the top of her head with the rest of the length braided and twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. The bottom half of her face is covered in black from the tip of her nose on down.
A thick white line goes vertically down her chin and two thin but bright blue lines go from the corners of her mouth to her jawline. The top half of her face is painted bone white with thick black ringing her eyes and blue lines slash across her brow, eyelid, and cheekbone on the left side, resembling claw marks. A half circle of blue follows the line of her brow and around to her cheekbone on the left.
A tight black shirt covers her upper body and a tight leather vest of some sort covers her back and chest.
On top of her head sits a ringed crown made of what looks like small bones and her fingers are tipped with black claws.
And she's dual-wielding kindjals better than most Shadowhunters he's ever seen. And he's pretty sure she's not a Shadowhunter. She moves differently, she looks differently.
As he watches her one on one fight with the last remaining vamp they're both surprised by a blur of speed heading straight for her and a small blade slipping into her side, low down where her vest doesn't cover.
The girl grunts with pain as she stabs the vamp in front of her with one dagger, dragging the other across it's throat, deep enough to leave a gaping wound that sprays blood over her hair and face.
Before he can reach her, she's spinning towards the vamp behind her, both kindjals moving in an arc before slashing identical lines across the vamp's throat and stomach. More blood sprays over her and by the time she turns to look over at Jace, he's left with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide as both vamps gurgle at her booted feet.
"Wait." He calls out as she grips the blade in her side but she ignores him as she rips it free and wipes it clean before sliding it into her pants pockets. She wipes the blood from her kindjals, too, and slips them into holsters that seem to sit at her lower back.
"You okay?" She asks him as if she's not the one with her own blood dripping down her side and another's blood half covering her painted face.
"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" He asks her as he looks pointedly to the place where her hand is pressed tightly, blood seeping between her pale, clawed fingers, exposed by her fingerless leather gloves.
She laughs, a sound like chimes, and slowly eases her hand away from the wound. And he can see that her hand and glove are tacky with the drying blood but it's no longer seeping from the wound.
"All better." She tells him with a smile in her voice as she lifts the vest and her shirt slightly to show him smooth, unblemished skin under the smeared remains of her blood.
Jace blinks at the sight, but doesn't have long to contemplate it before he hears running feet and remembers that Izzy and Alec are both on this mission with him and had gotten tied up with a couple of Shax demons.
"I'll be seeing you." The girl says as his brother and sister approach him from behind and a purple portal opens behind her. She starts walking backwards into it as Alec nocks an arrow and Izzy starts to crack her whip, ready to stop the stranger from leaving.
But, between one blink and the next, she's turned and rushed through the portal, disappearing along with the purple glow. Izzy's whip pops at empty air and Alec drops his stance with a frown.
"Who, or what, was that?" Izzy asks with a curious look towards Jace.
"She wasn't a warlock." Alec points out. "I don't think."
"No." Jace agrees. "She wasn't."
*
She is...old. That's one thing she knows for sure.
Like most, she does not remember being born, but she does have memories of her childhood, vague recollections that get fainter with every year, every decade and century, that passes.
There's the scent-memory of freshly turned dirt and tall grass. The salt of the ocean. Somewhere on a northern Ireland cliff is her birthplace, a small place that didn't even have a proper name then, not that she can remember anyways.
She thinks that she remembers dying for the first time, though she's done it so many times since then that she can't be sure if it was the first time. For all she knows, she could've died many times as a toddler, from many different things.
She's pretty sure she was young, far too young, in the time that she thinks was her first time.
What she does remember is that she was scrubbed with rough material and cold water before her hair was cleaned, untangled, and braided down her back.
She remembers the scratch of rough material on her pale skin and the cold stone she was laid upon. She remembers drinking something bittersweet before a sharp stone was stabbed into her stomach.
She remembers her body feeling too heavy to move.
She almost remembers young and innocent Céibhfhionn.
The thing that most don't know, don't consider, is that time blurs memories, makes them fade and makes them jumble together.
So, she doesn't know if that was the first time.
Which is why, after a time, she'd taken to keeping journals of sorts. It's all written in a form of Sumerian shorthand that only she understands. It was the first written language that she learned and by then, she was at least eight lifetimes old, she thinks. It's so hard to remember the passage of time.
But, she writes down her names, her deaths.
Her first is Céibhfhionn. Sacrifice. Impalement.
YOU ARE READING
Be With Me Always (Take Any Form)
Fanfiction"I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then." Clary has lived longer than she can remember and died too many times to count. Somehow, she will always find him.
