Scars of her Blood • Shadowhunters

Chapter 33: Closing in

Celia used the portal in her apartment to get to the headquarters. Álvaro had already brought back the majority of the other members. On one of the screens in the middle of the room there was a map of the territory, a red dot where Salomé had last been tracked to.

"Celia, did you recognize the voice?", Álvaro asked, as he opened another portal. Celia nodded:

"That was definitely Eileen. But I doubt she is operating completely alone."

"Yeah, I doubt that too.", Isaac joined Celia in front of the map, "let's expect a lot of guards at that location."

"So I guess we are all going?", Ethan asked. Álvaro nodded. He took a deep breath before raising his hands once more. Creating all these portals must be taking a toll on his energy. With a grand gesture, he created a new portal.

"I hope this works and you actually end up where you need to."

Everyone nodded and one after another stepped through the portal, determined to give hell to whoever was waiting on the other side. Nobody kidnapped a member of the SRU without facing repercussions.

Five minutes later, hidden in the tree line of a nearby forest, they were looking at a flat building, without any decorations at all, just concrete.

"What is this place?", Rubi asked under her breath.

"I don't really know...", Celia mumbled, "but it looks difficult to get into..."

"Let's wait on what our have to scouts say.", Isaac said. He had a hard time keeping everyone cool. They all knew they could not go in without a plan. But waiting around without being able to do anything was not exactly helping to raise the mood.

The bushes moved slightly and Ethan and Lito came back to the group.

"There is a front entrance guarded by three people.", Lito reported, "other than that, there is a door in the back, also guarded by three people and multiple windows on the first floor that we could use to get in."

"There are probably multiple floors underground as well.", Ethan added, "the thermographic camera does not show nearly enough people on the two floors above ground."

"Alright, lets split up accordingly. Five people on the front door, three on the back", Isaac gestured into the group, sorting out the groups, "Ethan, Luca, Nicolas and Jordan, you form two groups and go in through two of the windows. That way, we attack from all four sides of this concrete cube. Stay in contact and try to extract all the Warlocks alive. Salomé has priority."

Everyone nodded and left their hide-out to position themselves strategically around the building. Celia would go in through the back door with Benicio and Isaac.

"Everyone ready?", Isaac asked quietly.

"Front door check."

"North windows check."

"South windows check."

"Back door check.", Isaac spoke last, "windows first. Go!"

For a moment, nothing happened, then glass shattered. The guards they were watching turned their heads, one pulled out a walkie talkie. He spoke into it, listened for a moment, then nodded towards his two comrades and went inside the building. Isaac pulled out an arrow and aimed.

"I'll take the one on the left. Benni, Celia, move in."

Benicio and Celia made their way closer to the back door. A second later, the guard on the left had an arrow in his chest and collapsed to the ground. When the other one turned around in surprise, one of Benicio's axes ended up in the back of his head. Celia sped up her steps and carefully opened the door. There was no one to be seen in the hallway beyond. For now.