His Big Secret

Chapter 6

The first thing Izzy saw when they finally located Magnus' lair, glamoured as an abandoned warehouse, was the amount of circle members' dead bodies. The second was the number of arrows sticking out of their bodies. If she doubted they had the wrong place for any minute, that doubt quickly disappeared. The arrows showed Alec was here, and if Alec was here, then they were in the right place. She still couldn't figure out why Alec had rushed through the portal with Magnus; she had seen panicked looks on both faces. Izzy was pulled out of her thought when she heard Clary gasp in horror. Izzy watched as a warlock struggled with a circle member before being stabbed by a seraph blade and falling to the ground dead.

"Oh, God! Valentine found Magnus" Clary gasped as she ran over the fallen warlock, but a little girl appeared before she could reach him.

"Daddy, daddy. Daddy, get up, please!" the girl begged, shaking her father's dead body in the hope he would wake up – he didn't. Clary wanted to console the girl, but she noticed a circle member slowly approaching with his seraph blade raised.

"Watch out," Clary shouted, kicking the circle member away from the child, who quickly dashed behind Clary to hide. The circle member glared at Clary, raising his seraph blade to attack when his arm got caught on Izzy's whip, pulling the circle member away from Clary and a knife shot through the air, killing him instantly. Clary shot a grateful look up to Jace, who was standing on the platform above them.

"Stick close. It's safest if we stay together," Izzy said, and Clary nodded, wrapping an arm loosely around the girl's shoulders. The group moved further inside to find more dead bodies belonging to circle members and warlocks.

"Where do you think Alec and Simon are?" Clary asked, looking at Jace and Izzy. She still couldn't believe that Simon would run through a portal after the number of attempts Clary had made to keep Simon out of her world. It was dangerous, and she didn't want Simon to get hurt; why couldn't he understand that?

"Probably in Magnus' lair; that seems like where the more bodies are," Jace answered before a circle member jumped backwards out of the lair, followed by Simon, who was holding a seraph blade; it wasn't glowing as it had for Clary, but that didn't seem to matter to Simon as he skilfully blocked all the attacks before lunging in and stabbing the circle member. Clary's eyes were wide in surprise; since when did Simon know how to fight?

"Well, you guys are late. What took you so long? Did you stop for ice cream on your way," Simon said when he saw the three shadowhunters staring at him with a gormless look on their faces. Simon continued, "Never mind, Alec and Magnus are dealing with the last shadowhunter."

Simon walked back into Magnus' apartment, and the three shadowhunters followed. Neither fully understood what had just happened. 

"Magnus," Clary said to grab the warlock's attention. The young warlock girl rushed over to Magnus and hugged him.

"Go join the others, my dear. This is no place for a little girl. Go," Magnus and the girl nodded. Clary swore she heard the girl say Alec before running over to the Shadowhunter, who was looking over a wound on one of the warlocks. Alec looked over at the warlock girl and pulled her into a hug. This surprised Clary. She wasn't expecting Alec to be so open and caring to the warlocks, especially how cold he had been to her.

"I heard what you did to Zoe. You risked your life without hesitation to save a young warlock child" Magnus was surprised at least. Alec was the only shadowhunter he had met who would risk their life for a downworlder in the last decade. Maybe Clary had great potential.

"She was just a girl, and she was in trouble. I had no choice," Clary responded like what she did was nothing.

"You always have a choice. You're not like the others, Clary Fairchild. Most Shadowhunters protect Downworlders out of a sense of duty, but you saved young Zoe because of what was inside your heart. You're more like your mother than you'll ever know," Magnus said. The new shadowhunter was definitely an odd one, but that didn't mean he suddenly going to put his trust in her. She had to earn that.