METANOIA ... a.lightwood (REWRITE)

chapter two; club pandemonium

POUNDING, rushing music. The dripping of sweat from forehead, from neck, through clothes to stick them to skin. Alcohol rushing through bloodstreams, from cup down throat, splashing onto the dance floor that sticks to their feet. Club Pandemonium buzzes with electricity. Music that shakes through the floor, a drug bringing them to the highest point of elation.

The night is so young. They could dance for a millennia. They could dance for even longer.

Downworlders mix, free from the eyes of Shadowhunters for the night, alive in a space that does not want them dead. Pixies grind against werewolves. Vampires let their tongues drag down the neck of warlocks. They dance because they are free. Free from the fear of circles carved into skin. Free from the eyes staring at the marks showing their parentage. Free from the Shadowhunters who use the Accords to arrest them for the slightest misgiving.

Free from the worry of a missing sister.

The sequins of Chris' silver shirt catch the light of the disco ball twinkling above – launching every shade of the rainbow into the darkness between flashing lights. A mahogany-skinned dryad sidles up to him, holding two glasses of a liquid he can barely make out through the darkness pushing down on them. He downs half of it as her arm slides around his waist, pulling their writhing bodies closer.

"I'm Selene," she shouts over the music. He smiles. Her black dreads have been pulled into a half-hearted ponytail, but there are strands of maple orange and forest green that drip around her face like autumn leaves. A droplet of alcohol – vodka, the taste is too strong for the rest of the drink – slips down his chin and she grins, teeth pearly white, as she leans forward to lick it up. She has a silver piercing glinting on her tongue. Chris' head buzzes. Is it the music? The alcohol? The pretty Faerie inches away from kissing him?

"Chris."

"I like the way you dance." He can barely hear her over the music. He leans closer and she takes that as her cue to flutter kisses across his cheekbones, just beneath his eyes. He is moments away from asking her to leave and sneaking her into Magnus' apartment before the other warlock can catch him.

His eyes drag along the crowd and there is the High Warlock at his usual cordoned-off area, all kinds of Downworlders hanging off of him, feeding off the energy that radiates from his pores. He would never even notice if Chris left now. He is the reason Chris is here, having grown bored of the younger warlock's constant searching of grimoires in order to find the spell that will find his sister. Two weeks Chris had been cooped inside, drinking all of his own alcohol, and so Magnus had told him to take the night off, handed him a sparkling shirt and portalled them to Pandemonium before the blonde could argue.

Selene pushes long strands of Chris' blonde hair behind his ear so she can take the lobe between her teeth.

A shudder rolls down his spine. If he's lucky, maybe she'll stay longer than the night. It is almost like she knows all the areas that tantalise him. All the places to kiss. All the right things to say. He can sink away the daylight in her skin and pretend that his sister never went missing at all.

But she did, and he's drinking and dancing and flirting with a dryad.

A body collides with his. Liquid spills over his shirt. His vodka cocktail and the sticky beer from the other cup. Selene jumps back with a squeal, but she remains untouched by the alcohol. Chris spins, staring down the werewolf. Deep brown skin flashing between purple and pink as the lights change with each song, black curls cropped short, earrings running up all of his right ear. There are white, jagged-edged scars running along his muscular arms, most likely savaged by werewolves and left to his own devices to face the consequences, and he has tattoos drawn between them as if to take away from the garish sight of them.