Venus City 1 (9 page)

Braya took another few steps forward. She heard something clatter against stone beside her, and whirled around in what she thought was her left. A bright light lanced through the pressing darkness and Braya caught sight of a trail of red flowers along the stone floor before something slammed into her head and she collapsed into someone's arms, unconscious.

Something pounded against the inside of her skull. Over and over. Braya moaned in pain, but that only made it worse. She was acutely aware of her head and how heavy it felt. The rest of her body was lost to her. She could barely feel anything. She forced her eyes open, blinked a few times, and wondered for a moment if she'd gone blind.

Then she realized she hadn't gone blind. She was underground. That knowledge startled her up into a sitting position, but her head was spinning and the sudden movement made her feel nauseous. Braya cradled her head in her hands for a moment, moaning to herself, the rest of her limbs numb.

Once she was sure she could stand, she wobbled to her feet. There was nothing for her to hold onto—if the wall were a few feet away, she would not have known—and stood there with shaking knees for a moment. She cursed herself for being so weak.

When she was able to start taking steps, Braya moved slowly at first. She was being cautious of the oppressing darkness crowding in at all angles, but she was also trying to wake her sleeping legs up.

Her fingers brushed a grimy wall, and Braya moved closer to it, hoping to follow it. Someone had obviously knocked her out earlier, and she had no idea if she was still in the same place as before, but she wasn't going to wait around for whoever it was to come back.

If they hadn't moved her, she would still be close to the stairs and she could escape. She knew where the twins were hiding now, and she could go home and tell her mother about it. Then she'd be rewarded and live happily ever after.

That thought made her feel a little better. She crept along the wall at a quicker pace, and cried out in surprise when she tumbled into a corner. This couldn't be right.

Braya followed the intersecting wall and several feet down she grazed over something wooden. She frantically ran her hands over the surface, yelping at the splinters she collected in the process, and felt something sinister sink to the bottom of her stomach when her hands collided with a metal handle.

She was in a room, which meant that someone had put her there. Braya didn't want to imagine the dozens of other things the unknown people could have done to her when she'd been unconscious. Had it been the twins? Had they lured her here for a reason? If that were the case, Braya couldn't imagine it'd be to discuss tea.

She wrenched at the handle. Surprisingly, it opened easily. Light leaped into the room and Braya ducked away to shield her eyes. Once her vision was adjusted to the light, she peered out the door and into what appeared to be a corridor. The light that had burst through the door had only been dim candlelight, but Braya was grateful that she could see again.

She entered the hallway somewhat hesitantly. If those twins had known this underground structure well enough to throw her in some room they would surely know how to return to the room. And who knew? Maybe those foreign green eyes enabled them to see in the dark. She wouldn't doubt it.

The candlelight wasn't enough to illuminate every nook and cranny along the corridor. Great shadows swarmed along ledges, inside corners, and down intersecting halls. It didn't matter, though. Braya had to get out.

She wandered through the corridor. She continued down the same one since most of the others that rose up to the left or right were swallowed up in complete darkness. She shuddered each time she passed one.

Braya couldn't be sure since it was swathed in black, but the ceiling seemed to be very tall if the echoing of her footsteps on the stone floor was any indication.

The passage was wide, cold, and smelt like soil. At the end of it, she found another passage leading to her right. It was brightly lit with great, bulbous lanterns of blue and gold propped up in rusted brackets. She could see the high-reaching arcs of the ceiling clearly now. Tall pillars of cracked marble lined the walls, random spots of the floor were eaten up by overgrowing roots—some were thick enough to be tree branches—that curled up across the stone, and the heavy scent of fresh soil lingered in the air.

That was the strange thing. Packed around every pillar, into every ledge, and through every cracked stone was fresh soil. Placed in the soil were various kinds of flowers, beautiful in the lantern-light, all tangled together in a way that made it look like it was the flowers that had overgrown the corridor. It was impossible, though. Someone had planted them.

A few yards down the flower corridor, Braya encountered two large doors with many large locks nailed into its surface. All of them were unlatched, and, even though she had a feeling it wasn't the exit, Braya gently pushed them open.

She emerged in a chapel. That's what this underground place was, she realized. The vaulted space she tentatively stepped into was slightly narrow, but in no way small. Pews were lined up in front of her, stretching so far forward that she guessed more than five hundred people could attend service there. Hollowed archways as tall as the great entrance doors she'd just come through tapered off to a point and gathered beside the pews in a pattern all the way up to the front of the chapel. Elongated windows the same shape as the archways were deep set behind the arches, so far that shrouded walkways were formed under the indent of stone. Above the archways on both walls were another row of the same windows, and in the front of the chapel the entire wall was made up of stained glass. Its design was intricate and fascinating. The fact that it
had
windows made Braya realize this chapel must have been above ground at some point.

Braya moved forward, fully aware that this was wasting more time, and froze when something crunched under her feet. It was long, thin, and white. Was that a...bone?

She scurried away from it. With one hand leaning against the back of a pew, Braya clutched at her heart for a moment. Her eyes swept the entrance to make sure there weren't anymore bone fragments littering the ground—the only thing she saw was more packed soil and more flowers.

She passed through the pews. It was a mistake, she realized. Full-bodied skeletons, cracked skulls, and miscellaneous bones were arranged along each seat, as if someone had organized them that way. It seemed like with time, though, they had slouched over, fallen, or moved out of place. She hadn't seen any sign of them from the entrance....

Something moved behind Braya. She whirled around, eyes scanning the arches frantically, but there was nothing. Her heart was pounding in her ears and there was something like cold fear brushing across the delicate skin of her neck. She shivered, and decided to go back out to the corridor.

Her wandering became aimless. Braya knew she was rotten at direction, and being trapped underground in a maze of corridors and flickering lantern-light did not help that handicap one bit. Several times she got the feeling that someone was following her, but every time she turned around to inspect her surroundings, nothing was there. The presence would linger there, though, even if her eyes couldn't catch it.

She would be a fool to say she wasn't afraid now. She took frequent breaks in the middle of the halls to kick angrily at the pillars or knock away one of the lanterns. No matter what she chanted to herself she couldn't shake the feeling that something was following her. And no matter what hall she walked, she came no closer to finding a way out.

Braya slumped against a pillar, tired of walking. She reached down to rub her ankles, and from the corner of her eye she saw a flash of blue. She jolted up and stared in the direction it had come from. Was that the thing that was following her? She didn't care if it was a monster with eight arms and legs, she was going to ask that creepy stalker how to get out of this place.

Braya strode over to a small alcove to her right, where she'd seen the blue light. There was a chipped statue of worn marble—so worn that she couldn't discern what the statue was—tucked inside the small space that she hadn't noticed before. She was surprised to see a sliver of light emanating from a crack behind its back. Upon closer inspection, the crack was a lot wider than she would have expected. From the main corridor, it would have been hard to detect, but now that she was mere breaths away from it, the hole was large enough for someone to fit through.

Braya wiggled her way through it, grumbling to herself the whole while. Through the crack Braya found herself on a balcony. It was wide, rounded, and jutted out quite far from the outside of the church. It was peculiar, because she figured the entire balcony would have been buried under dirt, but for some reason a large dome-shaped space had been hollowed out so that the balcony was usable. The oddest thing, though, were the flowers and crystals. They were embedded into the dirt wall like ornaments.

Braya moved to the edge of the railing and leaned against it. With her arms outstretched, she could barely brush her fingers over the cool dirt surface and its twinkling decorations. The flowers were different hues of white, blue, and pink, and the crystals were the same colors, though glowing eerily bright in the enclosure. If she weren't so confused, Braya might have found it beautiful.

“I didn't expect you to find this,” a voice slid over her shoulder like a breeze. “You're quite the explorer.”

Braya felt every muscle in her body freeze. She turned around slowly, her neck craning up so her eyes could meet...

Blue eyes.

The man—whoever he was—was standing incredibly too close. Braya jumped away as if he'd touched her, and found herself backed up against the railing of the balcony.
 
Her face was flushed, her neck was soaked in sweat, and her head was pounding with the sound of her frantic heartbeat. She couldn't remember a time she'd been more startled.

The man in front of her seemed to be around her age, if not a year or two older. He was very striking—she'd never seen anyone like him. His cheekbones were high and prominent, his jaw was angular and defined, though his chin was small. His shining blue eyes were like polished gems, glowing as brightly as the crystals behind her. Dark, elegant lashes framed his blue stare, adding to its intensity. His hair was dark brown—possibly black—and long enough to sweep over his ears and curl at the back of his neck.

Braya hadn't realized she had been staring at him—she inhaled sharply when he smiled. It was like a statue reaching forward and shaking your hand.

His smile did two things to her. First, it made her realize how handsome he was. She didn't like that. He was a foreigner—a creature as likely to exist as dragons—and he was a man. A
Mud
. Like his ancestors who had lived in mud huts however many thousands of years ago it was. She wasn't supposed to think he was handsome—dammit he
wasn't,
she told herself vehemently.

The second thing was...

She'd never been enraptured like this. She'd seen attractive males before—Aspen, Grooms—but they were nothing to fuss over. Why couldn't she look away from him?

“I guess I really shouldn't have followed you around like that,” the young man spoke again. He dragged his gaze away from her, and Braya let out a sigh of relief. When he looked at her with those unnerving eyes of his, she felt trapped. “I couldn't have very well let you wander around just yourself, though, could I? Nor could I say anything to you. I don't know why, it's just—”

“You were the one who was following me?” Braya interrupted, her voice returning to her. She didn't like the sound of it, though—scratchy, as if she hadn't used it in a while. She had wanted to sound accusatory, but it came out warped and pining. “How come I couldn't see you?”

“I was invisible.”

“Invisible?”

“That's right,” he grinned with a familiarity that suggested they were something more than perfect strangers.

“Are you...” she paused, hesitating. She couldn't believe she was about to ask this. “Are you human?”

He laughed. “Of course I am. What do you suspect?”

Braya blushed furiously. “You look different,” she insisted. “Your skin...your eyes...”

“My skin,” he mused. “It may look a little different because of the crystals behind you. Your skin also looks a little silvery right now, if you ask me. My eyes...well, they're quite normal, too. You're just not well acquainted to them yet.”

She shook her head. “No, they're definitely not normal. Only girls have those kinds of eyes.”

Why was she arguing with this man? She should be demanding him to take her to the exit. And where were those twins? Just how many foreigners were crawling around like ants down here, she wondered.

“Is that your way of telling me I have pretty eyes?”

“Mind telling me where the exit is?” She ignored his question.

The humor dancing in his expression faltered. He blinked a couple times, as if realizing something, and then sighed.

“Do you think I can just let you go like that? If I could, I would, but there's something rather important I was meant to inform you of,” he said, moving to perch against the railing. It was the first time she'd noticed what he was wearing. Black turtle-neck shirt beneath a finely cut white vest, which was nearly concealed by the large, tailored jacket he wore. It was of a durable white material, its collar so long it was folded and still reached his chin. It made him look broad and lean, though she suspected his frame was exaggerated by the jacket and vest. A red symbol was sewn into the creases and collar of the coat, something with a lot of intersecting circles and swirls. She didn't recognize it. Beneath the coat he wore plain black pants and black boots. The only peculiar thing about his appearance was the thick, brown circle hanging about his chest like a necklace.