Venus City 1 (10 page)

“I don't want to hear anything from you except for where the exit is,” she snapped, slightly irritated that she'd got lost in her inspection of him again.

He gave a slight frown. “I'm sorry—”

“Then get on with whatever you had to tell me so I can leave,” she hissed. She'd pushed away from the rail now and advanced two steps. He saw this, and also moved closer. His lips were twitching at the corners, and that only infuriated Braya more. She took another step closer to him. He mimicked her.

Soon they were so close that she was overwhelmed by his scent. Soil and flowers.

“You don't have much patience, do you, Braya Vace?” His tone was silky, smug.

“Congrats, you know my name.”

“I know a little more than that,” he grinned. His blue eyes flashed, and Braya was pinned under that arctic gaze. “I know your tendency to kick walls when you're frustrated. You don't like skeletons. You mutter obscenities to yourself when you're lost—”

“All things easily observed when you're stalking me,” Braya said airily, despite the urge she had to kick him in the shin. She'd always wanted to do that to someone.

“That was a rather creepy way to approach—over the neck like that, wasn't it? I realize that now. I shouldn't have followed you around either, only that I had to, but no matter. I don't want you to have the wrong impression of me, so let me start over,” he insisted. The guy spun around and walked back over to the small crack in the wall and shimmied through it. A minute stretched by—a long minute where Braya wondered if he'd left her for good—before he came worming his way back onto the balcony.

His strange beauty was caught by the glow of the crystals and his eyes gleamed a brilliant blue. He approached her with a disarming smile and gave her a curt bow.

“My name's Asher Benedict,” he introduced. “I'm from Ephraim City and I'm a member of the Locer Sharks.”

Braya folded her arms over her chest. “Ephraim City? Locer Sharks? Never heard of any of it.”

“I was about to explain it all before you interrupted—”

“Nor do I want to know,” Braya sniffed.

“Your disdain wounds me,” he was sarcastic now. “But do refrain from any side commentary until I'm finished.”

“What's the point? I can just find my own way out of this God forsaken dump,” she huffed. She made for the crack in the wall, but he grasped her arm. His grip was strong, and she felt the soft pads of his fingertips firmly against her own skin. A shiver ran down her spine, but she decided it was disgust and nothing else.

She wrenched free of his grasp and glared viciously at him.

“You can listen dutifully,” he said nonchalantly, “or you can try to resist, in which case I'll have to keep you here by force.”

“Keep me here?”

“Just for a little bit. Listen to what I have to say and I'll set you free...well, as free as possible,” he amended.

Braya didn't pretend to know what he was talking about. “Sorry, I don't take orders from others very well. Maybe you should add that to your pathetic little list of yours. But I especially don't listen to Muds.”

His brows narrowed. “Muds?”

“
You
.”

“Am I missing something here? I was certain I bathed this morning—”

She didn't even want to know where he might have bathed in this underground hell.

“Never mind,” she groaned. “It's just—just an insult for people like you.”

“Like me? How do you mean?”

“Just never mind! I'm leaving.”

She made a move toward the crack again, and again he grabbed her. Asher dragged her back so that she was standing in front of him, and he peered closely into her face.

“Explain the insult,” he said seriously. “It's not really worth it if the person doesn't even understand it, right?”

Braya threw up her hands in frustration. “Muds. They're the guys. I don't know exactly, but the name caught on a while ago. It's like...it's insulting because all the men have the lowest jobs in the city. They have the mud jobs, work in the mud, see? I heard another one had to do with their ancestors living in mud huts thousands of years go.”

“What a creative insult,” he smirked. “Thank you for explaining it.”

Braya scoffed. Explaining the insult in detail—she'd never considered it before, but it stole something important from the insult, it stole the
bite
.

“And now to business,” he said, raising an index finger. Asher began pacing. “Ephraim City is far from here—a grand city—but I can tell you stories about that later. As for the Locer Sharks,” he looked up and snagged her in his gaze, “We're a highly trained combat and fighting group. We came to this city for...purposes I can't really discuss with you right now, but since your city bars all foreigners we had to sneak in.”

“I can't believe it,” Braya shook her head. “I never knew there was anyone else out there...”

He gave her a long look, as if he sympathized her, and then he resumed pacing. “You saw Junho and Jinho at the game today. They lured you here. We need your help—”

“Well you can forget it,” she said fiercely. “I'm not helping any rebels who sneaked into our city.”

For a moment she realized she sounded like Maydessa, and she hated herself for it.

Asher stopped pacing again, and moved closer to her so that his face was crowding hers. She was overwhelmed by his scent again, and an unbidden blush swept over her.

“This is the part I'm most regrettable for,” he breathed. It was like snow, the mixture of his tone and the freezing blue of his eyes. “You have no choice in the matter, Bray. You're a part of the Locers whether you like it or not.”

“I refuse, Muddy,” she sneered. “But thanks for the generous offer.”

She spun away from him—it took a frightening amount of effort to tear her face away from his—and walked to the crack. She posed herself at the mouth of it, and was in the midst of wiggling through when his voice crept over her.

“Braya,” he murmured. It was intimate and tender. He was several feet away from her, but his voice was echoing through her head. She threw him a panicked look. How was he doing that? “Braya...come back here. Come to me.”

Her body froze. There was something like a pair of cold hands coiling around her shoulders. It traced a frigid path down her back, and she shivered. Then she was moving. Stalking straight back to Asher, and no matter how hard she tried to stop it, she found herself standing where she had previously been, inches away from the foreigner.

He smirked. “I'm sorry. I had to prove it to you. You're part of us now...”

“What
was
that?” She screeched. “How did-how did you
control
me like that?”

“It's called a master-slave link,” he grimaced. “I'm not the one who came up with that name, so don't go blaming that part on me. Ness—our captain—he ordered it. He installed it in you. I volunteered to be your master, though, because the other guys would have been a lot nastier with this kind of leverage over a pretty girl. So technically, none of this is my fault. If anything, I deserve some sort of thanks, wouldn't you think?”

“Then what
can
I blame on you, huh?” She hissed. “I don't suppose you're completely innocent in this whole thing? You have this horrid slave crap strapped into me some how—wait...that's why you knocked me out! You stupid Mud-scums were wiring me with your messed up magic—”

“I actually wasn't the one who hit you over the head, if that matters,” he interjected indignantly. “I caught you. Don't I get thanks for that?”

“Ugh! No.
No
. That doesn't matter!” She howled. “Get me out of here! Stop with this mind control!”

He glanced sideways, at the crystal and flower wall. “You're a bad listener. I'll add that to the list, too. Mind control has nothing to do with this.”

Braya
wasn't
listening anymore. She was trudging back to the crack in the wall, and when he called out to her again, she fought it. She fought the iron grip. She fought the icy fingers that trailed across the slopes of her shoulder blades. She fought the mounting pain that struck her out of nowhere.

But it was useless. She was defenseless against it.

Braya's knees buckled and she caught herself against the stone wall, barely managing to keep herself up. She groaned out in pain as Asher's tantalizing voice brushed across her ear with the softness of a flower petal. “Braya, stop struggling. Come to me...” Her body was aching, nearly screaming in protest as she dug her fingers into the grooves along the exit crack. She was no longer in control of her body. Her movements were sharp and mechanic due to her efforts to resist him. Tremors shook her slender frame and she knew her body was only a moment away from collapsing.

And then it came.

A wave of agonizing pain, something like being impaled through every inch of her body, crushed her and she crumpled to the floor with one last cry.

“Your hair is beautiful,” said a distorted voice.

A great spring of warmth opened up in her chest. “Would you like to touch it?”

“Oh, I don't know if I should,” the voice replied.

“Come on, feel it,” she urged.

“If you insist.”

“Get lost in it. Run your fingers through it,” she ordered. Braya was slowly regaining her vision. She could see white all around her, and feel warmth all around her. It was like she was floating.

“Anyone could get lost in this, it's like a forest.”

“Breathe it in.”

“Like a dying man, I'll breathe it
all
in.”

“Wrap it around your arm. Play with it. Nuzzle it.”

There was a pause. “It's like a blanket. I could cuddle it to sleep.”

She could detect movements now, vague outlines just out of her line of sight. The voice was becoming clearer, too. Masculine.

“Isn't it soft?”

“Like silk.”

“Isn't it long?”

“Longest I've seen.”

“Doesn't it smell nice?”

“Like a garden.”

She became aware of something hard beneath her. Her surroundings were beginning to take shape. Everything was blurry. There was someone kneeling beside her, arms tangled in her hair.

“My hair,” she murmured. Something was tugging at her memory. Why was she talking about her hair? An achey heaviness was settling into her legs and arms. “Do you like it?”

“I like it so much I could eat it,” the voice snickered. Asher's voice.

At that realization, everything came crashing down on her with numbing clarity. She was strewn over dingy blankets in the underground chapel. She wore the same lace dress—now wrinkled—she'd worn to the Moon Tamer game. Asher was hovering next to her, an amused grin perched on his face, handfuls of her hair filling his fists.

She jerked up abruptly, screeching in rage. A wave of dizziness forced her back to the ground. With her hand pressed to her head, she glared up at Asher, who appeared to be holding back his laughter.

“Are you
mental
? What do you think you were doing?” She snapped.

“Only what you were ordering me to,” he answered with a shrug.

“Clearly I was delusional,” she argued. “You didn't have to do anything.”

“You can be quite fierce when you're delirious.”

“Uggggh,” she groaned, clutching her head.

“Feeling dizzy?” He asked, his tone shifting. He almost sounded concerned. “I'm sorry. I've never used this master-slave link before. I didn't know that was going to happen...though to be fair, you brought it on yourself. If you hadn't tried to fight it—”

Braya interrupted him with another groan of pain. “Don't think for a second that me feeling all wonky has anything to do with that stupid slave device.”

He narrowed his eyes in thought. “Are you suggesting it was caused from me touching your hair?”

“God, I'm glad you can catch a hint.”

“And girls knocked over the head, don't forget,” he added with a smirk. She sent him a foul look as her head thudded in pain just from the memory of being hit unconscious by the stairs a few hours ago. If it had been a few hours ago...now that she thought about it, she'd had to have been in this chapel longer than that. It was impossible to tell being underground.

“What time is it?”

“It's Sunday night.”

“What? I've been sleeping a whole day?” She cried.

“Don't distress, Bray,” he said as he repositioned himself from kneeling to sitting. He stretched his legs out in front of him—his dirt-covered boots were a centimeter from her blanket—and propped himself back on his arms. “I nursed you back to health. The others wanted to barge in and make their way with you, I'm certain, but I blockaded the door.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better about this?” She asked miserably.

“Doesn't it?” He quirked a brow, as if he couldn't understand why she didn't throw her arms around him in gratitude. “Anyway, now that you're awake I think you should drink some water,” he pointed a bottle at her side that she hadn't noticed before, “and I'll fill you in on what I was supposed to yesterday.”