3Torches supplying the only light stood directly across from these cells, forming shadows; the flames licked the walls with an interminable hunger. The walls and the floors were made out of slick stone, cracked and rough like a dank cave. The dark ceiling rose no more than thirty feet above the floor. Spider webs garnished the corners. Insects nested within the tiny cracks and holes that marred the stone; at times, they would poke their tiny heads out and twitch their antennaes; more often, they liked to skirt and creep along the floor, skillfully evading one's pacing ankles.
Two rooms branched off of this dungeon; their doors stood at opposite ends. A great metal door, twice as tall as a man and three times as wide, covered one side; it served as the entrance to the place, as well as the exit and the freedom a prisoner could only long for. The other door was small in comparison, and wooden. Moans and screams would sound from this room, causing the ones in the cells to quiver in unmasked fear. Those who went into that room, often were not seen to come back out.
In a high corner of a cell, subtle movement started. A spider stepped off of its web and descended the wall. The arachnid was a morbid black, ebony the color of an inconspicuous crow flying over a midnight sky. It scaled the stone, dropping onto the clammy floor. Its ten eyes watched a cell occupant walk towards it.
Splat. Green goo and dead parts littered the ground and the boy's shoe.
"Holy shit," the teenager swore. "Did you see the size of that sucker?"
On the other side of the cell, Jevane, a tall man with hard eyes, leaned against the wall, arms over his broad chest. He slowly slid his gaze towards the young teenager, forming an apathetic visage and an absent curve of his lips, as if to say an unvoiced and indifferent, "okay, and...?". His skin was dark and bronze; he had hair the color of a fireless pit; and his nose was very long and straight. He grimaced.
Unabashed, the boy continued thoughtfully. "Do you have a plan to get us out of here?"
"No."
"Do you even think we'll even get out of here?"
"Will you shut up already?" Jevane snapped angrily. "I'm trying to hear myself think, and your incessant questions get me no where."
Lucca hadn't shut up for the past hour. It was enough to make Jevane's mind numb. He shouldn't have let the kid come anyways. Karma was a bitch sometimes. Four days before residing in this rough and uncomfortable cell, he had concocted "a brilliant plan." Okay, it had sounded good then, but now it seemed dark and dreary, kind of like the dungeon and the predicament he was in.
Nevertheless, he had felt a burning desire, a blazing need to discover his other half. Jevane was half-demon, though he acted mostly human. He had wanted to know everything about demons, and it had almost bordered on obsession. So, taking two other curious and fellow half-demons, he went to find the entrance to one of the Underground Cities near Augustine- the place where mostly full-blooded demons dwelled. There were only a few Underground Cities in the entire country, hidden down more than a hundred feet below the grass and Upperground.. He had been caught snooping around, and was now paying the price for his curiosity.
He had gone against Andrew's wishes, and if he got out of this alive, Andrew would probably wring his neck for it. Andrew was his best friend, a fellow half-demon, and he had lived in an Underground City himself at one point. Naturally, Jevane had attempted to curb his curiosity by asking Andrew questions about his other heritage. Andrew had withheld all information, tightly and coldly from him, not willing to share anything about his hard past.
Charoal submerged itself into Jevane's yellow eyes, and his aura encompassed the entire dungeon. Lucca, sensing the unrelented mass of power, bit away the instinctive urge to hide in the far corner. Jevane inhaled a deep breath.
"We should have never came here," Jevane finally said. Now, he would be completely content without knowing anything about his other half.
A high pitched scream bounced off of the walls and crashed into their ears. The effect of the wail was the same as seeing someone get struck by a vehicle; their emotions boiled and then scabbed from the sound.
"Pssst."
Jevane turned and rested his eyes on the cell adjacent to their own, startled to see a girl half-encased in shadow. When the girl lifted her chin to meet their eyes, the light revealed her to be a young woman. Dull blonde hair fell flat like straw against a jutting collar bone and bony shoulders. Fire danced in a set of pale blue eyes. Dark bags crept under them and were juxtapose to her strikingly pale skin.
"What do you want?" Jevane said impatiently, unnerved to have her unyielding eyes on him.
The woman only cocked her head to the side and laughed at them.
"Why don't-"
"Hush, Lucca! Someone is coming," Jevane growled impatiently.
The door rumbled, announcing a presence, and upon hearing the echoing sound, the prison hushed, as if heeding a librarian's lecture to quiet. The slam of the door ended the effect at an instant, making the atmosphere sticky and sliced by their voices.
"Get me out of here!" a man sobbed uncontrollably.
"I swear, I won't do it again!"
"Come over here, you filthy demon!"
Heavy footsteps passed by every cell and vibrated the ground encircling the figure. The occupants who belted pleas and remarks became unlucky targets when new punishment advanced upon them, brought by the crack of a whip. The shouts dimmed as the person drew near to their cell. The footsteps halted, right in front of them.
Jevane felt his blood go cold. Long, dark hair poured across the demon's back, his eyes equal in shade to these strands and lacking any substance of white. He towered like a frightening haunted house over them and cackled, his laughter the theme song to his eerie stature. His nails were obtrusive with their yellow-mold tint and long, curved ends designed like grotesque talons.
"A full-blooded demon," Lucca whispered, trembling and scurrying back.
Jevane stood up straighter, eyes narrowing. Alexis. True to his thought, her mangled body dangled from the demon's right hand, half-concealed by the creature himself. In his opposite hand he wielded a leather whip. The cell door lock clicked and opened. The demon tossed Alexis in, and she skidded unceremoniously across the stone, a trail of blood dripping where she slid. Without any indication of a plan, Jevane lunged at the demon.
As if poised for this very action, the demon ducked under him, shot up his arm, and grasped Jevane by the throat. The demon tightened his hold, cutting off all oxygen, and lifted him a foot from the ground. Jevane sputtered, and his eyes bulged.
"Filthy halfling," the demon roared, spit flying in his face.
Full-blooded demons hated halflings. The only tolerated ones were the ones that had grown up in the Underground Cities, but even then, they were still scorned and ridicule, which was probably why Andrew had fled. If a hybrid was born and raised in the Upperground, the demons found it a crime and did not hesitate to kill the person.
The demon threw him aside like a ragged doll. Jevane soared in the air, hitting the wall, and knocking the back of his head brutally, causing blackness to fringe on his vision. The whip cracked and opened a wound on his calf. The cell door slammed shut, sealing any means of escape, as well as any aspiration to try a second one. The demon's laughter ricocheted off of the walls until fading. Jevane groaned, sitting up, and clutched his aching head. He checked the cut on his skin, saw the sliced pant leg, and hissed from the pain as he touched it.
"Alexis," he heard Lucca whisper worriedly.
Jevane swiveled his head a few degrees, abruptly aware of Alexis's nakedness. He chanced a glance at Lucca's reaction, noticing the boy's flushed face and his tendency to stare at everything but her. If she hadn't looked so appalling, he might have called the boy out on it.
Blood flourished on her back like weeds in a garden, where whip lashes had sliced callously across her dark skin. He found himself counting these lines, but the number lost itself like a flame blown out, when his eyes set attention on her face. Crying and fists cast her eyes scarlet and bulging; bruises painted her face a blended sky of night and day; and her bottom lip was a swollen, jagged crescent moon. Blood flowed down her nose like pouring lava. And where a knife had drowned on various parts of her flesh, the blood had come to the surface for air, and treaded on the stony floor where it dripped.
Regret filled him, and he buried his face into his hands. Alexis's impending death was sorely upon him. He felt Lucca touch his shoulder, and he growled low in his throat. Lucca's footsteps retreated a few steps back, but he could feel the concern radiate from it. He should be concerned about Alexis, not me, he thought bitterly.
"She's not going to make it," Jevane said bluntly, in a sitting position, but dragging his rear to where Lucca sat.
Catching a movement in the corner of his eyes, Jevane saw the strange girl in the next cell over; she was staring at them again, unashamed, placing her head just between the bars.
"What are you staring at?" Jevane hissed.
"You know, you really shouldn't have tried to venture in the Underground," the girl said. "Ever since I've been here, I've seen the end of so many of your kind."
Jevane inched closer, but just barely. "How long have you been here?"
"Fairly long enough," she replied tartly. She paused, sighing. "Five years."
"Five years? Why?" Lucca asked, amazed.
The girl drew away from them and back into the shade of her cell, where light could not reach.
"I can help you get out of here," she said in a small voice. "If you're lucky, they'll take you to the stadium, where you can fight for your freedom."
Jevane narrowed his eyes at her curiously, turned, and set his gaze back upon Alexis. The soft rise and fall of her chest had ceased.
"Shit," Jevane swore.
It was as if a stampede of erratic wildlife had trampled through her apartment and made it a jungle itself. Grass splayed everywhere- on the overturned couch, on the rug hanging over the sliced chair, and with the shards of the television screen. Her paintings no longer hung upon their skinny nails, but instead, had both been punctured with the rod of the television antenna. The tall lamp had been overturned, with its orange shade thrown carelessly into the corner. Dinner plates and intricate glasses spread their pieces along the trashed floor. Her game consoles had been smashed together, their controller's wires laid flat like snakes.
Glass crunched thunderously beneath her boots as she examined further. The door to her personal room was now inside of her room, right next to her cracked window. Pages of her schoolbooks and her own reading material were strewn all around the floor like piles of autumn leaves. Her bed was in three pieces; the mattress bled open and spilled its cotton inside, and the wood of the bedpost had actually disappeared all together. Wires sparked from her radio; clothes from her dresser spread across the floor; hangers and trivial possessions had piled to become mounds of obstacles.
Crunch.
Vera froze. Oh no. She tiptoed to her closet and around the shreds, careful not to make the same mistake as the intruder.
"Ingénue?" followed by a chuckle.
Fuck.She peered behind the folds of the door.
"You're in here. I can smell your de-licious fear." More mocking laughter. "Why don't you show yourself?"
Another voice suddenly pervaded the condensed atmosphere, spiked deep with an undertone of a charming English accent, and was at great ends different from the other man's heavy, French accent.
"I suggest you leave her alone, Christoff."
Andrew? Why is he here? she wondered, though thankful.
Andrew was a good friend of her brother. She had known him since they had moved into the city and in the apartment. He had stayed over often at their place, so she had her share of coffee mornings with him, watching cartoons at 8am, while Jevane slept in soundly. It struck her odd that he would be here at this time. She figured maybe he was looking for Jevane too.
She watched Andrew run an impatient hand through his long raven locks, frowning. His hair reached reached his shoulders in artistic waves; he kept his hair almost unkempt, as if he had just awaken, and it attracted the opposite sex in ways he sometimes could not understand; at times, he'd even pull his hair back in a low tail, and his sharp jaw and cheekbones would only be more pronounced. His eyes were an exotic, predator gold, and sometimes she felt herself drawn into them. There was a hint of hair on his face. Andrew was tall and smooth, with sculpted arms that could pick her up as if she weighed no more than a piece of paper, and broad shoulders that accentuated him. Sometimes, she wished he wasn't so damn good looking. It made it hard to tear her eyes away from him.
"I don't think so," the creep – Christoff was it? – derided with a sneer.
"A pity for you then."
Through the cracks of the white folding door, she saw the two men circle around each other, poised to lunge. She gritted her teeth, tired of not being able to do anything. Balling up her fists, something extraordinary happened.
Her anger blew away the door, casting it to the side as if she had actually body-slammed it. Andrew and Christoff gawked at her, as if she had just sprouted multiple heads. As a result of recent events unexplained, anything outlandish or peculiar was not to be questioned because, for the moment, she fully intended to use the energy teeming excitedly about her fingertips, curling and quivering at her desire to manifest itself through this bastard's heart.
"You," she shrieked, throwing her hands up. Unintentionally, her energy exploded onto him, and as if by an undetectable force, Christoff rammed right into the wall behind him. "I am really pissed off. And here you are, of all people, again!"
Christoff was restrained to the wall now, bound with invisible ropes emerging from her energy. His confidence must have been carried out of the shattered window with the slight breeze whispering inside of the room, because his face, and she wasn't exactly sure how, grew paler and more sunken.
A high pitched slap sounded, leaving an imprint the color of her flustered face on his cheek. Satisfied by his stunned and embarassed countenace, no doubt induced by the fact he had been bested by a woman, she turned her attention to Andrew.
"Why are you here?" Her voice was more amiable now, but had an undeliberate trace of a snappy tone; the abrupt alteration of her mood made both men fairly nervous, as if she would be so easily set off again like wind shifting its delicate direction.
Andrew looked, and this was a very rare moment for him, as flabbergasted as the man pinned to the bedroom wall; in consequence, a full pause spoke before he actually opened his lips. "Well, I came to save you, but I guess you really don't need it now."
"Who is he, and why has he been trailing me?" Fury clattered with the tenor of her voice as she turned to glower at Christoff, and he, who had managed to suck back in some of his valor, mustered up an irate visage to rival her own.
"I can not tell you everything now." Andrew's words crashed into each other, and she realized he sounded anxious to leave. "No time. I'll answer questions later. We need to finish him off and then move."
"Finish him off?" Vera echoed incredulously. Sure, she'd been more than thrilled to provoke the creep and lash her built-up, unbridled anger upon him, but by American law, she was in no position to play with lives. Andrew started walking towards Christoff, but Vera stepped in his path defiantly.
"Move." His words weren't cold, nor were they so demanding, but exhaused in a way that revealed Andrew's prediction of her answer.
"I'll call the police, Andrew."
Andrew laughed, and Vera glared at him, wondering why he was teasing her. "The police! God, you really have been kept in the dark." He paused and his tone darkened when he pivoted in Christoff's direction. "I'll let you go for now, Christoff, for the girl's sake, but the next time I see you, you won't be spared."
Together, they set off to his house.
"I've known you for, what, six years?" Vera said, narrowing her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest.
"Yes, and your point?" Andrew asked, quirking an interested eyebrow up.
"And in all of those years, you never thought to tell me that you lived in a mansion?"
She had passed this exact house multiple times during her life, and even had stopped to admire it more than once. Never would she have imagined it belonged to someone she knew, least of all Andrew! It was a magnificent mansion, positioned just on the rich outskirts of the city. There were tall, black gates limiting entrance, and the white paint always looked fresh and lurid. The grass was cut to perfection; the front yard consisted of two acres with a curved U-shaped driveway, and a magnificent fountain sat right in the middle, drawing eyes immediately, with its tulips, irises, and anemones bursting forth from the hint of spring. The fountain was half the size of the black gates, water dripping down in long ripples. A butler clad in a two-piece suit answered the door for them, standing straight and rigid. Andrew nodded curtly and seemingly routinely to him.
The inside appeared even more breathtaking; the first room they entered seemed to be a lounging room, with a high ceiling, a wide interior, and a glittering chandelier. A winding staircase, shaped like a large children's slide, poured from the second floor; its white-painted oak wood railing stood brightly in the dark-themed atmosphere. Ornate, black curtains were pulled back to reveal clear, rectangular windows. Waxed floors smiled at her, and vivid paintings of forests and star swept skies caught her curious eye.
A dozen, or possibly more, people were situated in the room, lounging cat-like on the leather furniture, which consisted of two couches and three laid-back chairs. The group was clad in colors of the night; nearly all extraordinarily handsome; and lavished with pallid features, as if they were creatures of not only the night but of ice, with frost turning their words cold and their lips tinted an unnatural blue.
"Oh, our welcoming committee," Andrew remarked dryly. "How lovely."
All eyes curved languidly in her direction, like they had already been expecting her. Considering that thought, she wanted to sneak out of the limelight because she knew her ruffled appearance was quite unattractive; blood and dirt caked icing on her shirt, and her untamed hair had managed to fight, and win, against gravity. Noticing the familiar face of Rémi, she relaxed a little when he sent a reassuring wink her way.
Rémi, a man as tall as her brother and with piercing gray eyes, was the other best friend of Jevane. They were the only two people Jevane had ever brought to the house. She had often been jealous of them, for stealing her brother's attention, when she had always longed for it. Ever since their parents had died in a tragic car accident a few years back, Jevane had turned from a good-natured boy to a cold and stubborn man. The new personality seemed to fit Rémi and Andrew well, but she had a hard time understanding him, thus the reason why they were so aloof from each other now.
The tall woman spoke first among the group. She was exotically beautiful; eyes a mixture of shuddering rain and indestructible ocean waves; chest-nut hair framed a face only captured in the most beautiful works of art and tumbled over steel-strong shoulders, ending sharply at a slim waist.
"So this is Jevane's little sister. I thought you said she was a human, Andrew."
Andrew shifted. "Well, she was. I'm not really sure why her aura is different."
"What's going on, Andrew," Vera whispered anxiously, without taking her eyes off of the group. "Who are these people?"
Vera noticed Andrew exchanging looks with the woman that had spoken.
"I think it's best if you sleep first, you look exhausted," the woman said.
"But I really-"
She turned to look at Andrew, and locking eyes with him, she felt a tug at her mind, very similar to the mind controlling effect Christoff had had on her earlier.
"It is time for you to go to bed," he said softly, persuading. "Come on, I'll take you upstairs."
He put his arms around her shoulders, and tried to pull her away. His words weighted on her consiousness, and Vera almost let herself be pulled in by it. Instead, she tore her gaze.
"No, I really don't want to go to bed," Vera said angrily, tearing his grip from her, and turning back around, irritated. "I want to know what's going on."
The members of the group had either parted their mouth into a surprised O or they gave her an odd look. Andrew looked the most bewildered, stepping back from her.
"What! Why are you guys looking at me like that."
"You just ignored a direct order," the tall woman said, befuddled lines etched in her forehead.
"So what! I do it all the time."
"No, no, you are mistaken, Vera. Orders given by my kind can never be ignored," Andrew said.
"Your kind? What are you guys, vampires?" she laughed.
Again, Andrew exchanged looks with the other woman. The group grinned at her, and she noticed that together, they had extended their teeth. Vera cursed wildly, and right when she had half-turned to flee the room, Andrew snatched the part of her upperarm.
"We're not vampires," Andrew dismissed impatiently. "I mean, humans might call us by that term, but we are not vampires."
"What do you mean you're not vampires? Look at your teeth! Nearly all of you are pale, and you just tried to do some crazy mind trick on me."
Andrew paused, opening and then closing his mouth, like he did not want to tell her. Rémi stepped forward.
"Humans have constructed myths about our kind, and they have called us vampires. Really, we are half-demon."
It wasn't true. They all had to be lying. She gazed around, startled to see their serious faces. No one laughed, but she still could not believe it.
Vera flailed in Andrew's grip, and yelled, "You guys are crazy. What are you, really? A cult-"
A chop to her neck, and Andrew knocked her unconscious.