The Art of Manipulation || Phantom of the Opera & Loki the God of Mischief ||

17. You Decieved Me

"There he is!"

"Get him!"

"There's the monster!"

I pulled Erik behind me and kept him pressed to the wall. The mob pushed through the slimy waters, their faces twisted with anger, their torches and their eyes flaming with hate and murder. I ignored Erik's struggles to come in front of me and protect me, keeping my full and alert attention on the group of men before me, "Stay away! All of you! Leave him alone!"

They advanced onto the ramp and kept a safe distance away from us.

Talking over my shoulder, I muttered to Erik, "Open the passageway and leave."

Still struggling he replied, "They'll kill you! There is no way I am leaving you here! Let them take me! It is me they want and not you!"

The grizzly man in the front of the crowd cracked a grimy smile, "As cliché as that sounded, he's right you know. We would kill you. One who defends the devil deserves to perish from an unpleasant death." The green eyes of the man sparkled, causing a shiver to crawl up my spine.

Raising my chin, I retorted, "I think you'd find me a difficult wall to break through."

Another smile snaked onto the man's face and the others drew closer to him, "I wouldn't be so sure about that. We're a lot stronger than you think." Glancing at his peers, they all joined him in smirking up at me.

My eyes darted to the other mortals, mentally taking in their height and build to see which one I should attack first. They were all damp from trudging through the lake, their hair greasy and dirty from weeks without bathing. Each one of them met my stare straight on, their green eyes never wavering in their silent threats, all of them twinkling with a certain mischi-

My breathing hitched and my blood ran cold.

I backed up, pressing Erik deeper into the rock behind us. When the head mobster smirked, his companions followed suit in an eerie kind of unison.

Keeping my eyes on the group of men, I turned my head and whispered over my shoulder, "Erik, I need you to do as I say."

"Christine, please, if you would only-"

I ignored him, the color draining from my face, "I need you to run, as fast as you can. Take all the passages you know of and get far away from here."

The man in the front stepped forward, tilting his head slightly as if he was trying to hear what I said, "What's that, love? Take all the passages you know of and get far away from here? Yes, yes that does sound like a formidable plan. However..." The images of the grimy men faded away, now showing us not twenty men, but twenty Loki's; all of them standing in a line, shoulder to shoulder. "Do remember there is twenty of me, and one of him. Don't think I can't find him. Like I said, we're a lot stronger than you think." All twenty of them smiled at once, making my stomach threaten to turn over.

I reached behind me and laid a protective hand over Erik's, the strength of my weakened grasp surely painful to him but I couldn't loosen it.

The one Loki stepped forward, his hands clasped behind his back and his step as relaxed as his smile, "You know, I never looked too closely, Erik, but, didn't Christine have brown eyes?" He towered over the both of us now. Tilting his head to the side, he said in a tone resembling a professor in a biology class, pointing out the different intestines of the frog cut open before them, "If you look closely at our little..." He leveled his hand to my hairline and frowned, "My, my, she was short, wasn't she? Are you sure you didn't over exaggerate her height?"

Erik butt in, perplexed and frightened, "What is your point?!"

Raising his gaze to the man behind me, Loki continued, "My point, dear O.G, is the woman in front of you has blue eyes." A slow, closed lip smile came to Loki's mouth before he added, "Go on and look for yourself. I would have thought you'd notice the color of your lover's eyes."