La Nuit Porte Conseil

Chapter Two

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The boat waited as always––a lone sentinel on the stony shore of the underground lake. As soon as she stepped inside it began to move, coaxed silently along the inky waters by its submerged chain. When Erik took the boat with her, he would use a gondolier's oar to project them forward. Though the oar lay in the bottom of the boat, she dare not stand to try to use it should she topple over into the black water. Erik warned her to be wary of the water––she never asked why. There was much she never asked.

Now she fingered the handle of the oar where his gloved hand would have grasped, as she waited for the boat to make its slow, tortuous crossing. To her left passed its twin, the empty counterweight.

Erik would know she was coming.

She had memorized this journey like any familiar path. By now the far shore should come into view––softly illuminated by the dim glow of Erik's candles, his lamps, his hearth––and yet, there was nothing. Only pure, black, nothing. An uncanny dread crept under Christine's skin and beneath her ribs to chill her heart. She should be able to see his home by now. In her haste, she had not stopped to light a lantern or candle, blindly trusting her steps and the little boat to guide her here, trusting Erik to light her way. She had never been here in the dark.

She had never been anywhere so truly dark before.

Without warning the spectral boat struck the bank as Christine cried out in alarm. Her ears filled with the terrible crush of her own pulse. A tremulous hand flew to her heart to settle her pounding blood.

"Erik?" she called, swallowing. Black water licked softly at the unseen bank; a taint of moldering damp soured the gelid air.

There was no answer save her own thunderous breath.

He would have known she was coming!

The little boat lurched beneath her as she crawled from it, grasping at the algae-covered stones of the underground strand. On her knees she stumbled forward blindly; if she could only find the wall of his house, she could reach his door. Cold sweat beaded upon her chest and slid between her breasts.

Catching an arm upon an unseen stone she shrieked in pain, then gave a sob for something else. She crumpled forward miserably.

Then––a sound––ragged and raw, like a last miserable breath before death––

Christine stirred, staring into the haunted dark.

Her knees scraped the coarse stone as she crawled, spoiling her heavy skirts and battering her palms. Gasping in pain and fear, she stood, and thrust her hands forward to grope for the wall.

"Erik?" she breathed, to every resounding drip of water on black stone, every crashing ripple of the black lake upon the parapet.

She knew the way to his door; it was not far, but darkness invents great distances where there are none. Grasping the wall of the cavernous room with aching fingers, she tested the crags and crevices of its frigid surface until she found the hidden switch––the stony trigger that gave ingress to Erik's home. Exhausted, as her chest heaved with each ragged breath, Christine threw herself through the entrance.

Again she cried out to him as her frantic heart pounded; she had been so sure she would find him here. Waiting for her, with a comforting fire blazing––then––he would reach out a magnetic arm and draw her to that enticing warmth, to him––and sing, and stroke her hair so, so cautiously as she sat attentive at his feet––oh––and everything would again be so simple––the Angel would tell her what to do––

Now her timorous breath echoed in endless darkness. The penetrating damp crept beneath her wet clothes like rimy fingers and she shuddered, wrapping her arms about herself.

He has forsaken this place, and you.

He is gone.

This is your own doing.

Christine stumbled blindly over something that she knew should not have been in her path and fell with a startled cry. Her probing hands found the graceful leather arm and plush seat of one of his handsome armchairs, toppled on its back. With careful hands she righted it, then dropped to her bruised knees, despairing.

A desperate panic rose in her throat like hot bile. The fearless determination she had clung to just minutes ago was crumbling––he could not have abandoned her––

She called his name, screamed it until her voice was ragged and her breath caught painfully in her raw throat.

Then, surrendering, she collapsed upon her hands among a disordered mass of scattered papers and trinkets. Recognizing their familiar shapes in her searching fingers began her torment anew, and folding, she sobbed openly in the absolute dark.

The click of the lamp lighting, like thunder in the suffocating silence of the room, strangled Christine's sharp intake of breath.

"Hush, Christine," said Erik dispassionately, "you will damage your throat with all that screeching."

The ecstasy of relief flooded her, and with it, mortifying shame. Illuminated in the flickering orange glow of the lantern, Erik eyed her carefully. He kneeled at her side, his narrow back arching just slightly to hold the lantern above her prone form. His other arm hung stiffly at his side, the long fingers splayed and taut as if reaching—

Why did he hesitate?

She had longed for his––what?––only moments before. Had he not desired the same? Now she blistered beneath the humiliating coolness of his stare.

Christine fought to regain her composure. She squared her chin and glared up at his indifferent mask. Tear tracks shone in the lantern light on her reddened cheeks. "I see you are as hateful as you ever have been," she said haughtily, intending to wound, though she regretted the words as soon as she had uttered them. Erik drew back the lantern, straightening.

"Christine," he started, though his eyes narrowed dangerously behind the mask.

"How long would you have me call for you?" she demanded, with vitriol that surprised them both. "Does it please you, still," she spat, "to watch me suffer?"

"Suffer, Mademoiselle?" echoed Erik bitterly. His voice shed its canorous allure; now he spoke in a cruel, even growl. "My dear, you know nothing of it." The lantern clattered to the floor between them, nearly toppling as he rose gracefully to his full height, to be cloaked in shadow once more. Christine lunged for the lamp in time to right it, gasping in fear of the darkness.

Her skirts rustled as she stood and rounded on him furiously. "Erik! How could you! I called for you, I needed you!" she wailed, unable to stop herself. Now her mind flooded with the remembered barbarousness of his affections––the offenses she had allowed herself so easily to forget––

Once––she had nearly killed herself to be rid of him––

Why had she done that?

Christine gripped her skirts to fling them roughly out of the way of the lantern sputtering on the floor between them. Erik stood rigid as she circled him, challenging his pursuing glare.

"Why do you mock me?" she said, advancing. "I owe you nothing, now! I have come––alone, Erik––did you think I would bring the mob for you? That I would bring Raoul? I have come to see you! Alone, Erik––alone! You will not shun me!"

He waited, silently raging. The heat of his body was palpable in the cold room.

"Speak to me, Erik!" she demanded. "Spare me your games––I am not your puppet, anymore!––I am not your toy!"

"Surely you are not," he said darkly. She quieted.

He considered her––her eburnean flesh, reddening at her cheeks and upon the fleshy tops of her breasts that fought their silken prison with each impassioned word. A curl, sable in the darkness, trailed from its pins to tantalize her throat––oh, but he could be that curl–

She is here; a part of him whispered, as her eyes bore into his in accusation. Beg her forgiveness.

She calls, and you come. You are a fool to think it is you she wants. You cannot deny her––she knows it.

The whore uses her flesh to ensnare us, as she always has.

She is not here for you.

The darkness always won.

Now his misshapen lips twisted luridly, baring his teeth. "Perhaps I am not always there when you need me, Christine. I do not wait for you here, like a child upon his mother's teat! Go home to your Vicomte!"

The response derailed her, dissolving her false composure. Now she stood nervelessly as her voice broke, a hand clawing the heated flesh beneath her throat.

"How can you say such things to me now?" she breathed. "Are your feelings so changed, so soon…" She faltered, catching the rancorous black stare behind the mask. "Erik, please–– I have risked everything to be here! Raoul will know I've come, I cannot pretend otherwise! I am abandoned! I was to be married in two days!"

"Was, Christine? So you will not marry him now?" he said silkily. "Am I your second choice?"

She cried out as he clasped her arm suddenly in a piercing grip and wrenched her to him, his face close to hers. "What makes you think I still want you!" he spat, and released her just as violently.

Eyes wide, she blanched and recoiled, but something barred her path and she stumbled; a slip of her foot upended the lantern with an unnoticed clatter, returning them to darkness.

"Stupid child!––he was the better option!" He seethed above her.

She had fallen at his feet. He made no move to help her.

"Wait––" she whispered.

Darkness has a tendency to illuminate.

Her heart pounded. Her breath poured from her lungs in a ragged pant. A crazed desperation roiled within, that familiar dizzying heat, that same panic that chewed beneath her flesh upon the black shore.

Erik was close––she sensed him still, his body electric even in the dark. She slid her hand over cold stone, seeking anything––

"Please––Erik," she breathed. "Angel––please––do not leave me––"

He had stepped back as he'd thrown her from him, but he would not have left her. For all he had tried to abandon Christine to the dark––to what purpose? Revenge? Justice? Her own good? It mattered little––he could not take her pain. He would not be the cause of it... not anymore.

Not again.

She had cried, and so he had turned on the light.

Now he waited, silently hating and hurting in turns.

On her knees she implored him, reaching out blindly with searching palms. Her probing fingers found the hems of his trousers and he stiffened in surprise.

"Say something––Angel, I am frightened of the dark––please," she breathed, the manic pitch returning. She grasped at the fabric with both palms, gathering it in desperate fists.

Any response he might have made died on his lips. He exhaled, loudly––rooted to the ground, he could not move, even as Christine dragged herself bodily to him. The temerous pressure of her, of her open legs coiled about his ankles, her skirts heavy upon his nerveless feet––

The girl was mad!

In the hermetic darkness, his senses awakened as others' could not. They crowded his faculties to overwhelm him in awareness of Christine. Every beseeching graze of her fingertips upon his ankles became a staggering blow. Her quiet, shallow breaths thundered in his ears; every fragile murmur in her throat, each wordless vibration rang out clear and rich in sound. The familiar heat of her, so tortuously close to him, burned hotter than any fire. The moisture of her pleading breath prickled beneath his clothes.

She would not release him, his presence her only constant in the forbidding dark. He was the palladium she was bound to. Discretion had no home here.

He must not leave her in the dark.

Her fervid palms seized his legs under the knee with long, grasping strokes. She handled the fabric in supplicant fingers, twisting and mangling it as her possessive arms encircled him.

"Say something––" she repeated, and he felt her blind gaze seek his as her fingers padded his clothes.

Erik stood, electrified, unmoving, as Christine pressed a kiss to the hem of his trousers.

He should stop this––

"Angel," she murmured reverently, exalting the word upon the fabric. He imagined her full lips, red and moist, as they parted at his feet––

No––no more––not again, Christine––

A cold chill roiled over his shoulders and upon his scalp, building deep in the pit of him.

"Have you returned only to vex me?" he managed hatefully, though his halting words betrayed something else.

"Angel," she implored him. Her hot palm slid behind his knee; he buckled, then tensed––

"You are a trifling girl, Christine… a tease…" he exhaled, "––you do things that you cannot grasp the consequence of––"

"Forgive me," she begged, and pressed her cheek to his leg in prayer, dragging her red flesh over the consecrating wool of his trouser.

Erik strangled an animal groan as her hands slid heavily up his thighs to grip the ends of his jacket at his waist; Christine pulled herself to her knees by the fabric. The weight of her forced him forward, exhaling, but he straightened and bore her as her unseen fingers twisted and worked the wool at his sides. Her skirts rustled as she shuffled forward on her knees, weaving her legs between his.

"You tempt me…" he said wearily, as she hung from him. "You scorn me…"

"Do not hate me," she whispered, her face upturned, her blind stare wide-eyed.

Leaden hands dragged over his hips and his breath caught in his throat; he felt her eyes, staring into nothing, burning under his skin.

Then, locating her target she grasped his wrists at his sides, digging her nails into the paper flesh. His hands yielded to her capturing fingers; bringing them together at his front she turned the holy palms to her face––her ragged breath moistened his skin––and pressed her cheek to the calloused flesh.

As his obedient fingers curled about her chin the flat of his hand brushed his riotous groin, heated and rigid beneath his clothes.

Could she know? he wondered. Did she understand?

Christine pressed a rapturous kiss, another, in his pliant hands. Her open mouth traced the lines of his palm, her lip dragging over the skin, as she entangled her fingers silkily with his.

So like a moan, her salvific repetition of his name upon his flesh––

"Christine…" he breathed, in ragged surrender, "you cannot know how I have ached for you…"

Erik could do it; it would be so easy, to take her now, helpless and terrified in the dark…

Erik could make it so she need not resist.

Their panting breaths echoed in the thunderous silence. Christine hung obscenely at his waist, her worshipping lips buried in his hands. She was waiting for something, he knew. He could feel her there, the torturous heat of her, her trembling fingers, her open, pleading mouth––

Touch her! Erik screamed, and the scream filled every part of himself, filled the unfeeling black void that enshrouded them both.

Take her!

But his fingers curled into trembling vises upon his trousers as his chest heaved, and he said nothing, did nothing.

She was asking, begging––but not for that.

Never for that.

Then, shaking, he tore himself from her grasp, and knowing his way in the darkness he turned and swept from her.