I know it's been a long time and I'm sorry, but it's a long one for you...
"Are you insane! Why the hell would you do that!" Diana yelled at Dean when they were alone in the dressing room she'd been given.
"Because Cas said that these people were contradictory and secretive!" Dean replied, grabbing the silk robe off the hook beside the door and tossing it over the room divider that she was changing behind. "Now we're on the inside!"
"Dean, I haven't sung for nearly ten years! I don't know if I can do this!" She came out from behind the screen and sat at the vanity using the cloth and bowl of cool water there to dab at her forehead. Her skin was hot and she felt lightheaded.
"Diana, everything's gonna be fine," Dean assured her. "We just have to figure out what the Phantom thing is and what it's doing and how to stop it. Just focus on the job."
Taking a deep breath, Diana nodded. "Okay. Um, we should start looking into the history of the-" She was interrupted by a knock at the door. "Yes?"
The polished oak swung aside with a creak and a tall, pale man in a dark, wide brimmed hat that cast a shadow, hiding his eyes, stepped into the room.
"Bravi, bravi," he said in a low voice. "That was lovely."
"Thank you," Diana whispered, staring up at him in shock.
"She's great, isn't she?" Dean butt in, putting a protective hand on Diana's shoulder. "Well, thanks for stopping by."
"Pardon the intrusion, but it is time to rehearse," the silky voice cooed from beneath the wide brimmed hat.
"Of course," Diana nodded and rose from her seat to follow the man. Dean snatched her arm.
"Uh, D, I don't think you should-"
"Don't worry about me," she told him, removing his hand from her arm. "I can take care of myself. You go do the thing, okay?" Dean watched them suspiciously as she took the man's arm and he led her out of the room.
"Sure," he said to no one as he watched them go. "The thing."
.
.
"What? What is it?" the man growled up at them. "What do you want?"
"Excuse me, sir," Sam nodded respectfully, "are you the man who runs this theater?"
"Yes," Lloyd snapped, "and I'm very busy!"
"Pardon the intrusion," Kara smiled, "but we were just looking for our partners. They should have come by to see you? About something... unusual, perhaps?"
"What the bloody hell are you talking about?" the red-faced man growled.
"Perhaps, Mr. Lloyd, they are referring to Donna's accident," came the low, velvety voice of a woman with long blonde hair. She stood from her easy chair beside the fire and glided to Lloyd's side.
"Yes, of course," Sam smiled politely at her. "Donna's accident. How is she?"
"She's dead."
Sam and Kara hesitated. It had been a long time since they had dealt with such people and conversations.
"We're very sorry for your loss," Kara stammered.
"You're sorry? I'm sorry!" Lloyd threw his hands up in the air, retreating into his office once more. Sam and Kara followed him in, closing the door behind them. They each kept a cautious eye on the blonde lurking behind them. "Donna was my star! She was worshipped by everyone! Audience members, other performers, even the stage hands! And no one yet knows she's gone! What am I going to do?"
"Miss Christine will prove just as enchanting, I'm sure," the blonde cooed, drifting over to lay a graceful hand on Lloyd's back.
"Perhaps," he sighed. "She does show much potential, but she's no Prima Donna."
"No one shall ever replace Donna," the blonde agreed. "But, with the help of the Angel, perhaps Miss Christine will prove just as wonderful, in her own way. She was chosen by Him. We should respect that and trust that he is doing what is best for the theater."
"The Angel?" Sam asked. The blonde smiled up at him.
"Yes, we are blessed."
"Bah!" Lloyd threw his hands up again. "I wish you all would stop with this Angel business!"
"It's true, and you know it," the blonde arched her eyebrows over icy blue eyes, folding her arms beneath her breasts. "Everyone has witnessed. Even you."
"I have work to do!" Lloyd grumbled, storming out of the office, his face reddening further, mustache twitching.
"Forgive Mr. Lloyd," the blonde smiled cooly at them. "He does not like to express his suspicions. He thinks it will drive our people away."
"Who is this Angel?" Kara asked.
"The Angel of Music."
Kara's eyebrows raised and her jaw dropped slightly. "The what?"
"The Angel of Music," she repeated with that frozen smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "He has graced this theater with his presence. He blesses our performers and enchants our audiences. He is strict, but very generous. When Donna fell, he chose Christine, a girl we had never seen before, to take her place. He is likely training her as we speak so that she may perform in the show tomorrow evening and dazzle the audience, maintaining our reputation." Sam and Kara stared at her, somewhat skeptically.
"Right," Sam finally said, forcing a smile. "May we speak to this Angel?"
The blonde's face suddenly darkened and she glared at them. "Of course not! He is never to be disturbed!"
"Of course," Sam backed off, bowing his head slightly. "I apologize."
The woman regained her composure and the icy smile returned to her face once more. "Not a problem at all," she assured him. "Miss Christine and the Angel will be very busy, but perhaps Christine's gentleman friend may be of help to you. He is likely in her dressing room, as gentlemen friends tend to be." She guided them out of the office and down the hall, giving them further instructions. "I have business to attend to, but I'm sure we will see each other again very soon."
She left Sam and Kara alone in the dimly lit hallway, quite suspicious and very concerned.
"I don't like this whole Angel thing," Sam said, staring down the hall even after the woman had disappeared.
"What I don't like is that they hadn't seemed to know of Diana or Dean at all," Kara added, glancing the other way. "Where the hell are they and what are they doing?"
"I haven't any idea," Sam said, turning to start down the hall once more, following the woman's directions. "But I'm sure as hell going to find out."
.
.
"Once more, from the top."
The piano sang beneath the long, elegant pale hands, filling Diana with a warm sensation that started in the pit of her stomach and swelled throughout her entire body until she felt she was about to be lifted into the air. When she opened her mouth, her voice was sweet and clear. She sang in such a way she never thought herself capable. The music was liberating and the deliverance empowering to the point where she felt she could fly.
As the music and her voice retreated to their corporeal homes, the air falling into silence once more, Diana felt exhausted but accomplished and dreamy. She smiled and bowed her head modestly when the silence was broken by gentle applause and a hypnotic voice.
"Wonderful," he smiled, standing from the elegant grand piano and coming to her side. "Practicing in the mirror helps, does it not?"
"It does," she smiled at the reflection of his hat, the shadow still covering his eyes. The pale hands with the nimble came to rest on her shoulders.
"He would be very proud of you," he whispered. She furrowed her brow.
"Who would?"
"Your father." Realization reached Diana's eyes and her gaze began to mist with memories. "Now, now," cooed the voice, the cool hands gently wiping her tears away. "You are a good, lovely child with devastating womanly beauty and a voice such as that of an Angel. What is there to cry about?"
"Nothing," Diana sighed, wiping her own cheeks and regaining her compusure. She smiled shyly at the mirror. Slowly, the man behind her returned the smile.
"Well if it isn't Beauty and the Beast?" he murmured.
"Oh no," she laughed lightly. "I'm sure you're very handsome. I could say it looking into your eyes, if you took that hat off."
The smile remained, but the hat shook slowly in reply. The hands traveled from her shoulders down her arms. "Come," he said, seizing her hands. "We must find you a gown for tomorrow night."
.
.
"One soul a year goes to him," she growled. "One! He has taken Donna and, by this time tomorrow, he will have that other girl, too! I told you! We must keep him in line or he will abuse us!"
"Calm yourself, Vivian!" snapped a deep, masculine voice. "You are here to look pretty, bat your lashes, and expose a bit of skin! Not to express your opinions on how I run this place! I have been very generous and patient with you, but I will no longer! You are not top dog, here! Get over it!"
"But he'll tip off Lloyd!" Vivian protested.
"Lloyd knows, you idiot!" the man snapped. "He's made a deal! The Hounds would have come for him already if he had even thought of speaking a word of it to anyone! Leave business to the professionals and go sell tickets!"
"Fine."
The doorknob turned and Dean scrambled back behind the men's restroom door. He waited until the soft thudding of heels on thick carpet faded away before poking his head out into the hall again.
"Christ," he groaned. "Where are you, Diana?"
Making his way quietly further down the hall, he found himself once more in the dressing room wing. He disappeared behind the door to Diana's and was about to return to his waiting laptop, when he heard a quiet creak from behind the dressing screen. Reaching behind him to pull a gun from his waistband, Dean reached out and yanked the screen only to find himself nose to nose with two other guns.
"Sam?" The guns lowered. "What the hell?"
"Where's Diana?" he demanded.
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know!" Sam's nostrils flared and his jaw locked. Dean raised his hands in surrender.
"I'm not her babysitter, man, she's a big girl!"
"Dean!"
"What!"
"Both of you, shut up!" Kara shouted, standing between them. "Wherever Diana is, yelling at each other isn't going to help find her!" She turned to Dean. "You. Why are you in here? What do you know?"
"Opera house run by demons."
"Whoa, what?" Sam and Kara stared at him confused.
Dean sighed. "Okay, the place is run by demons. Most of the people in this theater are possessed. Lloyd is not, he's caught in a crossroads deal, though I don't know who he is or what his deal is. The shows are designed so that more human bodies can be possessed, then they harvest the souls, for what, I don't know. There's something else here that usually takes one soul a year but he has already taken his one for this year and seems to be ready for another. Unfortunately, the new soul he's into is Diana's."
"What did you do," Sam growled, glaring at his older brother.
"Everybody calm down!" Kara snapped, shoving him back a step. "Diana's gonna be fine! Here's what we know; Donna's dead but no one knows yet. Christine is replacing her in the show. Some creepy blonde chick is helping Lloyd run the place, and the theater is 'blessed by the Angel of Music' who has supposedly 'chosen Christine' to continue their 'enchanting and dazzling reputation.' I can only assume Diana is supposed to be this Christine?"
"That's what people have been calling her, yeah," Dean nodded.
Sam took a breath, collecting his thoughts. "Okay so blonde chick and others are demons blackmailing Lloyd and collecting human souls. Angel is making this all possible at the price of one soul a year, but has decided he wants Diana. Diana's missing, we're stuck in a theater full of demons and tomorrow night the house is gonna be packed with smiling souls ready to be harvested. Have I missed anything?"
"Yeah," Dean butt in. "That girl has got one powerful set of pipes."
"Hasn't she?" Kara grinned, proud of her childhood friend.
"Can we please focus?" Sam groaned, putting a hand to his forehead. "We need to find Diana."
Soft voices approached the door and the three hunters inside grew quiet, listening hard, but failed to pick up the conversation outside. The door creaked open and Diana stepped in, eyes dreamy, arms cradling a large box.
"Sam?" her brow furrowed and the dreamy clouds in her eyes disappeared. "What are you doing here?"
"A note?" he replied, angrily. "You left a note? That's all I get?"
"Sam, please," Diana sighed, setting the box down on the couch.
"Diana, you told me you wouldn't come! But you did! You lied to me!"
"I'm sorry!" she said, looking up into his eyes. "I did lie and I'm sorry! I had every intention of staying, I truly did, but I just couldn't live with myself if I let people die when I could've done something to stop it!"
Sam exhaled, closing his eyes and pulling her close. "I was so worried," he whispered into her hair.
"I'm fine," Diana promised, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing him gently. "I'm sorry for lying and sneaking out and worrying you."
"I forgive you." He kissed her gently and hugged her once more before releasing the tense muscles in his arms. To his relief, she did not move out of his embrace, but only turned to face the others.
"What did you find out?" she asked.
"We're in trouble," Dean sighed.
.
.
"I don't know about this," Diana said, trembling as she felt the zipper on the back of the gown closing. "What if it doesn't work?"
"It will work," Sam assured her, dropping a kiss on her bare shoulder and smiling at her in the mirror. "You know, only you could massacre demons in an evening gown." They shared a nervous laugh before he folded her in his arms, holding her tightly. "I love you."
"I love you."
There was a knock at the door and when it opened, Mr. Lloyd and the blonde woman were smiling at them.
"Are you ready, dear?" Lloyd asked cheerfully. Diana nodded.
"I will show you to your place in the wings," the blonde said.
"And I'll show you your reserved seat," Lloyd grinned up at Sam.
"Thank you, sir," he smiled, giving Diana's hand a gentle squeeze before letting her go and following the manager out.
Lloyd led Sam down a few long hallways and up a flight of stairs before opening a door for him. Sam nodded his thanks and passed through the doorway, pushing the curtains aside to take his seat in an opera box. Instead, he found himself in a storage space where the extra music stands and boxes of scores were kept. Turning on his heel, the door was slammed in his face and he began to bang on it with his fists, yelling to be let out.
Meanwhile, after the doors had closed and the audience was inside, Kara and Dean were circling the entire theater with a thick ring of salt and lining any windowsills and doorways they could find. They then stationed themselves at the back of the theater to assist the flood of people that would be rushing out soon. They looked around but couldn't spot Sam and were about to go search for him, but the concert had begun.
As the music progressed, the audience became more and more still and silent. Soon, silvery blue light began to glow faintly among them and, not too long after, began to rise from the very bodies in the audience. At such a sight, Kara and Dean would have done everything in their power to help those poor people and stop the concert, but they had grown still and their souls were also drifting up from their bodies and into the cursed air.
With the Dean and Kara immobilized and Sam locked in a closet, the fate of every soul in the theater rested on Diana's shoulders.
She entered the stage and took her place among the demonic musicians. After a deep breath and a nod to the conductor, the piano began and she took a leap of faith. With the same accompaniment, in the same tune, Diana began to sing.
Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus
omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio
infernalis adversarii, omnis legio,
omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.
At the sound, the musicians and singers of the choir, along with every demon in the theater, all dropped their instruments and glared at her with their black eyes. But before any one of them could rush at her, they fell to the floor, writhing in pain. The silvery blue haze above the audience drifted slowly down back to the bodies and thick, angry black clouds of smoke rushed out of the bodies of the possessed, swirling into a terrible cloud of demonic energy that filled the entire opera house, but still, Diana sang.
Ergo draco maledicte
et omnis legio diabolica adjuramus te.
cessa decipere humanas creaturas,
eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare.
The demonic cloud began to swirl into a tornado, whipping at the hair and clothes of the stunned audience, sucking any light out of the huge room, twisting and churning, growing larger and angrier by the second until it all began to drain down into the floor, leaving the carpet of the house blackened to nearly ashes.
The souls of all the audience members returned to their bodies, reanimating each person, including Dean and Kara. However, when they came to, ever poor man and woman in that theater bolted for the doors, screaming in horror and disbelief. The bodies of the possessed lay strewn across the theater, leaving Kara, Dean, and Diana the last ones standing.
At the exorcism of the demons, the door to the closet swung open and Sam burst out, charging for the stage. He found an exhausted Diana surrounded by nearly one hundred bodies and his brother and Kara in the empty audience.
"It worked," he said, breathlessly.
"Indeed it did," agreed a silky voice that seemed to come from the very walls surrounding them. A tall man in a dark suit and wide brimmed hat appeared from the shadows, gliding to Diana's side. "Come, child, and rest." With a wave of his hand, Diana fainted against his chest. The man scooped her up into his arms and began to carry her off.
"Stop!" Sam screamed, hurdling over the bodies littering the stage. "You can't take her!"
The man turned again to face Sam, and, though his eyes were hidden in the shadow of his hat, they seemed to burn into him, into his very soul.
"Thank you," he said, "for ridding my opera of those retched demons. Now I may create my music in peace. You may go."
"Wait!" Sam cried when the man began to turn away again. "You can't take her! I won't let you!"
"And what makes you think you can stop me?" the man asked, tilting his head slightly.
"I don't know that I can," Sam answered. "But I'll die trying."
"Why?"
"Because I love her."
"I see." The man gazed down at the sleeping Diana in his arms, stroked her cheek gently. "Very well," he sighed. "You may have her. If you can answer me this." A terrible yellow glow suddenly appeared in the shadow of the hat, where the man's eyes should be. "What is the name of the Angel of Music?"
"Lucifer."
Review, please?