Chapter Eleven: Of Allies And Enemies

The gala was drawing to a close and Erik was at the door giving his farewells. Erik looked around every couple of minutes for Olivia but believed she was elsewhere occupied with other guests. Raoul was the last man in the line and when it came to him he did not shake hands or make a move closer to the front doors than he already was. Raoul's face showed that his blood was boiling just underneath the skin as he hissed at his old foe through clenched teeth. "Where is she?"

Erik raised an eyebrow, "Where is who, pray tell?"

Something inside the young Viconte snapped at that moment and he curled his fist and swung it as the covered side of the Phantom's face.

Erik turned his head with the blow so that Raoul's knuckles barely touched the cream colored material. Erik grabbed the wrist attached to the fist and brought it round Raoul's back and pulled it upward sharply. "Careful, boy," Erik whispered in his ear. "I still don't like you that much."

"You dragged Christine down to that hellhole again," said Raoul, "admit it!"

Erik released Raoul's arm and turned the sandy haired man around. "Christine? Of course not; Olivia would be eternally vexed with me." Erik noted with some smug satisfaction in the back of his mind that he just admitted to Raoul that a woman would be vexed at an action of his involving another woman. He watched Raoul grapple with that for a moment before he spoke again with the same tone of mistrust and anger.

"If she is not with you then where else would she be?" he demanded.

Erik opened his mouth to speak again but was almost immediately interrupted.

"Monsieur Angele." The two men turned their heads and saw an elderly woman who had attended the opera walking over to the pair of them. "Monsieur Angele. Would you be so kind as to point me in the direction of Mademoiselle de Briar? I simply must invite her to my Sunday luncheon at my salon.

Erik looked at her with a question brooding behind his gaze. Mademoiselle de Briar is not here?" he asked.

"No Monsieur," said the woman, "I have searched this whole hall over, but she has gone off and vanished."

"Madam," this time it was Raoul speaking. "Did you by any chance happen to see the Vicontess de Changy?"

The woman turned her gaze towards Raoul. "No Monsieur le Viconte." She smiled at the two men. "Perhaps they are together."

Erik nodded stiffly then strung on a cordial smile as he steadily lead the woman to the front doors where not doubt a carriage waited for her promising and re-promising that he would pass on her generous invitation to his fiancée. Erik's keen eyesight caught a dark shape in the corner of the cobblestoned square and the golden orbs contracted in fear as his breath was punched from his lungs. Erik left the woman in the care of Raoul who in turn had to promise to convey her invitation to his own wife as he put her in the carriage, all the while watching his old foe out of the corner of his eye numbly drift over to what his eyes were incapable of seeing.

Raoul walked away from the rumbling of carriage wheels towards the eerie silence that tickled the hairs on his neck. As he got closer he saw the shadow of Erik's form, porcelain mask bent low into an unseen chest slowly shaking it back and forth. His gloved hands were gripping thick, iron, bars; bars of a cage that he knew quite well.

"No," rasped a voice that Raoul would have never believed could have come from the man. Erik in fear was much more frightening then Erik fearsome. "God, no." Raoul believed that if Erik were not clutching the bars he would have crumpled to the ground.

After a beat Erik gained the strength of a desperate man and was running back to the doors of the opera house running over the floor plan in his head from the roof to the deepest cellars. Erik in the outer reaches of his senses heard the sharp slapping of the Viconte's shoes behind him.

"Erik, what has happened?"

"Barum is here."

"Who?"

"Claudius Barum; the gypsy master of Olivia and myself when we were children. He has found us."

Erik turned around once they were both inside and bolted the door shut, locking it securely with a key in his coat pocket.

"And you think that this man has taken both Olivia and Christine?"

Erik slowly, almost reluctantly turned to him, as if revealing this information would make it all the more real, all the more terrifying. But the memories of his childhood would not let him skive. "Raoul," he said softly, "pray with every fiber of your being that he hasn't."

Olivia and Christine sat up against the wall of the empty stone room the only exit blocked by a thick wooden door. Christine was looking about the room her neck snapping to and fro looking for some way of escape. Olivia had her knees tucked into her chest, her wide eyes staring at her knees, knowing that there was none.

Christine looked at Olivia. "Where are we," she whispered.

Olivia shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know." Christine looked at the angle of Olivia's face that she could see and saw that fear clouded all her reason, or perhaps the knowledge of who this man was.

"Who is this man?" asked Christine in a hushed tone.

"His name is Barum," answered Olivia almost with no emotion. "He was my master—"

"Is you master, Black-Briar."

Both the women's heads shot up at the sound of their captor's voice ass Barum closed the door behind him. His face bore a smirk as he approached Olivia who was cloaking her fear with defiance. "I have come for my freak and my whore, Black-Briar," not even bothering with false, self-glorying cordials, coming straight to the point of why they were entombed in his make shift cell. "I have one, now where is the other?" Barum grabbed Olivia's arm and wrenched her up, backing her against the stone wall. "The Devil's Child, Black-Briar, surrender him to me."

Christine gasped. It was Erik they spoke of. But neither acknowledged her sound, or even her presence in the room. To each only the other existed.

Olivia looked him square in the eye, something that Christine was not sure she could do. "No," she stated bluntly.

Barum backhanded Olivia so hard is bent her body in half her head down at her hips. But the Gypsy Baron with the same hand that struck her caught her before she collapsed to the floor, ensnaring her raven hair in his olive colored hands and wrenched her head back up to his. "I will kill him when I find him if you don't give him to me."

"You won't kill him," Olivia sneered through wheezing. "I know you. You won't kill your biggest profit. He made more than all of us put together. You can't do anything to him."

Barum seemed to ponder this, his hands seemingly tied by her reasoning and his own greed, but it was only for a moment before the smirk returned and he looked back into his prisoner's eyes again. "True," he chuckled, a dark, sadistic, laugh, "but that defense does not shield you from what I will do to you to have him."

Olivia's dark eyes widened and Barum raised and hand and stroked her cheek a purple bruise already darkening her jaw. "You haven't changed at all, Black-Briar, except…" His hand dropped lower, as if he was examining the curves of her body. "He has fed you well I see. Good, you're going to need her strength." Barum's hand clenched around her breast. Olivia gasped and tossed her head back looking at the ceiling.

Christine saw Olivia's choice just as plainly as Olivia did. Give up her Erik to this man, or give up her body. Christine could not be silent any longer. "Tell him where he is! He will be fine! If you know him as well as you say you do you know he can take care of himself!"

Olivia slowly twisted her head to look over her captor's shoulder to look at her fellow prisoner. Christine could not name the emotion that Olivia looked at her with but it was laced with anger and disappointment. She addressed them both with one word. "No."

Taking that as her answer the Gypsy Baron scooped Olivia up into his chest and man-handled Olivia out the door, one hand closing it behind him, the other wrapped in a vice around her struggling form.

Christine did not her any sounds, or perhaps she forcefully blocked them from her mind as she sat there pondering Olivia's actions as well as her statement to herself. Did she say no because Erik was incapable of looking after himself? No, she reasoned. Then innate wisdom seemed to strike the Vicontess. She said no because if she said yes her betrayal would hurt Erik more than what Barum could do to him. Break him, far more completely than she ever could. Christine asked herself why. Because they suffered together in childhood, parted and reunited, making each other feel more human than all of humanity had ever bestowed upon them. Christine also realized that the reason why she could give Erik up so easily was because she did not love him…"

The sound of the door opening again pulled Christine out of her thoughts and she watched as the limp form of Olivia was tossed in the room crumpling to the floor in front of Christine. Christine saw cuts of her face and neck, her dress torn practically off of her, her legs decorated with hand shaped bruises given by the hand that brutally parted them.

"You have grown soft," Barum called through the door. "Please me better next time or I'll break you harder." And he slammed the door shut.

Slowly Christine inched her way over to Olivia sitting down silently next to her no words needing to be said. She tore a piece of fabric from her own dress and began cleaning the blood from Olivia. She looked into her glazed eyes and saw to her shock how her body and mind were prepping for the second of a possibly unending onslaught.

She knew then, without a doubt, that Erik had found a woman that loved him as much as he did her, now transferred and magnified to the woman that lay prostrate at her feet.

To the point of no return.


There was no opening in which I could put this into the story so I thought I would clarify here. The room Christine and Olivia are in is the room that we first see Erik in or rather the top of his head in the Phantom of the Opera while Christine is singing think of me. This is mildly important later so I thought I would elaborate since there is no way of knowing where they were taken. Also the two scenes are happening at the same time scene two maybe slightly earlier then scene one, just so you know. Not that many chapters left, enjoy them while you can while I enjoy the reviews you give them.