Wow, Fanfiction would not let me login today - it finally started working around 7 pm. So hopefully it won't die again tomorrow!
Thank you for all of your reviews: they were very kind and so much fun to read. I hope you enjoy this chapter!
We moved as if in a fever dream: the flickering torches on the cold walls of the corridors slipped by, the cobblestones vanished away under our feet. The Count lay heavy in our arms, his labored breaths fluttering out like broken butterflies.
The shadows flitted and danced with our walking under the torches, our blocking and freeing of the light, black to gold to black again on the cobblestones. Erik's eyes were shadowed by the darkness; he was curved slightly downward to better bear Francis' weight. I struggled to keep my side of the injured man up, but my arms were sore and shaking.
Vaguely, I wondered why we hadn't met any of our mysterious enemies yet: we were certainly making enough noise to alert them to our presence. My feet were stupid and slow on the cobblestones, thudding at intervals, dragging at others; Erik's breathing was as ragged and as loud as mine.
But as long as they did not come, we had hope that we could make it. Our friends, however, were another matter.
I had asked Erik about Antoinette:
"Did you see her?"
"No, she wasn't backstage. She is smart enough to avoid the smell of smoke, though, so I think she is probably taking another passageway down here." He caught his breath, swallowed, and said, "I did not see Nadir either. I was… preoccupied."
"They must be down at your house," I decided.
Erik didn't say anything.
I looked at him, hard, knowing what he was thinking. If our enemies had already destroyed the entire backstage, what traps had they laid for our friends? If they had shot the Count, what had they done to Antoinette or Nadir?
"We have to move faster."
He nodded, but I could see how difficult this was for him; I could see the deep lines in his forehead, the grey ashes in his hair. I could see the stress, and the fear, and the weight of this night… The terror of the possible losses…
My heart ached for him, but we had to go on.
Luctor et emergo…
Twenty long minutes later, we came down the staircase and stopped at the far shore of the lake. It was difficult to get Francis into the gondola, but with Erik's careful maneuvering, we managed to place him in the bottom of the boat with Erik's jacket under his head. He was still unconscious, and from Erik's face, I took it that this was a bad sign.
I glanced doubtfully at the small gondola, trying to determine how three people were going to fit in such a delicate boat and yet stay afloat in the freezing waters. Erik straightened up from checking Francis' pulse and turned to look at me.
"We won't all fit," I said. "You should take Francis across first and settle him on the couch. I'll wait here – unless you don't mind me retracing my steps upstairs and finding another passageway inside."
"I closed them all except for three," Erik reminded me. "And those are at the top of the Opera. You should wait here; I'll be back in a moment."
"Very well," I said, and sat down on the stone shore, wrapping my arms around my legs. It was cold, and I was tired.
Erik looked at me with his weary green eyes. "Do you need a weapon?"
"I have my knife."
He stepped into the gondola, and swept the pole down into the water, spurring the boat out into the lake. The black water rippled in great swaths away from him, spreading into the distance like vibrations from a giant church bell turned on its side.
I blinked hard to keep my drowsy eyes open, flexed my hands to keep them limber in case I had to use my knife, and waited.
When Erik came back across the lake, he looked lighter. Somehow more at peace, as though he had passed through a sunlit valley and emerged refreshed. I took his proffered hand and stepped into the gondola, wondering.
"What is it?" he asked, using only one hand to steer – the other kept hold of mine.
"You seem… different," I said, looking up at his face. "What happened?"
Erik shook his head and stared off across the water. "I don't know. But I feel better. Antoinette and Nadir aren't here yet, though."
"Not here yet?" For some reason this important necessity had slipped my mind. "But where can they be? It couldn't have taken this long for them to get down here. We have to go find them."
"No, we need to stay and care for the Count. He's ill, Irene. We can't leave him."
"But Antoinette! And Nadir!"
The Phantom leaned closer to me, his mouth curved downwards in disagreement. "I know, but you have to trust that they'll be here soon. I can't leave Francis – and although you could, I don't think you should go off by yourself."
I wrenched my hand from his grasp. "Erik, I am fully capable of taking care of myself. Antoinette and Nadir may be in grave danger. You have to let me go help them."
We had nearly reached the shore. Erik dug the pole three more times into the lake bottom, pushing against the mud in powerful strokes and we were there.
He stepped from the boat with his usual lithely grace; turned to offer me his hand in support. I took it. I could not refuse such a gentle gesture, but I wanted him to know I disagreed with his decision, and that I planned to overrule it.
"We have to go find them," I said. "Erik, we don't know where they are. And they could be in great danger – our enemies set a fire to kill you – the Count was shot – we have to go look for them."
I was off the boat now, and Erik had released my hand; I'd turned away from him to stare at the house and the hidden passageways I knew were inside.
He took hold of my shoulders, turning me to him. "I won't let you get yourself killed, Irene. Listen to me. Listen."
I finally looked up at him, but I was angry and he had to know it.
He did, but he did not let go. "We will give Nadir and Antoinette ten more minutes to get down here, and during that time, I will tend to the Count – with your help, if you wish. If they do not show up by then…"
He paused, and let go of my shoulder, his lips compressed in thought. "Then we'll have to decide our next steps. But right now, we have an injured man to care for."
I wrapped my arms around myself, thinking this through. "Only ten minutes."
Erik nodded. He dropped his other hand from my shoulder. "I put Francis on the couch – he woke up – so I gave him a dose of laudanum. Hopefully he's doing better, but…"
He trailed off, but I understood.
Gunshot wounds were not to be taken lightly.
Francis opened his eyes when we entered the living room, his brown irises flat and blank in the candlelight. The white of his features contrasted sharply with the indigo cushions; his white-knuckled hands were clenched and trembling at his sides.
"The laudanum's not working," he whispered.
Erik went to the side table and picked up the laudanum bottle. The dark liquid swished gently with the movement. "I can't give you any more," he told the Count, and dropped the bottle into a pocket of his coat. "I've already given you a substantial dose. Too much will put you in a coma."
Francis, whose eyes had followed the bottle in mute desperation, let out a long whistling breath that reminded me of a scream. He closed his eyes again and lay still, his white face upturned towards the ceiling.
Erik bent down to feel the Count's forehead, his expression impersonal. He lifted his hand away and turned to look at me.
"He's better," he said, low enough for Francis to ignore, but loud enough for me to hear. I nodded.
"I'm going to go change," I said. "I can't wear this gown while dashing up and down the insides of the Opera. It's too cumbersome."
"You can borrow one of my jackets," Erik said, crossing the room to one of the heavy bookshelves that lined the back wall. Reaching up, he pulled out a thick book with black binding and let it fall to the floor, then reached for another. I assumed he was opening a secret panel.
I cast one last glance at Francis, who had finally succumbed to the laudanum and fallen into a drugged sleep. His breathing was lighter, gentler; his hands were open at his sides. He would be fine now; well, fine enough for a man who had been shot. I bent down to pull off my useless satin shoes – yet another clothing item too dainty for a rushed search of the underground passageways – and went towards the door, my bare feet sinking pleasantly into the soft rugs.
Behind me, the tumult of books falling broke off abruptly. "Irene? Did you-"
He stopped. I turned to look at him, confused.
He was holding a hairpin, a long one with an inlaid strip of mother-of-pearl, in the palm of his hand.
"That's not mine," I said, the weight of the shoes suddenly lighter in my hand.
Erik's eyes went from the pin, which they had been examining, to me, and then to somewhere behind me. He set the pin down on the bookshelf with great deliberation, his movements slow, and slid a hand towards his waist.
For a moment, I wondered why he was reaching for his knife.
"Actually," said a cool, quiet voice from the door, "I believe that is mine. Monsieur."
I spun, dropping the shoes and grabbing for my own weapon, but the blond-haired woman in the doorway lifted her hand in a blur of movement.
The dart whipped end over end, a silver streak of lightning, and my shoulder erupted in pain. Another streak whistled past me; there was a solid thunk.
There was a cry of rage and pain from behind me – Erik! – but everything was dimming, turning the woman's blue eyes and blond hair to gray. Colors faded into obscurity, seeping away from the white walls, the bluish rugs, the gold lights, vanishing into tones of dull metallic silver.
And with a final swathing of grey, the lights went out and the room went black.
Linnet crossed the room to pull the darts from her victims. Yanking the points from their temporary homes of warm flesh, she began wiping them clean on handkerchiefs.
"Pick them up, but only these two. Leave the manager," she commanded, and the men came through the doorway in a flood of thick muscles and sweat. They swarmed around her, lifted Irene and the masked man, and waited.
Two more men entered the room, carrying Irene's friend (what was her name? Oh, yes. Antoinette.), and looked to Linnet for instructions.
"Leave her here," Linnet said. "We don't need her."
The thugs let the older woman slide from their arms and onto the rugs with a thump. The unconscious woman lay where she had fallen, a thin line of blood dried and shiny at the corner of her mouth.
"Nicolas, my vial is empty," Linnet said, turning again to her work. It was always so difficult to remove blood from the tiny grooves in the pointed metal heads.
The blond man came to stand next to her. "I have no more sedatives."
"Very well. We will have to resort to violence if we come across any others."
Nicolas said nothing, but she thought he was amused for some reason. She ignored this; it was unimportant.
"To the carriages," she said, slipping the darts into her pocket, and headed for the door. "We don't have all night."
En route to the carriages, almost through the last of the passageways, Linnet found herself confronted with an unexpected problem.
She sighed in exasperation as a fistfight broke out in the hallway up ahead – apparently, the two men she had assigned to get rid of the foreigner had failed at their task.
Next to her, Nicolas watched dispassionately as the men subdued this new prisoner and hauled him to his feet.
"Bind his arms," Linnet said, her clear voice cutting through the grunts and heavy breathing of the men. Some of them were sporting new cuts and bruises; one red-haired thug had a gash dripping blood down his grizzled cheek. "And gag him. We're taking him with us."
The foreigner was silent as they shoved the cloth into his mouth and tied his wrists with rope. He did not resist, and his dark eyes met hers with a strangely furious intensity. Linnet stared back at him, startled by the mute passion she saw there. Perhaps he thought she had killed his friends; the two bodies lay limply enough in their carriers' arms.
Well, she would soon enough. She shook her head and turned away, breaking the hold his eyes had on her; Nicolas followed. "Hurry up," she said, and behind her came the tramp of boots as the men obeyed.
The carriage ride was long and bumpy, but from these two things Nadir could garner nothing except that they were going deep into the country. Four times the carriages had stopped; twice for water for the horses, twice for the men to get out and stretch. He, however, hadn't been moved. He lay cramped, his long legs folded up against his body, in the confines of the second carriage seat.
There were four carriages: he had seen them briefly before being manhandled into the last of them: four men climbed inside after him and settled themselves into the opposite seat. Nadir assumed that Erik and Irene had been separated into two of the others; it would be the smartest approach to take – one or the other might wake up and force the upper hand. But if they were apart, it would be less likely for either of them to incapacitate their guards.
But he doubted they would wake at all. From what he had seen of their faces, they had been sound asleep.
He could not even move his fingers now, the ropes were so tight. He felt sure that the digits had swollen from lack of circulation. His face was half-pressed into the cushions; it was difficult to breathe, especially through the gag, and only one eye could see anything. This, unfortunately, was the carriage floor. There was a curled white glove in the corner, its pale fingers flattened in on itself like a squashed flower.
He wondered who had owned it; if the woman's men had killed them too. He thought of Antoinette – where was she? And the Count – he had seen no sign of him either. He prayed that they were both alright.
But he was afraid that they were not.
Francis stirred sometime around midnight: the clock rang out the time in the hallway, the bongs sounding as loud as trumpets.
The living room was empty; this startled him enough to try and sit up.
But no – there was someone on the floor, her dark hair uncurling from her bun. Her face was slack; something red glimmered at her mouth.
This time, Francis did manage to sit up. "Antoinette? Antoinette!"
The pain in his side was horrible, but he ignored it and dragged himself off the couch, reaching for the side table in order to stay upright. What was Antoinette doing down here? What were Irene and Erik? What had happened in the hours he had been asleep?
"Irene?" he called. He listened. There was no answer. "Erik? Irene? Irene!"
Still no answer. The clock ticked monotonously on in the hallway.
He went a few steps. They were so difficult that he thought he would pass out from the pain; he groaned aloud and pressed his arm to his side, sweat dripping down his forehead and sliding down into his ear. He did not want to tear the stitches.
Eventually, he realized that he would have to walk unaided if he wanted to get to Antoinette. For the rest of the room lay open before him, the treacherous rugs unanchored on the slippery wooden floor, and there was no more furniture for him to lean on.
He lowered himself to his knees (the stabbing pain in his side intensified, ripping at his guts), and began to crawl.
When he reached Antoinette, he first felt for her pulse. It was steady, but slow. Then he turned her head to the side, trying to figure out what had caused the bleeding, but decided that she must have bit her tongue, because otherwise she seemed fine.
The only problems were that she was in a drugged sleep, and that there was a puncture mark on the back of her right hand. It wasn't too deep, thankfully, but Francis wrapped it up anyways, tearing strips from his shirt. This struck him as slightly humorous, considering the fact that everyone seeming to be shredding their clothing tonight.
But it was probably the laudanum making him giddy. He pulled another rug towards Antoinette and managed to wedge it under her head, making a sort of pillow.
There was a soft sound from the doorway – he glanced up in surprise and fear –
Oh. It was a cat. A blind one, from the look of it.
"Here, kitty," he said, hoping that it (oh, it was a she) would come in. There was no one else he could talk to. "Here, kitty, kitty."
The cat meowed and stretched, digging her claws into the bare floor. Francis winced at the high ripping noise of sharp bone on polished wood. Erik wouldn't be too thrilled about that when he came back.
If he came back. Francis' eyes went unwillingly to the large spot of red on the blue rug nearest the door, then to the black satin shoes lying next to it. If he remembered correctly, Irene had been standing just over there. And Erik – he looked toward the bookcase, but he couldn't make out anything – the rug beneath was too far away and at an awkward angle for his eyes.
The cat sidled towards him, her tail lashing back and forth, and Francis looked back at her.
"It seems that we are on our own," he said to her, marveling at the fact that within a few hours' time, he had been reduced to making conversation with a cat. "Or so I suppose. Oh, how I wish you could talk."
When I opened my eyes, I saw instantly that I was no longer in the Opera – there were two mahogany bookshelves in front of me, but they were not Erik's. No, because they were bare, completely bare except for a row of marble busts. Beethoven, Aristotle, Plato, and Artemis. They stared back at me with blank, empty eyes.
The floor was old but clean; it stretched several feet away from me before it ran under the bookshelves. The walls were hung with paintings on either side of me: I recognized the Saint Irene painting that Antoinette had posed for during the masquerade, and my heart gave a great lurch as everything came flooding back to me.
Where was Antoinette? Where was I? Where was Erik?
As all of this flashed through my head, I was trying to free myself. I was tied to an ornate wooden chair, so heavy that I could not move it even when I pushed my feet against the ground with all my might. My arms were pulled backwards around the chair's frame: thick rope bound my wrists and wrapped my hands. My ankles were tied to the chair legs; they would not move either. I was thankful for my long skirt.
After a long minute of tugging (and wishing for my knife), I gave up and sat still, trying to calm my breathing. So the blond-haired woman had taken us from the Opera and brought us here. But where was here? Paris? The countryside? Another country entirely?
There was the sound of footsteps behind me: I turned my head as far as I could, but the candles over the bookshelves did not lend enough light to the room. I could only make out the very edge of a figure.
"Oh, don't trouble yourself, Mademoiselle Dubois," said a high-pitched, warbling voice. "Let me come around the table so you can see me."
And the Inspector stepped forward into my line of sight, his broad face alight with triumph.