Hi guys! Thank you sooo much for the reviews! I love you all! This chapter's rated R to be on the safe side!

avid phanfic reader: I love Dark Eriks too! I've seen a lot of good ones, so I decided to make my own, and see how it goes.


"You shall know nothing if you have not known everything.

And if you are timid enough to stop with what is natural,

Nature will elude your grasp forever."

-Donatjen Francois De Sade

Paris,France. October 27-1850

Paris was a moonlit winter serenade, like a grand offering to Gods, on the sacrifical altar of the night.

The Moon had risen triumphant, along with shadows that filled each crevice of the winding alleys and streets that Alexej was running through.

The blood had been spilled, the sacrifice complete.

Alexej had made his escape, having gorged himself on the powerful sensation of his kill, that honourless dog Emil could not even look him in the eye. As he struggled for a wasted life that hung on a tenuous thread, cut by the Puppet master, slipped through the ethereal curtain into the black oblivion of many crossroads, some led to the Elysian fields, some into the depthless pits of agony and unending night, a realm where unspoken horrors tortured and terrorized their prey, like Cerberus furiously unleashed…

Alexej made sure Emil could not escape its ravages.

He did not linger, however, scandalized Parisian police and enraged Romany performers were after him, with torches and pistols and swords and maces, curses upon their tongues and in their eyes.

Blood for blood.

Ungrateful wretches, those gypsies. Alexej had freed them from the suffocating, evil clutches of that perverse, conniving caravan master. And yet, they still hunted him.

Alexej could not understand their boundless stupidity.

Let the mindless sheep be slaughtered next time.

He had learned his lesson.

He, the conquering ancient darkness, like Hades crowned with the blackened skulls of the trembling unredeemed souls he ruled and dominated with a tyrannical fist.

Through a secret door he had found his way into the small chapel of Opera Populaire.

Forgotten and neglected with dust and cobwebs dominant in this place of worship.

Obviously, these Opera people did not bother to appease their Christian God.

Maybe compared to the architectural medieval magnificence of that gigantique Notre Dame Cathedral, the tiny chapel was a less pleasant option.

Whichever it was, Alexej didn't care in the slightest.

Religious faith was alien to him, strange, ignorant.

Dead.

He was jolted out of his reverie all of a sudden, his ears pricking to the sound of rushed footsteps approaching down the winding stone staircase.

Footsteps light and resonating with a silent balletique litheness. The approaching entity was a she.

Of course, the girl.

He had forgotten about her completely the moment she pushed him through the little , dusk- stained, moon streaked window into the chapel.

Him, the abomination, cast into the hallowed halls of an unfeeling deity.

"Come, this way!" she whispered, taking hold of his hand, grimed and streaked with filth, caked with blood and other noxious elements that a dainty mademoiselle would find offensive to her delicate sensibilities.

Alexej was impressed with her boldness, her open-mindedness that, if sharpened enough, would pierce through the mundane thought easily.

He was bewildered by her compassion. Alexej permitted a tiny candle of hope to burn in his soul, his heart, his mind… albeit cautiously, the candle's feeble light was not yet strong enough to provide a faint illumination upon his opaque midnight.

They had passed through the ancient catacombs carved with seraphique splendour and demonized images, beyond the crystalline frosty lake into a gigantesque stone cavern with a high ceiling and many secret passages and hidden alcoves.

Alexei's bare feet landed on the cold, dry stone floor, quietly. With eyes like glittering blue and grey gems, bottomless, he observed his surroundings-littered with opera props and unused mirrors and other theatrical paraphernalia carelessly abandoned and discarded- absorbed each tiny detail, already a rough image of an architectural master plan to make the cavern inhabitable began to form in his mind.

A demesne of his own. An underground sovereignty of dark musique, where he would rule as a Voivode.

He cut his piercing gaze to the girl-mayhap four or five years his senior- who had been watching him curiously, and Alexej watched her in return, settling his smoky blue-grey eyes on her with equal amount of curiosity, until she shifted her foot uncomfortably and gestured around, a crisp, clear French forming on her lips as soon as her eyes drifted away from him.Her voice resonated within the cavern with a wraithlike timbre.

"We're under Opera Populaire.You can stay here, for as long as you like, this place is forgotten, no one comes here, especially after nightfall. It is said that it was once the hideout of a French aristocrat running from the authorities, a witch to be exact, whose name was supposedly stricken from the royal records after her dabble in black arts was exposed. She was never found again. Some say she performed many dark rites in this cavern, and that the place is some sort of gateway to hell, through which she vanished and that her ghost haunts this place. But of course, this was eons ago, it's all local gossip and hearsay, quite silly, actually."

Alexej listened with intense concentration to each word uttered. To each beat of her heart, drumming with a restless rhythm, though it was not the exhilarating symphony of Fear. Alexej was pleased. Truly pleased. She had seen his face, and yet did not flinch at the distorted visage.

"My name is Antoinette Giry, by the way, I live in the Opera dormitories. I'm a ballerina in training." She added helpfully.

Alexej registered this piece of information, then nodded ever so slightly, but in his eyes were a glimmer which could be mistaken for a friendly light.In his eyes were gratefulness, indeed, the arctic grey irises seemed to soften a shade bluer.

Taking his silence for a slow mind, Antoinette cocked her head slightly, a thin blonde-brown eyebrow arching.

"And you are?"

The Devil's Child.

Count Alexej Maximilian Dragutinovich.

A birthright denied, a name and title dead, reduced to bitter ashes.

Alexej crushed the memories, savagely, brutally. Casting them broken and battered back into the back of his mind. They were not to be summoned. Not to be touched until…

" I don't have one, people always referred to me as "hey you" or "that boy" or simply –it- ."

Alexej said, his somewhat unused and rusted French laced with a faint accent, though eloquent and crisp, his voice like smooth black silk caressing the senses.

Antoinette shivered instinctively. Such voice of indescribable beauty. A hesitant and awkward silence fell upon the duo, Alexej watching, a blasé look plastered across his daimon/malaki's face, and Antoinette regarding him with a thoughtful expression.

The boy –who must be in his mid-teens- underneath all that dirt and filth and hideously twisted face, was an intriguing and mysterious personage with an aristocratique carriage and a warrior's confident and proud bearing combined with a scholarly and artistique aura, coupled with a tall, powerful and sleekly muscled physique, which brought to her mind a storybook hero anda villain of ages past, that she had once read in Gustav's book of Scandinavian myths and Nordic tales. Gustav Daae… her dear friend.

"Erik. I shall call you Erik. Would you like that?"

Alexej was silent a moment longer as he considered the name. He nodded his head.

"Erik it is then." She offered a brief, warm smile.

Alexej, or rather, Erik, returned her smile with a frosty one, his eyes a bluish grey fire, like those icebergs partially obscured in the middle of a freezing cold, dark ocean. Alight with a strange warmth.


Erik watched her leave, observing her like one might a boat far off the ocean, as if trying to recognize what kind of boat it is. She was a fine young woman, and he had found himself growing fond of her friendly presence already. His secret would be safe with her.

Turning, he began to explore his new haven. Among the discarded wrought iron candelabrums, torn, yellowed parchment paper, broken glass and thick layers of lacy cobweb he spotted a violin.He lunged with a swift grace, his long, slender fingers grasping the musical instrument, his fingertips dancing lightly across its dust covered dark wooden frame, upon the strings, his breath coming harshly from his excitement.

He stood slowly, the violin in his hands, and found himself face to face with a reflection all too painfully familiar within the looking glass.

Placing the violin gently and reverently upon an elevated rock that resembled a dais, and turned back to the mirror.

A ghastly mockery of an angel greeted him, chained in his own private misery and despair.

With an anguished cry he tore the half trousers from his legs, tossing them aside angrily, and leapt into the ice-cold lake, sending ripples undulating across its glassy smooth surface. He emerged into the murky depths, washing away the dirt, scrubbing his faintly golden sun-tinted alabaster skin with such ferocity that he bled himself.

Climbing back up onto the shore, he strode to the large looking glass, its gilt frame scratched and tarnished with age, and stared at his reflection once again.

A young man stared back, his tall frame dripping with crystalline droplets of ice cold water, strands of night black hair plastered across the left side of his face, also dripping, standing tall and rigid, with broad shoulders and torso muscular yet slender, tapering into sculpted hips that flared into powerfully muscled thighs, like that of a dire wolf's, or a jungle cat's, his gaze trailed down the sturdy, long legs, and swiftly back up, past the magnificent length of his manhood and flat, muscled abdomen.

Where he had expected an ugly spectre, skeletal and gaunt, he had discovered a man's body, a normal human male body.

He could not say why he had created such a morbid phantasy about his own physique within his mind, for the reflection in the mirror's depths displayed quite the opposite with a glaring clarity, like bright sunlight blinding his eyes.

Maybe he was blind, wallowing in his own delusion.

Sunlight he loathed, despised. Light laid bare all his secrets, all his deformities and mocked his very existence.

Light be damned.

Damned into the Abyss.

Shadows undulated along the walls with a silent whisper, raising his hair on end. Shadows…How beautifully they writhed like fond lovers caressing shamelessly beneath the flickering gaze of the lantern's amber light, for as long as he had been alive, darkness was there, embracing him with its icy tendrils like the willing arms of a mother…of a lover…

Dense and ebony was its dance, overwhelming and overpowering its twilight song.

A shuddering sigh escaped his lips…Musique was finally going to be his, for his pleasure, at his whim, whenever he desired.

Considering he had eluded the authorities.

Shadows whispered the unspoken answer.

You're home.You are safe here. As a Phantom is safe upon Acheron's shores.

Cobalt grey eyes raised once more to the reflection's face, ravaged and scarred with such intensity that Erik shuddered with unconcealed horror. Hand met face, fingertips slowly touching the rough skin that stretched taut over a slightly jutting cheekbone, the flesh unevenly pigmented and marred with several revolting scars, a tangled mass of blemishes that had no place on a human face.His thumb grazed across the gaping black hole that was the right side of his nose, gliding past the cleft down to perfectly sculpted lips now set in a hard, grim line, over to the left side where the elegant slashes of his bone structure met marble smooth ivory skin, moulded into the visage of an incubi.

Devious beauty met twisted grotesquerie.

A brooding black brow arched, his hands trembled…the reflection threatened to crack into a thousand pieces…

One must accept the hatred with love, beauty with the beast.

Was it Anica who uttered those softly spoken words? Or was it his own black dementia?

Was it the distant memory of his mother just before she had sent away his only son… for good.

Mere foolish human sentiments that meant not a damn thing to Erik.

He decided not to dwell on it. For now.

Why should he? He had a whole new life ahead of him filled with more promises of agony and rapture.

There would be plenty of time to grieve and despair once he was dead.


Ahhh..delusions of grandeur mixed with insane self-consciousness.Erik is going to get darker guys, but PG-13 for now.Especially when Gustav and Christine Daae enters his life in later chapters. Whew, end of this chapter. I'll be updating again tomorrow.

As always, reviews are much appreciated, they're great source of help and motivation! I'd like to know your suggestions, whether you want me to tone him down a bit or continue with the dark progress..With Christine it will be really really intense, the guy oozes passion-not only sensually- there will be alot of tension, though not even a single physical touch for a while as Erik never shows his emotions at this stage, but he'll learn to love,obsess and worship, like the dark love god he is! Not to mention his...unknown ancestry which will play an important role in this story...hehe. I won't be introducing Raoul until later on by the way, I have nothing against the guy, it's just that I want to concentrate on Erik and Christine for the moment.By the way, do any of you have any idea what Christine's mother's called?