Author's Note: Hello everyone. After another little break I'm back with –of course- more Erik and Christine. A warning, though, this chapter contains a –darker- Erik, which some of you might find a little too intense, so caution is advised. Also, there's a little violence too, but I tried to keep it to minimum for G-13's sake. I'd like to thank all of you, again, for your support. Those who read and review are champs!

Well, enjoy!

broadwaygal: I truly appreciate your commentary :) There's definitely an Elektra complex to it. Erik's just too intense, too complex a character, but without over-analyzing him, I'll try to define his troubled psyche in this story. : ) Also, thank you for your kind words. I try my best.

monroe-mary Countess's memories were deliberately altered. Thanks for your review also.

MorganLeFay99 AT LEAST 20 chapters, my dear.

LadyCatBailey: -bows- thank you kindly my dear. No worries, occasionally I've been seized by a deep urge to bash all the characters that come between Erik and Christine, even as I narrate them, but hey, in the end, without them, we wouldn't be able to appreciate the tragic romance of E/C. –drools- Gerik indeed.

Kates: -blush- Wow, thanks! You made my day there.


"A savage place! As holy and enchanted/ As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted / By woman wailing for her demon lover"

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"The just is close to the people's heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God."

-Khalil Gibran

"But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of."

-Lord Byron


"This faithless lady's bound for Hades! Shame! Shame! Shame!" Sang the Countess's confidante, jeweller and hairdresser, an insincere grin plastered across their overly-made up white faces and scarlet lips.

Buquet, tending to the flies, watched the play disinterestedly, occasionally taking a long swig of brandy from a small flask, his roving eyes drifting from an exceptionally pretty aristocrat in the front row of the audience to the slender, statuesque figure of Christine, as the pink canopy drapes parted to reveal her character Serafimo and that screeching soprano lost in their illicit liaison on the lavish bed.

Suddenly, from nowhere came a deep, low, echoing voice.

"Did I not instruct that Box five was to be kept empty?"

Buquet's eyes darted about uneasily, that hideous, godless bastard was there somewhere, always watching.

Meg cut her gaze to the flies, then whispered to herself in awe. " He's here, the Phantom of the Opera."

Christine sighed in a small voice. "It's Him."

"Your part is silent, little toad!" Carlotta hissed as the bewildered audience gawked.

"A toad, madam? Perhaps it is you, who are the toad!" The ghostly voice resounded again, rising panic from the audience.

While managers Firmin and Andre tried to calm the audience, Carlotta made her re-entry after having walked off stage to spray her mouth liberally from a small crystal flask.

Music resumed with the return of the Diva, and what happened next was a grand comedy.

The Italian Soprano's high-pitched voice soared, then croaked.

Every desperate attempt at singing drew another croak from her brightly painted lips.

There were gasps and laughter.

The great chandelier began to sway, its lights flickering eerily.

The fiasco soon turned to nightmare.

Suddenly, and inky blackness enshrouded the whole theatre, drawing frightened gasps from the spectators and the assembly of opera cast.

Then, just as suddenly, blood-curdling screams resonated within the opera, in twisted concert with a crescendoing dark laughter.

Followed by a sickening thud as something heavy fell onto the stage.

The opaque curtain of the unnatural darkness lifted, and light returned with disaster.

The theatre was plunged into chaos, people shrieked, ladies fainted, guards rushed over.

The garrotted body of Joseph Buquet laid at Carlotta's feet, causing her to run backstage in a scream of terror.

What's more disquieting was, that the dead man's face was completely obscured by a white expressionless mask. From underneath the mask, trickled a steady stream of blood, staining the thick noose around his neck.

Christine watched in mute horror, petrified, as Meg, aghast, approached the corpse gingerly, and pulled off the mask.

Only then, did Christine react.

She screamed.

Buquet's face, -or what's left of it- was a gory mass of blood and torn flesh, the skin completely flayed.

The Opera Ghost had indeed extracted his brutal revenge on his disobedient flock.


Christine raced up to the Opera Rooftops, emerging into the night air, her brown curls and her red cloak flying behind her like an autumnal banner.

She leaned against a statue and panted, her uneven breaths misted in the cold air, tears streaming down her wan, pale face.

Her eyes fell on the gargoyles overlooking the nocturnally radiant panorama of Paris, trying to dispel the awful image of Buquet's death.

The flayed skin, exposed bone, flowing blood splashed in disorder in sanguine colours from a madman's palette onto a broken canvas; a savage tableau that would haunt her memories for the rest of her life.

Bile rose in her throat, Christine keeled over, shuddering uncontrollably.

An elongated shadow fell across her own on the snow-covered ground.

Alarmed, Christine snapped her head up.

Stood the Reaper before her, the menacing personification of Vengeance Primordial.

The Mask of Doom.

The totem of apocalyptic music clothed in his usual blacks that dusk would envy, the omnipotent and wrathful eidolon.

No wonder.

Blood didn't show on black.

The blizzard grey eyes were hollow on the surface, betraying the fact that he felt a lot more than he said, making him unpredictable and dangerous.

A rigid sculpture he seemed, standing beneath the Apollo's lyre, so austere and deific that the stone statues might tremble at the nearness of such an impending malignance.

In eyes of northern brown were a dark lustre of despair, of fear, awe and disgust.

"How could you…How could you do that? Kill someone like…that? Oh God!" A choked whisper.

"How could I not? He who ridiculed my face now has no face at all." The black silky voice terribly soft and calm, infuriatingly so.

"Erik! You killed a man! Don't you understand what you've done!" The silvery gentle voice was raised in righteous anger and utter shock.

The Phantom tilted a half-masked face slightly, eyes frozen to grey ice.

"Absolutely. Next time your dear friend Vicomte ignores my orders and provokes my ire, the punishment will be even more severe."

Christine stared, stupefied and terrified.

"You're mad." A faint murmur.

"How perceptive of you, my little Delilah." Cruel sarcasm flowing like blood wine.

"Don't you realize there won't be a next time!" Christine said, vexed.

"Without a doubt, my dear, indeed there won't. Unless your dear friend is more puerile than I've thought."

"There won't be a next time because they will catch you, Erik!" Cried Christine.

"No, my Vine Queen, next time there will be a lasso around his pretty neck."

Tears shimmered like liquid crystals in wide brown eyes, cherubic face drained of all colour and life.

"You're a monster." A trembling whisper laced with sick dread.

The white mask took on a ghoulish, unearthly sheen, eyes flashed with a baleful grey light, anger tinted like Hades exalted in an immaculate black rage.

"You flatter me, my dear." The smooth jet velvet voice was venomously harsh, but fiendishly soft.

The black boots fell silent on snow, slowly like a shark circling its prey, the Phantom began to walk slowly around ensnared Christine, regarding her with a veiled expression in eyes burning like an Erebus twilight, boring into a soul untarnished with guilt and sin.

"Suppose I get caught, and hanged to appease their corrupt justice, would that make you glad?" Beneath the arctic smoothness of his voice was an undertow of anguish, faintly detectable.

The black cape brushed against her lightly like a raptor's wing, as the Phantom continued his slow pace.

"No…" Sobbed she softly in a subdued voice. "God forgive me, I would weep should justice be served." Christine shook her head, startled and ashamed of her own affirmation.

"Then worry not, it is foolish to seek integrityin a world of an unjust God."

"By punishing the world, you punish yourself, Erik." Said she, a benign whisper.

A grim half-smile curved Erik's lips. Black leather clad hand rested on Christine's temple, tapered fingertips following a slow, gentle trail down to her tear moistened lips softer than a butterfly's wings.

"I'll enlighten you about the depths of my punishment, my dear, which keeps eluding you continuously."

His head was slightly bent to hers, eyes grey slits of feral ,chill intensity even as his touch was strangely warm, heated from within.

"Punishment is a gleam of resentment in a brown eye, a glorious dark curl against my skin…"

His dark voice lowered to a sensual whisper, daemonically so. Christine quivered like a solitary flower in a caressing wind.

His gaze fell onto a full top lip, flawlessly curved.

"Punishment is a single tear that stains lips of virtue, the frown upon a gentle brow." The husky whisper dropped a tone lower, fingertips stroked down to the base of the elegant column of her throat, tracing her collarbone.

Christine felt warm, mellow and light-headed, her pulse drumming in her ears. Her hand tangled in his sleek black hair of its own volition.

"Punishment becomes you, Christine; my heart's blood, your voice is the principle of my music." Erik said hoarsely, his hot breath beating upon her neck, just below her earlobe.

A maelstrom of emotions stirred within Christine, fear, yearning, unfamiliar and unspeakable pain in the depths of her heart.

Erik gazed down at her face, eyes misted in a dream-like trance, a smile plucked from an angel's sigh, her lips full and pink like the spring bloom…

Stern resolve dissolved, the mighty Hades fell to his Queen.

Then, Heaven opened its doors, a shaft of divine light reached mercifully down into hell and touched the charred, blackened wings of a demon chained in his agony.

Burning from within, Erik crushed her body into his with bruising intensity, devouring her lips with his own, prying them apart with his tongue, tasting the faint salt of dried tears, a strawberry warmth and desire in its purest, untainted form.

He tasted Christine, at last.

Lips met and moulded against and into each other, somewhat unsure at first, then intense passion soaring, tongues intertwined with fierce urge, fierce longing.

Angel and Demon combusted together, plunging into the consuming fires.

Christine's initial resistance rapidly melted under the steady gaze of the molten flame, softly whimpering into his mouth, teasing, tasting the potent aphrodisia that was his lips.

In that one moment's painful pleasure, joyful sorrow, the kiss came to an abrupt halt as Erik withdrew, pushing her away from him.

His monstrosity and immoral descent into lust's temporary snare was unforgivable.

It was a crime.

"Erik!" Christine whispered, dizzy from the intensity of the unexpected kiss, disillusioned and vulnerable.

"Punishment is this loathsome face, which you unmasked in the most deceitful and cruellest of ways! Behold, Christine, YOUR punishment! Take off the mask!"

Erik snarled in furious contempt, penitent, yet his face twisted in dark, bitter anger.

Christine's dark lashes met, a solitary tear trickled down smooth, porcelain cheek, her sorrow, her pain, her grief and her kind mercy, all calcified in that one tear.

Above the din of his beating heart, Erik heard footsteps approaching.

Christine opened her eyes into empty opera roof, at her feet, on the freshly fallen snow a dark red rose tied with a black ribbon.

Then the iron door burst open, a man running toward her.

A young man dressed in grey, his dark gold hair free of restraint, the chiselled, noble lines of his face creased with genuine concern.

"Christine! My God, I've been searching for you all around the place, are you all right?"

"Raoul…" Said the maiden of northlands, her voice dull, toneless. She was shivering beneath her thin cloak and shirt.

He slipped his coat off and draped it around her shoulders, smoothing his hands up and down her arms gently to warm her up.

Suddenly, Christine flung herself into his embrace, her arms clutching onto his strong frame.

"Raoul! Oh, Raoul...Will it ever end…"

He held her close, tightly, stroking her hair. "No more talk of darkness, Christine. I'm here, nothing can harm you."

Christine drew back, searching his face; honest, genial and beautiful. Yet her hearts strings were pulled in thousand directions by a man, a murderer, a Phantom that wanted nothing but her voice, to control and manipulate her. Still... those eyes that both threatened and adored. That soul-shattering kiss...

Erik's vindictive beauty was the rose clutched in her hands. Raoul's gaze drifted downward to the flower, he gently took the rose from her, and threw it to the ground.

"Christine, no matter what you do, what you have done, I will always be here for you, and my feelings for you will never change." He said in a tender voice. In his teal blue eyes were kindness, warmth…

Love.

"Promise me Raoul, you will understand…"

"Let me be your shelter, let daylight dry your tears. I'm here, for you, Christine."

"Anywhere you go, let me go too…Away from this nightmare. Say the word, and I will follow you, Raoul. Say…you love me."

"You know I do, Christine, always have, always will."

Taking her by the hand, Raoul led her away from the rooftop, back down inside the opera.

A vast black shadow fell upon the snow, violent, crackling fury tangible in the night air.

Erik bent over to pick the rose, each crimson petal stung his flesh, sending jolts of pain through his body.

"Christine…"

Pain and anger took over with vengeance, blotting out reason, all memory and all emotion.

The rose was crushed in his hand, its petals dropping onto the ground as the snowflakes began to fall.

As his tears began to fall.

The Phantom of The Opera faded into the blackness of his subterranean lair once more.

Leaving a curse upon the night, his betrayal and denial a bitter funereal echo upon the wind.

Now, there was going to be war.


The Dragutinovich family cemetery was a bleak garden of carved angels and weather-worn ornate marble tombs and crypts.

Rurik stood before an elaborate plaque that held the engraved picture of Ruxandra in her prime.

"Father Andrassy?" Inquired a male voice politely.

Rurik turned slightly.

"Father, I have the address of the old gypsy with me."

Rurik nodded, shooting a one last glance to the tomb. With a sigh that disappeared in the gaining wind, groaning like an elegy faint and whispery, Rurik lingered on the grave, where the cold marble walls now sheltered his aunt, his last relative.

Gone.

No, one last blood kin remained.

His cousin Alexej.


The feeble yellow disc of the September sun provided little warmth.

Old gnarled hands stroked affectionately the underside of a shepherd dog's chin, as it began to bark in warning of a stranger nearby.

Petru's eyes, blurred with age, searched the dirt path ahead.

"Sacha, who's that there?" Called the ancient voice.

The youngRomany set down her basket of freshly laundered garments and raised up a hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the softly golden shafts of the sun to inspect the approaching figure with more than a passing interest.

"It's a priest, grandpapa."

A tall man, with short, swept back dark hair, garbed in simple black trousers and unadorned boots, wearing the traditional priestly black robes of Russo-Romanian Orthodox church, slight beginnings of kind smile upon his lips.

If his beauty weren't consecrated to the Cross, Sacha was certain he would be a very sought after male indeed.

Maybe he already was.

"A pleasant day to you, my good woman. Is this Petru Ciorbea's house?" His voice was deep, its tone crystal clear like the blue waters of the Danube, fit for any heavenly choir.

A wooden cane was raised in his direction, interrupting before the young girl could answer.

"What would you be wanting from him?" The old gypsy demanded, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. These seemingly-devout church men usually brought trouble, and their preaching against the heathen ways of the Romanys in hopes of converting them were becoming more tiresome each day.

"My name is Rurik Andrassy, I-.."

"Yes yes, get on with it, man, I don't care who you are. What do you want?"

Rurik spoke on, ignoring the old man.

"I've come to speak with him about a matter of great importance. Would you know of him, sir?"

Petru muttered a curse beneath his breath.

"I am he. Make it quick!"

Eyes like green smoke lit with triumph, he took a few steps closer to the cottage.

"You were the animal trainer of a travelling gypsy show, were you not?"

"Yes, It was years ago...what about it?"

"Then you must know about a child that was given to your caravan master's care some twenty nine years ago. A boy of eight years with a deformed face."

A deep frown wrinkled the wizened bronze face.

"You must be meanin' the Devil's Child…Aye I do remember the little demon."

At this, the priest's kindly young face darkened slightly in confusion.

"Pardon me, father. I think you'd better come inside…"


That's it for now, guys. Let me know how you like the story so far.