I would have got this chapter up earlier but couldn't. Blame the electrical storm we had, okay? Anyway... I think a lot of people have been looking forward to a chapter like this so I hope it doesn't dissappoint. Enjoy!

Chapter 15

Late evening in Rome and I had finally arrived at the airport, dragging my bag after me into the departure lounge and scouring the crowd for familiar faces. I was nearly bubbling over with excitement, jumping up and down on the balls of my feet to try and see over the heads of the multitude around me.

Finally I caught sight of a woman with a young child in her arms. For a second the tot obscured her face, but then she turned, and I recognised Paula instantly. Soon we were heading towards each other, and I saw my father close behind them. They all looked as happy as I felt, and I dropped my bag to put my arms around them tightly.

"Oh god, I missed you," I said over the noise of the busy airport.

"We missed you too, honey," my dad replied, squeezing me tight.

"Even this little one." At this, Paula passed little Joseph over to me, and I laughed at seeing his little baby grin again.

"Haven't you grown, you big baby," I giggled, cooing gently at him as we began to make our way out of the terminal, my dad picking up my bag for me. It wasn't quite dark outside yet… with a faint pink and yellow light still hanging over the buildings to the west. And it was still quite warm, even though it was late October.

"One plus to living further south," my father laughed when I pointed this out on the drive home.

It felt wonderful beyond compare to see everyone again, and to finally be in the place I called home. Even though I had only spent a few weeks here over the summer, I recognised some of the surroundings as we drew close to our neighbourhood, lit up by the dim yellow streetlamps. I wondered how much the house had changed since I had last been inside. No doubt it would be much nicer now, after more than two months. No boxes, everything unpacked and in its place… it would finally look like our home.

We pulled up outside the house and I dragged my bag up to the front door excitedly, nearly jumping up and down as my father took his time locking the car and coming up to unlock the door. When he finally did so, I stepped inside, and was happy to see a complete change. The hallway was clear of boxes, and the wooden boards looked squeaky clean up and down. In fact the whole house looked as though it had been cleaned especially for my homecoming, except for a few of Joseph's toys lying around the place. All the furniture had found its proper place, not carelessly placed in any old way. Everything had an order to it that I welcomed after all the chaos I had been going through.

Inside my room too, everything was far more orderly than how I had left it. The walls had been painted from its original, pristine white colour to a deep, ocean blue, with just the barest hint of purple in the colour. It would be perfect in the summer, I knew… when I'd need a refuge from the heat outside. I remembered mentioning it to Paula... I was glad she had decided to go ahead with my idea.

Sighing with relief, I sat down on my bed and kicked off my shoes, then slumped back against the dark purple pillows, which gave under the weight of my head delightfully. Grinning to the world in general, I looked forward to having a relaxing week.

And I knew just how to start it off too…

Quickly I unpacked a few of my things and headed for the bathroom. One of the worst problems with living in a boarding school with dozens of other girls was having to share the few bathrooms there were. It would be nice not to be rushed through a shower because there were other people waiting to use it. So I stood there under the streaming water, watching the steam rise up and fog the window as I rubbed my greasy hair clean… then filled the bath with bubbly water and lay there until my hands and feet were wrinkled, soothing my tired muscles. I could have spent hours in there, but Paula was shouting me down for supper, so I changed quickly into my bed clothes and rushed down the stairs to the kitchen.

"Have a good bath?" my father joked at seeing me so flushed from the heat.

"Heavenly," I said, sitting myself down.

Over a meal of spaghetti carbonara we had our first full and proper conversation in months. That was another great thing about being home, I realised. I could actually talk to my family for more than ten minutes at a time. There was so much I hadn't been given the chance to tell them over the phone. I told them, in detail this time, about the concert, about Meg and Richard… although I left out certain details that I felt too uncomfortable to explain… and they listened intently to everything. It was wonderful to know that nothing had really changed between us… that they still loved me.

Well of course it hadn't, I told myself. They were my family… they'd always love me.

I sat in my room long after they had gone to bed, listening to the CDs I had left behind. A pad lay on my desk and I doodled idly as some of the greatest piano concertos played softly through the earphones. As my mind wondered, I couldn't help asking myself where Erik might be at this point. Had he followed me back straight away? Maybe he was already here now… back in that underground home beneath mine. I reminded myself to thank him again when I next saw him… it was just too good to be true, being home again.

Then I heard it. Just hidden underneath the sound of my music, I heard my name being called. At first I thought it was either my imagination or my father was calling me for some reason. I lifted one ear piece away from my head to listen, but everything was quiet. But just as I was about to replace the earphones, I heard my name again… and it wasn't coming from my parents room.

Erik…

It took all my willpower not to leap up from my chair and run down the stairs to find if Erik really was here. But I only got as far as my door before remembering my parents were asleep down the hall. After that I moved as if my life depended on silence… pausing at every creak in from the floor under my feet, listening carefully for any warning that my father or Paula were awake. But there was no sound. Even Joseph was sleeping like... well, a baby.

I negotiated the stairs and finally began moving with a little less caution on the balls of my feet to the basement door. I opened it and shivered slightly as a waft of cold air rose and engulfed the bare skin of my arms. A memory stirred… a sense of deja-vu that almost made me think twice about continuing. But then the voice drifted up from the darkness beyond the stone steps, and I couldn't resist its beautiful call. I took these stone steps more carefully, groping for the cord that would bring me some light. The bulb was dim, but it was enough to see that the basement was disappointingly empty. All that I could see were the shelves of tools, old magazines and various knick-knacks that had been thrown down here because there was no better place for them.

Then I noticed the dark, empty space in one corner, and remembered with nervous amusement that our basement did not end here. Erik's 'front door' was open… and obviously I was meant to go through it.

He has to be kidding, I thought to myself. I remembered what happened the last time I went in there… my arms and legs, in fact my whole body, ached at the memory of the rough treatment I had received when Erik had dragged me down there on that first fateful encounter. Granted I wasn't being dragged this time… but I certainly wasn't risking going down there in the pitch black.

But Erik was down there. And I had to see him.

Quickly, I glanced around the basement and, luckily, spotted an old and slightly dusty torch on one of the shelves. I picked it up and pushed the switch. To my frustration, the bulb glowed weakly, and it took a few whacks with the palm of my hand to get the little bulb anywhere near the brightness I was comfortable with.

Taking a deep breath, I aimed it into the tunnel. The light bounced of the stone, but it only showed me a few feet ahead. I would still have to go very carefully. I wasn't keen on tumbling down some steps and breaking my neck. So I went, one step at a time, down the tunnel, grateful that at least I had some light from the basement still shining through.

That is, until I heard the sound of stone scraping behind me. I turned in panic, only to watch the entrance seal up, apparently of its own accord, leaving me with nothing but this dim flashlight.

"Fabulous," I muttered to the world in general as I turned back to the tunnel. Now it appeared I had only one option.

But I hadn't taken one step before the torch in my hand flickered. I froze in instant panic.

"Oh no…" I said as it flickered again, and then began to fade. "Please no…" I smacked it with my hand again and rattled the batteries in the casing, feeling the dread rise as it made not the slightest difference and the darkness began to close in… and finally took all the light from around me. Generally I wasn't scared of the dark, but I'd never experienced this kind of inky blackness before… the kind that you felt on your skin and in your bones… the kind that made me want to sit on the floor and not move one inch.

I was ready to do precisely this when I felt something cold touch my arm. The sound that I let out was not really a scream… it was a kind of cartoonish yell that to anyone else must have sounded remarkably funny. It certainly seemed funny to the man whom I now shared the darkness with. I could hear the familiar chuckling close by me.

"Having trouble with your light?" Erik's voice asked, his amusement more than apparent.

A string of obscenities lined up inside my brain, but in the end I settle for a half exasperated, half relieved sigh.

"Erik… you nearly gave me a heart attack!" I reached out and managed to locate his chest, and swatted it angrily. He chuckled again and caught my hand.

"My sincerest apologies," he said.

For a few seconds I struggled to get my breath back and calm my heart down to a more regular beat, until I received another shock as a match was struck against a wall and not to far from my face. I jumped in surprise, and then looked up into Erik's shadowed eyes. For some reason, seeing him in this strange light made me tremble… and brought back some disturbing memories I would rather have forgotten.

His free hand was still resting lightly on my arm, and I felt it move up to my shoulder, gliding across the bare skin of my neck to touch my cheek and gently trace the line of my jaw. For the first time I realised he was touching me with his bare hands… something he had never done before in all the time I had known him. This thought brought a tiny smile to my lips, one that Erik returned, his eyes nearly glowing with intense emotion. Just before the match went out, he bent his head, and I felt his mouth press lightly against mine.

The kiss lasted only a moment. Then he pulled away and struck another match against the wall. This time he held it to what seemed to be an old-fashioned oil lamp that had appeared apparently from nowhere. I gave him a quizzical look, but he only smiled and held it up so that it could shed its light.

He held out his hand. "Come with me. I want to show you something."

For a second I didn't respond. I only stared at his hand… the long fingers… the pale flesh… the way they seemed so thin, with the knuckles and tendons showing plainly through the skin. Again I found myself wondering about his health. How could it be healthy for someone to be that thin?

I shook myself hurriedly. I didn't want to insult Erik by refusing to take his hand, so I placed mine in his, refusing to allow myself to react to how cold his bare hand felt. Instead of shivering I tightened my grip and smiled up at him as he turned to lead the way down to wherever it was he wanted to take me. I watched my step all the way, careful not to stub my toes or slip as we made our way down a flight of stone steps. Erik's small lantern didn't give out much light… barely as much as my torch had. I looked down and realised I still had the useless thing in my hand. With a careless look I let it fall to the ground, leaving it behind in the darkness.

We carried on like this for some time, moving steadily down into the depths of whatever catacombs existed beneath the streets. More than once I wasn't careful enough and did bash my toes on loose stones or catch my heels on steps. Once I knocked the same toe twice and hissed painfully through my teeth. Almost immediately Erik turned his head to look back at me.

"Be careful."

Smiling at my own stupidity, I nodded and we continued on in silence. I tried to take in my surroundings, memorise them… but I soon gave up. It all looked the same to me. In a strange way it reminded me of one of those optical illusion pictures, where the stairs seemed to defy gravity itself and people walked upside down and every way imaginable.

Finally we seemed to reach some sort of end to the steps. Down was no longer an option… so Erik turned and began heading down a narrow tunnel. How Erik had ever managed to negotiate all these stairs and tunnels in pitch darkness I couldn't begin to understand. He seemed to have eyes like a cat and I could barely see even with the lamp he held. Maybe it was just another eccentricity of his… one more strange aspect of his character to add to my list.

Then, abruptly and for no reason that I could see, Erik stopped. I almost didn't notice and collided with his back, eliciting an embarrassed laugh from me. I smiled up at him as he looked at me with something I could only describe as affection. It felt strange to apply such a word to him… and yet now I began to wonder if he hadn't looked at me in the same way many times before.

Without taking his eyes from mine, he reached up and pressed a section of the wall. It didn't give way under his hand, and there was nothing about it to suggest it was anything other than a part of the wall, but a few moments later I heard a sound already familiar to me. Stone scraping on stone… and I watched as an entire portion of the wall seemed to shiver slightly, and then turned as if on a pivot, half way around to reveal another, hidden passage way. And this one, I noticed instantly, had light at the end of it. A glowing yellow light.

This time Erik did not lead me down there. Instead he gestured for me to go ahead, then quietly blew out the little flame in his lamp. Unable, as usual, to disobey his gentle insistence, I made my way towards the light, feeling my way along the narrow tunnel with a hand on each wall. I felt Erik's presence close behind me… and it helped a little. As I moved closer to the source of the light, I realised that it came from an open room… more like a chamber. And the light did not some from one source, but dozens and dozens of sources… candles.

Finally I emerged from the tunnel and into the open chamber. The change in atmosphere and surroundings was almost instant. There were no more closed spaces. Instead I felt as if I had walked into some deep, underground building. Looking up I could just see stone arches, offset by more jagged, un-sculpted stone. It was so high up I guessed we could have parked a three-storey building in this one room. I half expected to see bats circling up there. Dizzy from looking up, I had to lower my gaze back to my own level. Everywhere I was surrounded by candles… some big and tall, some small, barely more than piles of melted wax. Some of them were set into the stone walls… into windowless ledges and tiny alcoves… but others were standing it candelabras… beautiful and decorative. Safely out of reach of the little flames were drapes… some black some red… all with delicate gold trimming. I reached out to touch the nearest one, feeling the thick, heavy fabric between my fingers. It felt so wonderfully soft I wanted to bury face in it.

But instead I looked at the rest of the chamber and took a step further in. As I did so the ground beneath my feet changed. I looked down and instead of the cold stone was a magnificent Persian carpet whose tasselled edges spread across nearly the entire floor. It felt luxurious under my bare feet, and was so delicately woven with intricate designs I felt dizzy simply looking at them.

There was so much space everywhere. Lower parts of the ceiling were held up by thick stone pillars. One or two of them were half-collapsed, but still held the place up sturdily enough. That still left a huge open space in the centre, which was covered by the carpet. As far as I could see furniture-wise, there was a desk off to one side, carved expertly from dark mahogany and covered with papers and books that I couldn't see clearly from where I stood. Close to the desk were some shelves carved out of the wall, in which were stacked more books and ledgers. This place was large enough on its own, but I noticed some of the drapes hung over half-concealed openings leading, I guessed, into other 'rooms'. The more I looked around the more I became convinced that this had been some abandoned place of worship that had been converted into Erik's home. All that was missing were the pews, the stained glass windows and the holy symbols, of which there was not one. I was tempted to go and explore when I caught sight of something else.

It was a piano. Or, at least… something remarkably like a piano, though not one I had ever seen before in my life. In fact I was tempted to assume it was, in some way, home made… pieced together from other pianos perhaps. It was standing at the top of three stone steps, as if it were substituting for an altar. That shouldn't have surprised me really, given Erik's love of music. I approached the unusual instrument and reached out, wanting to test its sound and somehow knowing before my fingers touched the keys that it would sound crystal clear and perfect.

It did, and I shut my eyes as the chord resonated throughout the chamber, the echo it created both eerie and beautiful. I smiled serenely and closed my eyes to better appreciate the sound as I sensed Erik moving to stand behind me, and felt his hands slip either side of me to rest on the piano keys. A melodious and hypnotic series of chords rose from beneath his fingers as he played, and I watched fascinated as his thin yet graceful hands moved with deft confidence across the notes.

And as his hands played a melody, his lips began to softly explore the exposed flesh along my neck. I murmured with barely contained pleasure at his delicate kisses, feeling them trace the tendons in my neck and up to just below my ear. I shivered as I felt his breath there, and then his voice whispering directly into my head.

"Welcome home."