A/N: This author does not own the Phantom of the Opera or any of its characters.
Well, I wrote myself into a stunning corner. Had to sit there and frown at it for a bit. I'm trying not to take things to quickly but the story is falling into place much more rapidly than I am used to.
Please review! I got 1510 hits as of 12/28 and I would be lucky if just a few of you dropped me a line to let me know how I was doing. I'll confess, I used to write all the time before college started and this is my first attempt in three years. And now with much ado…
Raoul stood, gingerly, as to not wake Christine. They had spent most of the night talking to Katerina and Erik. The situation was clear now but that did not mean he was comfortable with it. The woman was engaged to the phantom? Six years ago he would have laughed. He would have claimed that no one would have any thought to care for the madman. Now, though…
The more he watched them together the more human the evil Mephistopheles from his memory became. He could hear them in the room next door, arguing playfully over tea. He watched his sleeping wife. There was something much more unsettling about this situation though. If Erik had been the phantom six years ago then who was assaulting the theater today? He supposed he wasn't the only on with that question on his mind. They were being threatened, he supposed Christine and he could go to the police but the menacing voice had been right. That left little protection for Katerina and Erik. He knew that Katerina would not abandon the man just to keep herself safe. Raoul sighed, and brushed a lock of Christine's hair from her face.
Swiftly he stood and pushed the door open.
"Goodness Erik, I can make tea at least."
"After your attempt with the soufflé I must insist that you have nothing to do with my meals."
"I don't see how I can mess up tea…"
"Last time you made it, you completely forgot all about it, and I found it cold and bitter."
"Posh, just put more water and sugar in it."
"So I end up with warm sweet water instead of hot tea?"
"Maybe we should have kept the cook."
Katerina frowned as she mused about her cooking then she blinked as the door to the bedroom swing open.
"Good afternoon, Vicomte."
The man nodded, he was as distant as Erik this morning.
Katerina smiled brightly, "Would you like some tea? I am afraid Erik will have to oblige you since I am not to be trusted around foodstuffs."
She thought she saw the man blink and then nod, "if you would be so kind."
Erik was silent, only because she had scolded him for grumbling constantly. It had started to give her a headache. He returned with tea, Raoul's and his own as Katerina nibbled on a strawberry tart.
"Erik, you said that the grotto lair had been ransacked?"
Katerina saw the Vicomte perk up. Erik had told her the news this morning after they had taken the noose down from his study.
"Yes, most of our things were in disarray, as if he had been looking for something."
"I can't imagine what," Katerina mumbled as she licked a bit of cream from her fingers.
She blinked when she realized that Erik was watching her and that Raoul was watching him. She gently lay down her tart.
"You are both behaving very oddly, I hope you know that."
"It was a very odd night, perhaps it rubbed off," the Vicomte said over his tea.
"Well I sincerely hope it passes."
Erik smiled at her slightly. He had been watching her eat, licking cream from her slender fingers, and he had suddenly found himself rather upset that the damned Vicomte was in the room. He would have liked very much to just toss Katerina over his shoulder and make his way to the swan bed.
She had slept in his arms last night while Christine and Raoul had taken his room. He knew that he should be worried about this new threat but the memory of the way she had wound her body against him in the night would not leave his mind.
Katerina looked at him with confusion but her eyes glittered. Damned tease, she knew exactly why he was behaving oddly.
The door to the bedroom moved again and Christine poked her head into the room.
"I thought I heard voices," she breathed.
Katerina smiled, "Come join us."
Christine sat on the divan next to Katerina and accepted an apple tart. The four sat in silence. Not quite friends but not quite hating each other any longer. It was Katerina, who spoke first,
"So, I assume today will be filled with plotting?"
Erik nodded slightly as Christine and Raoul took on identical looks of discomfort.
Katerina smiled sweetly all around the room, "Do we have any suggestions?"
Silence.
Finally Erik straightened in his chair, "None of us are safe in this theater. I assume that it is no longer safe in your hotel either. If we are to ally ourselves against this person we need some place…"
"Some place to speak where the walls do not have ears." Raoul finished.
Christine swallowed jerkily and nodded in agreement.
Katerina sipped her tea thoughtfully, "Well, I don't know about you but that can be easily taken care of. I believe that I shall take the Madame here to pack up her hotel and aid me on a few errands and you Erik, can see if the Vicomte will be kind enough to help you clean up a bit here."
"Clean?" Erik asked as he and 'The Vicomte' shared uneasy glances.
"Downstairs."
"Of course," Erik nodded as her meaning sunk in.
Katerina had that glittering look as if she had suddenly come to a place in her mind where she knew she would be safe, if only for a moment, the same glittering look that had created Madame Durand. Erik nodded, ignoring the looks from Raoul and Christine. He had spent enough time with Katerina over the years to trust her for an afternoon.
He watched them leave. They were separating. The ladies to a coach and the gentlemen back to the theater, how entertainingly clever of them. He couldn't possibly keep an eye on both parties. Now the choice was up to him, to join fellow men on an expedition or to give into his sweet weakness and go chasing skirts? He grinned against the warming morning air. Life was full of such temptingly delightful decisions.
Katerina waited until the coach had rattled down the streets for a few minutes before regarding the woman in the seat before her.
"Smile girl, you look like you've been slapped by a demon."
Christine looked up and blinked for a moment, "Madame Durand! You language…"
"Oh enough of that, call me Katerina. Durand isn't my real name and neither is it Erik's, so I have no care for it."
"I am sorry, I am just a little shaken."
"I understand of course, but now is the time for work. It's the time to get our ducks in a row, as my mother used to say. There isn't any use if you fall apart crying. If you do then you have let this bastard win already, and the time for that decision is not at hand yet."
Katerina watched her nod and gather herself, her brown ringlets curled around her face like a mess halo. Katerina smiled slightly. Christine was only a year younger than she was. Why then did the woman seem like a child to her?
Christine swallowed, "Katerina, aren't you scared?"
Katerina stared out the window of the coach.
"Madame, I am terrified."
"I don't understand what the hell is going on!"
Erik ignored Raoul for a few more seconds as he slipped his hand behind a pillar and twitched the small lever that was hidden from sight.
"I would think it obvious. The phantom that we have found ourselves up against has been living in this theater, and no one knows the hidden places of the theater better than I."
The hidden door swung open and a cool rush of air filled the study.
Raoul frowned, "Just how many passages are there?"
"Including the two Katerina had built? Twenty-five."
"God, this is going to take forever."
"Then we must start now, Katerina expects us to be done by the time she returns."
"You have got to be joking?"
Erik felt a ghost of a smile cross his features, "While I have an exquisite sense of humor I fear that Katerina does not."
They walked silently into the dark passage, Erik moving quickly like a cat with Raoul trailing behind him, stumbling here and there in the dark.
Finally they reached the upturned lair.
"Not even the mob left it this bad," Raoul remarked as Erik lit a candelabra.
Erik shrugged, "All the important things had been removed."
Raoul edged silently around the wreckage of the place that had haunted his dreams. Everything had changed now; there was no fear when dreaming was replaced by cold dank reality. He watched Erik hiss at a pile of charred papers. The man seemed to be grumbling over something. A small part of Raoul wanted to smile; he wanted to gloat, as if to say 'See? You are getting what you deserve, a murder being plagued by madman. The tables have turned and you don't like it very much, do you?' But he bit his tongue, yes; it was true that now Erik knew how Raoul had felt those years ago. Of course it also meant that Raoul knew what Erik was going through as well.
He hadn't expected to ever feel sympathy for the man that had made his life and love a living hell for months. Still, he had seen the way the man held Katerina. Raoul knew the urge to comfort, to protect. Apparently in the time that had passed this monster had learned how. He watched Erik stand and kick aside a charred bit of wood.
"There isn't a lot left here. I can't tell if anything's been taken since we were moving at the time and it's been…"
Raoul watched him paused and then slightly smile to himself, "Well, it's been about six months since I was in this place."
"I thought the phantom did not leave his lair."
Erik sighed and pushed a curtain out of the way as he made his way to a new room, "Maybe the phantom didn't but Erik sure as hell was not going to argue with Katerina."
"Women do that sometimes," Raoul mused.
"So I have been learning, fickle creatures."
"But that is their best trait."
"You'd talk about your wife that way?"
Raoul grinned slightly, "All I was saying…"
"I am not your boyhood friend, and I can still throttle you, Vicomte. Watch your tongue."
"Of course sir."
Raoul nodded, so the scars still smarted despite everything.
"You are seeing things!"
Christine clutched fearfully at the curtains as Katerina scolded her.
"Christine! There is no one outside the window, we are two stories up!"
"But he attacked your room and Erik said you were up seven stories."
"I'm sure he came in from the hall like a normal person before making his daring escape, now stop seeing faces in every shadow and get on with your packing."
Christine frowned and went back to pile of clothes on her bed. She had seen something. Whether it was a shadow or a phantom she couldn't be sure. At least Katerina seemed capable of taking on an attacker. Or at least at pretending she could. It gave Christine some confidence. She wondered how Raoul was getting along with Erik. Katerina had told the both to behave or else. While it seemed that perhaps Erik knew what or else entailed Raoul and she were just going to have to wonder.
Christine noticed Katerina gently smooth a bit of lace with her fingers. She seemed to be admiring one of Christine's gowns.
"Raoul had that made for me for my birthday."
Katerina looked up as if she had been startled; Christine smiled as the normally strong woman blushed.
"I-it's very pretty."
Christine had changed into a wispy pastel pink frock for summer. The pale white lace hung dreamily from her wrists and spilled forth from her low cut bodice. Her hair also hung in loose billowing curls. She watched Katerina from across the bed.
Katerina was wearing a dress that was so high cut that she couldn't have been comfortable for the warmth of the day. It looked black but outside in the daylight Christine had seen that it was a very, very dark shade of green. The sleeves went all the way to her wrists and ended in a severe cuff. Also her dark hair was pulled up from her face in a tight chignon that was circled in black ribbon. Not a stray hair escaped that ribbon.
Christine smiled, "Don't you have any summer dresses, Katerina?"
Katerina frowned and looked back down at the lace, "The dress I am wearing is fine. I don't see any difference as long as it's functional."
Christine raised an eyebrow and the blush across Katerina's face burned brighter.
"Look, I'm a painter and if I wear a-anything that fine it just gets ruined. So it's not a good idea… I mean… Well, what I want to say is…"
Katerina lapsed into silence with a burning look in her eyes.
Christine blinked. She hadn't expected that the woman's composure was so false. Suddenly Christine realized that she was no longer looking at Madame Durand but at Katerina. Katerina, who shyly stood off to the side of the bed and fingered the fine lace that edged a gossamer blue gown.
"I am not used to having fine things. I think that Erik may be more used to them than I."
"I see," Christine said, "I didn't mean to offend you in any way."
"I'm fine, I just don't normally speak to… women."
"Other women you mean?"
Katerina nodded, "My mother died when I was young and it was just my father and my brothers. There wasn't much talk of frocks and lace in my house."
Christine felt a pang of sympathy for the woman who suddenly looked like just another girl, longing for pretty things and feminine trappings.
A crash sounded from outside the door.
Katerina stiffened suddenly and went for the door.
"Katerina!"
"Hush!"
Slowly Katerina pushed open the door. Christine couldn't see into the room but Katerina's eyes narrowed and she paused in opening the door.
"Christine," she said her voice low, "finish packing. Now."
The door shut behind Katerina and Christine found herself alone.
Erik jerked on the metal wheel that was supposed to open the door at the end of the corridor. He and Raoul had finished searching the lair and some of the adjoining corridors in relative silence.
"Here, maybe if we do it together."
Erik stayed silent as Raoul reached over and they both gripped the wheel. Erik gritted his teeth more at the discomforting closeness than at the strain of turning the rusted wheel. He heard the grinding of metal and the squealing of the hinges as the door opened.
"That wasn't so hard."
Erik ignored the man's cheeky smile and blinked.
"Well, that's never good."
The pair stared down the corridor. Unlike Erik had been expecting, it was brightly lit and seemed almost cheery.
"Perhaps we have found the right place?"
Erik slowly nodded and looked around for anything that seemed to be out of place.
"It looks all right."
"So you say."
Erik rolled his eyes, "I'll go first if you want."
"That wouldn't be very friendly of me."
Erik looked at Raoul, "Take the first step then."
Raoul frowned, "We'll go together."
Both men nodded trying to hide their anxiety.
They walked together silently. Erik frowned, whoever had lit the torches either knew they were coming or expected someone to be in the catacombs. Erik hadn't remembered this passage being this long. Suddenly Raoul stopped.
"Erik…"
"What?"
Raoul slowly inclined his head down. Erik followed his gaze and after a few moments saw the glittering of the trip wire in the torchlight. Raoul's ankle was pressed into it, but not all the way.
Damn it! He should have been paying attention!
"Don't move."
"Wasn't even considering it."
Erik quickly scanned the wall trying to see what sort of mechanism that the wire was connected to.
"Erik!"
He turned suddenly as a shadow rippled out of the dark. Suddenly the air was filled with rope, dangling nooses choked the passage way and he heard a grunt as he fell backwards. There was a grinding click of machinery, Raoul must have moved.
Erik caught sight of the man hanging onto the ropes above a chasm where the floor had once been.
"Hang on!" Erik tossed the rope aside and took a step forward.
"Watch out!"
Erik looked up to see a flash of metal, metal and a mask. The edge of the sword struck him across the face and he heard a cracking noise as the blow resonated through his head. Blood poured down into his right eye and he fumbled for a second as he heard Raoul yelling. There was another flash of silver and he brought up his hand to stop the blow, but it struck true and his mind exploded into red.
Aww, poor Erik, I really need to stop being so mean to him.