Chapter Eighteen – From the Road Less Traveled to a Fate Worse than Death
Persia 1875
"Well, hello." I stared at the woman, eyes wide. "I was beginning to wonder when you'd show up, Sir Garnier." She rises from the bed, her sheer, draping garment hanging loosely and seductively on her frame, though I try very hard not to take notice. Don't get distracted. You are here for one thing and one thing only.
"Who the hell are you?" I growl at her as she moves ever closer, taking hold on one of my forearms with her nimble, tan fingers.
"You really shouldn't be worrying about that," the woman murmurs, standing on tiptoe and pressing her lips along the exposed skin at the base of my neck. She works her way around me as I stand stock still. When she finds her way to my front, she rips the flimsy fabric of my shirt in half, leaving my chest bare, the ruined garment hanging open.
Behind me once again, the woman pulls the shirt off of my shoulders, leaving my body open to her eyes from the torso up. "You're so tense," she whispers, massaging my shoulder blades softly but forcefully. "Maybe you're worried my husband may catch us in our little exploits, hmm?" The woman traces the tip of her tongue down my back, causing me to shudder, and then she comes back to face me, her mouth dancing over the skin of my chest. Her hands grip onto my shoulders and she is soon looking up into my face.
"Husband?" I gulp. Stop! You're afraid again!
"Why, of course," she murmurs, kissing her way up the column of my throat. "I'd think that you would have figured it out by now." Then it all clicks, and apparently she can tell. "I knew you'd come round. Any man would kill to fill your shoes, to be on the threshold of lovemaking with the Khanum." I try to speak but voice fails me. "I don't believe you'll need this." Before I can stop her, she has taken my white mask and thrown it to the ground.
I wildly try to cover my face, the hideous part of me that has kept me from the world for all of these years. "You bitch! What are you…" The Khanum has grabbed my face with her hands, her smooth skin a harsh touch to the stubble of my good cheek and foreign to my deformed side.
"I know what you want, and I am willing to give it to you." A smile creases her face, her eyes glinting with wanton lust and pure evil. "However," she adds, before I can respond, "you must give me something in return. It is only fair." The Khanum runs her hands up and down my chest now, caressing the skin, sparse hair, and muscle. "Silent?" she whispers up at me when I do not answer, a cunning smile creasing her face.
I nearly shout in surprise as she touches her hand to my inner thigh, tracing circles with her fingers. Gulping, I answer her, "I will not…"
"Hush, now. I understand that you have not had prior experience," the Khanum murmurs, moving her hand that isn't preoccupied with tormenting me to touch my malformed cheek, and I shudder at the contact. "That is not a problem; I am not new to showing a man," her hand comes in gentle contact with the fabric covering my manhood as she speaks, "pleasure."
I'm so shocked now that I don't even feel it when she leads me like a dumb and blind child over to her bed and pushes me down upon it, straddling me as Indira did and returning to her sequence of moving her hands across my chest. "Now," she says, her voice dropping into a caliber I only know as one a woman uses when filled with lust, "let's begin with this, shall we?" To my sheer disgust and horror, the Khanum lowers her face to mine and presses her lips upon my own, sucking at them, using them for her own pleasure. As she kisses me, her nimble fingers find their way to the buttons on my pants and begin snapping them out of their fastenings.
Suddenly, I come to, realizing where I am. Never have I had a woman and I don't intend to tonight. Shoving the Khanum off of me, I roll on top of her and pin her shoulders down with my large hands. "Tell me where Christine is!" I growl at her, forcing her down into the mattress. "Tell me where she is or I will kill you and mangle your body for your husband to find in the morn."
"I'm afraid that telling you will be no use," the Khanum replies, awfully calmly for a woman whose life is being threatened by a man twice her size. "You see, your darling Christine isn't who you think she is, not any more." That sinful smile spreads across her face like an infection, and it feels as though the sheer evilness with seep into my skin through the contact of my hands on her shoulders.
"What do you mean?" I say through gritted teeth. "What the hell do you mean?" Shouting now, I press harder, eager for the kill like I haven't been in nearly five years.
"Should you go to your little porcelain doll, sir, I'm afraid you will find her quite asleep." I look at her confusedly, contemplating what she could mean. "You will find your protégée quite drugged, milord," the Khanum says with a fiercer tone than before.
The words don't sink in. They just…don't. The only one that stuck was somebody calling my Angel my protégée once again. "You…"
"Of course I know about you, Monsieur le Fantôme. She cries in her sleep every night, screaming for an angel to save her, an 'Angel of Music,' sir!" The Khanum rises from the bed, stalking me like a lioness. "She screams in the night, 'please, Daddy, send me the Angel of Music! Send me an angel to guide me!' And she wakes up yelling and crying and babbling about some unknown voice in the darkness, a spirit with no bodily form. The thing yells under the influence some harsh tune, 'Down once more to the dungeons of my black despair!' 'Turn around and face your fate!' I decided to drug her when she awoke crying and screaming about a man whose face wasn't a face at all!" She is breathing heavily, her voice having erupted from the first quiet words she spoke. "You think, sir, it took long to figure out that this monster she spoke of was you! You were her 'Angel' so many years ago, sir, and you thought she would forget! Not so easily! And now you are back as her rapist, my God!"
Her chest heaves as I stare at her incredulously. Down once more to the dungeons of my black despair…turn around and face your fate! "You…drugged the girl?" I ask her.
"We have our fair share of opium around the palace, sir. It was not hard to find a tea form and give it to her twice daily. The poor thing nearly depends on it now." Without a moment's hesitation I slap her roughly across the face, and I immediately regret it. Visions flood back to me of backhanding Christine the first night I came to the harem, manhandling her like a common whore.
I back up, sinking to the floor to grab my mask, stumbling out of the room and running, running as if I've never run before. There is nothing in my head but finding Christine, saving her from what she's destined to be. As I replace the mask on my face, my lack of attention to my surroundings runs me into a young girl about Christine's age. "Excuse me," I mutter, trying to move past.
"Wait!" the girl cries out, and I turn. "Do you need any help with…anything?" I see her eyeing my mask, bare chest and half-unbuttoned pants with great scrutiny.
I walk back up to her and ask her, trying to stay calm, "Do you know a Christine Daaè, miss?" The girl's eyes widen to incredible proportions.
"Yes," she answers quietly. "I can help you find her." The harem girl grabs my hand and drags me down the hallway until we're at the room in which I'd first come to Christine. It is utterly dark inside, though it smells of jasmine. I see the moonlight shining off of the silky bedspread that hides a small, womanly form beneath it.
I take a tentative step towards her when I hear moans coming from the bed. No, Daddy. Please, don't let him hurt Raoul. Daddy, it's all my fault. Daddy! Hurrying to her side, I kneel down by the bed, the girl standing a few respectful feet behind me. Reaching out a gentle hand, I touch Christine's forehead, cool and clammy. "Christine, mon ange. Christine, listen to your Angel. Hush, bébé, do not cry," I coo, letting my voice float over her.
She wakes with a start, panting heavily, and I avert my eyes from her filmy and sheer shift. Her eyes lock with mine and a startled hand flies to her mouth. "No…no…go away, please!" she cries, tears welling up in her eyes. Hastily, I rummage around in my pocket and find the little vial of sleeping draft, uncorking it and running it beneath her nose. She is instantly in a dead sleep.
Replacing the vial in my pocket, I remove the covers and scoop Christine's scantily clad form up into my arms, holding her against my chest. Mon dieu, she is thin. "Come," the other girl says urgently. "She will have woken up the whole harem by now. We must move quickly." She leads me out the door of the room and down some hallways, twisting and turning into the maze of the harem. There are sounds in the hallway up ahead and we stop, leaning against a wall.
"My name's Lakhi," the girl says timidly, her voice quiet even for our intruder-induced silence. "I don't mean to be rude, but my sister told me about you coming here and it just didn't seem true that you would hurt her," she remarks, motioning to Christine lying defenseless in my arms. "And when I saw you running from the Khanum…I knew you were better than they said. Most men just fall for her and let her do as she pleases with them. Nobody's turned her down since I've been here, nearly five summers now."
There isn't much I can say in response, at least nothing that's comfortable, so I nod in her direction, and I know she can see me. "Call me Erik," I add, knowing that there probably won't be a time after tonight when it will be relevant. The sounds subside and we hurry onward, until finally we step out into a courtyard shadowed in moonlight. Lakhi adjusts Christine's shift and hair, making her what I assume to be more comfortable. "You have a place to stay?"
"Yes, Lakhi, thank you." She smiles gently and strokes Christine's mass of curly hair.
"I'll miss her, you know. But I'm sure that things are better this way. I know she could never have been happy serving men, even if she put on the façade of being all right with it." Lakhi bows her head in a solemn pause. "Good luck," she wishes me. "And please, never tell anybody I helped you. If this was found out…they say that there are worse punishments than death for disobedience or fraternizing with men outside of duty."
"I will keep this secret, Lakhi," I reply forcefully, "but only if you will do the same for me, for Christine's sake. If there are punishments worse than death…"
"Oh, I would never sell another person into that fate! Could you do that? Could you, Erik?" The girl poses an interesting question. What am I to say? Someone like me…
"No," I lie softly, sounding as though I don't really want to say it. "I couldn't do that, Lakhi."
We stand in awkward silence until Lakhi kisses Christine's clammy forehead and squeezes my arm amicably. "Take care of her, please? She's been through so much…"
As I walk off into the Persian night, Christine unconscious in my arms, I think on those words. She's been through so much…and God, do I know it.