Disclaimer: This story is based on a hodge-podge of Phantom storylines and characters, mainly ALW, Kay, and bits of Leroux tossed in here and there for some wicked fun. I love all of the characters and own none of them, except for all of my original ones.

Side Notes:

Thank you to Phantomy-Cookies for betaing! Hers and Le Chat Noir's own wonderful writing can be found here at ffn, under the pen names "Chatastic" and "Phantomy-Cookies".

Thanks for all of the awesome reviews and encouragement. We're almost finished, folks! It has truly been a very busy several months, from house-hunting to grad school portfolios to business trips and vacations. But by writing a paragragh here, a scene there, this story is being completed.

Beneath the Opera House

"It was here."

"What was that?" asked Erik as he gazed out the brougham window as they left the Gare Saint-Lazare railway station behind them, studying the crowds of Parisians leisurely milling about the steaming streets of the Rue du Havre. A series of banners pasted to the wall of a corner shop caught his eye, advertising the beginning of the new opera season and the return of Delibes' Lakmé. He grimaced, knowing that his opera house would be awash with faux Indian silk screens and backdrops upon their return.

Christine turned to him.

"It was here, along the Rue du Havre, that I first came to the Populaire. I was such a naïve thing," she sighed, the telltale lines of her face furrowing wistfully. "I thought that being a part of an opera company simply meant wearing pretty costumes and performing for an audience. My first visit to the ballet foyer to celebrate the season was something of a revelation, I believe." Her cheeks flushed a bright pink, and Erik could all but see the bawdy dalliances she had witnessed.

"The corps de ballet is not exactly known for its discreetness. I am amazed that your ballet mistress was able to accomplish anything at all."

Christine smiled. "As long as we were present for rehearsals and did not miss a single penchée, our personal lives were our own affair."

"Except for yours. Madame Giry watched you like an overbearing nanny," the man drawled.

"Madame Giry watched me because she feared you. Besides, she never interfered with your nefarious plans—not until the very end, anyway." A shadow passed over the woman's blue eyes; the events of that tumultuous opera season dancing through her head were mirrored there. Erik could see what she saw—the notes, the shadows, secrets, murders, and music. Always his music.

"I am not that man anymore," Erik said softly.

Her glazed eyes slid up to his, half-seeing him now and half-seeing him then. "The past makes us what we are today—"

"—I am not that man anymore, Christine," he repeated, his hypnotic gold eyes firmly holding hers. "You have changed me."

"Any changing that took place was done by you alone, Erik. I was merely an instigator."

He tilted his head thoughtfully, mulling over her words. "Perhaps. However, you could not love a murderer—you told me so, yourself. I wanted your love; therefore, I changed."

"But life is not as clear-cut as that, is it? One simply cannot ignite or snuff out love—like a matchstick—simply because one wishes to. You were a murderer—perhaps you are one, yet. But I still loved you. And I will continue to love you, even if you kill again. It is my fate." She sighed and leaned back against the worn leather of the brougham, gazing at the grandiose opera house looming before them, to the right. "I am a child no more, Erik."

"A pity, then. There were many things I adored—loved—about the girl, Christine Daaé." Taking up her hand, he pressed it gently between his thin ones, his mouth curling in irony. "But now I love another—a woman with nefarious plans of her own." He brushed cold, rough lips across her own icy skin, smiling as a shudder coursed through her tiny fingers. She had felt him again—the opera ghost—seeping in and permeating the quiet ambience of the coach, sucking the very warmth from her body as they drew nearer and nearer to the Populaire. And though he had just sworn to Christine that the Phantom of the Opera no longer existed, the ghost claimed him anyway, emerging from the depths of him and manifesting in the hideous gleam of his yellow eyes. Releasing her fingers, he knelt over the satchel at his feet and rifled through it, pulling out the few items he had procured from a hidden-away closet in the east wing of the Chateau de Chagny: a wide-brimmed felt hat, a pair of gloves, and a fine woolen opera cloak. Tugging the gloves over his fingers, he swept the cape over his shoulders, secured it, and lastly, smoothed his black hair down and placed the hat over it, deftly straightening the brim.

Christine blanched at the person before her—someone she'd thought never to see again. Her mouth opened and closed as words left her.

"What is the matter, my dear?" Erik leered. "You look as if you've seen—"

"Do not say it," she hastened. Her eyes swept over her husband, recognizing the actual articles of clothing for the first time. "You do realize that you have stolen Philippe's opera cloak and felt hat?"

"I very well couldn't take his top hat and cane, could I? Rather destroys the image of a sinister, shadowy figure."

"That isn't the point. If Mme. Vasser discovers them missing…why are you laughing?"

"Of all the things that concern me at this moment, the wrath of Mme. Vasser is the least of them."

The brougham turned off of the avenue onto the Rue Scribe and rattled past the portent façade of the Opéra Populaire, its torches causing the stone-white walls to glow gold upon the twilight skyline, like a massive, ornate music box nestled on a concrete pillow in the heart of Paris. Bright red banners and Tricolor several stories high billowed over friezes and columns along the front of the building, heralding the triumphant return of Lakmé and La Carlotta—now in her eighth season with the opera. The coach slowed as it rounded the opera house towards the rotunda side. Fitting his satchel over his shoulder, Erik slid to the opposite side of the brougham and flung the door open before the footman could step forward and assist them. He leapt down, then turned back and held out a hand for Christine.

"Follow me," he commanded, and quickly swept his cloak around his person and moved along the railed ramps of the side entrance, slipping into the shadows of the petit rotunda alcoves.

"What about the Rue Scribe door?" she asked.

"The key was lost in Jerusalem, during that ridiculous chaos. Your sisters of mercy pilfered my pocket watch as well, by the by. Come, there is another way." He pushed through the heavy wooden door and allowed her to pass through, then pulled it shut again. Before Christine knew what had happened, she found herself being shoved into one of the dark recesses surrounding the foyer and still further back, past the heavy stones and into the wall. Panicking, her hands flew out in front of her as the dim square of light grew smaller and smaller. And then it was gone, leaving her in complete darkness.

"Erik," she cried, fretfully patting about the narrow tunnel until her fingers met wool. At last his cold, leather-clad fingers wrapped around hers and she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Do not let go of my hand," he said quietly. "It would be very easy for you to get lost within the walls and floors." He began to move forward, leading her down some sort of ramp that surely took them below the ground floor parquet.

"The walls and floors?"

"One of the opera house's many secrets—half of the structure is hollow. A rather nice feature for one who wishes to live as a ghost."

"Of course," Christine murmured. "Madame Giry said as much to me last year, when I first came to her for help. She told me that the opera house was designed specifically to hold secrets, and then took me through one of the walls…" As she reflected over the ballet mistress' words, she halted, suddenly struck by their meaning. "Erik, did you design the opera house?" There was a brief silence, and Christine could almost hear the man scowl.

"You did not think my home beyond Lake Averne simply appeared via the hand of nature, did you?" And then he continued in a softer vein. "I did not design it, so to speak. I was, however, a chief contractor." They turned another corner, and began to wind up a set of stairs. Orchestral strains of the exotic Lakmé floated from somewhere beyond the hidden hallway, signaling that rehearsal was still in progress despite the lateness of the hour. He continued:

"It was easy enough to adjust the dimensions of rooms in the blue prints; to thicken an alcove here, a column there. And when the project was halted during the Commune, no one was ever the wiser of my presence." He paused in the middle of the staircase and turned towards a conclave within the wall, tugging at some unseen mechanism. A narrow shaft of light permeated the damp gloom of their surroundings. Erik put his eye to the hole, then leaned back and grasped her hand.

"Look," he whispered. Christine stood on her toes to reach the peephole, blinking several times as her eyes adjusted to the sudden shift in light. She gazed about her, trying to ascertain where they were. And then she abruptly reeled back in astonishment—it was the familiar nave of the grand staircase, the stairs themselves just below her. The electric torchères were dimmed, but its marble balconies, bronze fixtures, and frescos still held court over the theatre doors in opulent splendor.

"I cannot believe it!" she breathed excitedly. "Are we…behind one of the bronze statues? We must be!"

"Within it, actually—the one to the left of the Ampitheatre."

"And these are her eyes?" Christine gestured to the openings.

"The folds of her skirt; she stands on a column, remember? Please lower your voice."

"So this is what it is like to be the opera ghost," she murmured in awe. "Always at the center of things, but never a part of it…"

"Something of the sort. Though the job of opera ghost is more daunting than this little jaunt through the main floor."

"I do not doubt it."

Erik's gold eyes glistened in amusement from beneath his felt hat, and for a moment it seemed to Christine as if they glowed yellow. And then he turned away from her and once more moved up the path, into the walls. A sharp turn to the left, then another turn, the secret hallway narrowing until they had to turn sideways to continue on. Christine rested a hand protectively over her midsection.

In two more months, she reflected, I will not be able to navigate through such a narrow path. She began to say as much to Erik, but he waved her silent, gesturing to the wall.

Christine strained to listen…

"Ah! Glissons en suivant! Le courant fuyant!"

"You could sing Lakmé and make the audience weep," Erik murmured caustically, as if he were actually scrutinizing the effort it would take to trigger trapdoors in the stage floor and fell La Carlotta before opening night.

"Dans l'onde frémisan—"

"No, no, no, Signora!" she heard M. Reyer cry. "You cannot over-sing the phrase, or you will obscure Mlle. Berrars' harmony. You must remember that this is a duet!" Christine smiled gently at the despairing voice of the repetiteur; she could all but see his round eyes bulging from his frazzled face.

"If Mad-e-moiselle Berrars cannot carry her own part," snipped the coloratura, pointedly rolling the penultimate "rr"s of the abused woman's name, "then she must go! It is unacceptable to share the stage with such a…a…"

"Signora, my diva, we cannot find another Mallika, as we open in three days. It is nearly eight o'clock, and some of us—"

"You think I am not tired? You think my voice is not weary from these endless rehearsals? It is not my fault that this dreadful excuse for a soubrette cannot sing!"

The beleaguered man sighed. "From 'glissons en suivant', if you please. Musicians: two measures introduction." The orchestra began the soft strains of "The Flower Duet," their poorly-tuned instruments and weakly-supported tones suggesting that they had long ago surpassed their rehearsal limits for the day, and would like nothing better than to toss bows and reeds aside for the feather-clad belles at the lively Le Café Riche.

As Christine drew closer, she could hear the incongruous tap-tap-tapping of Madame Giry's cane from the back of the stage, her firm instructions to the corps de ballet nearly drowned out by the soaring notes of Lakmé and Mallika.

"Ah. We have found your ballet instructor," Erik whispered at her ear. "Keep to the shadows, and wait for her to see you—not the other way around. Go directly to her chambers and I will return for you there." He brushed his cool lips to her cheek and before she could protest, thrust her into the open once again, the wall sliding shut behind her. Not quite sure what to do with herself, she melted into the shelter of an unused scenery flat depicting some generic scene of pastoral bliss and stayed there, watching, waiting to catch the ballet mistress' stern eye.

Christine's gaze fell upon the young ballet corps. Save for a matured Meg Giry and Jammes, not a single face was familiar to her; most of her peers had either retired, married, or continued on to other opera houses. She sighed as she watched them leap and float across the stage in a flurry of graceful limbs and lace, a twinge of nostalgia constricting her heart and throat. Meg, now prima ballerina, pirouetted onstage with the ease of a weightless bird, leading her flock of nightingales through each position as her mother's cane kept time. And then the tap-tap-tapping faltered. Madame Giry started in surprise, her dark eyes darting about the stage as if looking for someone. She paused, a hand pressed over her heart. Conscious of sixteen pairs of eyes upon her, she hurriedly scolded the corps for stopping and motioned for them to continue through their positions. Christine sucked in her breath; the ballet mistress was walking towards her.

"Christine Daaé, are you here?" the older woman whispered.

"Yes."

Madame Giry exhaled in relief. "Mon Dieu! For a moment, I thought I was mad—hearing him again, in my ear, telling me I was to find you here in the shadows. He…you… have been gone so long, I quite despaired you would ever return."

Overwhelmed, Christine clasped the woman's hands in gratitude, quite unsettling the ballet mistress. "Oh Madame Giry, you need not have despaired! I am alive, my son is alive, and it is all because of Erik—you told him to go to London, I know it, and so many things have happened since. I hardly know where to begin…"

Madame Giry extracted her hands from Christine's grasp and motioned for the girl to follow her further backstage. She studied the girl carefully— her lightly-browned skin, faint crinkles in the corners of her mouth, marked determination in her blue eyes, growing figure—not quite believing the year's changes evoked in the woman before her.

"Perhaps," she said delicately, "you could begin by telling me about the most obvious 'happening' since you left Paris."

Christine's cheeks reddened. She lifted her left hand, showing the ballet mistress the plain gold ring that rested there.

"All is well in that respect, Madame Giry, I assure you."

"I thought as much," she sighed. "When you left for London and the 'opera ghost' vanished not long after, I was worried it would only be a matter of time. Others thought you to be dead—the managers included—but Meg and I knew otherwise. We knew whom you were with and the lengths he would go to shield you, the things he is capable of. We thought—hoped—you would return some day."

"I cannot say that life has been easy since we left Paris, but I cannot complain of idleness, either." Her eyes shining, Christine told Madame Giry of the things they had seen: the streets of London; the green of the Mediterranean Sea; the deserts of the Middle East they had crossed in midnight flight; the Bohemian spires and the Turkish minarets. She told her of the strange music she had heard in Jerusalem, and how she and Erik had married in a tiny Franciscan monastery chapel (though she remained silent about deceiving the holy sisters and the discovery of their subterranean cardos; she preferred to keep these memories to herself, to think upon in quiet delight).

Madame Giry studied the gambit of emotions playing across the young woman's features, her own face firmly rooted in long-practiced stoicism. She listened to her former pupil's tale, all-the-while steering her beyond the alertness of her rehearsing ballet corps, past the freshly painted sets and screens and through a darkened back hallway, up a set of stairs towards the grand tier boxes.

It wasn't until Christine finished her story that she glanced about and saw where the ballet mistress had led her. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest. The door to Box Five, with its brass plate gleaming in the semi-darkness of the red-curtained tier, loomed before her as a blatant token of all that had passed in the Opéra Populaire. The opera ghost's haunting ground, once sacred and sacrilegious; now, just another handful of francs in the pockets of Mssrs. Firmin and Andre.

"Madame, why are we here?" she questioned.

"A reminder," Mme. Giry said tersely. "Never forget who he is—what he is—the man you have married. Having his protection is one thing; marriage, entirely another. Perhaps being away from Paris…away from the opera, has made you forget the lies, the deceit, the murders…"

"I have not forgotten. Things have changed, Madame." Christine's eyes softened with a light that shone not so much with resignation, but acceptance. "Erik will always have his black dispositions and shadows. He will always have his masks." She fixed her gaze on her former guardian. "The change is this: I understand them now. I love him in spite of his faults—because of his faults. He is trying to be a better person, Madame, so hard, but it takes time. I can wait for him, if he keeps trying."

"But think of your children, Christine. Surely Erik cannot be a good father to them, with such a disposition—"

Christine shook her head. "He may not have the makings or the temperament to be a father, but my children will be loved."

The ballet mistress sighed and held her hands out in acquiescence. "Childish naivety and foolhardiness have proven time and again to be wretched combinations, Christine Daaé. But I can see you will not be moved." Taking a small key from the clanking ring at her waist, she placed it in the lock and turned it, the ominous click chilling Christine a great deal more than it ought to.

"Would you like to see the box again?"

"Yes," she whispered.

Madame Giry pushed back the velvet red curtain between the door and the box, allowing her to pass through. She had only been inside the box on a few occasions, and then rather hurriedly for fear of confronting her estranged teacher. But the box was much as it always was, with its draperies and gilded furniture. Even the small footstool was still there, tucked away in a corner and awaiting the ankles of some elderly aristocrat with a penchant for Gounod. Christine leaned against the pillar and exhaled, lost in the nostalgia permeating the air.

"They have been here, Christine," said the ballet mistress. "Many times."

"Who?"

"Do you really need to ask? That man and his watchers—they have been waiting for you to return."

"Yes, I know. They are aware of our coming to Paris. It won't be long..."

Madame Giry crossed to the balcony and peered down onto the stage, watching her young dancers as they practiced the ballet sequence.

"I see all that goes on in the opera house; I have seen them in the halls, the foyers and parlors, even in the cellars, combing the building from top to bottom for several months now—" Christine's head came up abruptly, and at once the reverie was broken.

"The cellars? They have been in the fourth cellar, as well? I thought Erik had blocked it."

"They have been there many times. I believe they met with a trap door more than once, and had trouble slinking away without drawing attention. The managers thought them to be common vagrants looking for an escape from the summer heat, but I knew better."

A cold, dreadful fear stirred deep within Christine as she comprehended the woman's words. It rapidly brewed into a panic that sent her tumbling through the curtains and flying for the door.

"Erik is in the fourth cellar, Madame Giry!" she called over her shoulder as she tore down the grand tier hallway, towards the stairs. "If they were to happen upon him, there would be no one there, no one to help! I must warn him—is the mirror in my old dressing room still there?"

It was then, just as she was rounding the corner of the landing that she stumbled headlong into M. Firmin at the top of the stairs, blocking her way. The man, immensely startled, grasped the banister with one hand and her elbow with the other, steadying them both before they tumbled down the flight of stairs. Straightening his fine silk waistcoat, he stared at her for a full minute, gape-mouthed and stuttering, unable to string two words together. His two companions came up the stairs behind him: M. Andre, suddenly as silent as his friend, and another gentleman whose presence gripped Christine with icy fingers of terror that rooted her to the floor.

The other man was Michel David, the Marquis de Bourges: Aristocrat, eldest brother of Monsieur Henri David, and faithful brother of the Fraternité. And he was staring at her with the same mix of shocked disbelief as the others.

"Good God!" managed Firmin at last, still clinging to her elbow and slowly finding verbal footing. "My lady Comtesse! We thought—or had heard—that you vanished. Some even believed you were…but never mind about that. How utterly fortuitous! How splendid that you have returned!"

"Your continued patronage has been wondrously beneficial to the Opéra Populaire," exclaimed M. Andre, "and we have long desired to tell you as much. Why, just last season we were able to build a detailed replica of King Herod's throne room, complete with—"

"Forgive my friend's rudeness," interrupted M. Firmin, earning a scowl from his counterpart. "Do you know the Marquis de Bourges? Of course you do! He has recently offered his patronage to the Populaire—"

"—most generously, we might add—"

"—and anticipates becoming an essential part of our little company for years to come, much in the way your own distinguished family—"

"Excuse me," Christine said abruptly. Mustering her limbs to life again, she carefully extracted her elbow from the clammy grasp of M. Firmin, then spun around and flew down the hallway, leaving them astonished in her wake.

"Comtesse, wait! I must speak with you!" she heard the Marquis de Bourges call after her as she ran around the corner and towards the safety of Box Five, the only option left to her. Madame Giry was just locking the heavy door when Christine pushed her hands aside and flung it open.

"Lock it behind me!" she cried to the startled madam.

"Christine Daaé, what in heaven's name—"

"Lock it, please, and do not let anyone in!"

Speechless, Madame Giry did as she was commanded. Christine heard the lock click into place just as a bedlam of male voices reached Box Five. She knew she hadn't much time before Michel David caught up with her. Pushing past the curtain into the box, she frantically patted along the walls, looking for some sort of trigger—a hidden knob, or lever, or cord—to reveal a secret passageway.

"What is the meaning of this? I say, open this door at once, Madame Giry!"

"Comtesse de Chagny, are you well? Have we offended in some way?"

Please God, let there be something…there must be, she silently prayed. Her searching fingers reached the ornate column tucked into the left side of the wall and she heard a soft clicking sound. Sobbing in relief, she stood back as the column slid away to reveal a corkscrew staircase, dark and narrow, winding down into oblivion.

Christine hesitated. She had never been in this part of the labyrinth before—without a lantern or a torch, no less—and there were many frightening things beneath the opera house besides a ghost.

"Christine!" called the Marquis. "You needn't be afraid of me; there is something I must tell you!"

Her mind was made up. She ventured into the secret path, the stairwell beginning to grow dimmer and dimmer as light faded to complete blackness. The door slid shut behind her, closing her off from Box Five, Madame Giry, and the world of light.

ooOOoo

Christine did not immediately throw herself into the perils of the opera cellars, but waited until she was absolutely certain that there was no other means of escape but into the churning shadows below.

"What the devil—" came the Marquis' cry of surprise from within the box, followed by M. Andre's "a door! All of this time, there must have been a secret door!" It would not be long before they found it.

Taking a deep breath and offering up another prayer to the divine, she took a tentative step into the passageway, then another, clutching at the chilly stone wall for support. Down, down she stumbled blindly, fingernails scraping ahead of her along the cylinder at the middle of the staircase, one step after the other. The air gradually took on the well-known musty stench that clung so diligently to Erik, as if it had eternally permeated his skin—dankness, death—a smell that at once twisted her insides and at the same time, strangely, comforted her with its familiarity.

After fifteen long minutes of circling into nothingness, the path began to straighten. Christine paused and struggled to gauge her surroundings.

I would be two cellars below the stage by now, which is somewhere to my left. And that is the direction in which the path sloped downward…

Unless she had become disoriented in the staircase, and was now heading towards the bone-strewn Communard roads…

Tugging the brim of her rather outdated trimmed Parisian hat down in a show of determination, she turned left.

"Merde," she breathed, the soft word echoing in the tunnel. She sniffed cynically. Jean-Paul was not the only one to have picked up one of Erik's bad habits.

Jean-Paul. As she wandered through the darkness, stripped of all sight, her mind conjured images of the one precious person who occupied her thoughts relentlessly. It had been nearly four months since she had seen her little boy, held him in her arms. He had celebrated his third birthday with strangers, while she scoured the streets of Constantinople in search of her husband. What would he look like when she saw him again, her growing child? The past year had brought such changes in his appearance: he would be at least a hand taller, his solemn blue eyes larger and more intelligent in his three-year-old face. His questions would consist not only of Why? but also How?, Where?, and Show me.

Christine's heart ached. She pressed her grimy fingers to her cheeks and wiped away several escaped tears, leaving a streak of dirt in their place.

I have not been the best of mothers, she thought regretfully, but when I see you again, my dearest son, I will show you all that is in my heart at this very moment.

The journey into the cellars was surprisingly uneventful most of the way, as she clung judiciously to the slippery stone walls, not daring to stray from their sturdiness. It wasn't until she was stumbling along somewhere in the vicinity of the second or perhaps even third cellar that her musings of remorse were shaken. Her little booted feet were shuffling along the paving when a small, soft body brushed along her silken ankle. Christine clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the scream in her throat and kicked out at the rodent, sending it scurrying away with an indignant squeak. But relief was not hers; for as soon as the first rat was gone, there was a second, then a third, then dozens of little squeaks and hisses, their claws clicking upon the rocky labyrinth with a tapping that grew maddeningly louder by the second.

"Do not move…" echoed an otherworldly voice all around her.

Her fingers tightened over her mouth, her nails creating half-moons in her cheeks as she cried and sobbed into her hand. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of rats flooded around her, running and leaping down the path; she could hear them, feel them moving like a swift current towards some unknown opening.

"Let me pass! My rats…my rats…"

Christine squeezed her eyes shut more tightly, terrified to open them and face the red, devilish face she knew would be hovering in the path in front of her, moving closer…

"Do not follow—the rats!"

The Rat-catcher.

How many times had Erik told her of the half-men, half-creatures who roamed the underground beneath the opera house? How often had he warned her never to journey into the labyrinth alone, lest she meet with one of these horrific ghouls? And now a dim, orangeish glow was there beyond her eyelids, growing stronger, brighter—warming her face as if it were staring, breathing right in front of her…

Her hand fell away from her mouth and she screamed and screamed, her panicked cries resounding through the labyrinth. The rats screamed with her, their frightened squeaks and squeals rising to a deafening crescendo, then waning as they swept past her feet. And then the wretched creatures trickled away as quickly as they had appeared, rushing further up the tunnel and into the black void until there was nothing. No sound but her rapid, raspy breathing.

Cautiously, she opened one eye, then two. The Rat-catcher was gone as well, and she was once again immersed in safe, beautiful darkness. She shakily untangled her limbs from the wall and gathered her skirts in her fists. Trudging forward, she rounded the corner that had so thoroughly hid the Rat-catcher from her and moved on, her trembling fingers once again tracing their way along the wall. She had survived, she told herself, and she would find her way through the maze, even if she met that flaming head a dozen times over.

It wasn't long before a second light began to suffuse the path with pale, yellow glow. This light, however, was not accompanied by thousands of squeaking rodents, but by a voice, just as frantic, calling out to her.

"Christine! Christine, where are you?"

"Erik!" she called out in relief, pulling away from the wall completely and hurrying towards the light. A dark figure behind the lantern's circle rushed towards her, pulling her into in an embrace as she flung herself against his cloaked body.

"You…were screaming. I ran…" he managed between labored breaths. "What the devil happened?"

"The Rat-catcher. I have never met him before." She gave him a weak smile. "He is not the pleasantest of people to run into beneath the opera house."

Erik sighed and kissed her forehead, then pulled back to study her. Face unreadable, he slid a pristine gloved hand beneath his coat and pulled out a crisp white handkerchief, and gently wiped the smudge of dirt from her face.

"How you found yourself in this labyrinth when I specifically told you not to follow me, I simply cannot imagine. But it doesn't matter just now; I am taking you right back up to the surface."

"The Marquis de Bourges is here, Erik."

"What was that?"

"Michel David—he is above-ground with the managers, and he ran after me. I didn't have any other choice but to go into the cellars." Christine sniffed bitterly. "He is the new opera patron, of all things! What is the likelihood of that?"

"Too likely. I rather think his patronage is not a coincidence."

"Madame Giry told me that there have been men in and out of your cellars all summer long. They have been waiting for us, Erik—not only watching for our return to Paris, but in the Opéra Populaire itself!" A chill coursed down her back and she shuddered, wrapping her arms more tightly about her.

"That summer dress isn't the most suitable for the underground," he said, pulling the cape from his shoulders and dropping it over hers. She nodded in thanks and folded herself into its warmth. Erik's eyes then narrowed thoughtfully.

"I had to dispense of one of their Russian henchmen in the torture chamber before I left for London. However, I thought I had locked and chained all of the entrances." Realization suddenly spread over his face and he grunted in self-disgust. "The Rue Scribe door! Apparently your holy sisters in Jerusalem did not make off with my key after all. How utterly careless of me."

Christine shook her head. "There is nothing you can do about it. I will just have to go with you to the fourth cellar."

"You are already in the fourth cellar, my dear; however, the only place you are going is back to the surface. Come, I will take you a different way." He reached for her hand but she yanked it away.

"No, absolutely not! No more being tucked away while you run headlong into danger, Erik. There isn't time—we have to go for the oath now, or they will find us out—"

"And this suggestion of yours isn't 'running into danger'? Good God, it's amazing that that boy Chagny was able to leave your presence and go to Prague at all, what with all your tears and pleadings."

"That is not the same!"

Erik made a grab for her hand again and this time claimed it. "I am tired of your headstrong, foolish persistence, Christine! You may make demands of me, but do not challenge me; you will lose every time, I assure you."

"If the Reinards would be so good as to finish their conversation," drawled a high, arrogant voice somewhere beyond them in the darkness, "they might realize that they have already been found out, and the basis of their disagreement is pointless."

Christine's blood turned to ice at the sound of the familiar, hated voice. Frozen, she could only watch as a second lantern's light flared up, illuminating its owner's sneering face, slick gray hair, and tight lips. His eyes were hidden behind twin flames as the lantern's reflection flickered and danced in his spectacles, leaving his face sadistically emotionless. Instead of the austere, tailored clothing he normally donned, he was wrapped from head to toe in some sort of shroud, its brown folds draped about him like the garments of a monk. One pale hand reached out from beneath the shroud, its spindly fingers wrapped around the handle of a revolver.

A quiet "click" echoed through the tunnel.

"As you both seem to have been rendered speechless, I shall do the talking. If you please, do not speak unless I ask you to do so. Is that understood?"

Christine looked at Erik beseechingly. His eyes, however, were fixed frostily upon the man before them.

"Good," said Mas. "Place your hands behind your back where I can see them, both of you. Now, if you will kindly step this way—Ah ah! I will take that rope, Monsieur." He pointed the muzzle at Erik's chest just as his hand went to his waist for the Punjab lasso. They leered at each other for a long moment, until Erik finally lifted his hands away from the rope.

"Be my guest, Monsieur."

Mas took the lasso and flung it into the dark tunnel behind them, then waved them on with the pistol.

Christine fell into stride beside Erik, Mas Quennell only feet behind her. Her insides twisting with fear, she clutched at the cloak around her shoulders, pulling it tightly to her. Unbeknownst to her captor, she too had a thin length of rope coiled and tucked just beneath the elegant drape of her bustle, a hidden viper ready to strike. And as Erik was now stripped of his weapon, she must be the one to act. Biting her lower lip, she studied the stone floor as it passed beneath her feet, waiting for Mas to reveal some weakness.

"Your situation seems to have improved since last we met, Monsieur," commented Mas, as if they were on their way to luncheon. "You were quite the monster in the Rumeli Hisari—something of a horror to behold." Christine felt the chill of his eyes upon her neck. "Yes, your current circumstances are certainly impressive; quite a change from the pathetic creature I found in Istanbul. You may speak, Monsieur le Phantom." He paused, waiting for his words to hit their mark. There was no answer. "I heard of your magnificent escape from the prison fortress," he continued, "and how your wife—imagine that!—found you there." Once again, his irascible gaze was fixed upon her.

"You, Comtesse de Chagny, have given me more trouble than I ever anticipated from such a pitiable aristocratic flower. You slipped away from my carriage in Paris, then immediately fled to London. And again, you somehow survived our meeting, disappearing for several months to Jerusalem, of all places! We interrogated nearly all of the dock workers from the Thames to Brighton to piece together your location, journeyed all the way to Palestine, and spent tiresome hours negotiating with those ridiculous Turks, only to find that, once again, you had left the city!"

"I find it peculiar that you went to such lengths to unearth a 'pitiable aristocratic flower', as you put it," Erik said forcefully, immediately drawing Mas' attention away from Christine. "She was worlds away from Paris; how could she possibly have been a threat to you?" His eyes quickly darted to hers, and she realized that he knew she had the lasso. Her heart began to race; if only he could distract Mas a bit longer, rattle his composure.

Mas sighed in annoyance. "I did not give you permission to speak, Monsieur; however, you have posed the very question I have asked myself repeatedly. After speaking with you in London, Madame, I truly believed that you did not have the oath of Fraternité, nor could you tell me where it was. Therefore, I was resolved to dispense of you. But then I was forced to leave before I could complete my task. Since that night in London, I must admit that I have felt an unquenchable desire to finish what I had started."

Mas reached out one long finger to her cheek as if to caress it, but hastily withdrew it.

"Your face has tormented me incessantly; the very idea that a mere woman could escape from me, the very blood of Robespierre! I had to kill you, to keep you from plaguing me. So, in truth, my resolve was nothing but a personal vendetta. That is, until I learned you had returned to France."

Christine dared a glance over her shoulder at the madman behind her, and was startled to find that his face was no longer blank of expression, but gleaming with an insane mixture of irritation and, incredibly, what could only be called ardor. Next to her, Erik was bristling with rage.

"There I was," Mas continued, "safely ensconced in a small boarding house in Chalon-sur-Saône—courtesy of your brother-in-law Vasser, but that is a different matter—wasting away from idleness, when I discovered that not only had you returned, but were staying at the neighboring estate! So I ask you, what else would bring you back to the lion's den, but the oath? Do not try to deny it, Madame; you said as much minutes ago. I must admit, the fact that you were planning to journey on to Paris was more of a fortunate guess on my part."

Mas paused in his pompous rambling to ascertain their surroundings.

"Ah! Here we are, Monsieur—the shore of your underground lake."

Their armed captor gestured in either direction of Lake Averne. "Since exploring this fascinating network of roads and tunnels, I have long held the suspicion that the oath might be here, somewhere. Raoul de Chagny was much cleverer than I gave him credit for. Now, Phantom, you will take me to the oath."

Erik threw back his head and laughed, the sound bitter upon her ears. "My dear M. Quennell, do you truly expect me to believe you will let us live after we show you where that boy's oath is? I am no fool, sir."

Mas' lips twisted cruelly.

"I never said I would let you go." Setting his lantern down, he reached beneath his brown shroud and pulled out a soft, white object. A child's toy.

"No," Christine breathed.

It was her son's "Cesar" horse—the one object of affection that never left his side. She stared at the small plush toy in Mas Quennell's bony hand, its coat now dirtier than the last time she had seen it clutched in Jean-Paul's tiny arms. The ground began to churn beneath her, its sharp stones swimming up to engulf her and rip her to pieces. Her legs buckled, and she fell to her knees.

"You are lying," she heard Erik hiss somewhere above her, followed by Mas' cool voice as he ignored Erik.

"Prague is a beautiful city, is it not? Although, your accommodations at the old inn in the Josefov district were not befitting a Parisian countess." She shook her head in disbelief.

"They left Prague when I did. You would never have been able to find them."

"Are you really willing to take such a gamble with your son's life, Madame? Perhaps you did not get my note: What is mine for what is yours. Those are my terms. You show me where the oath of Fraternité is, and I allow the young Comte de Chagny to live."

Christine pressed her fist to her mouth and sobbed in fury. Only once had she felt so helpless, so powerless to change the tide and save someone she loved. And now she was once again beneath the opera house, once again being forced to make a choice in which there would be no prevailing. She glared up at the cruel tyrant towering over her, the heartless man who was threatening to take away that which she loved best. In Jerusalem, she had thought she couldn't possibly hate Mas as much as she did then. She was wrong.

Wrapping her arms around her middle, she took several wretched breaths, trying to fight back the putrid bile rising up her throat. Her fingers smoothed over the rope carefully tucked away under her cloak, and like a brilliant beacon, she remembered what she possessed. Grabbing the lasso, she furiously whipped it from her waist with an angry cry, just as a gunshot resounded through the cavern. A stinging pain shot through her arm and she gasped, stunned into silence.

"Drop your weapon, Madame, or the next time I shall shoot you clean through and not hesitate for a moment." Christine looked up from her grazed arm to find the muzzle of Mas' revolver just inches from her face. With a trembling hand, she grudgingly relinquished the punjab lasso to him and he snatched it away, tossing it into the darkness.

Pistol still poised next to her temple, Mas studied her.

"Amazing," he said quietly. "It is a pity I will eventually have to dispense of you. You could have been a very formidable, useful sort of person to our cause if only you had been able to see the greater events at work. Imagine the things we could have accomplished, Christine."

"You may as well call your men out of the labyrinth," Erik said evenly.

Until now, Erik had remained silently undetached, even when the revolver had been fired. Christine wasn't sure whether he hadn't wanted to provoke Mas into killing her, or whether he was simply watching and waiting; but now that she was able to truly see him, to see the frightful mask that had fallen across his features as he icily spoke, she perceived something more cruel, more intelligent churning in his cold, flinty eyes.

Their captor saw it too and, for a brief moment, he faltered, caught up in the man's death-filled gaze. But then he recalled himself and sneered, his thin lips all but disappearing as they stretched across his face.

"You truly do see everything in the opera house, just as I was told. Indeed, I have arranged for a sort of welcoming party to greet you; although I was saving it for later. But no matter." Stepping back from his captives, he called out, "Brothers! You may join us."

One by one, lantern lights began to flare up around the cavern, cutting through the shadows and revealing the robed figures behind them. Christine began to count them: at least a dozen along the stone walls, and even more spilling out from within the labyrinth. More and more emerged from the tunnels and filed along the shoreline until they circled Erik and her at least twice over. Her eyes widened; nearly fifty men in all, each one faceless and robed, their true identities concealed from her.

Slowly, Mas raised his monk's hood over his head and shadowed his face, save for the flickering light in his oval spectacles.

"Madame, Monsieur: may I present to you my Fraternité?"