Sorry for the long wait, but school truly sucks and I had loads of tests to study for. Right now, I should be free to write some more.

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Chapter 5

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Images and sounds moved through her dreams. Nothing was truly real, simply out of reach, visible, but never tangible. She was dreaming, for sure. Christine realized that soon enough and upon that realization, her dreams ended. She didn't remember much of what had happened. Certainly, she had been standing in the church, that much was obvious. She had been there and had begged her angel to take her with him, yes… to heaven… but was this heaven? She opened her eyes.

If it was heaven, it looked very little like what she imagined it would look. It was dark, seemed to be a tomb… but it wasn't. She saw the cross ahead of her… only it didn't look ethereal at all. She sat up, realizing she was lying on several tapestries, one being used to cover her. She looked around and saw that she wasn't in heaven at all. It wasn't heaven… it was the chapel near the church, almost right outside it. But it was sealed at all times, she knew, she remembered.

How had she gotten here?

She stood up and stepped away from the tapestries. But her movement didn't go unnoticed and neither was she herself now ignorant to the fact she wasn't alone. With a little scream, she backed away from the towering dark figure just ahead of her and found that her back was pressed against the wall. A thousand panicky thoughts swirled through her head and she was, not for the first time in her life, afraid.

The man approached her almost timidly and a gloved hand moved towards her cheek. Christine closed her eyes, but never felt the contact… only a coolness generated from the stranger's skin, even from afar, despite the presence of the fabric. She trembled, awaiting her fate… and waited. Finally, after a minute, she chanced opening her eyes. The man was still standing there, less than two feet away from her, watching her with unseen eyes. This silence, this suspense was too frightening.

"Who…who are you?" Christine asked shakily, quietly, "You…you aren't my angel…"

There was a quiet sigh from the darkness and the man turned away from her, lowering the hood of his black cloak. Christine was still very afraid, but felt herself stop pressing at the wall so much. Something had eluded her understanding her. Suddenly, she was back at the wall again, for the man had turned.

What frightened her the most about what she saw wasn't the white mask that covered most of his face – it was the piercing look he had in his unnaturally colored eyes. This time, two hands grasped her shoulders and Christine felt herself shrink slightly. The stranger didn't hurt her, only prevented any escape possible, not that she had thought of any.

"No… I am no angel… no heaven-sent messenger...if anything, you are from heaven, Christine, lighting the path of one who had thread in darkness for far too long…"

She would have recognized the voice of her angel everywhere, but coming from this man, right in front of her, without the frightening godlike resonance, it was almost too frightening to listen to it. Then she realized that she had been very stupid and naïve, that she had been tricked, by God knew who and that she was at the mercy of the same trickster. Yet still his voice soothed her and thoughts of anger were weak.

He collapsed to his knees in front of her, letting her arms go, grasping the hem of her skirt tightly. Christine still didn't understand fully, but she was beginning to realize that she wasn't going to die, that she wasn't doomed. As he raised his head, Christine got another glimpse of his eyes, but now, they weren't burning with a great fire. It seemed that something gentler had replaced the previous feelings she had spotted there.

"Forgive me!" he sobbed into her skirts, "Forgive the blasphemous lie that now costs me your trust, Christine… you are the angel… I am only Erik…a wretched creature who has fallen in love with you!"

Christine heard her breathing stop for a moment and then become very gasp-like within a second. Never before had she been faced with such terror, such shock and such pain before. But the pain wasn't hers anymore. She closed her eyes and began sobbing, more out of confusion than fright. She didn't know what to answer to such a statement. No one had ever said to her that they loved her, save her father and she sensed that this was a different kind of love.

The love that had been burning in his eyes – yes, it had been love! – was an emotion unlike any she had ever seen, dark, strong, passionate, robbed of innocence, quite unlike the utter gentleness his voice resonated with now to convince her of the truth of this declaration. Christine looked at her captor, her angel, her deceiver once more and slipped down the wall, crouching in front of him. She looked at him through teary eyes and he – Erik, her mind reminded her – looked up with a hope that hit her like a ton of bricks and almost crushed her against the wall.

The longer she looked at him, the longer it troubled her that she couldn't see his face, now that the truth had been revealed. As her angel, she didn't have to think of him as a person, but now that he was in front of her, as real and as human as her, she believed that her fantasy wouldn't be able to do him justice. Certainly, his blazing eyes were frightening and his unique voice hypnotic, but she noticed that there was a grace to his movement and an honesty to his gaze that she found appealing. Nevertheless, her hand reached out to his face, willing to revel it.

His hand suddenly closed in around hers and he pushed it away, slightly more fiercely than he had touched her before. Erik shook his head sadly, as if afraid to forbid her from doing this so that he wouldn't shatter the very weak barrier against fear she had created within herself.

"You shall never see Erik's face." he said simply, but commandingly. "I love you, Christine." How wonderful it was to say it, even though her face was still teary! But she had ceased crying. Yet today was a shock enough for her. Showing her his face would be… disastrous. "I love you more than anything. You don't love me, I know, but you don't fear me anymore, don't you see? Fear can turn to love, you know? Like in the story of the rose and the nightingale."

"The-the rose and the…?" Christine repeated, forgetting her fear briefly.

A smile passed through Erik's eyes, Christine was certain of it. "Nightingale, yes. It is an old Persian story. They have many wonderful stories in the East, did you know that? Some have happy endings… some don't. I have seen few happy endings in my lifetime, but good things are always rare. Your father told you stories, didn't he?"

Christine found herself nodding. "Yes… yes, he would always tell me nice stories."

"Then we could exchange some stories, wouldn't it be nice?" Erik said with something very close to happiness. "We could walk in the moonlit city and I would show you the fireflies in the dark and the starlit night unlike you have seen it. And we would tell each other stories of angels and demons and everything you wish! Then, perhaps, you wouldn't be afraid…"

He said it with an almost childlike tone, like a little boy craving for attention, Christine found herself letting out an involuntary laugh, and then clapping a hand over her mouth quickly.

"Never be afraid to laugh in my presence, Christine. It hurts me to see you sad. I love you." He said again and Christine found herself accepting the fact. "Perhaps I could tell you a story, for a start? I think you won't know this one – Aesop, what do you say? The lion and the mouse."

Erik began telling the tale with a natural storytelling ability, making Christine forget that they were in the dark and unused chapel, that she had been lied to… there was nothing but the tale coming to life around them.

Yet even as she watched and listened, she couldn't help but wonder – why would a gentleman who seemed to be kind and good, wear a mask in front of her? Why hide his face – even if she was to tell someone she had met him, she knew no one would believe her. What did he have to hide? Why couldn't she see? Why shouldn't she? After all, she had revealed everything about herself – everything there was to tell – and she didn't know the first thing about him, save his name and that he loved her…

A moment later, she regretted the decision to take her fate into her hands. With a cry of rage, betrayal and grief, he hurled himself away from her, from the merciless little hand that had snatched the mark away. Erik stood up with the movement of an escaping beast and fled to the other end of the chapel. Yet Christine had seen enough to cause her to scream and collapse. It was a wonder she didn't faint, but her legs gave out nevertheless.

His face was, in a word, hideous. By some terrible miracle, she saw through his skin and saw a Death's head, saw skin that seemed burned and twisted and deformed… yet it was much, much more horrible. He looked like a corpse that had been rooting in some dark place for many long winters, the only company being the rats and the insects of the swamp or graveyard.

"The Devil!" Christine shrieked out, putting her hands in front of her face in a defensive gesture, then crossing herself quickly.

"Not the Devil, my dear, no! The Devil can change his form at will! The Devil can appear beautiful! What I would give to be the Devil!" Erik laughed hollowly, with a tinge of something Christine frightfully recognized as madness. "What I would give to be able to make my face vanish! Anything in this world, anything, can vanish under my hands, but not this! Not my face, my accursed ugliness! Does it please you, Pandora, to see it, to open your box! Oh, but you don't know the tale! I'll tell you! Pandora was the most beautiful woman in the world, created by the Gods to punish men, because she had a box that contained all the evils of the world and she opened it, unleashing them! Only hope remained crushed beneath them… hope…" His voice was empty, broken. "I have no hope. I had hoped that you would love me, Christine, love me and return to me on your own accord, without seeing my face, without being faced with this horror! But don't you see that now that you have seen my face, you can never leave me, you cannot!"

He returned to her, towering her with his astonishing height, his dark cape almost blowing in a nonexistent breeze, because of his very will. Christine began crying and sobbing in a most pitiful manner and Erik felt as if someone had stabbed him in the heart. He had endured many battles, many fights and had experienced wounds, but this was more than he could bear. He sank to his knees, his tone dramatically changing. No longer was he the commanding dark lord, but a pleading child.

"Please don't cry. It hurts me to see you cry, it hurts too much…. I cannot survive the pain, I cannot see you cry like this…I love you, Christine… I love you… even I can love…even I…"

And he cried as well, Christine saw through the gaps between her fingers, in that inhuman voice that never failed to enchant. Christine's sobs lessened somewhat. She gathered enough courage to hand him the mask that she had dropped in her fear, to return it to him. She saw a terrible pain in his eyes as he took it, but once it was back in place, he seemed to shake off several decades and much of the brokenness that had filled him before. He was her commanding angel again, a terrifying archangel of darkness. Surely only God could punish this for utter sins.

"I want you to return here every day. I want to see you again, Christine. Please." Her freedom wasn't an easy thing to give, but he knew he couldn't keep her where they were. He couldn't break her even more. Christine nodded shakily, panic visible in her eyes. "After dusk, I will be waiting for you. Tell no one of this, for no one will believe you. They will think you mad."

"Yes… master." Christine said dutifully, dully, understanding that the Devil wasn't to be refused. She still wasn't willing to believe that anyone but the Devil would be scarred this horribly, this permanently.

Erik sighed. She was a catholic, bound by the beliefs of her religion. Those chains would yet have to be broken if she was to truly understand that there was nothing to be feared from him. For now, however, he let it be. Perhaps those chains would yet be useful and bring her back to him when all else would fail.

"You mustn't fear me – I would kill myself before hurting you."

Again, Christine nodded and repeated the two words that granted her temporary freedom from what she thought to be damnation. Sinn was sweet and its seduction strong… and she scolded herself for not being strong enough to refuse one she looked upon with pity and fascination, even if he was indeed damned.