A/N: Sorry for the delay! I'm afraid this chapter is really short and not very substantial, I was sort of clueless as to how to continue. To warn all of the ALW and Leroux puritans, I'm taking several creative licenses in this particular chapter.
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"Dear God in Heaven…" Roxanne stepped backwards in fright as she soaked in his appearance.
His skin was stretched with unnatural tightness across his face; it had a yellowy cast to it, like a candle. He had no nose, only two nasal cavities, like a bare skull. His golden eyes were sunken deep within their orifices; they were unnaturally bright, like two flames burning with smoldering hate. Hate towards her.
Only the first few rows of the audience could see his face clearly, they recoiled in horror, several screams and masculine curses were heard throughout them.
"You little demon!" The Phantom snarled, "Well, then, my Delilah, you wish to stay with Erik? You only said so much in our song. I shall grant you your wish!" His voice bounced off the walls with a God-like intensity throughout the theatre. He threw something on the ground; it hit the 'bridge' with a flash of fire and resounding light, leaving a puff of smoke.
She felt the ground slide out from under her, she was suddenly free-falling with the Phantom pressing himself to her. For a fleeting moment she was sure that they would hit the stage beneath and would break several bones, but strangely, a hole slid back underneath them, allowing them to fall through the stage, as well.
They landed in the prop room beneath the stage, a discarded prop-bed was underneath the hole, they hit the bed with a loud 'thud'. The bed was not meant to hold up to such a shock and the frame promptly splintered and fell to pieces, allowing the mattress to drop to the floor.
Roxanne shrieked in surprise as she tumbled off the bed.
The Phantom growled and jerked her up roughly, continuing through the dusty, dimly-lit prop room.
They could faintly hear the noise of the audience in an uproar above, the sound of thudding feet above them was heard and the shouting of the gendarmes as they inspected the stage.
The Phantom laughed harshly, it was a strange, mirthless noise. Like the noise of lightning when it struck something living.
A stone statuette of an angel stood on a table in the corner of the room.
He went to the table and removed the angel, a button was nestled in a hole in the table; he pressed it. A mirror on the other side of the room slid back, revealing a darkened passageway.
He dragged her through the passageway, pulling a torch that hung in a sconce on the side of the dark, slimy wall, the mirror slid back.
Roxanne kicked and screamed, trying desperately to escape his grasp, but the vise-like grip he had on her arm did not loosen. She refused to die at the hands of this monster!
He stopped and spun on her, his golden eyes glowing with fury. "Shut up, chienne! You do not realize whom you trifle with!" He struck her soundly across the face, the blow was so hard that she would have been thrown against the wall had his grip on her not caught her.
She whimpered and fell into a silence, brokenly trailing behind him.
The only sound in the gloomy hallway was that of her footsteps and the sound of dripping water.
She could not see anything in the damnable darkness, save for a pair of fire-bright golden eyes. They were unnerving; they didn't belong to a man, or an animal. Roxanne could understand why the Daaè-girl thought him to be something otherworldly; those golden eyes filled her with an unexplainable mixture of emotions. The current mixture seemed to be more fear than anything else.
She limped and stumbled along in the darkness, nursing the wounds she had sustained during her fall. She hurried to keep up with the Phantom and his death-grip on her arm. The noise of commotion and chaos was growing steadily more distant.
He muttered angrily to himself in a language Roxanne did not understand, it sounded faintly Middle-Eastern.
One thing she could be thankful for in the darkness was that she could not see his face. Oh, why had she ever taken his mask?!
God, in heaven, protect me! She prayed wordlessly.
Roxanne sorely regretted ever pulling the mask off, for the rest of her life—that is, if she lived long enough to have one—she would remember that face.
She could feel that the hall they were going through was inclined downwards; the air was steadily becoming cooler. They were going underground…? She had heard rumors around Paris that the monster within the Opera Garnier lurked underneath the opera house, living in the sewers.
Roxanne shuddered, what was he going to do to her down there? Even in the darkness, it was very obvious that he was fighting the urge to kill her right then and there, so she did her best to keep quiet. Terror was threatening to overwhelm her; God knows no one would ever be able to find her in this vast underground beneath the theater. What would the Phantom do to her once they arrived at their destination? She was wise enough tot know that death was not the worst of fates that could possibly await her.
Not for the first time did she regret accepting the gendarmes offer of 'help.' A dark cell or a flogging seemed much more appealing than this life, at the moment.
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A light flurry of snow was coming down upon Paris, covering the dirt of the city in a thin blanket; temporarily disguising the filth of the inhabitants and emphasizing the beauty of the city's architecture.
On a night like this, Christine would ordinarily be out on the rooftop, playing like a child with the other chorus girls.
But tonight was—in no way, shape or form—an ordinary evening.
Tonight, she stared in horror from the cobbled street in front of the Opera Garnier as her home, her life burned.
All because of her angel.
There was a cruel sort of irony to it, the man who had given her the greatest gift she had ever received—her voice—and had done his best to ensure her future was the one who was destroying all that she had called home.
Little Giry had suffered serious burns and was being rushed to an infirmary. Carlotta, the woman whom she had despised for the most part of her life, had died beside her lover, refusing to leave his corpse.
Raoul, thankfully, had managed to escape unharmed, he was leading the search party underneath the opera house.
Carlotta, Piangi Little Giry, and countless others had suffered because of Erik's brash decision. But at the same time, she felt like she was the one who ought to have been punished. Erik had never known love, and, admittedly, Christine had offered him little of it, but more than he had ever experienced. It was only natural he would do what he could to protect it.
God in heaven, what had she done?
It was because of her that all of these people were dead. Stupid, silly, superstitious creature, she was, she had wishfully fooled herself into thinking this fallen angel was innocent in his intentions.
In a way, she almost hoped he and Mademoiselle De Winter would not be found. She knew that was a cruel thought, but she knew her Erik, he wouldn't kill a woman, but he wouldn't let her go, either. Perhaps, although it was a very childish and wishful thought, perhaps he could find a companion in her.
"God," She whispered into the wind, "Protect my Erik, keep him safe and…help him. Oh, God, please, help him…"
XXX
Torchlight flickered and danced across the rough stone walls of the cavernous catacomb ceiling, creating strange, deformed shadows.
The mob was in an unusually deathly silence, as if afraid to speak lest that devil, the Phantom and his legion of demons swoop down upon them.
The Vicomte swore that if it were the very last thing he did (and it very well could be) he would rid the Earth, more specifically Christine, of that hideous monster.
When he thought of all of the grief and terror the Phantom had caused his Christine, it made his blood boil. That dirty, deceitful bastard! And now, he had another woman in his grasp.
Raoul looked around at the men about him, their faces smeared with soot from the fire, the firelight distorting their faces grotesquely.
Sighing, a sorry ragtag band they were, Raoul mused. Where was the Persian when he needed him? The Daroga Nadir seemed to have disappeared before the opera began, he had seen him briefly before. Who knows where the man was? Perhaps the Phantom had found him and finished his long-time acquaintance once and for all.
Raoul said a quick prayer for the man's soul, Moslem or no, he would need all the help he could get in this Godless opera house.
His thoughts returned to the woman the Phantom had kidnapped. The Vicomte sighed regretfully, his plan had failed and the poor woman had to suffer for it. Although of all the women to have kidnapped, a…lady of the night was about as ideally suited as they might come, he would still do his best to recover the poor woman.
But things were looking bleak.
They had been underground for over three hours and they had yet to find anything. They were marking their path with red paint, lest they lose their way.
"Monsieur le Vicomte?" One of the men piped up.
"Yes?" Raoul answered irritably.
Instead of answering, he pointed to a mark on the stony granite wall, a red stripe.
"Merde," He muttered, "That's the second one we've encountered in thirty minutes.
"Beggin' yer pardon, Monsiuer le Vicomte, but we should return with more men, in the mornin'. The men are dead-tired and most of them are so scared of the Phantom they wouldn't know what to do if we did meet up with the Opera Ghost, sir," The man bowed shortly to soften the frankness of his words.
Raoul grudgingly had to admit their was truth to his words, and, afterall, the woman was naught but a street urchin. He reprimanded himself for such thoughts, the woman was a human just like himself, one of God's creatures. The thought of what the perverted monster would probably do to her made his skin crawl, "Very well, we shall return to the surface and will get more men. Hopefully, the gendarmes' search party has had more luck searching for the woman."
The last sentence sounded hollow even to Raoul's ears.
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