XX
An hour was all he needed. Time enough to arm himself and see his household safely off to the Château. An hour and he would be on his way to free Christine, or die trying. The nag Nadir had hired from the livery stable plodded along no matter how Erik urged him. But soon, the townhouse was in sight, the windows glowing with light in the darkly overcast December morning. Nadir had promised to watch the brothel and monitor the comings and goings, hoping for a chance to somehow smuggle a message inside and correct the grievous lie.
The promise of snow swirled in the air. Icy air curled beneath the borrowed, threadbare clothing, and Erik shivered. His wound had not succumbed to infection, not yet. Erik felt horribly weak and his left hand was marred with an obvious tremor. A faint hope remained that he could regain some of his former dexterity. The remnants of a ratty sleeve had been crudely fashioned into a mask for him to wear. The strap was much too loose and he had to stop every few minutes to retie it.
Erik eased back in the saddle, pulling the shaggy nag up at the gatepost. Hot and cold washed over him at the sight of the sleek black door kicked in, the front window smashed . . .
"God," he murmured, and it was a prayer. He leapt up the stairs two at a time, and shouldered his way through the ruined door. Dead leaves were scattered across the parlor, the table overturned, the shattered chandelier creaking pitifully as the wind caught it.
"Elise? Jacqueline? Claire? Answer me!" he bellowed, fear rising in a cold, thick knot in his throat. The patter of running feet, coming from his study.
"Erik!" Elise's high voice warbled and broke, then she was sprinting into his arms.
"Where were you? Where did you go when we needed you?" she sobbed, beating her small fists against his aching chest. Her words shred his heart. Fate had played him for a fool again.
"Elise, Elise, my poor darling. What happened?" he crooned.
"The bad men came in the middle of the night. Luc tried to fight, but they knocked him down and kicked him until he didn't move anymore. They started breaking things. And . . . and Aunt Claire . . ." Swinging Elise up onto his right hip, Erik was already striding toward the study, where he heard the murmur of voices. Jacqueline peeked into the hall, saw him and uttered a sharp cry. She flung herself at him, sobbing in the same honest sorrow as her younger sister. Erik gathered them close, breathing in their tarnished innocence and trying to fight down the panic clawing at his throat. After a moment, the girls found their composure.
"You're hurt," Jacqueline murmured, touching the sling.
"Oh Erik!" Elise cried, gingerly touching the red spot staining the bandage.
"I'm fine, girls," he said, setting Elise down. Linked by joined hands, they headed for the study. His chest was on fire, each step and breath a torment, but it was his penance. His penance for loving Christine and fighting for his own selfishness. The door creaked open at his light touch and he found the room in a similar state of disarray as the foyer. Madame Villon looked as she had aged fifty years overnight. Her grey, line-seamed face transformed when she saw him into a look of mingled relief and sorrow.
"Oh Sir! I'm so glad you're all right! Those Commune bastards, they stole some silver, looted about, but our boys hustled them out soon enough." she said, wringing her wrinkled hands. Erik waved his hand. The possessions were meaningless. They had rooms full at the Château.
"Where are the boys now?" he demanded. Madame Villon's face sagged.
"They're taking poor Luc home to his family. The physician said he wouldn't survive the night, God rest his soul." Erik scanned the room. The other three maids, the cook and two kitchen lads were present.
"God rest him. And the Comtesse? Where is she?" Erik said thickly. Madame Villon heaved a shaky breath. Elise and Jacqueline both uttered twin whimpers. The panic was thickening, deepening into a morass of bottomless terror.
"She's upstairs with the physician."
It was just the same as when his mother lay dying, the horrible silence, the leaden air. Erik leaned against the banister, trying in vain to catch his breath around the pain in his chest. He was cold, as cold as he'd been in the river. Now he regretted taking the time to dress in his own clothes and mask. Maybe it was already over . . . He opened the door and found the physician—that dyspeptic string bean—bent over Claire, administering a potion. The older man glimpsed Erik in the doorway and approached him.
"Monsieur le Comte, I am so very sorry. A most horrible accident." A fucking accident? As if she had slipped on a patch of ice? A Commune bastard had shot her in the midst of robbing his house!
"Is that what they call assault these days? How is she faring?" The words were clipped and cruel. The physician visibly cowered.
"Th—the bullet caught her beneath the breastbone. She is bleeding internally. Frankly, I am surprised she has lasted this long." The words caught him short and sharp, a punch in the gut, knocking out his wind.
"Leave us." It wasn't until he shut the door behind him that Erik found the will to move toward the bed.
"Claire," he whispered. The thin skin of her eyelids twitched, her blue eyes opened and shone with pain. Her greying blond hair was loose and spread over the pillow and the nightgown trimmed in lace peeked from above the coverlet.
"Erik," she gasped, her hand fluttering an inch off the coverlet. Her voice was a weak thread of sound. So pale . . . Slowly, joints aching like an old man's, he knelt beside the bed and grasped her hand. Cold. Erik bowed his head, pressing her knuckles to his forehead. Guilt, that oily black stain on his soul, thickened and spread until he was drowning in it, as thick and hot as the blood gurgling in Claire's lungs.
"Oh Claire . . . I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me." He hoped she knew it wasn't just for last night. Swimming through pain and opium, Claire blinked slowly.
"They . . . they tried to take . . . couldn't let them." She fluttered her hand to one side and Erik saw, with dawning horror, the locked box on the bedside table. The teak and ivory patterned lock box that held the requiems he'd written for their lost children. Erik buried his face in his hands. The man had tried to take it, thinking it held money or valuables, and Claire, she had . . . she had fought for it.
"Oh God! Oh Claire . . ." the words felt as if they'd been torn from him by the roots.
"Letter . . . read it," she wheezed. Frowning, Erik snagged the key from the drawer and unlocked the box. A letter bearing Claire's neat hand sat atop the sheaves of score.
"Claire, you need your rest-"
"Read it." Swallowing any further protest, Erik read:
Husband,
You might be surprised to find this letter here, amongst the notes you penned in honor of our lost issue. At first, the impulse was one of pique and a childish need for you to think of me as well as the dead. But since of late, all you seem to have time for is your painted women, my gesture will pass unnoticed. You have pressed me many times to tell you why I so detest your infidelity, in light of my own seemed aversion for you.
Have I ever told you about the dream I had the night before our wedding? No, I think not. Even though our marriage has spanned two decades, it has never fostered such confidences. I dreamed I had slipped into a world of silver mist and moonlight, with the most beautiful music intoxicating my senses. My lover was waiting there, tall and dark and unknowable. I embraced him, but when he smiled, he had a wolf's bloody teeth ready to rend into me. I ran and tripped over a gravestone that bore my name.
You could perhaps understand why I found the tall, dark husband with a masked face waiting for me disconcerting. Doubly so when I heard your voice for the first time. A demon with an angel's voice. We were doomed from the start, weren't we? I didn't like what your voice made me feel, I didn't like what I felt when you touched me in our marriage bed, I didn't like feeling out of control. So I held myself apart from you.
And then Thomas. The vehicle of our hopes and the vessel for our thwarted love. I loved our son. And when he died, God help me, I wished you had died in his stead. When you came to me with that silken, beguiling voice, promising another child, and those long hands that had let Thomas die slid against my flesh, I wanted to vomit. Forgive me, Erik. I didn't see how it shredded you inside; in fact, I would have relished your agony in those early months after he died.
The years passed, and the sheets of score in this box multiplied as pregnancy after pregnancy ended in blood and despair. I hoarded your slights against me, real or imagined, used them to nurse and nurture my hate as I would never nurse a baby. You would gain no victory in my eyes, not until you returned my dead babies to me. But you never cursed me. You were unfailingly courteous. God, I could see that spark of hope in your eyes whenever you spoke to me, hoping that this time, there would be a kind word. Every time I crushed it under my heel, I justified it by saying I was protecting myself from you. The simple answer for loathing those faceless women, especially this Christine you gushed about is that I love you. I never wanted to love you, but love you I do. Almost as much as I hate you. Husband, you mocked me with jealousy, and it was true.
There is my secret. I can't forget Thomas, and so I hate you. I can't forget you, and so I love you. I will lock this away with the ghosts of our children, and perhaps one day when you are free, you will remember me with some fondness.
Claire
"My God," he whispered, looking up from the page into his wife's eyes. He grasped her cold hand and pressed his lips to the back.
"Oh Claire. Yes. We were doomed from the start. I waited for you to forgive me, and when you couldn't . . . I am so sorry." The smile she offered was a travesty. She beckoned him close and kissed the silk of the mask gently.
"I forgive you," she whispered. Something inside him loosened and fell, and he wept. She looked so pale, with the blue tones of marble in the weak lamplight.
"Thank you." For the first time, Erik embraced his wife in truth and healing. His face pressed against her throat, he knew the moment her heart stopped beating.
XXX
Voices woke her. Loud, angry voices pierced the sweet grey veil sheltering her and she curled deeper into herself. What had she done wrong now? She heard a babble of feminine voices raised in distress, a harsher, deeper register barking and a low female voice answering in kind. Hard fingers gripped her arm and inside she howled with blinding pain. Brokenhurtstoppleasebroken!
"Holy God! What did you do to her?" the hand retreated, then stroked her hair with awkward tenderness. The voice was wrong. Not liquid gold and heaven made audible. Inconsolable grief rose from deep inside, threatening to swallow her whole. Nonono . . .
"You're not leaving here with her!"
"What use do you have for her now? She's coming with me!"
"She is my property, you little shit. You'd better thank your lucky stars that Bruno is busy disposing of that troublesome Persian friend of your fucking brother's. Do you even know how to use that thing?"
"Oh yes, my fucking brother taught me. You pull back the hammer, like this-" a metal click, "—and squeeze . . ."
"Goddamn it, stop! Take her, then! Just leave! Leave us be!"
"I should just kill you. You deserve it." Harsh, ragged sobbing.
"Please . . ."
Every broken, bleeding place in her screamed in horrible unison has those hard hands grasped and hoisted, swinging her up over the bony fulcrum of a shoulder. She couldn't speak, couldn't see, couldn't think around the throbbing, bludgeoning, spiteful pain. Nononohurthurtpleasehurt . . .
"I would say 'rot in hell,' but even that would be too kind for you."
Cold air, a heavy slam, each jarring step tearing her nerves with pain. Hard hands swung her, cradled her against a wall of bone and muscle and the smell of horse. With a grunt he lifted her, laying her down on a flat surface. The pain quieted to a dull pulse. Her outstretched fingertips brushed rough wooden siding. A wagon? There was a metallic tang in her mouth, blood and despair.
A tender stroke on her forehead, above the wreckage Bruno had made of her face. The gentle touch was sharply contrasted by Raoul's harsh voice: "Stupid, fool woman! Didn't you think? Didn't you fucking think about what Erik would have wanted? He would have wanted you to live, damn it!" It had obviously occurred to Raoul. As deeply as her despair seeped into her soul, how much more would that be compounded if she had had some hand in his death?
"We are going to Erik's house and you are going to get better." Or else was the glaring subtext. The mention of his name hurt so bad she could hardly breathe. Or was that her broken pieces rubbing together? Her assent or even acknowledgment was apparently unneeded, Raoul patted her hair gently—one of the only parts of her that wasn't broken, bruised or bleeding—and the wagon trembled. She heard him land on snow-covered gravel with a wet crunch, and murmur sweet words to the horses. Pain was a hard, hot jolt as the wagon lurched into motion.
Once again, a hopeless pawn of fate and circumstance, Christine was headed for a life she hadn't chosen, alone.
XXX
César seemed to sense his fragile state and stepped with sedate care down the road toward his and Nadir's rendezvous point. His father, Nadir, Claire and now Christine's uncertain future . . . the pillars upholding his life were being demolished one by one and now he wobbled, precarious, bewildered and terrified. His father and his wife were not given the pomp and ceremony due them as they were interred in the de Chagny mausoleum. A hasty burial with two frightened children sobbing from a loaded carriage was not the scenario Erik had envisioned. Honor would come later. Now, Elise, Jacqueline and his household were en route to the Château and safety.
One burden laid aside, at least. What he needed now was strength. Not his usual stoic, tensile strength, but one of clarity and fury. He would need wit and strength both to conquer Bruno. Erik hunched lower over César's neck, flying snowflakes dribbling from the brim of his fedora. God in Heaven, he felt battered and old, eyes gritty from grief and lack of sleep, his left hand spasming periodically. The bullet had not only broken his shoulder blade and torn his flesh, but also had nicked a nerve, ruining much of his former dexterity. Crude force would be his saving grace now.
The dingy house where Erik had woken to pain and the thin comfort of a friend stood empty. Fear slicked his skin like dirty ice. He drew and cocked the revolver in one fluid motion. His right hand, at least, still executed his will without complaint.
"Nadir?" Long, nerve-rending silence . . .
"Erik." Relief loosened his taut muscles and Erik shouldered his way into the bedroom. His relief evaporated when he saw his friend slumped in the chair, staunching a bleeding wound.
"What trouble did you get yourself into, old man?" Erik demanded, striving desperately for levity as he knelt beside the chair, peeling back fingers gummy with half-congealed blood to peer at the wound. Thank God, not serious, a gouge along the side of his chest, scraping against a rib. A knife wound.
Bruno.
"Frailty thy name is Nadir," the Persian jested weakly.
"Nonsense," Erik replied. "We both know you're tougher than an old boot." Nadir's dark eyes were solemn.
"He found me in the stable looking for your brother. Caught me by surprise."
"You're lucky he didn't gut you by surprise," Erik snapped, hands swiftly cleaning and bandaging the wound as Nadir talked. A crooked smile peeked through the grimace of pain.
"I got a shot off, though. Bought me time enough to get away. He's wounded, Erik." The monster bleeds at least. Thank God for little mercies.
"No word on Christine or Raoul?" he asked, eyes studious on the strip of bandage he was winding around Nadir's torso. The Persian wagged his silvered head.
A brief, intense debate ensued between them. Nadir insisted he could still be of use while Erik countered that he had nearly been killed whilst trying to 'be of use.' Twice. In the end, with much cursing in two different tongues, Erik helped his friend into bed.
"Bruno doesn't know about this place. You'll be safe here. Perhaps we could trouble Elaine for supper? I know Christine will be hungry." The underlying message was clear. He would return with Christine or not at all. Their eyes locked and between them flew the terrible knowledge of what could come.
"You remember how to find the Château, I trust? Elise and Jacqueline need a visit from their favorite Persian uncle." Nadir gave a fair attempt at a laugh.
"Their only Persian uncle." Erik shrugged.
"Who knows? Maybe Raoul has Saracen blood." The smile wobbled and fell from Nadir's face. He laid a hand over his heart.
"As-Salāmu `Alaykum."
"I badly need it, Nadir. Wa 'Alaykum as-Salaam, my friend."
From his vantage point, the brothel and stable were as bland and unremarkable as they had been yesterday. Erik was the one who'd been changed: beaten and shaped and fired into something almost unrecognizable. Not Vicomte, but Comte, not married but widowed, not whole but crippled. He looked upon his swaggering confidence with disgust.
Low, brooding clouds crouched over Paris, threatening more snow. A light in the window offered a cheery, beckoning touch. Christine . . . he couldn't wait. He couldn't wait for the gendarmes that were probably paid from the Madame's pocket, he couldn't wait for the veil of darkness to hide him, Christine was in there and she needed him. He would be there for her, as he hadn't been for Claire or Nadir. It had to happen now, while Bruno was at a disadvantage.
In a secluded alley, Erik swung down from César and found his weapons. His skin prickled at the thought of unseen eyes watching, crouched in wait like a beast in a cave . . . Sucking in a steadying breath, Erik made a break for where Nadir had said he and Bruno had had their duel. The stable was deserted; a stall door creaked in rusty reproach. Erik strained his ears for the slightest rasp of breathing, a scrape of boots on the gravel . . .
He reacted, swiveling just as Bruno's knife cleaved through the air where his throat had been. The revolver in his hand rose, took hasty aim.
Crack! The weathered grey wall exploded as the bullet tore through. The bastard was quick!
A hard hand seized the wrist holding the revolver. Erik chopped viciously at the elbow, easily breaking the grip. His brain, absorbing data, took in that Bruno was the shorter of the two of them, but long-limbed and well-muscled. A sharp twinkle caught the weak light. Knife. Erik grasped the wrist, twisting the arm attached to it at a painful angle. Bruno snarled in pain. Malignant hate, dark, dark eyes, hard grabbing hands, red blood . . . bleeding! A wet red stain on his belly. Cruel hands torqued Erik's wrist and the gun fell from nerveless fingers to the ground. It may as well have been across the ocean for all the good it did him. The knife flashed. Had Bruno missed him?
Intense struggle ensued: muscles screamed, tendons strained, wills clashed in the meeting of hate-filled eyes. With a roar, Erik shoved, breaking the grip of their grappling hands and slammed his knee into Bruno's lean belly square over that red stain. Bruno shrieked. The pain of the blow only seemed to enrage him further, like a baited bear. The bouncer charged, his momentum slamming Erik in the aisle wall, the knife plunging down like a thirsty fang. Erik checked the blow, his clumsy arm quivering under the onslaught. Oh God, his broken shoulder blade screamed! Too strong! His strength was draining away, like water through a collander. His eye darted to a halter lead, draped innocuously over the stall partition. Maybe three seconds to act, to find his revolver—A hideous smile spread on Bruno's crude face, relishing the prospect of victory.
"I'll beat you into a soft, bloody pulp. Just like I did to your Swedish tart," Bruno snarled, his spittle flecking Erik's face. Rage surged through him, burst free along with the howl of denial. A demon, they called him. A demon he would be!
Erik snatched the lead rope, then delivering a vicious elbow to Bruno's face. Cartilage crunched under his elbow. Eyes stinging and blood pouring down his face, Bruno lurched forward with a blind thrust. Anticipating the move, Erik threaded the arm through the headstall and yanked it taut, his other arm punching deep into that wounded belly. Bruno's empty hand swatted at him, but Erik doggedly held on. After a moment's struggle, he succeeded in snagging the free hand, twisting both into a painful knot. Erik found it ease in itself to trip the bouncer and fell him like a tree. Something sweet and dark pulsed through Erik; his booted feet stomped and kicked at the prone figure. Savage pleasure filled him at the soft grunts of pain, the crunch of breaking bone.
"What did you do to her?" he roared. Each blow was an act of true, bloody justice!
"What did you do?" Rage throbbed in time with his heartbeat, the ancient male imperative to conquer the threat, the interloper.
"What. Did. You. Do?" he punctuated each word with a vicious stomping kick to any available body part. Erik swayed, his breath short in his chest. He looked down and found deep gouging cuts along both arms and across his chest. How had he not felt them? The heap of long, dark-clad limbs shuddered and emitted a noise that Erik identified as laughter. A mangled horror to rival Erik's own visage turned toward him, his jagged-toothed, blood-reddened smile a travesty in itself.
"She asked for it. Scared off a customer with her laughing. She wanted it. Some whores come to like pain, did you know that? I teach them sweet lessons and they come to like it, even beg for it in the end. Your Christine sang so sweet in the end. She sang for me." The world lurched beneath his feet. He had failed. The black, oily guilt surged over him, he was drowning in it! No . . . no . . . no!
"You're lying!" In reply, Bruno only laughed.
Seized by red, hot rage, Erik took up his dagger, relishing the thought of carving out the monster's still-beating heart, then his lying tongue, then hack at those cruel hands until he was nothing but a pile of useless meat.
It happened too fast for him to follow.
One moment, Erik was kneeling to deliver a killing blow to a bound enemy and the next, coarse rope was digging into his windpipe, his vision swallowed by the image of a demon. Warm breath smelling of blood and onions wafted moist over Erik's face. Dirty straw was poking him through his clothes. It itched.
"You hit hard, de Chagny. I'll give you that. But my father did that and worse before breakfast. Do you want to sing for me?"
The only sound emerging from his throat was a song of soft, glottal sounds, hungry for air. His hands felt blind, disobedient to his will. So, when he snagged the butt of his revolver with his very fingertips, it was quite an accomplishment. An accomplishment made still greater when his vision narrowed and he squeezed the trigger.
The monster sprawled on top of him went limp and the pressure at his throat ceased.
Erik sucked down greedy breaths of cold, musty air. It took several tries to coordinate his tired muscles into shoving the corpse off of him. And a corpse it was, if the hole in its head was any indication. Erik rolled onto his hands and knees, coughing weakly, swallowing the urge to retch.
No time to rest. He had to get to Christine. Bruno had lied. Hadn't he?
A/N: Reviews might give the muse a nudge. Just sayin'.