You have all been amazing! Thank you SO much for the reviews - truly!

Hollielillie - I can't send you a PM to send you snippets of upcoming chapters, but your reviews are lovely!

A special shout-out to M.G36 for inspiring me to delve into Meg's party and turn it into a masquerade. I never intended to include the party in the plot, so you have her to thank for the next scenes. :)

Chapter 15

For the rest of the night, Christine made every effort to stay around other people. If the crowd was thick, she was right there with them. She refused any other drink, wanting to keep her wits sharp and her head clear just in case.

It was a good thing that she did because she caught sight of Erik at various times over the next hours. He never engaged with anyone else, keeping to the darker corners of the enormous house, his glowing eyes always trained on her. Even though his presence unnerved her, she made every effort to obviously ignore him, and he made every effort to keep track of her whereabouts.

Maybe she should have found his looming manifestation creepier than she did. Certainly the other partygoers did – giving him a wide berth and mostly pretending as though he wasn't there. The single drunk person who had tried to strike up a conversation with him had run away at the first sight of his glare. The scene might have been funny if not for the fact that likely Erik had gotten that same reaction all of his life.

Mostly, Christine tried to keep an eye on Raoul while also pointedly not looking at Erik. Once, she saw her masked companion in the doorway beyond the room where she played poker with a group. She folded and went to another room to push herself into a circle of dancers, and that proved to be a mistake. Raoul noticed that she was actually dancing for once and rushed over to join her. He'd had several drinks himself and his hands were freer than they might otherwise have been. Christine pushed him off with the pretense of needing to go to the bathroom, but she knew Erik had seen.

Meg, ever observant, followed her and leaned in close. "Who's the mysterious dude? The one in the big mask?"

"I have no idea," Christine said, shrugging. Was her nonchalance convincing enough?

"Me either. He's so tall! I hope he's not a party crasher."

"Yeah, that would suck."

Meg elbowed her. "He's been following you around. He must like what he sees."

"I can hardly believe that," Christine said, rolling her eyes. "But I've barely noticed."

"Really? Because I've seen you looking over at him a lot too."

Christine recognized that sneaky tone. "Don't get any ideas, Meg. I'm not interested. In fact, I don't need to use the bathroom anymore. I need some air."

"Oh come on, Chris, I'm just playing around."

"Well, I'm not." Christine shrugged her off and headed out the back door. Some guests had spilled outside to smoke or enjoy the cooler night air. The mansion was on about an acre of property with mature trees and expensive landscaping. She didn't have much trouble finding a secluded spot off to the side of the house.

She didn't have to wait long before Erik showed up, sliding out of the darkness in his full mask. She rounded on him, too angry to feel any kind of fear.

"People are starting to notice you too much. You have a lot of nerve, showing up here, following me around like this."

"I wanted to see you."

His honest admission brought her up short and threatened to undo the wall she had put up. She folded her arms across herself, wishing she could talk to him without being dressed like this. She hated this get up; she was over this masquerade concept where she couldn't tell who was who. Her own mask itched. She couldn't imagine how Erik could wear one all of the time. She wondered if he thought she looked as ridiculous as she felt right then.

More than anything, she hated this full mask he wore. Her hand itched to reach up and take it off, and she finally had to satisfy her curiosity by touching it. She expected him to jerk back, grab her wrist, stop her in some way, but he didn't. Her palm curved around the sharp angle of the mask's cheekbone, the plaster different from the usual coolness of his porcelain cover.

"Why are you wearing something like this?" she asked.

"In such a public place, I cannot risk anyone seeing my face. With this, I am truly anonymous."

She let out the breath she had been holding. "I was worried you had been injured somehow."

He answered with a derisive snort. "I cannot get uglier, my dear!"

"Don't say that." She traced the shape of the mask, over the full lips so different from his real ones. She found the bottom edge where the thick plaster met the crease of his jaw and neck, touched her fingertips to the line of exposed skin above his collar. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. "You know what I meant."

"Do I," he mused. "My side is healing well enough and no, I have no new injuries."

That relieved her. "Are you done in New York?"

"No. This will never be done. Now that they are well aware of my existence, I cannot stop. More have followed quicker than I expected, much like stepping on an ant hill."

He hadn't pulled back from her touch. Her thumb slid over the imperial nose of the mask and gripped it. Perhaps sensing what she was about to do, he placed his own gloved hand atop hers.

"Christine-"

"How many more have you killed?" She spoke so softly that she doubted he could have heard her without his expert hearing.

Again, she tried to lift her hand, tried to lift his mask. He pressed more firmly on her hand with his own. Why didn't he push her away, throw her off of him, step back? He could so easily escape. His weight shifted from one foot to the other and back again.

"Four," he said at last.

This time, when her hand rose up, her fingers digging into his mask, he didn't try to prevent her from doing this thing to him. She could hear the noise of the party, the laughs of men and women who led lives in the daylight, who were far removed from anything close to this reality. She placed her other hand on his chest and felt the rapid flutter of his heartbeat.

His bare face was damp, sweaty from the confines of a mask not meant to be worn for long periods of time. The sores on his deformity hadn't healed much, and he was obviously not letting his skin breathe like he should. Pressing the mask into his own hands, she clucked her tongue softly and reached up to trace the outer ridges of that side of his face, mindful of the lesions. His golden eyes were wide and wild in the shadows.

"You have always known what I am, Christine."

She outlined the sunken ridge of his nose. "You're right. I have known." From the time Erik had considered leaving her in the pitch blackness underneath the Palais Garnier, she had known of what he was capable.

She shook her head, letting her hand drop from his face. He held the mask between them like a thing alive, but he didn't put it back on. The man before her had just admitted he had murdered four more people - sought them out on his own and strangled the life from them. For what? A feud over a decade old, for a time lost to history.

A pair of partygoers burst out of the back door, laughing and holding hands. Christine knew she and Erik were well hidden behind the thick bushes and trees, and anyone would have to travel quite a ways from the house to even come close to them, but even so, the sudden loud noise startled her. The couple began to speak in hushed murmurs and soon, Christine heard the telltale sounds of affection breaking out between them.

She turned back to Erik. He had widened his stance, his arms spread open and bent at the elbows, the slight beginning of a crouch. With his height, he had to have seen more than she could, maybe caught a better glimpse of the two people in each other's arms. He looked across the yard, and the longing in his eyes endangered her resolve. Maybe she should have felt apprehension, standing out here alone with him, a man who stirred conflict within her thoughts. Instead, she felt a surge of sadness. She felt like she was at a crossroads, and if she said the wrong thing, the world would fall apart beneath her feet.

She laid her hand back on the hideous half of his face, drawing his attention back to her. "You can't keep killing, Erik. You can't keep going down this path. Maybe years ago, this would have made sense, but now it's just murder. It won't ever stop until you stop, and you're better than all of this, you're better than this person who keeps killing."

His fierce, liquid gaze threatened to swallow her whole. If she expected tenderness then, she got the opposite, his voice light and mocking. "Sweet, trusting Christine. As you wax on about my moral character, I am plotting ways to finally make you mine."

She gasped at that, snatching her hand back, revealing his full face twisted with a dark emotion she couldn't name. "W-What do you mean?"

"Those friends of yours will take you from me. Maybe not now, maybe not quickly. But I have seen the way he looks at you. That boy does not even try to hide how much he wants you." He took one of her wrists in his steely grip so she couldn't possibly flee. He seemed to grow taller, larger, blocking out the party beyond.

"Erik, I don't-"

He continued his onslaught, moving closer, following her as she stumbled back. "You don't want him in return, is that what you mean? My dear Christine, maybe so, but you want his friendship and his charms and you laugh so easily with him. He places his hands on you like he has done so before."

Her back hit the trunk of a tree. "Stop it, Erik." She put two hands on his chest. Tucked against the tree, farther into the shadows, she could barely make out his face.

"I could make you mine, Christine," he continued, leaning forward. His mouth hovered just above hers. "I could kill the boy, take the girl, force you to cooperate in all the ways you might not otherwise."

"And I would hate you."

She didn't try to push him away because words were her power, words were her own strength. Erik cared too desperately about how she felt to carry through with any of these empty threats, and he knew what she had finally realized.

She had far more power over him.

He could never make her love him by sheer force alone.

He tried to draw back, but she didn't let him. Her arms snaked around his neck, easy to reach while he was bent over her, and folded behind him so he couldn't easily escape. Just seconds before, he had threatened her friends, threatened everything she held dear, and she felt his despair as surely as she felt her own.

She filled the last of the space between them, compressed the length of their bodies together. She chased his sharp intake of breath with her lips, the brief meeting of mouths not sufficient but all she could give. She pulled back before he could recover enough to respond, before she could begin to feel anything. She didn't dare meet his eyes.

"Get out of here, Erik."

And he fled into the night.

Christine found Meg about to lip-lock with a matador dressed head to toe in green and gold. She poked her friend in the shoulder, waiting with little patience for her to notice Christine standing there.

"I'm heading home," Christine said. If she could fool Meg into believing she was as fine as she had been minutes earlier, then she was truly a talented actress.

Meg must have drunk too many glasses of red wine because she didn't notice that anything was amiss. "Do you need a ride, Chris?"

Christine shook her head. "I'll take a cab. There are plenty shuffling in and out of here." She didn't have to worry about Meg going home alone, so she hugged her friend goodbye and headed off to find Raoul.

He was shooting darts with some other men in a back room, and he grinned at her when she entered. "Chris! There you are."

"Not for long. I just wanted to say goodnight." She stepped away from him before he could hug her. Even though she was pretty sure Erik was no longer in the area, she didn't want to add any fuel to the fire. "I'm feeling sick. Don't want to puke on you." She punctured her statement with a little laugh. "How are you going home?"

He jabbed a thumb behind him. "These guys rent a place within walking distance. I'll crash with them."

"Good, I'm glad to hear it." She was. Thank God neither of her friends were going to be alone tonight. She really did believe that Erik's words had been just that – empty threats to try to hurt her, to cover up his own vulnerability. Still, she would have to text both of them in the morning for her own peace of mind.

A few minutes later, she was climbing into a cab and sliding her own mask from her face. She rubbed the spot between her eyes, happy to have it off. She half expected Erik to show up again, but something felt different between them, like they had both said things that couldn't be taken back.

Her apartment had never seemed so empty.

The impending rain chased many people off the beach, so by the time Christine arrived in the late morning, the stretch of sand was nearly empty. She didn't much care. The dreary weather matched her mood, and she was thrilled to have the beach mostly to herself. Really, it wasn't raining all that much, just a steady mist that wet her arms and kept her cool.

She sat under her umbrella, stretched her bare legs across her blanket, and tried to read her novel like she had planned. However, her thoughts kept straying to last night. Erik had ventured into open territory – her territory – and came so very close to revealing himself to her friends. He had threatened her, threatened them, and all but said he wanted to claim her as his own

The thought made her shiver, and not completely with fear. She had been propositioned by men before – mostly for straight up sex – and turned them all down. Years ago, she hadn't been that interested, too focused on getting through college, and by the time she thought she might be ready, she had gotten her diagnosis. Unlike other guys who had fled at the first hint of the c-word, Raoul had stuck around at least as her friend.

And Raoul had propositioned her before, asking her to be his girlfriend quite clearly. In fact, he had always been downright chivalrous and formal about it. She appreciated the straight-forwardness, even if it wasn't all that romantic.

And yet she had told him no. Had turned him down several times now. And she never yearned for him in his absence like she did Erik.

Every time she was parted from her masked man, she wanted to see him again. Even when she had been so angry at him, she had still thought about him. What did that say about her, that she was more drawn to a known murderer than to a kind man with a steady job? What did that make her?

She remembered Erik's face when they had nearly been interrupted by the two lovers, his expression of utter longing, his eyes wide with want. She closed her own eyes, feeling the salty breeze on her skin, and tried to picture the manifestation of his bare face at that moment. There had been something else written in his features. A hunger mixed with… what?

He had looked down at her, and what had been his thought?

Christine shook herself and draped the shawl she had brought about her shoulders. The wind had picked up a bit, slanting a building drizzle under her umbrella. She pulled out her cell phone to check the time, maybe take a picture of the beach hazy with misty rain, and saw she had a text.

From Nadir.

It read: Call me. Please.

She hadn't spoken to Nadir since he had gone off to… deal with his friend Darius on that horrible night last week. She had thought about calling to check on him, to see how he was doing, but she hadn't wanted to open herself up to possible communication with Erik.

Still, she should call him, so she thumbed the screen open and pressed his number, putting the phone to her ear.

"Good morning, Miss Daaé," came his voice, which was normally so warm when speaking to her. Now, she could hear an edge in his greeting.

"Good morning, Mr. Khan," she replied. "How are you?"

"As well as can be expected. Where are you?"

"Um, what?" That took her aback.

He said it again, this time a bit slower, then added, "I drove by your apartment, but you were not there."

"Ah. Do… you need something?" She had no clue if Erik had told her about his little escapade last night, but obviously, Nadir Khan was also back in Boston.

"I need to speak with you in person."

"I'm at the beach."

"Which one?"

She puffed a breath of annoyance, but she decided to play nice. "Constitution Beach."

"Perfect. I'll pick you up in ten."

"Nadir-" she began, but he had already hung up.

What the hell? She thought Nadir was the more reasonable of the two, but obviously he also knew how to be annoying when he wanted to be. She gathered up her belongings, hiked her large beach bag over her shoulder, and made her way to the parking lot. The rain had started to pick up, and she was grateful for her large umbrella, which covered her enough that only her feet and ankles got wet.

A black car, smaller than the SUV he had driven before, pulled up to her side. She dumped her sandy stuff in the back seat and climbed into the passenger side. Nadir was dressed in his usual suit, so she felt a little sloppy in her sundress which she wore over a bikini, her hair wind-blown, her bare limbs covered in sand.

She pushed her wet hair from her face, and turned in her seat to glare at the Iranian. "You couldn't explain anything over the phone? You've been hanging out with Erik too much lately."

He frowned at her. "I could say the same of you. Your foul moods match." He pulled them into a more secluded parking spot and put the car in park, leaving it running. The beach had started to get chilly, so she was grateful when he turned on some gentle heat.

"Look, Mr. Khan, did you come here to berate me or is there a point?"

From his coat pocket, he produced a thin envelope and gave it to her. She sucked in a sharp breath and took the envelope from him with suddenly shaky hands. She stared at the careful penmanship of her name on the front in red ink.

"Is this…"

"A letter from Erik, yes."

She flipped over to the back. "It's still sealed."

"I haven't read it, if that is what you mean." He eyed her. "He was in quite a state when he came back to the hotel room last night."

"He followed me to a party. It was a masked party, so no one saw his face, but still – he was there around a crowd of people." She paused, thinking if she should tell Nadir anything Erik had said last night. She decided to hold her tongue for now.

Nadir tilted his head at the letter she held. "That would explain his behavior when he returned. I have never seen him in such a mood."

"He was angry?" She breathed slowly in and out.

Nadir made no comment about her odd behavior, gazing at her calmly. "No, not angry. Far from it, actually."

She stared down at the crisp white envelope. After a few minutes, she brought it to her face and inhaled Erik's familiar dark scent. Then she narrowed her eyes at Nadir, lowering the paper to her lap, running her thumbs over the surface. "You already know what it says."

"Oh, he said not a word to me, I assure you. Not a word until he told me to give you that." Nadir straightened in his seat and gripped the steering wheel in front of him. They both watched the rain go pitter patter against the windshield, blocking out the rest of the world. "But afterwards, he said it was time to go."

"Go?"

"Christine," he said, using her familiar name. "He has decided to stop pursuing this whole mess further, at least as far as physically attacking anyone responsible." She thought Nadir looked relieved at that, leaning his head back against the seat. "We are leaving."

"Leaving? Leaving Boston?"

"Ah, no, I'm afraid leaving the States altogether. If they know we aren't going to attack them, we can't stay here or even go back to Paris, for that matter. We have to go to a country where we know they have no stronghold and vanish from their radar altogether. It will have to be an extended stay, likely a year until they relax. Maybe more."

They were leaving. Erik was leaving. She struggled to breathe and talk calmly at the same time. "Why?"

"Damned if I fully understand that, Miss Daaé. Now that he has taken the initiative, he might be able to wipe them all out. But I have my suspicions. If we overstayed our welcome here, if we continued to pursue this further, eventually I would expect it all to get traced back to you. As long as we stay here, Erik will keep coming back to you. Surely you realize this."

She did, she did oh so clearly.

She held the envelope up, resisting the urge to crumble it within her trembling hands. "This is a goodbye letter, isn't it? He's saying goodbye to me."

Nadir sighed. "I believe so."

"I can't read this!" She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to the paper, her hands fisted beneath it. "How could he?"

"How could he!" The sudden anger in Nadir's voice startled her. His accent grew thick as he spat, "He is giving up on his revenge for you."

"He could at least say all of this to my face!"

"Could he, now? Erik has many abilities, but I doubt he can stand in front of you and willingly release you from him. He would not be able to do it. Besides, he seems to think you have made it quite clear your opinion on his pursuit of you."

"Because he's an idiot! He terrorizes me, saying terrible things, and then expects me to be happy when he shows up again!"

Nadir turned his eyes skyward, muttering something under his breath. "Like I have said, you are well suited for each other." He swept a hand to indicate the pouring rain outside. "Are you staying here or may I drive you home?"

She slumped in her seat, crossing her arms petulantly. The letter lay in her lap, remaining unopened. "Just take me home already."

He began to drive, easing the car on the way to the highway. It wasn't a long drive to her place, and he was silent for most of it. She got the feeling he was deep in thought. His words had cut her deeply, but she knew they were all true. She had done everything she could to push Erik away, so why was she so upset that he was finally leaving?

When she saw the familiar shape of her apartment, despair overcame her. Was he really going to drop her off and be done with her? This was all she would be left with – a fight with Nadir and a stupid letter from Erik?

"Nadir-"

He parked and turned in his seat to face her. "I am an old man, Christine, and I am tired. I am going to tell you something and forgive me, for I haven't spoken of it in a long, long time. But you need to hear this."

She nodded, giving him the room to begin. He darted his fingers through his salt and pepper hair, clearly nervous, and started his story.

So sorry to stop there, but otherwise, it would have been a giant chapter. :(