Chapter Ten

Anna paused for a breath and stared at the bump barely evident through her skirts. She may as well have been sucking in shards of glass instead of the dank air for all her lungs burned. As the days rolled on her pregnancy robbed her of the simple pleasures of catching a decent breath. She had no idea how far along she was, but she knew the next few months were going to get harder. Biting into the apple she swiped from a pushcart, Anna made her way forward into the darkness. How quickly she had come to know these tunnels.

Though wonderful to wander in daylight and feel the weak winter sun on her skin, her walks became more of a secret patrol for dogs than anything for her health. She didn’t mind the tunnels of Lyon, as uncomfortable and uninviting as they were, they were far better than the rue Saint Antoine in Paris and the Cour de Miracles she used to call home. Filthy sewage riddled streets, debauchery around every corner… The apple suddenly made her stomach lurch. She tossed the core aside and tried not to think of the real reason she risked exposure.

Erik was still nowhere to be found.

Unsuccessful in drowning her thoughts or finding him, she headed toward the dead end of a tunnel she currently called home her. If she imagined it hard enough, the scene she came upon was cozy. Pappy leaned back against the stack of old crates he’d arranged as a makeshift chair and puffed his pipe. He propped his feet up on an abandoned three-legged table. Anna shook her head. The things Pappy managed to find and make useful.

Smoke crowned his head and wove in and out of the wrinkles in his brow. Furrows of disapproval, actually. They’d deepened since they’d burrowed underground like giant moles. Not wanting to worry him more, Anna shoved the weathered piece of paper she carried into the folds of her dress.

“I fail to see why you keep looking for him,” Pappy grumped as soon as she came close enough.

“Pardon?”

The pipe jabbed in her direction. “Your morning walks. You’re thinking of him and you shouldn’t. He is a perverse, selfish, and violent man. You should be counting your blessings he’s gone. Good riddance, I say.”

Anna folded her lips into her mouth. Leave it to Pappy to speak his mind. “He’s none of those things. I just hope he doesn’t hate me.”

“I find it hard anyone could hate you, Anna.”

What a sweet thing to say. If only she could believe it. Palms forward, she warmed her hands before a crackling fire and watched, horrorstruck, as the paper she’d protected floated free from its hiding spot to land at Pappy’s feet. Those wrinkles smoothed out as his brows shot up.

“The decree! Where did you find this?”

He sounded like someone had just released his throat from a vice. “Tacked to a hitching post.” Anna shrugged. “They won’t find us.”

“Us!” Pappy tossed the decree into the flames, his nostrils flaring as the paper burned. “I’m getting a bit tired of the ‘us’ part. Don’t you give me that look, missy! I’ve remained partly because you’ve endeared yourself to me. I didn’t do enough to protect my daughter, but I’m just about at my limit!”

Since rolling her eyes wasn’t well met, Anna folded her arms. While she empathized with Pappy’s guilt, she didn’t need protection.

“And another thing,” Pappy jabbed his pipe at her again, “I—for one—am a gentleman and will not race off and abandon a pregnant lady. I want to know why your face turns whiter than a baby’s ass every time you see a decree. And don’t tell me it’s due to this hunt! If you expect me to stay, then give me the entire story. There’s more to this, isn’t there?”

Anna shivered despite standing in front of a fire. Hopefully Pappy didn’t hear her gulp. “You know all you need to.”

“Rubbish! If Maestro’s such a saint and this entire manhunt is one huge misunderstanding, then why do you walk clear across a road merely to avoid a dog?”

Anna searched Pappy’s expression. He’d managed to corner her and make the tunnels shrink around her at the same time. If it was hard to breathe before, now it felt impossible. His gaze probed her with such unrelenting demand; she wanted to turn tail and run in the other direction.

“Anna, antwort mir!”

Barking at her for answers in German didn’t help any. It only made her feet numb underneath her. Swallowing hard, she searched around her as she faced the reality that she had no choice but to confide in Pappy. Erik may never return, and she had to think of the baby. All she could do was hope the curmudgeon glaring at her would have a big enough heart to understand the transgressions of the two people he got irreversibly involved with.

“Erik—” Voice having had cracked, she started again. “Erik is a great man, Pappy. He’s a misunderstood genius and, yes, a murderer. But man had a hand in making him into what he is. And if he didn’t do what he did when this manhunt started, I’d be dead right now, and my baby would never have had the chance at life. But he’s not the only sinner.”

Anna never experienced such stares in the time it took to confess what she knew of Erik’s past and all that had transpired at the Opera Garnier. Through it all, she saw sympathy in Pappy’s eyes and knew she’d convinced him of their plight. But now, after confessing the deepest roots of her past, Pappy sat like an unemotional rock before the dying fire.

“Swear to me, Pappy, swear you’ll never tell him. Do you understand? Erik can know nothing of Brussels, nothing of Duke de Molyneux, nothing of my past.”

Pappy rubbed his stubble and swiped the sweat from his brow. “Why? Why shouldn’t I tell him? You’re birds of a feather!”

“Pappy, please!”

He blocked such words with a shove of his hands and got to his feet. “Why did you keep this from me? After all I’ve done to stay with you?”

“Erik can’t know I’m a murderer. I’m running from two noble families now. I know that dog he killed belonged to Duke de Molyneux’s head huntsman, Loup. Erik will do horrible things if he finds out about my past. You’ve seen how protective he is of my honor. If he discovers my father gambled me away in a card game when I was barely fifteen to be a whore to Molyneux’s heir, I can’t fathom what he will do! It’s best our pasts remain separate. I’m not exactly the right person for Erik, but I love him. I don’t want him to know that I’m capable of murder.”

Pappy stopped short in his pacing, looked at her once, then paced again, still rubbing at his stubble. “How do you expect me to accept all this?”

“How do I expect you to accept this?” He had to be joking. “That is just it. I don’t expect you to accept this! I’m asking you to. How does one forgive murder? Tell me, how? I’ve been trying to find that answer for the better part of my life. It’s the spot I can’t wash away. The sin I can’t overcome. Why would he have fallen in love with the comtesse if not looking for someone that didn’t match him sin for sin? That’s why he can’t know because it only makes me more imperfect! I’m already competing against so much.”

“What is this power she has over you?” Pappy threw his arms open wide, the move only making his bellow sound louder. Anna jammed her teeth into her tongue. A battle of wills was not on her agenda.

“For that matter,” Pappy shouted, “what is this power he has over you?” He indicated the dark tunnel around them. “Do you see him here? No! I don’t like him. I don’t trust him. I still don’t believe you should be with him and I certainly don’t trust him and this Christine together. But all that isn’t my choice. It’s yours, or his, or hers. Bah! I don’t understand this whole damn thing.” He grabbed a broken board and shoved it into the fire.

Anna dodged sparks. “I’m not asking you to understand it. I’m asking you to understand me.” She nearly bruised her chest when she clutched her heart. “I’m the product of the world in which I grew. I’ve spent my entire existence trying to do good to repent for the life I took, and this hunt is bringing it all back to life. And now, I’m giving life. Can you ever understand what that means to someone who has murdered?”

The expression on his face had gone blank, erasing the weathered lines of which Anna had grown fond.

“I choose to be with you, Anna, but I never dreamed you’d have been capable of such horror.”

“What of my horror? That boy and his father would rape me nightly. They tied my hands so I couldn’t fight back. They struck me. I was scared, Pappy!”

“Murderers are murderers! Like the bastard that killed my—”

“That bastard wasn’t like me! Pappy, please! Not a day goes by that I don’t dwell on what I did.” She shook her hands. “I still feel the jarring of the knife as it sunk into that boy’s back. I still smell his blood, and every time I sleep, I can still feel the weight of them on top of me. Every time Erik reaches to love me, I can’t help but remember—” Anna hugged herself with one arm, wanting desperately to shrink away from the thought. It took a moment for her to loosen her throat and speak again. “Molyneux and his wolves have shadowed me on and off for years. I thought they’d given up looking for me.”

The fire was the only sound for a long time as they stood there; Anna hugging herself against the memories of guilt and shame and Pappy shaking his head as he paced away thoughts he wouldn’t share. It took all her courage and a heavy dosage of prayer to have the guts to speak again.

“Pappy, I’ll understand if you leave me. I know how such an unimaginable crime has destroyed your life. It’s destroyed mine too. Just—if you leave, be safe? Please? You chose to associate yourself with this manhunt by covering for us. Chagny must know you, and you can be sure Loup does as well. He’ll mercilessly seek you out. I’m sorry. I truly am. I wish I can change the past, but I can’t.”

She barely breathed as Pappy sank down on a crate and stared at the fire. Anna inched toward him fearing his rejection while at the same time wishing harder than she ever had wished before.

“If you stay, let me live give you the life your daughter can’t. Let this be her child too. You’re the father I always dreamed of having, Pappy.”

Pappy folded his wrinkled hands together in his lap and leveled his eyes with hers. Her lungs burned as she held her breath and tried to read between the wrinkles quivering on either side of his bottom lip. She tried her bravest to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling as his flowed freely down his face.

“Swear to me. Never tell Erik of Brussels.”

With a whisper of her name and a nod of his head, he made his promise and his choice.

Far opposite any confessions being made in an underground tunnel, Erik stood staring across the rooftops of Lyon. His arms were like impenetrable armor folded tightly against his chest. A distant rumble of thunder, unusual for the time of year, vibrated against the metal roof of the opera house and rolled away just like his thoughts. He didn’t even feel the biting wind that caught his cloak and whipped it around his ankles. He’d wandered without thought or aim through the streets after his encounter with Christine until he found himself on the opera’s roof, staring across Lyon with contempt swimming through his veins. Thunder clapped as if applauding the one thought that just exploded in his mind.

Erik needed no one. Wanted no one. Wanted nothing to do with the life he’d been trying to lead. There was no point to it when his life was a perpetually turning hourglass, replaying the same history over and over again.

His life would be here, back in the shadowy halls of an opera house, full circle and alone.

The wind howled, and Erik laughed, making no effort to control his voice. Who would hear him anyway? The Lord? What a pathetic puppeteer He was. Thinking He could tempt him by yanking the string of one woman before his face while dangling the memories of another.

Pitiful fool that God.

Erik leaned far over the edge of the rooftop, the sideways rain slapping against his mask. A stone dislodged and fell toward the street. Anna was like stone. She was solid and tough as she tumbled through life, yet, like everyone else would eventually hit bottom over something and at some point crack.

The rain made the stone rail shimmer with imperfections. Erik stared at it trying hard not to dwell on Anna, but if he likened her to stone, then she was ordinary on the surface until studied closely enough. Then, she was as intricate of a creation as he ever saw. Erik stroked the rail and squinted. Rugged enough to cause him pain, yet able to build fantastic foundations that made him never want to stop exploring life’s limits.

Stone, when dry, looked one way; yet wet was entirely different. All the hidden flecks shone in the rain and blinded him with its beauty. He didn’t want them to. Falling for beautiful things was just as reckless as believing in the fool that created them. Erik’s eyes tapered. He dug out a piece of masonry.

Like stone, Anna was easy to dismiss being plain and simple. He flicked the piece off the edge of the roof and waited for it to shatter on the ground below like the other. Easy to dismiss, until it multiplies into more than one piece.

“Why!” He spat at the heavens. “You miserable excuse for a Savior. What are you forcing upon the world by allowing me to multiply? You stupid, ignorant—were you not thinking it was me, your Angel of Death?”

Erik pounced upon the railing and walked, heel to toe, perfectly balanced between life and certain death.

“Yet another cruel and twisted game, you play is it not? Rear me in a life of no love and then dangle Christine in front of me by one hand, Anna by the other.” Erik spread his arms and arched backward. “Are you taunting me to make a choice now, like I forced Christine to make a choice? Is this some spiritual lesson?” He rapped his temples with both hands like a child whose point wasn’t coming across. “Did you merely think bringing Anna into my life would change anything? You are more of a laughable ghost than I.”

Noise wailed like hungry babes in his mind. Erik deliriously allowed it to come. He was here was because of Anna’s rejection, and the alarming reality that seeing Christine again made it so he dared not return to her. Would he even want to now, thinking himself more imperfect than before? If there were a God, would he have allowed Christine to waltz into his path? Her belly swollen with what would undoubtedly be a perfect child raised in a privileged life.

Certainly not.

He closed his eyes as guilt glutted on his veins. “Create what you want in Anna’s womb. You have already practiced on me, go ahead and perfect it in that child. Perhaps you can get it right this time.” He tore off his mask and savagely thrust it aside. He delighted in the cold blast of air that slapped across his skull. “Go on! Give the world another walking, talking corpse; Yet another signature of your mistakes and your imperfections. Breathe all the music and genius you want into it. Do what you want, but be forewarned.” Erik’s finger shot toward the heavens, pointing at a faceless God he hated. “You will not destroy me, and you will not destroy my child. All the love you swing before me like a pendulum only to sever in my heart is his now. I will see to that! I will trust no one to love him, not Anna and not you! I will not be rejected again. Not by Anna. Not by Christine. Not by your damn world.” Erik slammed a fist into his chest. “I do not need anyone.”

The words chased him like the wind. He followed the echo until they were nothing more than a memory of an awesome confession. Kneeling, he stared at the stone beneath him until his vision blurred. Perched precariously on the edge of the railing, on the fringes of sanity and madness, he clawed at the stone’s perfections and imperfections until the tips of his fingers were red with blood. He didn’t know how to stop wanting. He didn’t know how to stop needing.

All he knew was he wanted and needed his child.

Sobs wracked his body until he crouched, his forehead lowering until it met the unfeeling stone. Was this the weight of God pushing him to submit? Forcing him to bow before His throne? Erik’s body bucked with the potency of his cries. Alone on the rooftop, he wept out years of frustration.

He thought to lean to one side and be done with it. The exhaustion over fighting his desires for Christine, the constant tug of war with madness coupled with fearing he would destroy the one woman who made him feel alive, was unendurable punishment.

“I never believed in your grace or in your sincerity of bringing Anna to me. Shocked are we? Surprised for a brief moment, I did believe?” Erik rolled his head toward the side and pressed his cheek to the stone. “Congratulations, Oh Merciful God, you failed again. Anna can have you and that Son of yours.” He yanked himself upright, his body going rigid with his anger. “And I am pleased Philippe is dead!”

Spittle flew from sob soaked lips. His lips spread upward. He may be alone for now, but not forever. There was to be an heir to his kingdom, a child with his mind and his madness. Erik spoke to the shattered stone below with an unblinking stare.

“I will have my child, in all his hideous imperfections. I will need no one but him and my music. I will need only his love. As for Christine?” Erik stood. The wind flapped his cloak behind him. He leaned into the gust and taunted the streets below like a great yellow-eyed bird ready to swoop on unsuspecting prey. “Our character becomes our destiny. Music, like life, is inexpressible silence without its instrument. And am I not its master? I hold the baton. I will conduct who I want.”

Leaping back to the roof he retrieved his mask and turned to the opera house, his boots drumming a cadence with each step he took. A haunting whisper carried his sadness forward on the wind.

“What is Erik without the Phantom?”