Chapter Two

Life on the run meant keeping close to shadows and his eyes never off the road behind him. The thought of one day finding a place where he could live unmasked and free from unjust persecution kept Erik pushing forward. His dreams of creating a castle for Anna prevented him from slipping into the ever-beckoning memories of a darker time. At the moment, the unfairness of this manhunt boiled his blood.

“This is getting ridiculous.” The musty smell of the livery added to his growing disgust. “I did not spend years crafting my asylum and hoarding my wealth to be prostituted back to the life of repugnant freaks.”

Anna flicked him an annoyed look he didn’t appreciate, so he kicked at some damp hay. It didn’t help.

“Don’t criticize my life,” she scolded. “You had an unusual arrangement at that opera house. I, on the other hand, grew up like this. We can’t exactly invade a salon or dine on turtle. We’re wanted criminals.”

“I find it annoying that you continuingly call us that.” Each time she did he had to push down the guilt threatening to emasculate him.

Anna planted herself in front of him, ready to reply, but a voice coming from the shadows made her close her mouth.

“Oh joy. If it isn’t the humming wonder.”

Erik’s spine snapped ramrod straight. He groaned toward the ceiling as Anna ducked around him.

“Pappy! Guten Abend.” Her voice was far too chipper.

“Abend, yourself little lady,” Pappy replied. “I never did have the pleasure of your name.”

“Anna.”

Erik turned in time to see to see the old goat’s smug smile.

“Bundle up some hay and have a seat.” Pappy patted a bed of straw.

Hay fluttered aside as Anna flopped beside him, her smile reaching across her face. She gestured to Erik. “Go ahead, might as well let it all out. You’re more irritable than an angry hornet right now.”

Erik governed his temper. “Why are you—”

“Ah-Ah! I didn’t follow,” Pappy interjected. “I got here first. Took the good hay. Old bones you know.”

A girlish squeak slipped out Anna’s lips as Erik reached down and plucked her into his arms. “If you do not mind, old man, I would much prefer my woman sleep near me.” He carried her along with him to a spot across the livery, and sat, plopping her into his lap. He buried his lips in the top of her hair lest he said something he’d regret.

“So,” Pappy proclaimed, lighting a pipe, “are you going to tell me about the mask?”

“No.”

“Fine, I’ll just assume you’re uglier than my horse’s ass. Go back to that murder then.”

“No,” Erik grumped, pulling Anna closer in an attempt to stop her chuckling.

She poked at him to let her go but grasping her kept him in check. Erik didn’t take kindly to prying questions. With a heavy sigh, she settled into the crook of his arm and amused herself with the one thing in reach, a discarded copy of last month’s Époque.

“No,” Erik snapped in reply to another question, though he imagined gagging the old man with whatever he could find.

As he looked around for something to accomplish that with, his eyes roved over the paper Anna nonchalantly flipped through. He skimmed the top story, his grip on Anna going soft. The words numbed his arms at first; then the shock jolted him straight through to his spine. He leaped to his feet, tumbling Anna to the side so abruptly her braid flipped over her head.

“Erik, what in the world—”

He snatched the paper from her hands, memories flooding him thick and fast. He hunched as his strides pounded against the earthen floor.

“Erik?” Anna asked. “What’s going on?”

He sank to the floor beside her, a cold numbness falling over this body His gaze never left the front of the paper.

“Philippe Georges Marie, the Comte de Chagny—is dead.” He crumpled the paper to his chest seeing nothing but distant shapes in his mind.

“Philippe de Chagny?” Anna huffed, picking hay off her dress. “Is he any acquaintance of Raoul de Chagny?”

The pressure in Erik’s chest rose when she turned to Pappy. He had a want to tell her but feared the vulnerability constricting his throat.

“Noblemen,” Anna rolled her eyes as Pappy made smoke rings in the air. “I have little respect for the lot of them. Especially Raoul de Chagny. We save the life of his wife, and this is kind of respect we get.” She wagged her finger, gesturing to no one in particular. “The entire manhunt is her damn fault. If she had a spine to stand up for what she knew was right, we’d not be in this mess. Who was Philippe? Or do I not want to know?”

Erik looked at Anna, his heart slowing in his chest. The profound degree of his grief lay hidden beneath his mask, but he wasn’t so sure he kept it from his voice.

“Who was he?” he asked brokenly. “He was not his brother…”

Closing his eyes stirred his memories and gave birth to the unsettling noise in his mind—the familiar pull of madness. Turning his back, Erik pulled his chin to his chest and refused to meet her eyes…

Cellars of the Opera Garnier 1881

Blood—it tasted metallic. Erik didn’t know where it came from, nor did he care.

His foot slipped from under him causing his shout to pierce the silence as he rolled down the stone steps in his drawing room. He was too weak to bother trying to stand again. Everything spun like an out of control kaleidoscope, blurring the candles that were burning out. He thought he could still hear the shouts his attackers, but they were a figment of his mind. His labyrinthine home was silent as a tomb.

At least they overcame him quickly. He was able to unleash his fury on a few before they left him for dead.

He had nothing remaining in his life now. Christine Daaé had run off with her lover, the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. Fitting, wasn’t it? That his return from confessing his sins to an old Persian friend should end this way; mugged and beaten as soon as his feet left the cab.

Arm over arm like an injured reptile Erik dragged himself to his bedchambers where he could die surrounded by his memories of her.

Erik shuddered violently after each movement, his body swelling where the fists had collided with flesh. Not able to make it to his bedchamber under the intensity of the pain, he curled into the fetal position, half in and half out of his doorway and willed death to be soon. Erik closed his eyes. The shouts in his mind faded away, replaced with the metronome of his labyrinth: the rhythmic lap of the water as it beat out what time he had left. It would be a welcome change to slip into darkness. He had always been one with the shadows.

Christine had been his only ray of light.

The sounds faded. Born alone. Die alone. Die unloved. Giving in to the pain, Erik laid his face against the cold stone floor. He had no idea where his mask was. It didn’t matter anymore.

His lips trembled a lonely requiem. “Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla: teste David cum Sibylla.”

He lost count of how many times he had whispered that as he faded in and out of consciousness. Erik cracked open his eyes: rock, water, organ. He closed them. He had no concept of how long he lay there, but the pain grew excruciating. Erik’s body blazed with fever while his mind danced a duet with Mephistopheles.

He lifted an eyelid again: rock, water and some black shape blocking his oblique view of his organ.

“Stay still,” a voice whispered. The shape knelt. “You’re terribly hurt.”

Erik watched as a hand reached for him, sending panic ripping across his body. “No!” he roared. “Do not touch me!”

“Stop. You shouldn’t move. You’ll injure yourself further.”

“No!” Erik yelled. A fever driven insanity made the room pitch and tumble as the man grabbed him. “I will not die like this!”

Kicking and scratching like a cornered animal, he fought to make contact with any bit of available flesh on his assailant. Let him die with some vestige of human dignity, not like a beaten mongrel.

The man fought back, grabbing Erik’s wild hands, matching him scream for scream. “Calm yourself! I’m here to help!”

Erik continued to flail, using his fever-induced craze to the fullest.

The man was not deterred. “I don’t want to do this, Monsieur, but seeing as you’re most uncooperative—and I admit I’ve been dying to do this for some time now—you give me no other choice.”

The fist landed on Erik’s face like a catapulted rock, knocking him into submission. Next he knew he was being dragged across his floor until his body was lifted, and he sank against his divan. Erik stared across the room in confusion at the coffin he used for a bed. Why was he not in it? Had he yet to die?

“Relax,” the voice urged, “you’re hurt.”

Erik’s unfocused eyes bobbed away from the macabre box to look at the man above him. Impeccably clothed, aside from the tatty cloak and threadbare felt hat he wore, his blue eyes shone with compassion yet his mouth seemed tight, angry. Too dizzy to make any sense of it, Erik surrendered to blackness while his mind posed the question that would haunt his dreams.

“Why do you look familiar?”