Page 77 of Angel's Kiss
“The Shah always gave the victims the same offer and the same warning: survive and walk away a free man, but beware if you see the demon’s face, for that means you are already dead. I killed fourteen men for him, and each time it got easier. Each time I became more of a monster because I enjoyed the power it gave me to hold their lives in my hands. The world had hurt me so much for so long. I could finally take my revenge in those rosy hours in Mazenderan.”
Christine shivered at the echoes of the past in Erik’s voice. The relish she could hear.
“Shaya grew afraid of me, but Ramin...he feared for me. For my soul, or so he said. He told me so many times it was a crime, a waste, to put an artist like me in the place of a common executioner. But I was more than that. I was an angel of death, a terrible, magnificent, powerful thing. I told him I was what I was always destined to be. He disagreed. He said I was meant to be so much more.
“I worked with him on the new palace. At the Shah’s insistence, I was to do on purpose what I had done piecemeal and in secret at the Opera: design a mystery box, a giant magic trick where he could move about unseen to do his own spying upon all that would defy him. He also wished for a place to put those that displeased him, male and female. A place to confuse and punish. To torture. And so I thought back to my time in Steiner’s cellar and the commune and I built him a maze of mirrors to drive men mad.”
Christine shuddered, and in Erik’s distorted face she could see his disgust, or so she hoped. The outline of his body was visible now, set apart from the shadow by gray light.
“I never saw it at work,” Erik continued despondently. “The Shah’s paranoia turned on me. He ordered that the light of my eyes be put out forever, so no one would know the secrets of his new realm. He ordered Shaya to do it, but Shaya made the mistake of telling his brother. And it was Ramin who saved me before Shaya and his men could strike.
“We ran, the two of us. And Ramin’s name was added to the list of those who were to be killed for their knowledge, along with all the builders who had worked on the palace. Shaya refused to kill his own brother and innocent workers, so he was branded a traitor too.
“We went to the sea, the shore of the Black Sea, Ramin and I. I had always admired him, enjoyed our time, and he had always been there to tell me I was meant to create beauty, not death. He even said my face was not so bad, if one got used to it. I laughed at him, in that little house by the sea. And he said it would not be impossible for someone to...to care for me. To want me.
“Shaya knew before either of us, what Ramin felt. I still don’t understand how someone that good could see anything worth saving in me in that terrible place, knowing what I was and what I had done. But he did. I mocked him at first, called him a fool who would turn on his god and his people for infatuation with a monster. And he told me that love was never a sin.”
“You said that to me, about Jammes and Julianne.” Christine watched Erik nod in the light that had begun to creep through the curtains. Soon it would be dawn. “You and he were lovers then?”
“For two nights. And on the second one, I was foolish enough to hope that we could escape. But the curse found us. Shaya found us. He berated Ramin for destroying their family’s name and lives for the sake of a monster, he cursed me for corrupting a good man with my evil. They fought, Ramin telling Shaya it was he who had lost his soul serving an evil man. And then the rest of the secret police found us.
“There were two of them. Both armed. They did not have Shaya’s tact or conscience. They shot Ramin first and turned their guns on us. Shaya and I were too fast, he shot the one who had killed his brother, and I killed the other with the Punjab lasso before he could take Shaya’s life.
“Shaya could have killed me there. I had just destroyed his family and condemned him to exile or torture. But I had saved Shaya’s life. And he wanted to do what Ramin would have done and be a man of honor. So he let me go.
“He told me I would have to live with his brother’s blood on my hands, along with all my other crimes. When Shaya returned to court, whatever lie he told failed, and he was imprisoned then exiled. Only his royal blood saved him from death. He followed the tales of me until he found his way to Paris, three years ago, but by then I had already been driven farther into the dark than he would have ever guessed.”
“You came back to Paris six and a half years ago.” It was time for the final confession.
“It took me a while. I had to hide, travel slowly. I couldn’t perform, for word might reach the Shah that the living corpse with the voice of a siren was doing magic in the East. I went through Turkey, tried my hand at a mechanical career there, but that gained attention and I knew I could not stay anywhere long. I was too tainted.
“I kept running, joined with a Roma band heading west, and found myself in France once again. Here I thought I was safe enough to sing in the fairs once again, and eventually, in the summer of 1874, our caravan was invited to be the entertainment for a garden soirée near Rouen, hosted by a man with a name I recognized.”
“Your father.” Christine’s heart began to pound in fresh horror. In the dawning light, she could see the burns on Erik’s shoulder and arm.
“I still wonder if he knew who I was when he hired us. But I recognized my father that day in the sun. I stood there at last before a crowd of nobles, sharing their blood, with the man who had cursed me before birth sitting among them in the manor gardens so close to where my mother had been buried. And I took off my mask and felt the summer sun on my face. And he knew.
“He called me a monster, a thief, and a criminal. He had me seized and locked in a cellar. The lasso was of no use, and there were so many of them. His people had guns and no regard for my life or the Romani who had come with me. So I did not fight. They beat me anyway. But I escaped my bonds easily at night. I needed a distraction for the men set to guard me. So, I set a fire. I don’t know how the fire spread so fast, but before I knew it, the whole manor was in flames. I could hear people screaming, guests for the party trapped in their rooms...”
Erik’s voice faded even as the light in the room grew brighter, his words and eyes echoing with the sounds of death and destruction he had caused.
“I heard someone calling for help close by, and I tried to go back. I wanted to help. Prove I wasn’t like them. But a beam fell and my way was blocked. I was trapped. Then I heard it: my father’s voice, calling for his son. I found him, in the grandest bedroom of the house, where he very well could have raped my mother all those years ago, pinned under a bookshelf. He saw me through the flames and begged for help, begged for his life. He offered me money, his name, and his lands. He offered me everything. And I turned away and left him to die.”
Christine bit back the words of comfort she wanted to offer. It was wrong, to say such a man deserved that fate, to die alone in flame. But didn’t he? After all the evil he had done? It made Christine’s own heart burn with guilt just to think it. And did that mean Erik deserved the same fate, for all his crimes?
“I was hurt badly trying to escape. Burned and beaten, I still refused to die. I stole a horse and rode as far as it would take me. I moved at night, hiding and growing weaker, but I finally made it to Paris where I found my way to the Opera. From there you know and guess the rest.”
Christine looked into her lover’s face, the picture of death, scarred and broken by so much tragedy. It was strange to finally know the truth about the man who loved her, who had saved her life and trapped her soul. Now at last she saw beyond all his masks, to the ugliness she had always known was there and tried to ignore it in the dark. But now it was dawn.
“What will Shaya do when he hears about Buquet?” she asked. Somehow the fear was distant, while Erik held her in the twilight.
“He’s been waiting for me to prove I am still a monster. When he hears Buquet was hanged, he’ll want words with me I expect. He’ll know I killed him.”
“Butyoudidn’t,” Christine protested. “It was—”
“It was me, Christine. He is dead because of me. Please, do not let that sin weigh on your soul. Let me have it, another body added to my list does not trouble me anymore.” Of all the things Erik had told her in the last hour, that chilled Christine the most. “I do not regret that man’s death. He hurt you. He would have kept us apart and the world is better without him in it.”
It made her sick to finally hear the last truth: that Erik was willing and ready to kill for her. To keep her. Out in the street a carriage rolled by, the horses’ hooves clopping steadily as the vehicle rumbled behind them. Paris was beginning to wake. Erik looked towards the light growing beyond the curtains.
