Page 95 of Angel's Fall

Shaya let go of Raoul to turn to the wall where the voices were coming from. It would have been comical to see his confused face replicated so many times had it not been so bloody fucking hot.

“What are you talking about?” Christine asked as if speaking to a rational man and not a deranged monster.

“I always wondered why that fire took off as fast as it did that night. It turns out, I was just a distraction – a patsy! – to take the blame for the real criminal. Can you believe it? Do you know what I felt when I figured that out?”

“Liar! Don’t listen to him!” Raoul yelled. Shaya delivered him a quick blow to the groin to gain some silence.

“Erik, calm down,” Christine begged as Raoul collapsed. The floor – was it metal? It was searing hot, just like the walls. “Just look at me and breathe. We’ll talk, and—”

“I was disappointed!” Erik howled, and Raoul struck the searing glass again. He was starting to sweat profusely from the rising heat and his endless rage. “Iwantedto have been the one that delivered them all to Hades! I thought my Don Juan’s great finale would finish the work, not begin it!”

“You don’t need to finish anything! It’s over!” Christine cried. “Erik, it’s over! You have them where you want them and you’ve hurt them. You have me and you’ve proven your power!”

“And I will keep them there until I am done with them!” A crash sounded, and Christine gave a cry of alarm. “Would you like to see? Look in my window here and see. Tell me how they look in my lovely jungle!”

“I don’t want to look!” Christine argued. “I want you to turn that thing off and stop this. I want to—”

“Talk? So we can fix it? So you can devise more lies and more placations to satisfy a world that hates me?” Erik sounded truly wild, like a man who could – and would – do anything. Raoul was sick and helpless and dizzy with the heat, furious to think how the creature had already abused her. “Or will you seduce me? Distract me from my path with a nice fuck?”

“Don’t you dare touch her again!” Raoul found himself yelling. “You raping, murdering, degenerate villain!”

“Oh, you poor boy,” Erik laughed, and his voice sounded like it was right in Raoul’s ear somehow. “You don’t even know how many times I’ve been ready to end your miserable life and our dear Christine has saved us all from the brink of devastation with hercharms. Would you like to know about how I had her right under your snooping nose while you looked about her room? Oh, how she—”

The sharp sound of a slap cut off Erik’s words. Then deafening silence on the other side of the wall. He was going to kill her or rape her again, Raoul was sure of it.

“How dare you. Howdareyou use me for your petty revenge like he used me as bait,” Christine said at last, her voice unrecognizable. “I thought you were better than that - than all of this!”

“You were wrong.I am the monster, Christine. I always have been, always will be. The one I was made, the one I was born,” Erik replied with terrifying calm. Raoul glanced to the Persian, who was just as transfixed. “Theyreminded me of that with their chains and their lies when they stole you from me! And now, I will not let them forget it!”

“Erik, for God’s sake!” It was Shaya who cried out. “Have mercy! She’s right! This is not who you are!”

“Are you a fool or insane?” Raoul demanded of the man beside him, ready to throttle him. He turned back to the wall and yelled instead. “No! For once, the beast is right! He is a monster! He knows nothing of mercy.”

“I have given all of you mercy for decades!” Erik roared, and the very walls trembled. “I have held back from showing this cruel world just how terrible the monster they made is! I have hidden away and buried my rage and hate, but no longer! I am tired of mercy!”

Again, there was pregnant silence, the tension as oppressive as the heat of the torture chamber.

“If only my brother could see you now,” Shaya chided. “Ramin showed you mercy, and I said he was a fool for it. At last, you prove me right.”

“Erik, please,” Christine pled, and Raoul could not banish the image of her falling to her knees before the creature. “We can just go. It can be over right now.”

“Go?” the monster echoed, as disbelieving as Raoul. “You keep saying that. You keep planning to run away, but to where? I ran before. I’ve run my whole life until I came here. This is myhome. The only home I have ever or will ever know. And it will be my tomb too.”

“It doesn’t have to be!” Christine argued desperately, and Raoul raised his hand to strike the glass again in rage. “There is a chance out there.”

“Do you still believe that?” Erik asked, and it was the tenderness of it that shocked Raoul. “Christine, I can’t—"

“We can! We—” Christine’s entreaties were cut off by the sound of a bell, of all things, tolling mechanically.

“Someone is on the lake,” the villain stated, and Raoul’s pulse quickened. Was it the police? The managers? Who was as foolish as they to come down here?

“Oh, God. Erik, please help them!” It sounded like she was crying again. “No more! No more death. Whoever is out there – stop them! For me and for us!”

Raoul could not make out any word of reply but his heart leapt in hope at the sound of a door shutting. Was Erik gone? The silence stretched out as he breathed in air that scorched his lungs.

“Christine, you have to let us out!” Shaya cried, placing his hands against the glass then stumbling back at the heat from it. “It’s these lights – they’re making it too hot! They’re electric! We’ll die before he can even start his tortures!”

“I can’t,” Christine replied desolately.

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