Page 69 of Angel's Fall

“We really don’t care about your failures, old chap. Just do as you’re told, and it will be easy,” Antoine replied. Motlagh didn’t seem to like that, but Raoul didn’t care. They had reached the Inn of the Setting Sun.

“Stay here. I’ll ask after her inside.” Raoul did not wait for his companion’s assent. The woman tending the table in the common room looked up in interest when Raoul entered and approached.

“I’m looking for a woman who may be staying here, a dear friend,” Raoul began, fumbling for something that was not too far from the truth. “She’s about this tall, with green eyes and dark hair. Pretty in a dark sort of way. Her name is Christine. Christine Daaé. She’s travelling alone.”

“There was a woman who came in late last night,” the innkeeper answered slowly. “I don’t recall her name. But she’s not alone. Her husband joined her today.”

Raoul’s heart leapt to his throat. “Are they... Is she here now?”

If he caught the monster in the act of defiling her, Raoul would kill him. He would strangle the fiend with his bare hands, and no court on earth would convict him for the death. He blinked the vision away to see the innkeeper shaking her head.

“Where have they gone?” Raoul pressed. The woman looked hesitant, so Raoul seized her by the arms and shook her. “It is essential I find them! My friend – that’s not her husband. She’s in terrible danger!”

“They left just before you arrived! I think they went towards the church,” the woman stammered. Raoul’s excitement surged again as he rushed from the inn to find Antoine and the Persian staring icily at one another.

“We have to be quick! I know where they are!” Raoul cried as he ran, fumbling with the valise in his hand for the materials he was so worried he might need. “She’s gone to the graveyard.”

“You’re not going to kill him in a house of God, are you?” Shaya asked. Raoul shook his head grimly, thinking back to his dreams and the constant vision of a corpse taking Christine’s maidenhead against her will.

“I assure you,Monsieur le Perse, he will not die,” Raoul muttered. “He deserves far more suffering.”

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It was different tobe in the churchyard at night, Christine mused. Eerier and darker, of course, but beautiful in its own way. The light from the ever-burning candles in the church and the waxing moon above allowed them to see, and Erik held her hand as they made their way through the humble gravestones.

“Are you sure about this?” Erik asked.

“I need it,” Christine whispered back. “I need him to hear you and know you. I need to feel him and say farewell.”

Erik sighed beside her. It was a strange way to reconcile the lover she had killed for with the father whose death had destroyed her. They were not the same, her angel and the man who had promised him. But one could help her say goodbye to the other, and perhaps, let her soul be free. Free to do what, she did not know, but free, nonetheless.

“Thank you, if I didn’t say it already,” Christine added, lifting Erik’s hand and kissing his knuckles. She met his shining, worried eyes as she did.

“I’ve never been so nervous before a performance,” Erik murmured as they came to the grave where she had wept and protested that afternoon in the rain. Now, it was clear and silent and calm. “Are you sure no one will hear?”

“If they do, they will think it is a ghost.”

Erik smiled weakly at the edge of his mask. “They won’t be entirely wrong.”

Christine could tell how tense he was to be out in the world again, even after all her reassurances. How could she convince him she would keep him safe? That was for another night perhaps.

She knelt before her father’s grave, silently begging for forgiveness and a blessing. Erik stood behind the stone and lifted the violin to his chin below the mask and began to play, the lilting notes of the violin calling Lazarus up from his grave.

She had known the old Romani air since before she could speak. It had always been her father’s favorite, this secret, magical song of The People. He had played it in his darkest moments, bringing his soul back from the brink of despair. Erik had played it for her when he was an angel hidden behind her mirror and made her feel that tenuous connection to the father she had lost. Now, he played above the place Stellan Daaé rested forever, and Christine could do nothing but weep.

It was pure beauty, this music. Pure love and hope ringing out through the cool March night under the moon. Christine felt the pull at her heart, the echo of an embrace, and the unmistakable swell of pride mixed with contrition. He had been wrong in so many ways, her father, to hold her too close and keep her wrapped in his despair and dreams. But he had loved her, and she sensed that love now as Erik played to the heavens.

Too soon it was over, and Christine was left looking up into Erik’s masked face in the moonlight. She could see tears glistening in his golden eyes. She wished so dearly that he had not hidden his face for this, but there was only so much she could ask of him today. Even so, she wanted to ask more. She wanted to beg. He had told her there was nothing he would refuse her. If she asked him to stay here above, maybe he would...

“Erik, I—” she began as he reached out his hand to help her up.

“Get away from her!” A voice rang out through the dark. Christine turned in terror to see Raoul racing through the gravestones, face twisted with rage and a gun in his hand.

“No!” Christine screamed, rising on instinct to block Raoul’s aim. “Please, no!”

“Out of the way!” Raoul cried as Christine threw herself at him, desperate to keep Erik safe. Raoul seized her and cast her to the ground. The sound of the gunshot hammered against her ears, rendering her deaf to her own screams as Erik dropped her father’s violin and gripped his arm.

“Erik!” she cried as she struggled to stand, and Raoul grabbed her again with a grip like iron.

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