Page 100 of Angel's Fall

“He said he would end his opera burning down the world when he was raving!” Shaya hissed. “And he means to end things tonight.”

“We have to warn her!” Raoul stumbled back towards the light and the trap door up into the chamber. “Help me up! Christine!” he cried as Shaya boosted him back into the sweltering, mirrored room. “Christine! You have to listen to us! You have to stop him! Are you there?!”

Raoul didn’t care if the monster heard him, only that Christine did. No matter what she had done or what that thing had convinced her she felt, she would not allow murder and destruction on this scale.

“I’m here!” came her wrenching cry in return, close to the wall.

“Christine, listen to us!” It was Shaya who called out as Raoul hauled him up through the trap door. “He has a cache of gunpowder under the house! He has the means to kill us all!”

The music stopped, and Raoul held his breath. Already the heat of the torture chamber was making him dizzy once again. Or perhaps it was the image in his mind of Erik turning slowly to his captive where she stood by their prison.

“And he intends to use those means, very soon,” came the voice of the demon. How could Raoul have thought it an angel before? The sound was pure evil and hate. “When I turn the grasshopper, the spark will ignite those barrels, and the whole Opera will hop with it.”

“And the scorpion?” Christine asked in return, as if reciting a riddle Raoul had not heard the start of. “What does it do?”

“Makes the barrels unusable. But there will be no need,” Erik laughed.

“Christine, find that thing! Turn the scorpion!” Raoul yelled, desperate for hope. “Don’t let this coward kill us all!”

“A coward, am I, Monsieur?” Erik cackled. “Come and face me as we all die! You will beg me for your precious, useless life, and I will say no!”

“Let me out and I am happy to do just that, you vile creature!” Raoul screamed in return. “I will rip your heart out with my bare hands, do you hear me! I will cut off that monstrous face as a trophy and wave it through the streets and the world will thank me!”

“Ha, and you call me the monster,” Erik laughed again.

“He is a monster because you have made him one!” Christine cried in turn. “Butyoudon’t have to be one or do this!”

“Christine, stop trying to reason with this thing!” Raoul screamed in fury. “He is beyond hope! Do you hear me, Erik? You are damned and doomed! You will rot in hell for your sins! The murdering coward and his—”

The arm around Raoul’s neck cut off his words, squeezing the air from his throat. “That is enough from you!” the Persian ground out as he choked Raoul, causing his knees to buckle as his vision tunneled into black and white. “Erik! I’m ridding you of your audience!”

Raoul wanted to scream and fight. He tried to! But he could only paw at the arm around his neck and gurgle his protests as consciousness began to leave him.What an awful way to die, came his final thought, not knowing if he would ever wake.

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“What have you donein there, Daroga?” Erik asked, blinking at the return of silence. “Please don’t say you’ve killed him before I could.”

“He is alive and unconscious,” came Shaya’s exhausted reply. “I did it to give you a chance to listen to this woman!”

“He won’t,” Christine said calmly. “Because heisa coward.”

Erik turned to look at Christine, slowly advancing from his place by the organ. The music of the requiem had been like a respite – a balm on the wounds eating at his soul or a break in the fever. Or a final prayer before the end. He still was not sure. He could see Christine clearly again, beautiful and devastating as always.

Her long, unbound hair was a dark contrast to her rumpled prison frock, and yet, she looked like a warrior standing tall on a battlefield. Her jaw was set and her eyes resolved as she stared at Erik across the room. “Did you hear me, Erik?You are a coward.”

“A coward?” Erik echoed softly as he moved towards her, his wounded pride stoking his indignation. “I have endured and faced things no one could imagine.”

“And you ran from them,” Christine spat, and Erik clenched his fists.

“I ran to survive.” Erik came within arm’s length of his beloved, waiting for her to flinch or cower in the face of his monstrousness. Christine only raised her chin in further defiance.

“You did, and I admired that so much about you. How you chose to live in the face of such pain. How you could see the beauty in the world and live for it.” Christine shook her head sadly. “But it was fear that moved you further and further into the dark, until you were nothing but a shadow.”

“Not for you,” Erik protested. “I came out of those shadowsfor you!”

“Not all the way. Not enough,” Christine shot back. “You pulled me down into this endless night with you. And I let you! Because it was this strange honor and terrifying burden to be loved like that. To be yours. But not anymore.”

“Christine...” Erik whispered, a torrent of maddening emotion filling him again as he tried to understand.

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