Chapter 16
It was music that woke me, strange chords and contradictory tempos unlike anything I’d heard before.
I blinked back to consciousness and let my gaze wander as I tried to place the unfamiliar surroundings. Tall windows flanked the great canopied bed I found myself in. They were covered by swagged drapes of black-and-gold brocade, making it impossible to tell what time it was.
It felt very, very early.
With a groan, I pushed myself from the pillows and threw aside the soft coverlet to peek through one of the hidden windows.
Only there was no window behind its curtain, just a brick wall.
Realization dawned heavily over me.
The whole thing—my waking, my Angel’s seduction, my acquiescence—had only been a dream.
I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh with relief or cry in despair.
It seemed impossible to believe it had only been my fevered imagination.
Everything had felt so real. He had felt so real.
Even now, my body betrayed me with heated flushes, remembering the exact way his hands had run over me, cupping my breasts, gripping my hips.
I could recall the taste of every kiss, hear every breathy sigh, each low-pitched moan.
I pressed the back of my hand to one stained cheek, trying to cool myself off, trying to sort through which of my memories had been real and which were only the heady yearnings of a desperately hopeful heart.
“There was mist,” I murmured. “Swirling mist on a vast, glassy lake. There were candles and a boat. Shadows and song. And music…”
I turned then, making my way out of the draped bedroom, by following the music, which still played. It was the pipe organ, blasting its notes with so much force that the air around me seemed to tremble, filling the long candlelit corridor with vibration and sound.
I remembered the organ from last night, both it and the room which housed the monstrously large instrument. There’d been so many other types as well, and shelves of strange objects: Automatons and tinkerings. Music and sketches. And the man—the angel—who had made them all.
I turned a corner, and there he was, seated before the organ’s console, surrounded by swells of keyboards and gleaming pipes of all sizes.
He’d changed into a new jacket of burgundy velvet. His attention was fixed on the work before him. He would play a string of notes, then scribble them down in a large ledger with near frantic intensity.
He wore the mask once more.
Because he’d never taken it off. That was only a dream.
And he did not notice my approach.
As I got closer, the veil between reality and fantasy began to blur.
I saw him as he was, here and now, but also as he’d been then, both last night and in my dream.
There were flashes of black silk, then dark-red velvet, a white mask, then a beatific smile.
My Angel ensconced in a cloak. Him again, naked above me.
It couldn’t have been a dream. I could still feel the imprints of his touch all across my body. Our cries of passion still echoed in my ears.
I had to know.
I had to see.
One quick peek at his face was all I’d need to put an end to my misery. One small look would confirm everything.
I stood at his side, waiting for him to acknowledge me, certain he’d stop.
But he only continued to work.
After an interminably long pause, I decided to take matters into my own hands. “Good morning,” I said, taking another small step closer.
Nothing.
“Angel,” I tried again, sitting next to him on the bench.
He sighed and crossed out a section of notes before beginning to play again.
I leaned forward, trying to catch his eye, but I’d sat on his right side and I was worried the mask obstructed me from his view.
I knew of only one way to fix that.
Seizing every bit of courage within me, I reached out and plucked the mask from him. My lips had already begun to rise into a smile, ready to once again behold that otherworldly, beautiful face.
Instead, I let out a bloodcurdling scream.
The Angel whirled around on the bench, giving me full sight of his ravaged visage, and began tearing into me with words so sharp and harsh I felt as if I were being flayed alive.
“Damn you! You little prying Pandora! You wicked viper!”
It was like encountering a wall of fire. I could feel the physical heat of his fury lick across my skin, scalding and cruel.
I had to get away.
I had to put as much space between me and his rage as I could.
I fell off the bench in my hasty retreat and crawled backward across the room like the miserable wretch I was.
Still he pursued me, shouting hatred and spittle.
“Curse you, Christine! You evil Delilah! You’ve damned me. You’ve damned yourself!”
“No,” I whimpered, tears I hadn’t even realized I’d cried spilling down my cheeks, unchecked and unbridled. “Angel, please. Forgive me! I…I…” I had no explanation. There was no excuse.
I cringed from his railing, bringing my knees up to my chest and scrunching my eyes closed. I squeezed them as tight as I could, but his face was still imprinted on the back of my mind.
For the rest of my life, I would never not see that face.
There’d been no nose, only a cavity where one should have grown, offering a horrible glimpse at all the things a body was meant to hide beneath flesh and cartilage.
Long, angry striations scarred down his cheek, twisting the skin that remained into knotted cords that were a ghastly mess of deep port wine and bone white.
And his eye…
His skull…
“Damn you!” he howled, striking out at a music stand and sending an explosion of papers into the air.
He let out a feral scream and attacked the marble plinth displaying the violin.
It crashed to the ground, cracking the stone.
With an ugly twang, the violin splintered.
Strings sprang free of their tension and lashed out like whips.
One struck my cheek, drawing blood. I was too terrified to protest.
Still he raged, stomping deeper into the room as he knocked over candles and hurled a set of architectural models at the automaton man who had been staring at his reflection in a mirror last night.
Now, as if spurred on by his master’s distress, the figure had come to stilted life, smashing his head into the mirror over and over as broken shards of glass rained down.
My world shrank to nothing but the sound of the Angel’s storm, the clatter of his chaos.
There was nothing to do but hunker down and wait out the fury.
Finally, he collapsed, grabbing at his chest in such a horribly human gesture I felt compelled to go to him. No matter how appalling the things he’d said, no matter how terribly he’d frightened me, no one deserved to suffer through that much pain alone.
“Erik!” I cried, acting without a thought for myself, concerned for only him.
He froze, as if I’d struck him. Then, slowly, so slowly I almost couldn’t register the movement, he turned to me.
“What did you say?”
I couldn’t find the words to answer, and we simply stared at each other for a long, long time. He was hidden away in a shroud of shadows, but I could just make out the glint of his shrunken eye. I could feel the weight of it upon me, as heavy as a tomb.
“Is this what you wanted to see?” he whispered, and I’d never heard him sound so small, so childlike and wounded.
What had I done?
I didn’t understand it.
I knew his name, but he’d told it to me in a dream. But his face…This was not the face that had been with me then. In the dream—Had it been a dream? How could it have been?—he’d been beautiful. Beatifically so. He’d been angelic, in all things.
But now…
But this…
“I’m sorry.” It came out a gasp, a sob. For me. For him. For the situation I’d placed us both in.
He scuttled back into the shadows’ hold.
“This must be stranger than you dreamt it, yes? Too loathsome and foul?”
When his questions came, they didn’t sound from where he’d disappeared, but from along another wall, at the far side of the room.
I could only look down, pushing the tears from my face, stewing in my own misery. We’d had something astonishing, something precious, and, like a foolish child unaware of her surroundings, I’d destroyed it, smashing it to wreckage and ruin.
“You can’t even bear to look at me now.” His voice had wandered to the pipe organ, though I couldn’t see his figure anywhere.
Fresh tears sprang to my eyes. I had broken it. He’d disappeared once more, haunting me with the power of his voice. I would never see him again.
“Am I now to be a monster to you, Christine? A repulsive carcass? A gargoyle burning in hell?”
“No!” I nearly shouted in my haste to push myself to standing. His voice had drifted to the great mirror, and I hurried after it, eager to show him my penance. “You’re not. Angel. I promise you. You’re not.”
“Did you…did you know that even the angels of hell secretly dream of heaven?” He hissed, and this sound of pain seemed to come out of the monkey automaton. “I frightened you…”
I crossed to the papier-maché box and ran a gentle finger along the monkey’s velvet sleeve.
“Your anger did,” I admitted readily. “But your face…it startled me…and it shouldn’t have.
I’m sorry. The Bible tells of angels with eyes of wheels and with multiple faces, like lions and eagles.
I should have known you’d be just as extraordinary. ”
A choked sound of disbelief came from behind me, and when I turned, I saw he was exactly where he’d last been, crouching in the shadow of a chair. He looked so…fragile. So wounded and raw, like a cowering, abused animal.
Shame burned in me that I’d brought him to such a state.
My gaze wandered around the disaster of the room, wondering how to set any of this right. I spotted the mask near the organ, where it had been dropped in my panicked flight.
Cautiously, I picked it up. Carefully, I set out to return it to him.
I kept my movements slow and deliberate, as if I were approaching a cornered, feral creature. And perhaps, in a way, I was.