RoseBlood(56)

Without speaking, the Phantom freed Etalon’s wrists, offering him the boots off Arnaund’s feet. They were too big, but with ripped bits of cloth stuffed in the toes, they sufficed.

“Most of the guards are either drunk or sleeping at their posts,” the Phantom said, yellow eyes aglow. “I will be swift and cut them down in silence, one by one. You free the other children. But I must not be seen, for I would haunt their dreams.”

Together, they made their way through every level of the catacombs, quiet and deadly as scorpions. As promised, the Phantom killed the guards, coaxing that strange grayish-yellow light from each of their bodies before ducking into the shadows. Only then would Etalon unlock the cells, so the masked silhouette remained nothing but a ghost—blending into the background, sensed, yet never seen.

Death was everywhere, juxtaposed with hope for new life. Etalon slipped in puddles of blood and stepped over the Phantom’s victims. Heaps of carnage became stair steps to freedom as he opened the doors and released his peers. Chaos reigned—a frenzied race to escape the cells and congregate in the corridors. In the narrow spaces, children clung to one another, weeping and afraid. After everyone was freed, Etalon kept to the darkest passages, out of their sight, in search of the Phantom. He found him hidden in the depths of the catacombs, his hands bloodied, his suit torn, and his veins and eyes effulgent with that supernatural glow.

“Will you help them find their way out?” Etalon asked, understanding on some level that to ask any other question would put him in mortal danger.

“No,” the Phantom answered without pause, smearing blood from his hand across one of the thousands of skulls stacked along the wall. “They have food and lanterns from the storage surplus; they have one another. The weak will die, and the strong will survive and be stronger for it. That’s the nature of things. Those who find the surface have the gendarmerie. Let law enforcement step in for once. Let them fill an orphanage with their abandoned souls. Even alone, those children have better parentage than I ever did.”

He started to leave, but Etalon caught the skilled hand that had slaughtered over thirty men with a singular cord of string, his own fingers too small to wrap around the blood-slicked palm. He gasped as some of the illumination from the Phantom’s veins siphoned into his own, lighting beneath his skin.

The Phantom narrowed his eyes then pried himself free. “I suspected as much, the moment I heard about you.” He drew out a handkerchief and cleaned his hands before offering it to Etalon for the same purpose. “You are an anomaly of nature . . . a brilliant miscreation. No doubt you’ve known this for some time, even before you were imprisoned.”

Etalon nodded, handing back the soiled handkerchief.

The Phantom tugged gloves onto his hands and looked toward the cave’s roof, the muscles in his neck corded with tension. “It doesn’t matter that you’re a demon’s spawn. You could still have a normal life. Your perfect face, flawless features . . . they’ll earn you a place of respect and power in that world. You can blend in, even rule, where I never could.”

“I don’t want to blend,” Etalon whispered. “I want to belong.”

The Phantom’s head tilted. “To follow me is to make a pact with darkness and solitude. No more sunlight. No more sky. No more friends or relatives. What I can offer you, in exchange, is a way to reclaim your songs. And I’ll give you an education, training, and protection.”

“You will show me how to wield the wire garrote and strangle those who would harm me?” Etalon asked eagerly.

A bubble of laughter erupted within his savior’s chest. “It is in fact a violin string. Catgut makes an excellent Punjab lasso. At least, my version of one. But I don’t believe I’ll share that particular skill. I must keep some form of leverage. I’ll educate you with other ways to defend yourself. I acquired many such useful talents in my past lives. Many useful talents.” Then, in silence, the Phantom guided him through a secret entrance into one of the sewage tunnels deep beneath Paris.

They walked, led only by a pinhole of light far in the distance and the fading glimmer beneath their own skin. Etalon tuned out the dripping water, their sloshing feet, and the stench soaking into the hem of the cape draped across his shoulders—so many sizes too big, yet something he aspired to one day grow into.

“Why did you wish to buy me?” he asked on a raspy murmur, half dreading the response, yet desperate to hear his rescuer’s melodic voice again.

“I thought you were someone else.” The answer broke beneath the mask, muffled and wracked with so much longing it bordered on agony.

“Who, sir? Who are you seeking?” Etalon pressed. “It will be my life’s work to help you find them.”

His savior stalled, those golden irises flickering in the recesses of the dark eyeholes, cauterizing Etalon’s heart like lit torches. “Your question will be answered in time, and I will hold you to that promise. Also, you are to address me as Erik.”

Etalon nodded. “And my name is—”

“Don’t even speak it.” Erik placed a glove on Etalon’s head, quieting him. In the blackness, the lower half of his mask made a scraping sound, as if a smile shifted the fabric. “Today, you become someone new. From this moment on, you belong to the underworld, from which you were born. You are something monstrous, but beautiful. Something fierce, yet fragile. You are Thorn. The part of the rose that is unloved . . . that everyone fears for its ability to bring a soul to bleed. That was your gift, and shall now be your identity, to honor what was taken from you by vile and treacherous men. It is a falsity, that monsters are the instigators of all the evil in the world. Our kind is capable of acceptance and mercy where mankind is not. For we see beyond the surface, as we live beneath it.”