24.

FINAL FAREWELL

Dorian had fallen as quickly as he had flown in his attack on Gabriel. The lighter in Harry's hand was trembling, causing the shadows to dance even more madly across the bloodied bodies that lay before them. The scarf that was concealing Dorian's face had fallen away in the action, and they could see the blood pouring from between a lipless mouth, gasping air being gagged through jagged teeth.

It was a face that Raoul had longed to see dead or dying, the face of the Phantom of the Opera. Yet it had a stranger's voice, and he stared with almost as much terror as Lord Henry. The older man was confused, his fear seeming to keep him in place rather than run. Raoul's own gaping was interrupted when a loud cry of despair sounded from Christine.

Raoul had looked away for a moment, and when he looked again, his wife was laying over the bloodied body of the lovely Gabriel de Tophet. He too was drowning in his own blood, and in unison, both he and Dorian released one last gargled breath. The young comte had wanted nothing more than to see either of these villains dead, but as he now looked at their empty eyes, the chill of guilt crept in. He was not as willing to see death as he had anticipated, and now his wife was mourning his rival.

Gently, he took her shoulders. "Christine, please…"

But her grip on the dead man was strong. There was a moment of quiet weeping— not very long— before she gave an almost invisible nod. Her delicate hands rested upon the cold cheeks of Gabriel and she brought her mouth to his bloody lips. Raoul's skin crawled with anger to see his wife kiss the one who had tormented them both, but something kept him from interfering. Unlike the last time that they had escaped the Opera Ghost, he was irrefutably dead.

It filled him with disgust, but it was his love for Christine that allowed her this last chance to bid farewell to her Angel of Music and to live her life free of his dark influence.

At last, she allowed him to pull her to her feet, her fingers lightly touching the blood that now lay upon her lips. Not a word was uttered from her and by the light in Harry's trembling hand, they found their way back out of the catacombs and into the chilled dawn that stretched over Paris.