Hello, my dear readers! Thanks so much for your support. I'd lost a lot of steam on this project, but with such wonderful reviewers (and for the Guests, I hope you set up an account in the future so I can thank you properly), I had to jump back onto that POTO train again.

Now, here's the next chapter. But just be warned. This story does get dark in some places, because I myself am a bit twisted myself (teehee). I will definitely try to keep things as non-graphic as possible, but still….enter at your own risk, readers.

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"Your little singer is quite the lovely dove," the Khanum noted with a sly grin. She sighed deeply, tilted her head back, baring the soft slope of her neck to his eyes, the chair creaking beneath her weight. "Such a shame it would be if her beautiful skin were to - "

"DON'T YOU DARE GET NEAR HER!" Erik snarled.

The woman practically cackled at the threat, stood up and sauntered over to him. Calm and deliberate, to unsettle him. "You would still protect her? After all she's done to you."

The Khanum's face was mere inches from Erik's, pressed up as she was to him, her hands roaming the length of his body. So close, he could see the dilation in her pupils as she asked, "What would you do to me if I touched her, hm? Would you truss me up like you are, currently? Strip me of my clothes. My skin, if you so wanted."

She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, then licked across her upper lip. "Would you taste my blood like the finest of wines, my sweet? I wonder what I would taste of upon your enhanced palate. Cherries? Plums? Or, perhaps, something much more fitting?...like apples."

He felt, more than saw, her shiver from delight. Not terror, never not - the disgusting witch. Erik grit his teeth, refusing to play her twisted games.

Even with his refusal to participate, she was encouraged furthermore, no doubt remembering the countless of brutal executions he'd performed for her like a show all those years ago when he was still her blood-thirsty puppet.

Her breasts heaved as her breaths deepened, tipping forwards to press a kiss to his lips. Her taste was sickeningly sweet, a mixture of grapes and sugar and the iron tang of blood. When he did not respond, she dug her nails into the skin of his back, and dragged them down, clawing five deep trenches into his flesh, drawing blood.

Still, he refused.

She pulled away with a low growl. But from one second to the next, Erik watched the anger slip away from her face like water off a duck's back, replaced with fond amusement, as if he was a pet and had done something utterly adorable.

Her mood swings always were unpredictable.

She sighed lightly, her blood-speckled hands coming back around to rest on his chest, her head tilted at him with a pleasant smile.

If Erik hadn't known what dark heart rested in that full-bosomed chest of the Khanum's, he would have been fooled by her appearance.

Before him, was an ethereal beauty, with the most luscious and smooth caramel skin, hair as dark as the night he loved so much, sharp green eyes that he's stared into far too often to count out the flecks of brown that dotted them.

Age suited certain women well, but for the Khanum, it seemed as if time and age has bowed to her aesthetic vanity. Perhaps it's from the virgins' blood that she bathed in every night, the sadistic bi -

"I treated you well, magician, and you betrayed me." Her grin widened, amused and sharp, her gaze turning considerate as it roamed over his face. "Not very grateful, are we?"

"Grateful? Your son tried to kill me," Erik threw back at her.

"Be that as it may..." she hummed in reply. She looked down to trace the path her hands made as they smoothed over the skin of his stomach, and then, "It seems quite fitting that your comeuppance would be for your beloved to betray you."

He strove not to speak, forced the anger away at the thought of that fop and Christine, and dug deep to find the resignation he'd achieved when he'd accepted Christine's decision.

"I wonder what she would say," the woman said with a happy click of her tongue. "if she knew all the things that you've done as the Angel Of Death. All the blood on your hands. Why, she's already in a catatonic state after what happened with the chandelier, the pathetic little teacup."

"That was not by my hand, and you know it," Erik snarled in her face. "I did not murder those people! Your assassin did. And, by proxy, you did!"

"Semantics," she dismissed with a wave of her hand, turning away from him to roam the empty room.

Erik huffed, latched his ire back into its cage, willed his control back because he most certainly needed all he could afford when dealing with the Khanum.

"Clever of you to send a blind assassin," he said. "Fight those who dwell in the darkness with one who was born in it."

"If you had been a good little boy like you used to be, I wouldn't have needed to send him," she wagged a finger at him in reprimand, tutting at him lightly like a disappointed parent. "And those poor little ants wouldn't have been crushed under the weight of that light fixture, now would they? But, as always I tell Samir, mistakes must be made if lessons are to be learned."

Samir, her son, who certainly didn't fall far from her psychotic tree.

"Maybe next time I tell you to do something, little Erik, you won't be so quick to disobey," she grinned wickedly, coming to pause at the only entrance and exit of this small room. She rapped on the door in a sequence that Erik was sure would lose effect the moment she left. There was the sound of scraping metal on the other side of the barrier, chains unlocking.

It seems as if they'd barred and sealed him in this room with armed guards outside.

Erik should have known. The Khanum's never been foolish enough to underestimate the genius magician's ability to disappear when left alone.

Before she left, she pursed her lips and blew him a kiss. "Do sleep well, my lovely. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow, after all."

The moment the door clanged shut, his ropes lost tension, and Erik was dropped to the floor with the same care one would give a sack of potatoes. The first thing he did once he pushed himself upright, was to dislocate his left thumb to snake his hand out of the tight bonds.

His hands were drenched with red by the time he was free, scraped raw by the ropes, and from experience, he knew that the pain he could already feel burning its way through the muscles of his arms and shoulders and back from being held in position for so long, would only worsen as blood flow returned to those areas.

He settled himself into a reasonably comfortable-looking nook in a corner, pressed his thumb back into its socket with a stifled groan, and resigned himself to the agony sure to come - both from his body, and from the sadistic woman with death trailing in her wake.

Sleep would not be a privilege gifted to him tonight, Erik knew, and so he let out a shaky breath, closed his eyes, and struggled to formulate a plan with the few options afforded to him.

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The teacup shattered as it impacted with the floor, hot tea spilling over the kitchen's tile, but Nadir was too appalled to notice or care, even as Darius came running.

He ignored the younger man's good-natured tutting as Darius set about cleaning the mess, Nadir's attention focused solely on the front page of the morning's Epoque.

Freak Accident At Opera Populaire! 26 dead, 45 wounded.

Freak accident, they say. Nadir sincerely doubted that.

Simple accidents like these didn't just occur when in relation to anything within a one mile radius of the Phantom. This is most definitely Erik's doing.

Nadir slammed the paper down, shot to his feet and grabbed his coat and hat. So upset was he, he missed Darius' alarmed questions.

A maelstrom of anger and disappointment and why why WHY swirled around Nadir like a veil, and from the moment he left his house to the moment he stopped at the Rue Scribe entrance, he had no memory of the trek there. Twas a miracle he hadn't been hit by a buggy along the way.

Feeling foolish indeed for being so blinded by his ire, Nadir took a moment to stop and simply breathe - before he does something he'll truly regret.

Once he could think without the urge to throttle a certain Phantom, Nadir allowed himself entry to the underground home. The door opens to the labyrinth of pitch-black tunnels that snaked down from the Opera House to Erik's home, and it was only from years of traversing these tunnels, and the aid of a small hand-held lantern, that he was able to successfully navigate his way around the traps and large lake to the main door of the Phantom's lair.

Just beyond this wooden divider, Nadir thought darkly, lay a murderer born anew. The Persian took a moment here as well, to calm himself.

When dealing with Erik, he's found, fighting fire with fire was, more often than not, only going to result in a towering inferno. It's Nadir's place in this odd dynamic as guardian to his resistant ward, to be the immovable rock to Erik's oncoming storm.

To be the anchor to the troubled young man's wayward soul.

With this thought in mind (and a prayer to Allah for strength), Nadir let himself in. It was dark inside, no hint of light save the warm glow of his lantern.

He wasn't sure exactly what he'd find - perhaps a masked madman, rampaging and destroying everything in sight for reasons currently unknown to Nadir.

Whatever he'd expected, it most certainly wasn't this.

Nothing.

Nothing seemed out of place. The living area that the door led to, was tranquil. Everything was orderly, the candle wax solidified - they haven't been used in a while, it seemed. But darkness has never bothered the Phantom, and therefore, unused candles held no real import as to the man's presence.

"Erik!" Nadir barked into the silence as he quickly examined the rest of the rooms.

They were all, like the living area, untouched. Tidy.

Erik's tantrums would not allowed everything to stay so neat, Nadir knew from being a friend for so many years. Having been chief of police for just as long (judging by the absence of meal discards in the kitchen's rubbish bin), Nadir could tell that Erik has not been here since the night of the chandelier.

Crossing to the organ, Nadir was not surprised to find a light coating of dust upon the beloved instrument. If Erik had been here, he would have never allowed such a travesty to happen.

What he was surprised to find, however, was a lone note sitting atop the keys. Nadir picked it up, and recognized Antoinette's handwriting immediately, even if it was a careless scrawl. It seems as if the writer had been in a hurry to leave - or, more realistically, was so angered that she couldn't even write properly. There were multiple puncture marks where she'd pressed the tip in too violently.

Oh and the cursing was definitely a dead giveaway.

The note wasn't overly long, but not short either, expressing Antoinette's thoughts on Erik's inability to think with his mind instead of his heart. Detailing the things she would do to him if he ever showed his face anywhere near her again, and ended it all off with a simple - I am done with you, Erik Destler. I wash my hands of you, and absolve myself of any and all actions that your insanity will no doubt think up in the future. Goodbye.

Nadir sighed as he stared down at the destruction of one of Erik's oldest friendships, his righteous fury ebbing away in the face of such a disheartening turn of events. Now...he just felt tired.

In Nadir's hand, held the culmination of decades of frustration and hope, friendship and betrayal, tears and laughter.

He couldn't blame Antoinette for her rage. For abandoning Erik at a time when he needed them the most.

Whilst she has never learned of Erik's time in Persia, it was nevertheless Antoinette that witnessed the change in the boy the most. It was she that worked tirelessly to bring him out of his self-imposed shell; dragging him away from the proverbial grave that bore Reza's name kicking and screaming back into the land of the living, while Nadir wallowed in his grief in the company and consolation of Darius.

And despite the many years being by Erik's side, Antoinette has never once been exposed to the dark corners of the Phantom's psyche. She's never known of Erik's easy willingness to actually follow through with even his most violent threats.

And as Nadir thought back to the mountains of bodies stacked at Erik's feet before they escaped Persia - before the promise - dropping a chandelier on twenty six people was considered relatively tame by the Angel of Death's standards.

But now, the veil's been lifted. And for the very first time, Antoinette looked at that scarred, deformed boy...and saw a monster.

Heart heavy, Nadir replaced the note to its original spot. A metallic glint reflected in the light of his lantern, and Nadir looked down to see the key that Antoinette had thrown with bitter ferocity. Nadir placed it on top of the parchment, and searched for paper for himself.

He found a piece of discarded sheet music crumpled in the rubbish bin. Tearing off an empty corner, Nadir scratched out a short missive of his own.

I'm very disappointed in you, Erik.

He laid it down next to Antoinette's note, and stared down at the twin papers. He ran his finger along the metal of his key to Erik's home in his pocket, torn between two decisions.

He held up his key, and considered following the same route that Antoinette had taken.

He could do it, the logical part of Nadir's mind whispered to him. He could end it all, right here right now. Burn the bridge that's been so painstakingly built, held up by Nadir through sheer strength of will for all these years.

The moment came...and Nadir let it pass.

The image - memory - of Erik's eyes as he staggered out of Reza's room, the empty vial clutched tightly in a white-knuckle grip, was enough for Nadir to know that he could never leave that boy. Nadir would now have to be the one to drag Erik away from the darkness and back into the light kicking and screaming, if it's the last thing he did.

He left, pocketing Erik's key, intent on finding the fearsome ballet instructor to figure out just what in Allah's name had happened to set the boy off so horrendously.