Etalon watched in awed silence as Arnaund gripped the hairline wire at his neck—face bulging and purpling, unable to release even a whimper.
“Ah-ha,” The Phantom crooned. “Perhaps now you can be discerning enough to appreciate the value of working vocal cords, and how life-altering it is for them to be taken at the hands of another.” He gave a harsh twist and brought Arnaund to kneel on the stone floor. “There you are, little one,” The Phantom’s rapturous voice purred to Etalon. “You have brought him to his knees even without your song. Vindication is sweet, no?”
Alongside his terror, Etalon secretly savored watching his mother’s murderer captured and suffering.
“Shall I spare him?” the Phantom asked, fixated on his squirming victim.
Etalon grimaced at the skulls and bones lining the walls. Killing was wrong. Maman always said so. But she also said it was right . . . when it was to save a child’s life. Thinking of his friends who had already suffered at Arnaund’s hand, of those who would soon be sold as possessions, Etalon croaked his answer: “You should spare none of his kind.”
The Phantom’s eyes met his, and an unspoken alliance passed between them—so earnest yet so vicious, Etalon knew there would be no redemption from this sin.
The Phantom lifted one side of his mask and leaned over Arnaund, too deep in the shadows for Etalon to see what he revealed. Arnaund flailed, his expression filled with fear and revulsion. A pulse of grayish-yellow light jumped from Arnaund’s wide-eyed gaze and sunk into the Phantom’s chest, illuminating his sternum from behind his shirt and suit jacket.
Stunned speechless, Etalon watched the Phantom’s neck where it was bared above his shirt collar. The veins grew luminous beneath his skin, as if siphoning from the glow in his chest. In contrast, Arnaund’s coloring drained to a deathly white and he stopped moving.
The Phantom flipped the lifeless body over. “Thank you for sharing the remaining years of your life, Monsieur. And in return, I’ve given you your necklace. Wear it in good health.” He tightened the cord around his victim’s neck until a pool of blood spread like a dark, seeping hole along the floor. With a flick of his wrist, he retrieved his deadly weapon.
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.”