I can feel the pinch in my lungs as I reach for the high notes, pushing through it for a sweet clear bell-like tone that puts a smile on the conductor's wizened face. A wobble betrays the sounds, a fingernail scraped along the inside of my throat. From the center of the house, Monsieur Roux's lips pucker in a moue of disappointment. He waits for the end, approaching the pit.

"Vienne, have you done your exercises?" His hands are clasped behind his back, a stance to hide the tick in his hands.

"Oui, Monsieur," I say, breathing with care. The pinch is now a vise of panic winching around my lungs. The Monsieur threw a violinist out of the pit last week for grating on his nerves, snapping the bridge of his instrument as a final insult. He squints at me, critical of the sheen of perspiration on my skin. My gaze skirts away from him, staring over his shoulder to the burgundy velvet curtains framing the stage.

"Are you feeling alright, dear?" The kindness of his tone catches me off guard. I focus on him again, noting the curious frown knotted between his eyebrows.

"I feel a bit ill today," I reply, sincere in my half truth. I hadn't slept all night, unable to take my eyes off the ceiling of my room as Jean held me against him, the peaceful rhythm of his breath fanning across my neck, soothing my restless body through the long hours before dawn.

Monsieur Roux grasped my hands between his. I could feel the tremble in his right hand, the one that destroyed his instrumental career, as he gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. "You know the music by heart, Vienne. Take the day, rest. The premiere is the day after tomorrow. I don't want to lose our lead before opening night." My position was more secure than I realized. My understudy must be shit. I almost protest, determined to keep pushing through the discomfort.

There is a ripple of movement in the curtains, a flash in the corner of my eye. For a moment I think I see the glitter of scales. I shake my head to clear the vision.

"Merci, Monsieur, I'll be fine with a bit of rest." I bid a casual farewell to the others, heading for the door. The late summer heat licks up my spine, a fetid hot breath that draws further moisture from me as I make my way from the opera house. The apartment I currently share with Jean, my handsome taxi man, is about a mile away through the winding Parisian streets. Not even the breeze off the Marne cools the air. I truly do not feel well but I know sleep won't cure the shiver in my veins.

The streets are choked with pedestrians, rushing to various destinations to escape the heat. The air is rank with human sweat, cigarette smoke, coffee, and a hint of spoiled meat and waste from the swollen summer river and the sewers.

I turn down a seeming back alley, broken glass and loose paper crinkling beneath my feet as I head to the innocuous stairway descending to a wooden door, once painted green before it was sullied by the refuse of Paris. A small hand carved sign identifies it as The Jade Blossom.

My knuckles rap the weathered wood in a practiced rhythm, ignoring the bum sleeping in urine soaked trousers against the opposite wall. I smile at the equally weathered old woman who opens the door, a familiar whiff of smoke teasing my nostrils with a dark promise.

"Bonjour, Vienne," she says, a faint Chinese accent giving the words a unique lilt. Madame Ling speaks fluent French, moving to the city at a young age, but the roots of her home never quite left her voice.

"Bonjour, Madame Ling, could I take my usual booth?"

***

The opium pipe beckons me with greedy fingers. A craven want of mutual fulfillment. The entangled mess of scents is intoxicating, a mixture of sweat, Oriental spics, and tobacco. Clouds of smoke swirl overhead. My eyes lazily track some ghost-like creature as it nestles up close and whispers a thousand little lies in a fellow patron's ear. The wafting tendrils coalesce and thread together,  creating a stairway to the heavens. Who are worthy enough to make that trip? It is obvious, we are going the other way.

The Germans were slowly devouring the country in great bloody chunks, leaving gangrenous wounds filled with our dead countrymen in their wake., They gnawed a path for the city, but here I was, preparing to sing for the wanton socialites and rich fools of Paris. The Nightingale, who sang a song so sweet it stayed the hand of Death. A great cosmic joke and final stand against the chaotic storm of violence approaching us.

I reach up, curling my fingers as I turn towards the ghost-like creature, listening to the slow thud of my heartbeat, a wounded bird fluttering within my rib cage. My lips part, releasing the opium smoke from my lungs. It feathers around the form, revealing a face of heart breaking beauty. The prick of tears stings my eyes as I stare into those perfect features. Was it an angel come to claim me? My fingers straighten, reaching to embrace the beautiful being when I feel them, sliding over the bared skin of my belly like beads of glass. I lift my head as the tip of the tail traces my navel before vanishing over my side. The heavenly face dissipates.

A dry hacking cough tears from my chest. Through watering eyes and shaking limbs I catch glimpses of the scaled beast coiled in the corners of the room, whiskers waving in the haze. It sneers at me, smoke curling over the craggy features of its face, a sharp contrast to my other ethereal visitor. A black tongue darts out, tasting the air, caressing a wicked fang as one great orange eye winks at me.

"Where is she?" The muffled voice of Jean distracts me. I try to answer him when another fit of coughing seizes me. Phantom fingers like claws seize my throat, squeezing off my air. I am sense blind until hands push a glass of water to my mouth. I blink the worried face of Jean into focus. His calloused hands brush the tears from my temples, pushing my hair back.

"Too close, Vienne," he whispers. His eyes are red. Perhaps he did not sleep as much as I thought he did last night. He doesn't wait for me to answer, easily carrying me from the room without so much as a grunt beneath my weight. Of late, I have spent more evening meals in the Jade Blossom's sordid embrace than at the dinner table. Even Madame Ling's face is creased with concern as Jean cradles me against his chest. "Thank you for the message, Madam."

Ah, I have gone too far again. Madam loathes addicts spoiling away in her den. She is not above sending for the relatives or loved ones to collect the ones who edge too close to the line. A corpse is bad for business.

The muscles of Jean's arms are taunt through the journey home. I am keenly aware of the tension in him through the high, though I am distracted by glimpses of scales and teeth in shadowy alleys and dark corners. I almost say something about them until my eyes catch the grim set of his jaw. He is angry with me, angry I went to the den instead of coming home to him, I suppose, though he knows I need it. I couldn't bear this world without it.

I am still trying to make sense of him when he dumps me into a full tub of water gone cold. It has the effectiveness of a bucket of ice, a shock to the system as I come up sputtering and flailing. Rubbing the water out of my eyes reveals Jean calmly watching me from a nearby chair, arms folded over his chest.

"I waited for you, had a bath all ready to welcome you home."

I was in the Blossom longer than I realized. He has every right to be angry with me. I lay my head on the chill porcelain of the tub's edge, pouting at him. "I'm sorry, my love," I said, reaching for him. The high is still there, like cotton wrapped around my thoughts, but I see the hurt and the love shining in his eyes and all I wish to do is make it up to him.

He closes his eyes for a moment, reminding me of the beautiful face in the smoke. Jean has rougher, more masculine angles to his face, but their lips are the same, almost too full for a man, cherubic. I lean out of the tub to brush my thumb over his bottom lip, causing him to open his eyes. His pupils contract, focusing on how the sodden cloth clings to my breasts. Jean slides from his seat, his hands gliding down spine, playing a string of passion as they tap individual vertebra.

There are no words about my visit to Madame Ling or the state he found me, no admonishments or harsh words because he senses the futility in them and does not wish to place them like mines between us. His actions, his tension, speak the finer truths of his emotions as his lips trace my jaw. His fingers help peel my clothes off, like molting skin, wrapping me in a blanket as he carries me to our shared bed. The pull of sleep is too great to resist, between the lull of his fingers stroking me hair and the slow metronome of my heartbeat I find myself drifting off. I feel the slide of scales over my legs, pinning me to the bed.

My eyes snap open, night blind, struggling to adjust to the absence of light. A drop of moisture hits my cheek. I want to brush it away, but my arms are too heavy, full of sand and lead. Another drop hits my cheek, sliding done my temple to my pillow. I look up into the eyes of the dragon, slit pupils wide in the darkness, his irises like two massive hot coals, lit from within. His serpentine body fills the ceiling, ash colored scales, with fiery red edges, like the lit end of a cigarette. Another drop against my cheek pulls my gaze inexorably to its mouth. Blood coats its ivory fangs, dripping onto my face. The sight of them causes the trapped bird in my chest to flutter weakly within its cage. I turn to Jean, seeking comfort. The stump of his neck greets me, nothing left of his head but ragged flaps of skin and gore.

The scream is torn from me, shredding my throat, the agonized howl of a wounded animal. It isn't until Jean sits up next to me, framing my face with his hands I find my tether to reality. The dragon chuckles before vanishing into the shadows.

***

"Are you sure you want to go tonight?" Jean runs the brush through my hair, watching my expression in the mirror. He hasn't spoke much on the subject, preferring to distract me from it instead, a wonderfully attentive man. My delirium induced scream the night before left my voice broken and hoarse, as if shards of glass were embedded in my esophagus. I feared for my voice recovering in time to hit the Nightingale's final act but a harried visit from Monsieur Roux, where he confessed my understudy was not up to snuff, left me determined to see the night through.

"Yes. Will you be there?" Bless him for loyally ignoring the rasp in my voice.

"My apologies love, I have another task this evening that requires my attention. I might be late." He drew my hair up in elaborate knot at the back of my neck, tucking in the loose ends, before leaning in to plant a kiss at the base of my throat. "There is a meeting tonight at the town hall for every taxi man in Paris. I will try to make it before the doors close."

"I will tell Monsieur Roux to hold the door for you."

He presses his face into my hair for a moment, careful not to muss it as he breathes me in, arms wrapping around me. I feel that delicate flutter in my chest as my pulse tries to match the passion only to be met by another sharp pinch between my ribs as if the bird is pecking to be free.

"I know you'll be amazing," he said, taking his leave. I stared into the mirror, watching a coil of scales undulate in the shadowed corner above our bed.

***

I had every intention of arriving at the opera house early, going through my scales and exercises with plenty of time to shake any opening night nerves from my system. My feet however, bring me to the stairs outside the Jade Blossom. The knock I bestow on Madame Ling's door is tentative. Our last parting was not an ideal one, and her expression at first is remote as she studies me from the doorway.

"Would you give a supervised session?" I press a hand to my chest, feeling the flutter again. "I merely wish to calm the nerves." And silence the bird inside me.

She pursed her lips and I was certain she would refuse, but the Madame is a shrewd one. I have brought her a lot of business in the months I'd been coming here, enough that she stepped back with a gracious bow. "Allow me to ease your jitters, mademoiselle Vienne." Over her shoulder, in the dim recesses of the den, I see the outline of the beautiful face, woven of smoke and dreams. Our eyes meet across the room.

His are filled with sorrow.

***

The high is a small one, enough to calm the ruffled bird inside me, enough to carry me through the performance. The madame treated me to liquid smoke, through a hookah, to soothe my throat. The effect is magical, I carry out my scales without a single wobbling hitch.

My gaze is unfocused and wandering through much of the first and second act. It takes me that long to realize Jean isn't in the audience. The disappointment leaves the bitter taste of ash in my mouth but there is little I can do over the matter when I catch sight of another figure in the audience as it slithers between the seats.

In the low light of the theater, the flame edged scales have a more silvery hue to them, but the dragon is no less menacing. My heartbeat fills my ears as the bird in my ribcage is startled into motion. I can feel its talons scraping against the inside of my ribs as the orchestra around me plays the opening strains to the third act. The pall of tragedy hangs in every note, the Emperor's dying scene, greeted by the specter of Death himself.

My heart beats with a plodding rhythm at odds with the chaotic jangle of my nerves.

The dragon winds its way through the third row, clawing out the throat of a debutante, her jeweled brooch falling silently to the plush theater carpet. In the space of a blink the man next to her is severed in two, his torso toppling forward.

The surrounding patrons do not react. The build of a scream dies in my throat as the dragon's ember eyes watch me, perched above the carnage it's wrought. It is taunting me, trying to rip my voice from me. The conductor sweeps the baton towards me, cuing the Nightingale's entrance.

I open my mouth. Within me, the bird joins in the song, lending me its voice through the trills and crescendos to still the hand of death. The pinch in my ribs grows sharper but I press through it, though each breath feels like drowning.

The dragon stills, those burning eyes fixed on me as I sing the Nightingale's song. Behind me, on the stage, the dancers act out the part as Death falls in love with the bird's enchanting song, sparing the emperor's life. I enter the final crescendo, rising toward the high note as my vision wavers. The note wobbles, though the audience's enchantment with the act as a whole keeps their focus off me. The only one whose focus is solely on my wavering voice is the dragon.

The conductor cuts the music, leaving me gasping for air, my vision gray around the edges. My fingertips and tongue are tingling as I look up through my degrading sight. A curl of smoke twists from the dragon's nose, twining around its body like an affectionate cat.

Monsieur Roux's face fills my vision, blocking my sight of the dragon. "Vienne?" His tone is off, rife with worry and a sour note of fear. He reaches for me with his good hand as my vision fails. The last sound I register is the gasps of the singers around me. I feel weightless, floating in nothing, in a space comprised of shadows and thought. I can hear the rustling of scales from the void around me.

***

The return to consciousness is an arduous process. The absence of sound gradually gave way to muffled vibrations, as if heard through water. Perhaps I was drowning after all.

The bird in my chest gives a feeble flutter, a stuttering uneven beat accompanied by an ache that echoes through my bones. My eyelids feel full of sand, scraping open to gray edged sight. Though the grainy veil I see Jean sleeping upright beside me, chin tucked to chest. His breathing is deep and even, I count the seconds by it, waiting for the flutter in my chest to settle. It does every so slowly, each breathe hurts and burns. I can taste smoke on my tongue but my last taste of opium must have been hours ago if not more. There is a flash of light from the window, illuminating the familiar walls of our bedroom and the dragon coiled in the corner.

I hold my breath but it's noticed I am awake now, unfurling in a graceful spiral, its whiskers curling like smoke, beckoning me.

It's not real, it's not real, it's not real.

The mantra plays over and over through my thoughts but I can hear the click of its claws on the wooden floor, the hiss of air through its teeth, and the scrape of scales.

"What do you want from me?" My voice is a strained rasp, barely fit to be called speech. The dragon cocks it head at me, orange eyes boring into me. I can feel its heat beating against my skin. The bird in my ribcage is clawing at me from the inside again, as if it can sense the presence of the dragon, feel it drawing closer.

Its eyes swept over Jean. It was time to move, less I see an enactment of my dream. I can't allow that. I won't allow the monster stalking me to hurt him.

Somehow I pull myself up, rolling from the bed as the dragon watches me. Its game is a drawn out one, doing nothing as I stumble for the door. Follow me, follow me and leave my sleeping lover be.

The humid Paris night air floods my lungs, causing a choking cough that tastes like copper and mud in my mouth. In the distance, along the river Marne, the sky is lit with explosions like sun bursts in the air, blinding me when one catches me off guard. What is happening?

Have the Germans reached the city?

I hear the hissing breath of the dragon in my ear, causing me to stumble into the street. I cannot see. The sounds around me are sharp and distorted, I hear angry horns and shouts muffled by the droning hiss of the dragon's breath.

I blink to clear my vision as a taxi swerves to avoid me, the angry shouts of the driver ringing in my ears. The dragon hovers above me, watching, always watching, the sinister orange of its eyes flickering like real flame.

"Why are you chasing me?" I whisper, trembling despite the heat.

Another horn blares as a taxi rushes past, full of men. Their eyes turn to follow me as the car races towards the river.

Scales brush like silk covered steel up the back of my calf as the dragon winds its tail up my leg. It leans in closer, those smoky whiskers caressing my face. I hear its voice then, a voice of tumbling stones and hammer struck iron.

It was you who was chasing me.

It opens its mouth to roar in my face. I stare down its gullet as flames bloom within, bright white, bursting toward my face. Twin lights. I hear the horn behind them.

"Vienne!"

I hear Jean's scream at the moment the taxi slams into me.

My body is airborne. I can feel the wet crunch of splintering bones. My thigh shatters within itself, flapping limp and useless. I can feel the small ruptures inside, the untold bursts and tears. I know before I land, before the pain of it swamps me, there is too much.

My body meets the ground, flesh yielding to the clawing friction of the road, pieces of me scraped away before I come to a stop at the dragon's feet.

Sounds gain a sudden clarity as blood leaks from my ears. I hear the screech of tires, the pounding footsteps and murmurs of men surrounding me.

"She came out of nowhere."

"Is she high?"

"Miss, miss, stay with me!"

"Vienne, no, Vienne!"

Jean slides in the blood ridden mud to my side, cradling my head in his lap. I can feel the gravelly crunch of my spine.

"No, no, no," he moans. I want to reach for him, to tell him it is alright, to sing the Nightingale's song for him so he can hear how beautiful it was.

The dragon hovers over me, reaching for me with his claws. There is no pain as they tear into me, hooking underneath my ribs before snapping them open. With surgeon's care, he reaches inside the ruined depths of my broken chest, plucking out a gore stained bird. Its feathers ruffle as it sings for its freedom, the sweet song of the nightingale. The dragon vanishes with his prize. I can feel myself growing light, lungs full of vapor.

Smoke pours from my lips as the high takes me. I close my eyes, drifting, wondering if my lovely ethereal phantom will appear. Will he open the stairway to the sky for me again?

A/N: This story takes place in the days before the battle of Marne in 1914, including the use of the city's taxis to ferry men to the battle front to halt the German invasion of Paris.