3. Jack the Ripper
“Now wait, Mr. Wamuu, let me be sure that I completely understand.” Jonathan was still holding one hand to his forehead as he sloshed through the mix of old and fresh snow behind the other two. “You’re trying to tell me that the Whitechapel Murderer was turned into a blood-drinking demon by a mask like my mother’s, and that we’re going to track him down by holding up a cup of brew and
wishing really hard?”
“My investigation these last few days has convinced me that he was,” Gabriel answered without turning around, “And no, not wishing. More a matter of being sensitive to the right vibrations. I will handle that part.”
“I thought you said you’d be handling the
killing him part,” Speedwagon gave him a suspicious look.
“I can do two things at once,” Gabriel said, almost curtly, “your only purpose is to help me navigate these streets, Speedwagon. Jonathan’s is to watch and learn.”
“Speaking of which,” Speedwagon replied, holding up a finger instructively, “it’s
this way.”
He waved them around a different crumbling, colorless brick corner than the one Gabriel had been about to take. The first thing Jonathan saw when they’d cleared it was a filthy, graffiti-covered street end, carved into the crude likeness of an enormous, ugly face. He looked across from there at the assortment of run-down tenements and low-ceilinged storefronts illuminated by just a few struggling lamps and the meager moonlight that fought through the snow clouds above. Jonathan felt his eyes go wide. Of course, Ogre Street. That was where Dio had probably run into them, after all. He had never quite picked up the nerve to visit this particular neighborhood before, despite his curiosity. He’d also gotten the impression that his father and foster brother both preferred it that way.
“Home sweet home, Mr. Joestar,” Speedwagon spun around with an illustrative wave of both arms, “I suppose I just owe you the favor of entertaining, don’t I? It’s not as pretty as yours, but.” He took a step closer to Jonathan and placed a hand on his bicep, looking at him with a surprisingly genuine smile. “You’re a big boy, aren’t ya? I’d wager you’ll come out of here alive.”
Jonathan held his tongue as he looked over the street and then back at the smiling, long-haired man who was patting him on the arm. “Well, thank you,” he said after an uncertain moment. “On the subject of favors, I’ll refrain from beating up your sister when we’re introduced.”
Speedwagon threw back his head and laughed, slapping Jonathan on the arm once again before turning around and leading them down Ogre Street. Jonathan let out a frustrated, nervous breath. Not
quite the reaction he’d been hoping for, but then, he supposed Speedwagon was still agitated himself beneath the bravado. He’d been unusually quiet and subdued for most of the walk from King’s Cross.
“Here we are now,” the behatted man spoke again after leading them a ways through the gloom and slush, addressing Gabriel this time, “my dear sister’s respectable establishment. I expect you’ll want to hear what she told me straight from the source, aye?” Gabriel’s hooded head bobbed affirmation, and Speedwagon led them toward a door with a cleaner coat of paint and flanked by windows with slightly better curtains than most of the neighbors’.
“What type of shop is this, by the by?” Jonathan asked as he followed them inside, taking one last look behind him to make sure no one was sneaking up with a knife, “I imagine your sister must be quite the businesswoman to keep this-”
He stepped in after the other two, glad for the indoor warmth, but then stopped speaking mid sentence. Four women, each wearing a floor-length, frilly dress of a different color with collars cut obscenely low and matching ribbons in their overmade hair, looked up from the threadbare couches lining three of the walls. Standing just to the side of the door, glowering suspiciously at himself and Gabriel, was a burly man with a short brown beard, a face covered in wild tattoos, and his hand on the knife hilt at this belt. Aside from a pair of shaded lamps and a pair of curtained doors leading away into the building, there wasn’t much else.
“Don’t look at him like that, Tattoo,” Speedwagon admonished the man by the door, “that’s the Jonathan I told you about.”
“Oh.” The tattooed man raised his eyebrows and took his hand immediately off his hilt. He stepped up to Jonathan, who was still struggling to get his bearings, and dipped his head respectfully. “Thank you ever so kindly, sir. God bless ya.”
Jonathan stared at Tattoo in confusion, before noticing the thick, new-looking coat he was wearing. He then looked back at Speedwagon, whose own jacket was old and threadbare.
“Ah.” Jonathan blinked once or twice, looking at his guide with a newfound respect before returning his attention to Tattoo. “Well, I…suppose you’re welcome?” He didn’t mean that as a question, but it somehow came out as one. Before Tattoo could reply, Jonathan was distracted by something warm and soft pushing itself firmly into his forearm. He looked down at it, and found himself staring down the cleavage of a freckled thirty-something year old woman in a yellow dress and ribbons.
“You’ve good taste in friends, Robert,” the woman said, painted eyes slowly working their way up Jonathan’s chest and toward his eyes. “That nose of yours at work again? I can just
see he’s a real gentleman.”
“Handsome too,” said a younger, thinner woman in red as she crept up behind her coworker, “but still so young…”
Jonathan took a step back toward the door, looking around for help. Gabriel was standing, impassively, in its center, completely ignoring the attention of the green and blue clad girls as they pawed at him. Fortunately, when he desperately met Speedwagon’s eye, the latter came over and laid a hand on each of the women’s shoulders.
“We’ll all have time to make each other’s acquaintance right and proper,” Speedwagon said, “but just for now this one is in my company.”
The two women backed away and returned to their couches, smiles immediately replaced with bored expressions. “You actually are handsome, though,” the younger one said with a shrug. Out of the corner of his eye, Jonathan thought he saw Tattoo giving him a dirty look, but it passed quickly. Before Jonathan could puzzle out what he had just seen, or even be sure if he’d seen it at all, one of the back door curtains swished open and a fifth woman marched in. Her dress was plainer and less frilly, and her face – though painted like the others’ – lacked even the affectation of coquettishness. Beyond that, Jonathan would have best described her appearance as “Speedwagon, but a woman.”
“Keep it down,” Clara said, her voice sharp but quiet, eyes flicking across the room sternly, “my boy is sleeping.” As everyone fell silent, she addressed her brother. “These are the two?”
“That’s right.”
Clara nodded. She seemed to be appraising Jonathan and Gabriel, but not in the way the others had been. Taking note of their heights and bulk, and Gabriel’s eerily rigid and still posture. “Come in back, then. I made a nice pot of tea. If you can really help us, it’ll be the least I can do.”
Jonathan followed her, more than a little gratefully, out of the front room. Gabriel and Speedwagon went after. The kitchen was dirtier than the foyer, but not in the unattended way. Rather, the dirt and dust had all been driven down between the counters by furious scrubbing of the exposed surfaces, as if the passion for cleanliness existed, but time or strength were in short supply. The hearth was hot, at least, making it a bit cozier than the previous room. Clara took a large teapot off of it as she motioned everyone to sit.
“We should just get to it, I suppose,” Speedwagon said as his sister handed him a steaming cup, leaning back in his chair and setting his bowler down on the table beside his saucer, “fill these blokes in.”
Clara sat down herself after handing out the cups, putting her elbows on the table and pushing her own pale bangs out of her narrow face. She let out a long, heavy breath, the professionalism slipping. She seemed to be having trouble getting started.
“Still no word from Eliza, then?” Speedwagon asked.
Clara shook her head. “Neither glimpse nor letter. And while she’s the only one of
ours that hasn’t come back, the other girls talk to other people’s employees. It isn’t only in Whitechapel anymore, since we all started avoiding it after dark; two more have disappeared around East End, and one other’s body was found just this morning.”
“Erm,” Jonathan shifted uncomfortably in his chair, which creaked dangerously beneath his mass, “if you don’t begrudge my asking, aren’t your employees the…erm…” he felt his face go hotter than the hearth could account for, and had trouble continuing “…indoor sort?”
The Speedwagon siblings both looked at him. Clara crossly. Robert sympathetically.
“Sorry. I, um. I’m not so familiar with how your industry works. Carry on.”
Clara gave him a skeptical glare before moving on. It hurt him, a little. While it was considered a rite of passage of sorts by most of his classmates to partake, Jonathan had never quite been able to bring himself to, despite his occasional curiosity.
“Bled dry,” Gabriel spoke for the first time.
Clara nodded. “It’s…so bizarre. The Ripper’s first few victims weren’t like that, but ever since Miss Kelly they have. Same wounds as the first bunch. Bodies dumped the same way, them as could be found at all. But also all...bled out...now, but with hardly any red on the snow.”
Gabriel nodded, looking incredibly nonchalant at this. Clara was visibly disturbed, and Jonathan noticed her eyes avoiding Gabriel in favor of his own and Robert’s now. She took a comforting sip of tea before continuing.
“The last two vanished south of Whitechapel. Closer to here. If he keeps…hunting…so close to our neighborhood, I don’t even know where we can work. Or who will even come looking for us, besides that devil himself.”
“Devil?” Another female voice half-whispered from behind the door.
Clara’s face hardened. She whispered something under her breath that sounded like “oh, not this again.” Before she could say anything more loudly though, Gabriel turned his hooded, gold-hung face to the door. “Come in,” he said. The door opened, and the young girl in red poked her ribboned head in, looking nervous.
“We’re talking about Jack, Cecily,” Clara said sternly, “not some man you saw through the window here a month ago.”
Gabriel tilted his head, a bronze chain shifting along the lower edge of his hood. “A suspicious man, I assume?”
Clara sighed, shaking her head. “She has a bit of an overactive imagination.”
“Well, yes, maybe I do,” the girl at the door retorted, huffily, “but I didn’t imagine that man. Eliza saw him too.”
“Come inside,” Gabriel ordered the girl. Clara put her face in her hand and shook her head, but Cecily swished her long red skirt inside and closed the door behind her.
“What makes you think that the man you saw outside was Jack the Ripper?”
“No normal person would ever look at someone the way he did at Eliza,” Cecily said, “and it was right before Jack started getting so much worse. He was just...stalking...outside the window, looking at Eliza with a smile that showed so many teeth, so sharp. Like a devil!”
Clara rolled her eyes. “Did he have horns too?”
“Yes! I saw them poking right out of his hair! Eliza told me I was crazy, but he
was looking at her, and now she
is gone.”
Speedwagon raised his own bushy eyebrows at that detail. “So, maybe you did imagine that one part, if she didn’t see it?”
Jonathan tried to repress a derisive smile as he looked over at Gabriel, but stopped when he saw the latter’s expression. He had looked serious before, but now his face was downright grim.
“A month ago?” Gabriel asked. Everyone looked at him.
“Erm…yes, give or take,” Cecily repeated, shrinking away a little from Gabriel’s size and voice. Then, as if his intimidating presence had given her an idea, she said “Wait...you’re hunting that monster, aren’t you! You think you can get rid of him, really?” She looked at Gabriel more carefully, eyes seeming to linger on his exotic jewelry and on the geometric blue marking that curled around his eyes. “Well...I did see him before, so if you need someone to lure him in for you I could-”
“No,” both Speedwagon siblings said, almost in a single voice. Cecily nodded meekly, looking both disappointed and relieved.
Gabriel was silent for a moment, as if pondering something. Then, he said “thank you,” and turned back to the other three at the table. Cecily looked around uncertainly, before slipping awkwardly away again and closing the door behind her.
“Sorry about that,” Clara said, but she sounded less certain herself now. Her eyes were reluctantly studying Gabriel again.
What proceeded then was a discussion of streets and intersections – all ones that Jonathan had been told to avoid for as long as he could remember, and that he’d barely ever thought of as actual places where people lived as opposed to some kind of morbid fairyland – and speculation as to what time of night most of the murders would have most likely taken place at. Every few sentences, Clara and Speedwagon stopped to sip their tea. Jonathan and Gabriel barely touched theirs. Jonathan felt like he should be taking notes when Clara started lecturing them on the probable routes the victims had been walking when they were taken and her brother supplemented it with his musings on which alleyways a bloody-handed criminal would take to go unseen to those places. However, Gabriel seemed to remember it all without need for note-taking. And then, almost abruptly, Gabriel stood up (nearly knocking his chair over in the process) and thanked Clara for her information before instructing the other two to follow him.
“Bye for now, sis,” Speedwagon tipped his hat at her before putting it back on his head as he got to his feet himself.
“You’d better not get killed too, Robbie. You’d
better not.” The two briefly embraced. Jonathan watched this, curiously. His first reaction was that this was slightly off for a sibling relationship, but a moment later it occurred to him that he’d felt the same way when his flatmate’s younger brother had visited last semester. And when he’d been invited over to the rugby captain’s house the year before and seen him with his sisters.
Gabriel opened the door, and Speedwagon followed. Putting some distracting, and disquieting, thoughts out of his head, Jonathan brought up the rear, and gave Clara a nervous “thank you” of his own that she only returned with a nod. He avoided looking at the red-garbed Cecily back on her couch as they passed back through the foyer.
“Later, Tattoo,” Speedwagon smiled at the guard by the door.
Tattoo gave Speedwagon a silent, pleading look, and crossed himself.
Then, they went back out into the darkness and the snow.
…
Hours later, they were still roaming the streets. The snow was falling much more heavily, burying the cobblestones and pavers in undulating mounds of ghostly white and shading out much of the streetlight. Speedwagon had liberated an extra scarf from a poorly shuttered storefront they’d passed, and they had taken a break to warm up in a dimly lit and malodorous pub, but he was beginning to shiver again even despite that. Jonathan was doing better, but his fingers and ears were still starting to go a bit numb. Leading them around yet another lifeless cul-de-sac, Gabriel leaned over the open wooden cup he’d been holding in front of him. He sheltered it with his hand from the snow, and Jonathan watched as he blew gently on the surface of the acrid-smelling liquid within and studied the movements of the ripples.
“He’s getting closer to our position,” Gabriel declared.
“Do you mean we’re getting closer to him?” Jonathan asked, looking at the chemical brew with very narrow eyes.
Gabriel shook his head, letting a couple of gold-tipped tassels poke out of his hood for a moment. “No. He’s approaching from the northwest. He must be cutting across the buildings. Unless he changes course, we can meet him back at the main intersection.” He turned around, and dramatically picked up speed, making the other two run to keep up.
“I’ve still got trouble believing you can brew up a vampire-detecting ripple potion from stuff old Chan sells,” Speedwagon put a hand on his hat to keep it in place as his hair trailed behind him, “but after all else I’ve seen since meeting you, Gabriel, well.” As they returned to the intersection, he suddenly stopped for a moment and wrinkled his nose. “Well dammit all, you’re right!” he whispered, “there’s a stench in the air alright. One as puts the usual London depravity right to shame.”
Jonathan gave him a baffled look.
“This nose can smell evil, it can,” Speedwagon said by way of explanation, gesturing to it while keeping it painfully wrinkled, “and the last time it sniffed anything anywhere
near this bad, it was when…ah, never mind.”
Jonathan cocked his head to the side. “You can
smell evil?”
“It’s not many who believe me when I first tell them about it, but there’s many fewer who don’t after knowing me a good while-“
“Hush!” Gabriel whispered harshly.
The other two closed their mouths, and looked across the snowy dunes and whirling flakes at where Gabriel was looking. A lone, furtive shadow, just barely darker than the space around it, was crossing the street. Like themselves, he was wearing a winter coat and scarf, and though it was hard to tell in the snow and darkness, Jonathan thought he had his hands in his pockets.
Gabriel put his hand over his cup and blew on it again. This time, Jonathan was actually at a loss to explain what happened with the ripples; they were sent outward toward the edges of the cup, but bounced back toward the center exclusively from the direction of the street ahead of them, where the man was crossing. Another chill came up from within Jonathan’s chest, icier than the one in his fingers, ears, and face.
“What do we do?” he whispered at Gabriel.
“Confront him,” Gabriel whispered back, closing the lid back onto the cup and screwing it tightly shut before replacing it in his cloak pocket. “If that’s Jack, he’ll think he has no reason to run from us.” He straightened up, and cracked his knuckles on both fists. “I hope he has his mask on him, so we don’t have to go looking for it afterward.”
“Alright then,” Speedwagon nodded, before flashing a sardonic half-smile. “I’ve got me some experience at creating the kind of situation you describe. You two big fellas take left and right, I’ll head him off, and if he tries to suck my blood please kill him before he can get to me.”
Before either of the others could stop him, Speedwagon took his first couple steps out into the street. Jonathan gave Gabriel a pleading look, but saw to his surprise that the hulking sorcerer had already turned his back and was flitting down the sidewalk much faster and more silently than anything with his bulk ever should have. Grimacing, Jonathan edged a bit further up the sidewalk in the other direction, moving halfheartedly into the street to close off the man’s right. A moment later, the man stopped in the middle of the street, a few meters away from Speedwagon. Now that he was closer, Jonathan could see that their mark was a short, slightly portly man, with dark brown hair and a short, trim beard and moustache below his woolen hat.
“Do you need something?” the stranger asked. Through the snow, Jonathan saw Gabriel closing silently in on the man’s far side. He nervously came a few steps closer himself, wondering if he really was just being hoodwinked into taking part in common banditry.
“Well, I might need something, depending,” Speedwagon returned, taking off his hat and holding it in front of him. “Would you by any chance happen to be Jack the Ripper?”
The man gave Speedwagon a shocked, almost outraged glare.
“That’s not very polite,” he replied, voice low and controlled.
“Well, I’m just asking.”
As Jonathan risked another, careful footstep forward, the bearded man suddenly looked to the side, locking his eyes on him. The eyes in question went wide, and Jonathan swore for a moment they were luminous, almost like a cat’s. The man then looked the other way, where he saw Gabriel.
He turned back toward Speedwagon, who had taken a few steps backward. A long, low, hissing breath. Then he opened his mouth again, and Jonathan’s heart froze through. He was parting his lips wider now, and Jonathan could see teeth more like a dog’s than a man’s. No, not a dog either; they were sharp and needle-shaped all the way into the sides of his mouth. More like a predatory fish, or a bat.
“Since you insist,” Jack the Ripper replied through his mouthful of fangs. Speedwagon’s eyes widened, and a tiny whimper escaped his throat as he saw the light glinting off of those two rows of jagged needles. “Yes, I am. And since you just
had to raise that topic; while you three might not be my usual type, the streets have been awfully empty.”
He took a step toward Speedwagon, and then pirouetted around with almost unbelievable speed and lunged toward Jonathan. Jonathan heard a warning cry from Speedwagon, but could barely register anything besides the oncoming cavern lined with gleaming stalagmites, and the two blazing, volcanic pits above it. Jonathan raised his fist, but it didn’t connect. Instead, a sharp, whipping wind lashed through the air between his flesh and the glistening fangs, and the monster was repelled, nearly losing its footing as the snow was whipped into a frenzy and rose in a blinding vortex around it. Behind the snowy whirlwind, Jonathan could just barely make out the outline of Gabriel, approaching with his knees bent and arms held out to both sides, chains lashing wildly like octopus tentacles all around his head.
The thing that had a moment ago passed for human seemed to be regaining its footing despite the wind, and faster than Gabriel’s approach. Jonathan did the only thing he could think to do, and punched it in the side of the head. The loud
crack was followed by a discordantly high-pitched scream, almost more a whistle than a shriek. Jack the Ripper stumbled backward, and the wind vortex knocked him off his feet. After a moment, the blinding whirlwind of snow and sharply biting wind was gone, the snowflakes collapsing down onto the prone demon. An instant later, Gabriel was upon it. Jonathan was still blinking the snow out of his eyes, so all he could see was Gabriel’s hands descending, then an explosion of hot liquid, a louder whistling scream, and then an almost earsplitting
crunch.
And then, all was still.
Jonathan blinked the last of the melted snow out of his eyes, and raised his hands to the flecks of warm liquid that had landed on his face and the front of his coat. It was thicker than he expected, and not as hot as he felt it should have been. In front of him, Gabriel rose back to his feet. His cloak hung down wetly around his arms and legs. Some semi-liquid bits fell from his hands. On the snow beneath him, there was only a splatter and a mass of indistinguishable blackness above Jack’s neck, as well as some flecks of what looked oddly like sharp metal.
Jonathan choked when he saw it. He gagged when the wind brought a whiff of the corpse’s scent to his nostrils, worse than any rot or decay he’d ever smelled. When he saw that the body was still twitching and clawing at the air with its twisted fingers, however, was when he had to look away to avoid losing his dinner. He was even gladder to have done so when, a moment later, he heard two more of those crunches as Gabriel jammed his foot twice through the torso, after which its writhing died down to a limp wriggle. When he withdrew his foot, there were a couple of metal shards stuck in his boot. He looked down at them, his expression more bemused than anything else.
“That was…
that...?” Speedwagon’s eyes were wider than Jonathan had yet seen them, when he looked back at his fellow mortal. He was holding his hat up wardingly, and it looked like there was a ring of
blades surrounding the brim. An insignificant detail, after what Jonathan had just witnessed.
“That was too easy,” Gabriel’s voice took over. His voice was too normal-sounding, after what he’d done. Jonathan and Speedwagon looked back at him. He was standing over the remains, looking distrustfully down at them as he wiped his hands against the sides of his cloak.
Speedwagon slowly craned his head back toward Gabriel. “If you’ll pardon my asking,” he said, “how difficult is it
normally supposed to be?”
Gabriel kept his eyes on the remains. “It varies. Each vampire is different. But they have become stronger on average with every few sets of masks, and this one was weaker than I have fought in a long time.”
Speedwagon finally blinked. “Well, that’s a good sign then, isn’t it?”
Gabriel shook his head slowly. “I do not think so. Some vampires are strong enough to turn their victims into weaker demons. More powerful vampires can animate more servants at a time. I am afraid this might not have been our real target.”
“You’re saying there’s ANOTHER Jack the Ripper out here? An even WORSE one?”
“Maybe.”
Jonathan looked warily out at the streetlamps and snow-covered rooftops. Where
was he? It was as if the London he had visited throughout his life had split open, and he had fallen into another version of the city that had been hiding in some invisible netherworld beneath. No, actually that wasn’t it at all. If his mother’s mask, the antique that had hung from the wall in the Joestar foyer since before he could remember, was at the root of this, then what he thought of as the “normal” world had never actually existed at all.
“If that wasn’t him. Jack. The real Jack,” Jonathan said, hoping that putting words around this would help him process it, “then what should we be doing next?”
“Looking for the real mask wearer.” Gabriel rolled up his gore-soaked sleeve and reached into his pouch to produce the flask again. As he pried off the cap and began swishing the liquid around and sheltering it with his free hand, Speedwagon padded through the snow toward Jonathan.
“You alright, Mr. Joestar? That creature got awfully close to you.”
“I’m quite alright. Thank you.” Jonathan held up his hand and looked at his own knuckles where he had punched Jack. There was a dull ache in them, and they looked slightly bruised. As if he had punched a wall rather than a man. Speedwagon looked like he was about to say something else, when a fresh voice cut through the snowy air.
“Who are you three…wait…
Robbie?”
“That voice!” Speedwagon spun around so fast he almost fell down into the snow. “Eliza? Eliza Day!?” He raised his free hand and waved it energetically over his head.
Jonathan followed Speedwagon’s eyes. A young woman was standing a little ways up the street, casting a long shadow from the streetlight behind her. She was just close enough that Jonathan could distinguish fair skin, long dark hair, and wide, bright eyes through the snowflakes and the gloom.
“Robbie!” The woman repeated. She took a few steps closer, and her look of surprise turned into a joyful smile. Speedwagon started to approach her himself, still waving and grinning. “Where the bloody hell have you been, girl? We were sure we’d seen the last of you!”
“Wait.” Jonathan stepped up behind Speedwagon and placed a hand on his shoulder. As Speedwagon looked at him in confusion, Jonathan raised his voice. “Miss Day, was it? Perhaps I could lend you my coat. You must be dreadfully cold.”
Eliza stopped her own approach, standing perhaps twenty feet in front of them. The freezing wind picked up, blowing her ebony hair up and around her smooth, swanlike shoulder. Aside from the purse hanging from her arm, she wore only a dress of thin, pale green cotton, and the wind blew its skirt halfway up her bare ankles. And yet, she wasn’t shivering. Her hands hung at her sides, arms uncrossed.
“Oh.” She bit her lip, looking over at him coyly. “Well, yes. I’ve learned to handle it over the years, but a coat would be lovely, good sir. Robert, I’m glad you’ve finally found yourself a companion with a bit of class.”
She came closer, the nearer streetlamp illuminating her deep brown eyes and the fading red of the wild roses sewn to the low-cut neck of her dress. As she drew near, Speedwagon’s nose wrinkled up, and he coughed, making her stop again, looking at him in doe-eyed confusion. Jonathan’s eyes shifted over to Gabriel, who was holding out his flask. He looked back at Jonathan, and nodded grimly.
“Eliza,” Speedwagon said, his expression changing as he took a step back and tensed up his arms again, “what have you been up to these last few weeks?”
Eliza blinked, cocking her head to the side as her hair fluttered back down around the pale luster of her neck. She looked like she was starting to speak, but then something else caught her eyes, and they narrowed. She clenched her jaw, and looked up from the splattered remains of Jack the Ripper at Gabriel, and then back at Jonathan and Speedwagon.
“Did you just kill Aaron?”
Her voice had gone as cold and biting as the wind that played around her hair and skirt. Her lips had fallen from their earlier smile into a thin, straight line.
“That was his name, then?” Jonathan asked. His own muscles were tight, and his heart pounding against his ribs as he stared the woman down.
“’Twas.” She put her hands on her hips, and then locked her suddenly luminous and catlike eyes on Speedwagon. “You just take EVERYTHING from me, don’t you Robert? You and your bitch sister.”
“What?” Speedwagon blinked, his mouth hanging open. “Eliza, what…Clara housed and fed you even when you kept getting sick. I stole the medicine for your fever last year!”
“Yes.” She almost
sneered the word. “So you could put me back out on the streets again and keep this all going.” Her smile returned, but it was a completely different expression than her previous, girlish one. It was wide, thin, and joyless, and seemed to harden her entire face around it into icy stone. “Not anymore. I’m putting
all the working girls out of their misery now. To tell the truth, I’d been meaning to pay you and Clara a visit soon enough, and draw it out a little more in your cases.” She looked back at the corpse. “That one was already doing God’s work when I met him, though the dumb brute didn’t realize it of course. That’s why I took him on and made him better at it, after he mistook me for an easy mark.”
Speedwagon’s face had gone waxen. He looked nearly ready to faint. “Eliza, this isn’t you.”
“It’s the
new me, is what it is.” She reached into the purse, and pulled out a flat, oval shaped object that gleamed stonily in the gaslight. “I was as stupid as every other five-pence bitch in this city. Couldn’t even see your like for what it is.” She raised the mask and held it before her face, its blank, marble eyes covering her own and its serene, fanged mouth overlaying hers. “And to think,” she chuckled humorlessly, “I was actually
disappointed once when you turned me down.”
Jonathan felt like his heart had stopped beating at all. It was dark, but not too dark for him to recognize the artifact she was holding. Almost exactly like the one tucked inside the desk drawer in his study. Differing only in some of the minor detailing of the bangs and the carven rim.
She pressed the mask to her face, and a droplet of dark red appeared from each of her nails. As soon as blood touched stone, the five hidden blades – jointed and spike-tipped like the legs of a spider – swished out of the sides and top of the mask and punched into her skull from all sides, sending a chorus of muted crunching sounds over the street. She didn’t fall when it pierced her head. She didn’t even flinch. As her hands returned to her sides, the eyes and mouth of the mask lit up in a dull, glowing red, as did the fine geometric lines that ran along its edges. Jonathan felt like he was screaming, even with his teeth pressed together and his lips tight.
My God. When I first saw the spikes, I was just glad I hadn’t hurt
myself with them. If I had had a shaving cut when I first touched my face to it, I wouldn’t just have died. I’d have… He felt an almost manic urge to be back home. To get the skulking, deceptively handsome-faced invader as far from his house and family as possible.
“I’ll decide what I’m doing with this city once there’s no more like you and I left in it,” Eliza’s voice continued, muffled but decipherable, from behind the unmoving mask, “but first, I’m going to need me a new Jack the Ripper to help out. You broke it Robbie. Now you have to buy it.”
Gabriel stepped forward, advancing over Aaron’s remains, and pulled back his hood so that his chains hung free. “You see now, Jonathan.” His voice was calm, but held a tension that Jonathan hadn’t heard since he had flung the curtains open on him in his bedroom. “This is a stone mask at work. I am sorry about your friend, Speedwagon. There is only one thing we can do for her now.”
Eliza raised her hand, and Aaron’s corpse exploded. Gabriel, who had been standing right in front of the corpse, spun his body in place, leaning over the body and spreading out his arms and legs to shield Jonathan and Speedwagon. Jonathan heard Speedwagon’s shriek of alarm, and a series of wet stabbing noises from Wamuu, before gasping in pain himself as his shoulder, forearm, and waist seized up around a trio of deep stabs. Two broken razor blades and an old darning needle, all covered in dripping black gore, had half-buried themselves in his flesh. Gabriel’s body was stuck with at least ten. Speedwagon had been sheltered by both of the larger men and struck by no shards, but he was sprayed with Aaron’s black blood nonetheless. Before Jonathan had finished blinking this new shower of gore out of his eyes or assessing the damage to his own forearm, waist, and shoulder, Eliza charged, streaking across the snow with her body bent forward almost double, hair trailing behind her and hands outstretched. From beneath each fingernail, another bit of metal gleamed.
A gust of air blew the snow around her up in a great wave, lifting her off her feet mid-leap and slamming her against the brick wall beside the sidewalk. Her blank, masked face turned in Gabriel’s direction, as a muffled “What?” echoed out. While Jonathan was still struggling to decide what to do, Speedwagon jumped backward and threw his bowler hat like a discus. It cut through the falling snow and sliced across Eliza’s chest, but she barely even seemed to notice. Jumping back to her feet, she crouched down like a wild animal and raised her hands at the advancing Gabriel. Her fingertips erupted in blood and shredded skin, and a volley of gore-covered carpenter’s nails shot at Gabriel like bullets. Jonathan saw Gabriel fall down on his back, just in time to avoid the projectiles, and continue skidding toward his mark through the snow. Eliza leaped into the air just before the advancing bulk could connect, soaring over Jonathan’s head in a wild arc of pale skin and green cotton before crunching the snow beneath her as she landed in the middle of the street. Gabriel was already standing back up, but Eliza had regained her bearings first. And now, Jonathan was the closest to her.
As the masked head came flying toward him, followed immediately by a whirlwind of flailing arms and clawed, bloody fingertips, Jonathan pulled back his uninjured right arm and punched her in the shoulder. Once again, that heavy impact as his knuckles crashed into something much harder than human flesh should be. It was not enough to knock her down, and an instant later Jonathan felt a new kind of agony as more nails came stabbing out through the skin of her shoulder, impaling two of his clenched fingers into the bone. Pain came roaring up his arm, making him cry out, as the woman retracted the nails and then wrapped her hands around Jonathan’s shoulders and slammed him down onto his back with a strength many times too great for her slender frame.
“Idiot,” she hissed from behind the mask as it filled Jonathan’s vision, eyes, mouth, and engravings glowing like red hot iron, “didn’t think this rose would have grown herself some thorns, did’ya?” Her ruined fingertips pressed themselves into his shoulders, and yet another kind of pain burned through him as they punched through his coat and into his skin. There was a tight, liquid sound, like water being sucked through a straw, and Jonathan felt his flesh go unnaturally tight around her fingers. Before he could even fully acknowledge the fact that his blood was being sucked out through her claws, Gabriel’s shadow loomed up behind her, and Jonathan felt a higher jolt of pain followed by an immense relief as he kicked the monster off of him.
Gasping, Jonathan forced himself to sit up and look around him. The street was filled with white vortexes of whirling snow. Gabriel stood beside him, the chains of his headdress spinning and flailing like high-powered machinery as the sharp, loping shadow of Eliza leapt and tumbled around to avoid the blasts of wind. Jonathan saw the bestial outline, running on all fours now, with the red glare of the mask blazing toward him as she ducked under another air blast and moved back toward him. Willing himself to ignore the burning and numbness in his punctured fingers, Jonathan reached around his own body and pulled out the razor blade protruding from his left shoulder. Compared to the pain in his fingers, he barely even noticed the sting as it came out, or the wetness as blood flowed from the opened wound. With nearly the same motion, he threw the shard with as much strength as he could muster. It didn’t seem to hurt her, when it buried itself in the crook of her neck just below one of the impaling legs of the mask, but it didn’t need to. Her head reflexively flinched downward toward the impact, and she stumbled on her arms as it distracted her for the fraction of a second that Gabriel needed.
The mask muffled another roar of rage as an updraft lifted Eliza into the air, tossing her straight upward in a flurry of snow, blood, and flapping hair and cloth. Before she could descend, Gabriel streaked over to her, grabbed the mask in both hands, and kicked her in the chest. Another sickening crack as her collarbone gave way, and then an even worse cracking as the spokes of the mask were torn free of Eliza’s skull. Jonathan flinched away from the sight, shutting his eyes and trying to banish that glimpse of ripped bone and exposed brain, but he knew it would be back to vex his dreams. When he opened his eyes again, she had landed on her side and was raising her hands to her exposed face, legs thrashing wildly and kicking up more snow than Gabriel’s winds. She threw back her ventilated head and screamed, louder and shriller than even Aaron had. Pain shot through Jonathan’s head, and he was forced to put his hands to his ears and grit his teeth against the scream.
Through the stars dancing before his vision, Jonathan saw Speedwagon running toward the thrashing demoness, raising his hat and putting the force of his charge into the throw. Jonathan and Gabriel both shouted for him to stay back, but it was too late. The hat left his hand, and embedded itself in Eliza’s head, jerking it back. The hat remained stuck in place, protruding from her like a grisly growth, but it didn’t seem to impede her in the least. Rather, it snapped her out of her pained flailing, and brought her attention back to Speedwagon, who was now dangerously close. Gabriel’s chains began moving again, but Eliza opened her mouthful of batlike fangs and
spat another volley of crimson-trailed nails and sewing needles at him, forcing him to duck out of the way and let his chains go limp. She continued toward Speedwagon.
Moving faster than he ever had, forcing the cold and pain and numbness out of his world entirely, Jonathan rolled up onto his feet and ran toward them. A gust of wind pushed him from behind, as Gabriel realized what Jonathan was doing and helped him along. Jonathan was almost flying as much as running as he passed the street sign, using all eight of his working fingers to grab and pull it out of the pavement with a groaning crack, and then brought the broken point of the metal shaft down over his head into Eliza’s ankle as she leaped for Speedwagon. Just as her fingers closed around his coat and slammed him into the ground, she too fell as the signpost pierced through flesh, bone, snow, and pavers, pinning her leg to the ground. Jonathan collapsed himself, stumbling over his own feet as he came to a stop. Eliza was stuck in place, but she had both hands on Speedwagon now, and was clutching the struggling man against her body.
“Stop!” She barked, twitching her gory, broken head back and forth between Jonathan and Gabriel, Speedwagon’s hat still sprouting from just below her eye. “I can crack his neck in a heartbeat, I can!” She grabbed Speedwagon’s throat and squeezed it, causing him to choke and gasp desperately for air just as he had been about to speak himself. “You can have him back, but you’ll have to let me
aahhh….”
She stopped, and almost choked herself, as a stony
crack sounded. Jonathan pulled his head out of the snow, and looked at Gabriel. He was holding half of the stone mask. The rest was in fragments in the snow at his feet, and the brick wall beside him was freshly gouged. Eliza shook. Her mouth opened and closed, cutting its own lips on her extended fangs.
“There’s no letting you go now,” Gabriel said, advancing slowly back across the street. He reached up and pulled a sewing needle out of his cheek, almost nonchalantly. “You won’t live longer than another night. Maybe two, if you don’t exert yourself.” He dropped the remaining half of the mask and stepped on it, crunching it to pieces as well.
She bared her teeth at him, keeping the struggling, choking Speedwagon’s neck wrapped in her hands. “How do you claim to know that?”
Gabriel shook his head. “I know much more about the masks than you do. I have fought your kind more times than I could be bothered to count. I know you can feel your strength abandoning you. It is over. Let him go.”
She choked out a hoarse, spiteful laugh, spitting out a little more blood. Her hair was heavy and clotted with blood now, sticking to her torn dress and ragged skin. The wounds on her head and neck looked smaller than they had a minute ago, as if they’d already begun to heal, and the pieces of her collarbone had moved halfway back into position. “I’ll just have to drink ALL of Robbie’s blood, then, won’t I?” Her fingers closed tighter around his neck. His face began to turn purple, and his writhing became involuntary. “That ought to keep me going longer.”
“You will still die.”
“
But at least I’ll take this son of a bitch with me!”
Jonathan barely had the searing agony of his fingers under control, but he was just lucid enough to follow the conversation. Not knowing if he was being misguided, or even just outright foolish, he nonetheless took in a sharp breath and spoke. “Miss Day?”
Her head shot around to glare at Jonathan. The hat finally fell out of her face, leaving a bone-deep gash in its wake. She didn’t seem to be healing anymore.
“I can’t pretend to understand how you feel,” Jonathan said, breathing heavily against the pain in his fingers and arm as he lay in the snow, head just barely raised above it, “and I won’t try to. But this I can assure you; killing Speedwagon will only make things worse.”
Eliza gave him a look that
burned with contempt. But, Jonathan continued.
“You said you’re trying to help the others. Your…colleagues. To end their suffering. But, what do you think will happen to the ladies you worked with, if Mr. Speedwagon were to perish?”
She rolled her glimmering eyes. “They’ll be free of Mr. Speedwagon. That’s what.”
“Yes, ma’am. But they’ll still be alive, won’t they?” Jonathan groaned, and forced himself up onto his hands, so he could look Eliza straight in the eyes. “They’ll be in the same situation, but with less money, and less protection. Who’s going to steal the medicine the next time one gets sick? That won’t be a merciful death, if it comes to that. It’ll be a very long, slow one.” He paused for a moment. Struggling with himself as much as the pain of his wounds. “I’ve…my father’s been in and out of the hospital for almost two years. I hope he’s getting better, but I don’t know for how long. He’s in pain, every day. Sometimes he can’t eat, or sleep, or speak, when his episodes are at their worst. There’ll be…probably more of that, for Cecily and the others. Someone new might be taking over Ogre Street, and do you think they’ll be better than Robert and Clara, or worse?”
Eliza was motionless. Unblinking. In her hands, Speedwagon was starting to go limp. Behind her, Gabriel was quietly watching.
“I’ll…I’ll make you a promise, Miss Day. Let him go, and the others will hear you died fighting. And you really will have. They…they don’t need to know the details. Everyone will think you died a saint.”
Eliza’s arms were beginning to tremble. Her jaw clenched tighter and tighter.
“If you kill him, then that will mean you weren’t actually doing any of this to free anyone. You were just doing it because the mask
made you do it. You can decide whether or not that’s actually the truth. You…you always wanted to be free, didn’t you? Try to think and decide…what YOU actually want. What you think is actually right. The things you told myself and Mr. Speedwagon before.”
Her lips trembled. Her fingers twitched. Her many wounds were bleeding more profusely now, and her skin beginning to discolor. She looked down at Speedwagon, head lolling down into the snow, unconscious. A quiet, high-pitched whine emerged from her throat.
“Please, Miss Day. You spoke of mercy. Let your final act
be one of mercy.”
Her hands relaxed and fell off of Speedwagon’s throat. Her face sank down into the snow, surrounded by tangled and blood-soaked black hair. Speedwagon’s throat was redder than his face, but his chest began rising and falling again as soon as she let go, and a moment later his eyelids started to twitch. Gabriel stepped over to him and pulled him gently out of Eliza’s reach.
“It…it’s almost dawn, isn’t it?” Eliza asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Jonathan looked eastward. The sky was beginning to lighten over the rooftops. “Yes, Miss Day.”
Speedwagon began opening his eyes. Gabriel helped him turn over, so he could retch. As he began moving his limbs again, Gabriel stepped over beside the buildings, placing himself in the shadows. Jonathan narrowed his eyes, but kept most of his attention on Eliza.
“I died fighting.” Her voice was weaker, starting to sound as ragged as she looked. “That’s…well…”
“You killed Jack the Ripper,” Jonathan forced himself to smile.
She laughed. It was a normal laugh, this time. One with humor in it rather than malice. Jonathan found himself smiling along with her, though he was in too much pain to laugh as well.
“By god, I did!” She continued giggling, shaking her head back and forth. “I mean, you killed him too, but I did it first!”
He nodded, still smiling.
The first real sunrays came down over the rooftops. There was a flash of heat, as if Jonathan was suddenly facing a bonfire, and he felt the snow soften and melt beneath his body. Crackling yellow flames engulfed Eliza, and then there was only a handful of needles, a tattered green dress and a pile of charred bones and ashes.
TO BE CONTINUED ->
