From Hell (3 page)

Four

The sun inched into the sky behind a
blanket of gray. It did nothing to chase the chill from the air,
but at least it had stopped raining. London glistened in the dawn.
Millions of sparkling diamonds littered the city, reflecting the
pale morning light and shimmering in the early gloom.

Scarlett and I had circled the city
all night via the rooftops the entire night but what brave souls
remained outside—by choice or happenstance—were few and far
between. While it might have been an ideal night for killers, since
there were no witnesses anywhere to be found, there were also no
victims out and about. Hard to kill folks who aren’t
there.

I shook the water from my soggy coat
and glanced over to Scarlett. She’d taken up a perch on a chimney
after we’d stumbled across the last of the late night
streetwalkers. The woman, more vagabond than hooker, with thick
layers of worn clothing hiding her uncertain shape, staggered off
alone when morning came. With no more whistles or baying hounds in
Whitechapel, our hunt had come to the end.

Scarlett stood and stretched, preening
in the weak glow of the sun. “It would seem the killer took the
night off.”

“
I wish we had.” My hat
had nearly soaked through, the constant pressure of the rain
softening and bending the brim until it hung limp around my head.
My ears tingled from the cold wetness that ran over
them.

She nodded while twisting her long
hair in her hands, water spilling between her fingers. “Since we’re
not going to find our man plying his trade during the day, I think
I’ll return home for a bit.” Scarlett turned her green gaze on me.
“Meet back here at dusk?”

“
Sounds good.” I waved,
knowing she meant to report our evening’s failure to
Metatron.

“
Yet another wonderful
evening in the life of Frank.” She yawned. “No wonder you’re
single.” Scarlett snorted and leapt into the sky before I could
reply. She was gone a moment later, leaving a trail of golden
energy in her wake. I waved goodbye with one finger.

Once she was out of sight,
I sighed, glad to be rid of her. I yanked my hat from my head to
shake the water loose. While Scarlett might be right about the
killer not hacking up his prey in broad daylight, it was by far the
best time to scout a victim and to prepare. It was also the perfect
time to find out more about our elusive
friend
.

That was what set Heaven and Hell
apart, or so Lucifer always told me. Demons were willing to crawl
in the muck to accomplish their goals. You don’t get to know your
enemy by keeping your distance, he’d said. You have to get up close
and personal, dig through their belongings, sniff their asses. The
contact would be a big help with that; the learning more part, not
necessarily the ass sniffing. Then again, you never
know.

While I didn’t mind
Scarlett hanging around, especially if it helped prove
Hell’s
innocence
in this particular matter, she didn’t need to know
everything. A demon needs his secrets. We were, all things
considered, on opposite sides of the war. It never hurt to have her
there if a fight broke out, but when it came to subterfuge or
choosing the lesser of two evils, Scarlett was a liability. She
thought in straight lines and was colorblind to the gray in the
world. There’s no doubt she came here to finish the job, to take
out the killer like I’d been sent to do, but you never know how
things are going to work out. I hoped the mission was that clear
cut—track and kill—but they usually weren’t.

I tossed my hat and coat aside, both
worthless after being drenched, and shimmied down the drainpipe to
the alley below. My uncle had given me plenty of shillings in case
I needed to bribe or coerce information out of anyone, but I didn’t
think it would hurt much to pick up a new jacket. After all, Uncle
Lou wanted me to blend in. Wandering around in the winter for too
long without a coat might draw attention.

The Webley tucked nicely into the
waistband of my pants, out of sight beneath my shirt, I made my way
out to the street. Still early on a Saturday, most folks were still
slumbering off their Friday night or just avoiding the cold, wet
morning. The streets were nearly deserted as I wound my way through
Whitechapel. What the night’s darkness had hidden so well, the hazy
morning revealed. I wasn’t impressed.

It was no surprise the Ripper fellow
had chosen to stalk his victims in the East End. The place was a
dump. Trash littered the alleys and flowed out onto the sidewalks
in haphazard jumbles, the rain having turned most of it into a wet,
stinky mush. Urban mud.

Rats skittered through the garbage
looking for breakfast. They were fearless, beady little eyes
staring me down as I walked past while they held their ground,
whiskers twitching. They were willing to fight for their meal. That
meant they were starving. And if the rats were so hungry they would
challenge a demon, I could only imagine how bad it must be for the
people living there. That kind of desperation made folks do stupid
things. Just like the women I’d run into last night. They were out
because they needed to be, not because they wanted to. Even in the
pouring rain, they’d stepped onto the streets to sell themselves in
the hopes someone was buying. It meant the difference between
eating that day or not.

While Baalth would laugh at my
sentimentality, that horrible desperation only made me want to
catch the Ripper even more. I could hear my mother’s voice inside
my head reminding me that I was one of them—human—or at least half
of me still was. She wanted to be sure I never forgot that. A
peaceful woman, she might not approve of what I intended when I
caught Saucy Jacky, but she would agree something needed to be
done. Regardless, he wouldn’t kill any more women if I could help
it.

As I made my way through the labyrinth
of Whitechapel streets, London crawled meekly from their beds. A
newspaper vendor hawked his wares from the corner, his voice
cutting through the still, morning air. With no mention of a murder
in his pitch, I breathed a little easier. So, it seemed, did the
people gathered alongside me. While there weren’t many pedestrians
on the sidewalks, they carried a sense of doom with them, as if the
killings were a weight pressing down on their lives. Their shuffled
gaits sped a little at the vendor’s proclamation, the weight lifted
until darkness fell once more. For their sakes, and my own, I hoped
I could remove that pressure forever.

I handed the vendor a coin, him
passing me a newspaper in return. After a quick nod to the man, I
folded the paper and slipped it under my arm and continued down the
street. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it’d be enough given the
preoccupation of the Whitechapel residents. They’d made it through
another night of terror and were reveling in being alive,
regardless their circumstance. Later in the day they might be more
vigilant, but I’d have replaced my coat by then. I continued on,
the city slowly growing into prosperity with every
block.

At last I came to the far reaches of
the East End and turned onto Alderny Road, Mile End, remembering
the directions Baalth had damn near embedded in my skull. There, I
picked out the address for the contact: a Mister George Lusk. I
sauntered across the street and took a moment to survey the house.
George didn’t live like the rest of the folks in Whitechapel. A
fresh coat of paint gleamed on the exterior of the three-story
home, which was nearly as large as some of the apartments I’d
passed. Attractive, flowered curtains lurked behind the large glass
windows that stared out onto the street. Thick shutters hung open
at their sides. A large porch butted into the sidewalk, white,
stately columns rising up to the roof of the veranda. Several
wooden rocking chairs sat out front, further proof of George’s
status in the community. Had he lived further west, he’d wake up to
his chairs missing.

I drew a deep breath and
sauntered across the road as though I belonged there, the task made
easier by the street being empty. Up the porch, I went to the door
and knocked. A smile brightened my face at the deep
thump
of the wood.
Despite the façade of comfort, the door was made of a heavy wood,
just as the shutters were. George was no less fearful than the rest
of the East End folks. He was just subtler about announcing it. He
was likely far more afraid of the people of Whitechapel than of the
Ripper, his home one foot in the slums and three feet out. I
wondered what his game was, what he hoped to gain from stepping
into the spotlight as he had.

Footsteps pattered across the floor
inside, drawing closer. Bolts slid loose of their holes and the
door creaked open a crack. Dark brown eyes stared out at me,
surrounded by a cherubic young face.

“
Yes?” the boy
asked.

I smiled and gave a half-ass nod. “I’m
here to see Mister George Lusk, the head of the Whitechapel
Vigilance Committee. He’s expecting me.”

“
And you are?”

“
Thomas Yardlow,” I lied,
offering up the name my uncle had passed on to the contact. It
didn’t make much sense seeing how George wouldn’t know me from
Adam, but whatever made the old man happy. “Is Mister Lusk
home?”

The boy stood and stared at me without
moving. He lifted his chin, eyes narrowing, as though he were about
to tell me to fuck off, but a sharp voice at his back silenced
him.

“
Let the man in, Joseph.
It’s cold outside.”

The boy swallowed hard and spun about,
yanking the door open. “Yes, father.” He waved me in.

“
Thank you…Joseph.” I
smiled at the kid and patted him on the head as I stepped inside.
“It is a might chilly out this morning.”

“
You’re foolish to have
left your room without your jacket, Mister Yardlow,” George said,
eyeing me up.”

Older than I expected, George was
still a solid man. Not huge by any means, but he carried himself
with a dignity not present in the streets I’d wandered through to
get there. He seemed a match for his home: sturdy. George stood
with a rigidity that only came with wealth and status, prosperity
stiffening a man’s spine against adversity.

A brown mustache trailed down to his
chin on both sides. The rest of his face was neatly shaven. His
graying hair, only beginning to thin, was slicked back against his
scalp. Pools of brown stared out at me just as they had with his
son. He proffered his hand.

“
I arrived late, my coat
soaked through by the storm. It’s out to dry.” I took his hand.
Though his flesh was smooth and soft, he met my solid grip with one
of his own.

He smiled. “Then come in, Yardlow.
I’ve just the thing to chase the chill from your bones.” George
turned to his son. “Shut the door, boy before we lose the heat. Our
guest and I will be in my study should you need me.”

Joseph muttered a quick affirmative
and did as he was told, his eyes never leaving me while George led
me down a short hall and into his study. George waved me to a seat
and shut the door, blocking out his son’s prying gaze.

“
You’ll have to forgive
Joseph,” he said as he stepped around an oaken desk and dropped
into the chair behind it. “These are difficult times to put one’s
trust in strangers.” From the drawer beside him, he pulled out two
crystalline glasses and a small bottle of amber liquor.
“Brandy?”

I nodded. “It would seem to be the
wise course given the circumstances, wouldn’t you
think?”

George grinned in response, but there
was no humor to it. He poured a liberal shot of Brandy into both
glasses and slid one across the bare desk to me. “Too true,
Yardlow. Too true.”

“
Call me Thomas,” I
answered as I collected the shot, biting back a chuckle. If only my
uncle could see me now, a cultured gentleman, all please and thank
you, a stick up my ass to keep me proper. He’d shit a goose
laughing. I raised the glass to George. “To a happy
ending.”

“
Indeed.” With a trembling
hand, he lifted the glass to his lips and swallowed it down in one
gulp.

I did the same, savoring the heat that
lit fire to my throat and warmed my belly. George hadn’t skimped on
the liquor, offering up the good stuff. He poured himself another
shot and held out the bottle to me. As much as I wanted to suck
more down, I waved it off. There’d be plenty of time for carousing
once Jacky boy caught a bullet.

George drank down the second shot
without hesitation and set his glass aside. Though his hand was
noticeably more stable, his eyes kept wandering to the bottle. “I’m
not sure what you can do to help, but your employer, Mister Ceefer,
seemed to believe you can.”

Lou
Ceefer
, my uncle, the Devil. It always
made me laugh at how blatant he could be and yet no one ever seemed
to get the joke. That was probably a good thing. “I’ve spent a lot
of time down
south
investigating cases where the trail had gone cold.” I
shrugged. “Often, fresh eyes are all that’s needed in order to find
the answer to a mystery.”

“
I hope so, Thomas.” His
eyes darted to the bottle once more. “I truly hope so.”

Despite his volunteering to track down
the killer and restore the peace to Whitechapel, it was clear the
brutality of the Ripper had gotten under George’s skin. “My
employer told me you received a message from the killer.” I
motioned to the brandy with my chin. “Perhaps another glass will
make the tale more palatable.”