Betrayer (Hidden Book 7)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  London’s East End had been known, back in the days of Jack the Ripper, as a slum. The murders and the mystery surrounding them had brought attention to the living conditions of the people of the Whitechapel district. It did not mean that they changed overmuch during that time period, but eventually, the slums became respectable. Part of the draw, of course, had been the morbid fascination with the area and what had occurred there. A murderer who had never been found, his grisly work left for all to see. Historically, the name of Jack the Ripper is one that lives on in infamy.

  And those two things: drawing attention to her neighbors and gaining a certain level of fame, were the things that drove the woman who became known as “Jack the Ripper” to do the things she’d done. It was delicious irony, however, that history had appropriated her murders to a male. Jack the Ripper had been a woman, a prostitute from a poor family from Whitechapel by the name of Eveline Noonan. She’d been beautiful, buxom. A favorite among those who frequented the brothel where she worked. But she had wanted so much more from life. She had deemed herself worthy of fame, of remembrance. She had been a psychopath who, for whatever twisted reason, had decided that murder and mutilation was the way to gain that fame, and a witch who had used the blood and body parts she tore from her victims in some of her more sickening spells.

  She had been power-hungry, devious, and full of rage in life. I had no reason to believe she was any better in death. In all likelihood, she was probably worse.

  I stood before my team in the alley behind the building where she had once worked in Whitechapel. I unconsciously rubbed my hand along where I knew there remained a long, jagged pink scar on my arm from the last time I had seen her, which had been when I had arrived to claim her soul after death. She had put up a brutal fight, and, even then, had been stronger than I had expected a soul to be. She had taken me by surprise, wrestling with me when I’d tried to plunge my Netherblade into her, and she had ended up slicing my arm to the bone in some places before I had been able to get myself turned around and back in control. She was the only time, in my entire existence, that I had ever failed in a mission. She had gotten away, and managed to stay just out of reach for nearly a year before I finally caught up with her.

  I remembered that as we stood in the rain. “She is dangerous,” I said in a low voice. “She does not look it. She is beautiful. She is petite, and curvaceous, and the absolute picture of perfection. But she is evil to the core. She fights like a being possessed, and she is much stronger than she looks. She will not hesitate to fight you, and if she is doing what we suspect, she likely already has a corporeal form, as well as others she has turned undead aiding her.”

  “Um. Is this maybe one of those situations where it would be helpful to have another god or something with us?” Erin asked uncertainly.

  “We’ve got this,” Quinn told her, meeting my eyes.

  I nodded. “Just be smart. Do not go off on your own. Do not split up. If she starts speaking, do not believe a word she says. If she seems calm or even afraid, it is a trap. Do not fall for it.”

  We started walking, and I focused on trying to pick up an energy trail. Hours later, we were still walking the streets of Whitechapel, having found nothing more than traces of other souls, souls who, very likely, she had since turned undead. Nothing but whispers, the barest sense of something that had once been there.

  I knew Eveline, though. This was her home. She would not leave it, and she would not run. She very likely knew or at least suspected that I was there. She would want to face me eventually.

  And I was more than happy to let her do so.

  We made another circuit through the neighborhood, and this time, my New Guardians walked through buildings, scoping out interiors. A pair of Guardians on each side of the street, using their ability to simply walk through walls and other obstructions to their advantage. I stayed out on the street, eyes open, and, more importantly, senses focused, ready for even the slightest hint of a soul in the area.

  As we neared a large factory, I was hit, hard, with the sense of a soul. A new soul.

  “Come on,” I said, just loudly enough for my team to hear me. They rejoined me, and we stalked toward the factory. I rematerialized inside, and they joined me.

  It was dark. Pitch black, the hulking forms of the factory machines visible only thanks to the meager light shining in from the street lamps outside.

  The sensation of death was stronger here, and I darted through the factory, around machinery, following the energy trail.

  There was more. It came to me, that the person whose energy signature had brought me here was named Harold Swanson, age thirty-nine, murdered mere moments ago.

  And I could already feel his energy signature moving away from me, along with another.

  I reached the far end of the factory, where his energy signature had been the strongest. As I took a step, my foot kicked something soft, bulky.

  “It’s a body, boss,” Quinn said gruffly.

  “Yes, I figured.”

  A body. The body of Harold Swanson, and his energy signature was moving away at a fast clip. I closed my eyes, reopened them, letting the final vestige of my enchantment that kept me looking human drop. I heard Claire gasp, undoubtedly at the sight of my eyes glowing red in the darkness.

  I ignored it. I looked down quickly at the body of Swanson, noting, as I’d feared, that he’d died thanks to a large cut to his chest area.

  That, and the fact that I could see that his heart was missing though the gaping hole in his chest.

  “Ah, fuck it all,” Quinn groaned.

  “My sentiments exactly. Let’s go,” I said.

  We moved quickly now. I grabbed them, and they joined hands, and I rematerialized us several blocks north, which was the direction in which I’d felt his soul moving. This was it. This was what they did: murder a person, give its heart to a soul they were working on turning, and then steal the soul of the person they’d just murdered.

  Not they. Not in this case. She. I could feel her energy signature, as well as Harold’s and a soul I was able, after a few moments of focus, to identify as that of a woman who’d been murdered in an alley several blocks away. A woman on Brennan’s list: Deirdre Ross.

  We ran, drawing ever closer to them. My team simply ran through obstacles, and I rematerialized myself instantaneously on the other side of any fences or walls that stood in my path.

  We were closing in. The feel of their energy signatures was so strong now. I rematerialized on the other side of a high wall surrounding a parking lot, heard a laugh I recognized from that night all those years ago.

  And then the energy signatures vanished.

  “What in the hell is going on?” Erin asked.

  I gritted my teeth, stalked around the parking lot, then stopped and focused, trying to get a read on them.

  They were gone. The trail ended, almost as if it had never existed.

  I put my hands on my hips, pacing, trying to pick up anything at all.

  “They’re gone,” Quinn said. I gave a terse nod.

  “One of your kind?” Claire asked.

  “It would seem so,” I answered through my clenched jaw.

  “Another one of your sisters, you think?” Quinn asked, joining me in my pacing as the others looked on. I could see in their postures that they were nearly as irritated, as angry as I was.

  “Perhaps,” I said. “We have reason to believe there is a higher immortal involved. All of the immortals can make that happen,” I said, gesturing toward the area where I’d last felt the energy signatures.

  “Well that makes our job a hell of lot harder then, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Why, though?”

  “Why, what?”

  “Why are they here helping? We came across your sisters when they weren’t expecting us.”

  “Except when they set that trap for us in Japan,” I said quietly.

  “You think that’s what this is?” He asked, brow furrowed in concern. My New Guardians had not got
ten off easily in that encounter, either. My sisters had used their Netherblades on them, incapacitating them, weakening them so they could not assist me. And they still, somewhere, had Mary, the soul they’d stolen from me. Her loss, and the fact that we had not yet uncovered any sign of her, wore on my team, especially Quinn, who had been her constant companion before they’d found me.

  I shook my head. “I do not think so. I do not think they are in a hurry to face off against me again. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Cocky much?” he asked with a small grin.

  I shook my head. “Just logical. They suffered losses last time, when they were sure they would be victorious. They underestimated me, and paid for it. They will be wary of doing so again.”

  “So what now?” he asked with a sigh. “Should we start circling the neighborhood again?”

  “Let’s go back to where the brothel was,” I said. “We can rest there.”

  “You really think she’ll come back there?”

  I shrugged. “It was where I found her. It is where she knows I will return to check for her. If I am at all correct about her ego, she will want to face me again.”

  Quinn nodded, and I took his hand, then Claire’s, and the rest of the team joined hands. I focused, and moments later, we were on the roof of the building that had once been an infamous brothel, the place Eveline, AKA Jack the Ripper, had called home for years. The place she’d eventually come to control, becoming a madame to some of the most well-paying clientele in all of the East End. While it had earned her a certain amount of power in her own little sphere, it had not brought her the attention or respect she desired so much. It did not improve the slums of Whitechapel. The wealthy men who enjoyed her services did not stay. They did not spend their money in the neighboring businesses, and being among Whitechapel’s people had not made them see that something needed to be done. So when she’d been incapable of getting the attention of the wealthy via the favors she did for them, she turned to more grisly methods.

  I mulled it all over as the team and I sat on the roof. The whole idea had been insane, of course, I reflected. Her mind had clearly been an interesting place, a place where logic held little sway. She had believed wholeheartedly in what she was doing. She had seen herself as a hero, as some kind of savior of the people of Whitechapel, when in reality, she’d been nothing but a nightmare, a grisly part of the history of the area, one that drew the more morbidly curious to visit.

  No, she would return. Even if her orders were to avoid me, she would be unable to resist the idea of facing me again, undoubtedly stronger than she had been when I had collected her well over a century ago. Her ego would not allow the opportunity to pass her by.

  I glanced around at my New Guardians. Cathleen and Erin snuggled together, Claire snored quietly several feet away, and Quinn, as always, remained at my side. Even he, for once, was resting, back leaning against the chimney beside me, arms crossed over his chest, eyes closed.

  I took out my phone and checked the time. It was just after two in the morning where we were, which meant it was seven in Detroit.

  I hesitated a moment, then typed a message to Brennan. “Are you home yet?”

  I waited for only a moment, and there was a response. “We just got in. Was just about to text you.”

  I let out a breath I hadn’t been aware I had been holding. “How did it go?”

  He responded that they’d gone to Athens, and had found several lesser gods, as well as seven spirit daemons. The lesser gods had reported that they didn’t know of anyone who was missing, which was a good sign.

  “Good,” I texted back.

  “We’re going to Crete tonight,” he wrote.

  And then my phone rang, and I saw that it was him.

  “I hate texting. I want to hear your voice,” he said when I picked up. I smiled.

  “So is this better, then?” I asked.

  “Much better,” he answered. “How are things there?”

  I filled him in on our chase through Whitechapel, the infuriating disappearance. I could hear him moving around on his end.

  “You are not leaving for work now, are you?” I asked, interrupting myself.

  “No. Just climbed into bed. I’m going to crash for a few hours and go in at ten.”

  “I should let you sleep then,” I said.

  “I’ll sleep in a bit. Talk to me, Tink. So the trail just ended?”

  I paused, and then gave in, telling him about how it had just ceased to be, which led me to conclude that one of my sisters or another immortal must have been in the area helping her.

  He was silent for a moment. ”I don’t like it. If there’s another immortal around, they could be setting you up again.”

  “I will be careful. I wish I had not made our presence known. We should have hung back more. If I had had more time, I may have been able to see who was helping them. Instead, they knew we were chasing them and they left in a hurry.”

  “Your job was to chase them down. Don’t get annoyed with yourself for doing it,” he said.

  “I assume she will make a reappearance. We will wait around until she does so. While we are here I will look into those murders you emailed me about. Though we did find one of the victims tonight, with her.”

  “And a missing heart, which means they’re definitely making undead.”

  “Yes.”

  He let out a short, wry laugh. “You know there was a time when the biggest worry I had was whether the werewolves near Belle Isle were going to be a problem at the full moon or not.”

  “It is a whole new world,” I agreed. “For us, as well. Life as an immortal was always fairly routine. Those like Zeus pretty much lived a life of luxury. Those of us in the Nether did our jobs, slept, and worked some more. It was rarely dramatic, and never as messy as it is now.”

  “Do you miss the old days?” he asked. His voice was sleepy, and I wished, for just a moment, that I was in his arms again.

  “In some ways. Life was so much simpler,” I said. “My life was straightforward, and I knew who had earned my trust and who had not. I was whole,” I said, and for just moment, it felt as if my wings, wings that were no longer there, had flexed. That hurt most of all, that at times, I could almost believe they were still there, the sensations were so real.

  “I can definitely understand that,” he said quietly.

  “But, in some ways, this is… not better, exactly. More, perhaps? I cannot say better, not with Hades gone,” I finished quietly.

  “Yeah. I think everyone’s going to be feeling that loss for a long time,” he said.

  “At the same time, I would not have Mollis in my life if things were still the same,” I said. “I would not have Shanti. We never had any time to bother with the living.” I paused, debating whether to say what I wanted to say to him. As it happened, I was more of a coward than I would like to think. I let the moment pass.

  “True,” he said. “I wouldn’t have Sean. I wouldn’t know my grandmother, or anything about what I really am.” I knew he felt odd about the whole god/immortal label for himself. He rarely, if ever, said the words, but I knew he thought about it, about what it meant for him and his son.

  There was silence between us, words left unsaid.

  “I should let you sleep,” I finally said.

  “I would sleep better if you were here with me,” he murmured, and I felt my heart pound in response.

  I took a breath. “That makes two of us.”

  “Be careful, Eunomia.”

  “Same to you, Cub. Good night.”

  “Night.”

  I hit the button, disconnecting our call. I looked at the phone for a moment, irritated with myself, then slid the phone into my coat pocket.

  “You gonna tell that poor shifter you love him, or not?” Quinn said. I jumped a little, glared over at him.

  “I thought you were asleep,” I told him.

  “I was. Until I wasn’t,” he said with a grin. “Seriously, though, boss. Three little words
. You know he wants to hear ‘em.”

  I watched him coolly. “You do not know that,” I told him.

  “Mmhmm. I have almost zero serious relationship experience, and even I can see it. Don’t tell me you’re that clueless.”

  “There are other things we need to be thinking about right now,” I said.

  He shook his head with a smile. “You are really good at avoiding shit you don’t want to talk about.”

  “Yes. It is almost as if I am forced to prioritize where I can afford to spend my time and attention,” I said.

  He scratched his chin. “I know. I get that, boss. But consider that there’s a reason yer fighting. There’s a reason you want things to be safe, and it isn’t all duty and honoring the role you were created for. Maybe it used to be, but that’s not all there is now.”

  “Duly noted, thank you,” I said, and he laughed. “We should move. I want to check out some of these locations throughout the city. I doubt we will be lucky enough to recover any souls for — “ I stopped myself, remembering that as far as he knew, Mollis and I were enemies. “Recover any souls to send to the Netherwoods,” I corrected myself, “but we must try.”

  He nodded, stood up, started gently shaking Claire’s shoulder to wake her up. Once she was up, she and Quinn woke Cathleen and Erin.

  Quinn glanced at me. “You didn’t sleep,” he said, as if just realizing it.

  “I am not tired,” I said with a shrug. The movement pulled at the area where my wings had been, and I immediately regretted it. I hated anything that reminded me of what I had lost.

  Sleep was just another opportunity for me to have to remember.

  Once everyone was awake and alert, I took their hands. “Several murders happened in the neighborhood around St. George Cathedral. We will poke around there first.”

  They nodded, and I focused, and then we were gone.

  Chapter Seven

  I watched as Cathleen stood, looking up at the impressive arched window above the doors of St. George Cathedral. She shook her head, then looked at me, as if she could sense me watching her.