Key to Redemption

by Talia Gryphon

  “All right, piccola sorella, we will do it your way, but I will also be watching over you, Aisling and Kimber from the air as well as I am able.” Tanis was terrified for Jenna but almost more so for the other women.

  Gillian turned to Pavel and Trocar. “Pavel, I need you to track her as best you can. Just go, stay out of sight and remember to bark, not howl, if you see or smell anything. We’ll get to you. Trocar, I know you know what to do.”

  “Indeed, Gillyflower, I do. But first, take this.” He pulled a shimmering cord about two feet long out of his leather shirt. “A garrote, my lady. It is of a material which, once wound round the neck, will continue to tighten and kill, even if you let go. I hope that you do not wind up in close-enough quarters to use it, but he if gets hold of you and you can get at least one arm free to use this, it will decapitate him.”

  He demonstrated the movement required to activate the cord, then waited until she secured it carefully around her wrist as he told her. One tug and it would come free for her to use without injuring her arm.

  The Grael dipped his head, arm across his chest, in a gesture of respect for her, gave a mock salute and ran lightly ahead of them, Pavel for the moment at his side. The Dark Elf was silent, invisible if he chose and deadlier than the Ripper’s wildest imaginings. He also had a score to settle with Jack for backhanding him across the room at the Chastel estate in France. He would hide among the buildings in the village, shadowing Gillian as she took her walk of death.

  What she didn’t know was that he planned to find this diseased creature first, hopefully while the Human woman was still alive. He would incapacitate him, make her safe, then return to leisurely finish a long overdue period of torment known only in the Halls of Anguish of the Grael.

  Gillian actually prayed that Trocar or Tanis would find Jack first. She was no coward but she remembered distinctly how badly the sadistic Vampire had unnerved her. There was also no way in hell she could take him or any other Vampire in a hand-to-hand fight if it came to that. They were just too damn strong and fast for a Human to prevail in that situation.

  The last thing she wanted to do was to walk down those moonlit streets alone, keenly aware that she was without a bra or panties underneath Aleksei’s shirt even as she pulled and tucked the shirt and makeshift belt to make a suggestive-looking minidress. Putting herself into the role of a potential victim was not something she was used to.

  It would have been more her style to storm the place with a fully equipped, armed unit who would kick ass and take names. Here there were just too many innocent civilians who could potentially get hurt. The streets themselves were clear since it was somewhere around three or three thirty in the morning. They had to find Jenna before the sun was high or Jack would certainly kill her then dump the body before he went to ground.

  “Ready?” she asked the other two women, then moved off without waiting for an answer, gun hooked in her belt, resting in the small of her back, leaving her arms free.

  At the edge of the town, Kimber peeled off down one dark street followed by one of the Fey and began singing, “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother, I’m a sinner, I’m a saint . . .” Her voice wavered a little, but Gill couldn’t blame her. They were all scared shitless.

  Aisling lightly ran ahead and picked another alleyway to duck into. The Fey following her melted into the background as soon as he hit the shadows. Gillian heard her singing too. A rather suggestive melody, presumably in Elvish, from the sound of it. That was fine. Those two could sing all they liked. She had a different tactic in mind for attracting Jack.

  Squaring her shoulders, Gillian adopted her most aggressive swagger and moved into the quiet streets, keenly aware that she was about to do the most idiotic thing she’d ever done in her life. The Ripper was about to be fucked with by a master smart-ass.

  “Hey, Jack! Jack the Ripper! It’s Dr. Key! I’m here, just like you wanted!” she called out into the night, her eyes shifting constantly for any sign of movement among the shadows.

  “Come on, Jack, we found the body! I recognized the Eddoes kill so I know it’s you! I also know you have Jenna, but she’s not who you want, is she?”

  Every ten yards or so, she’d stop to listen for a moment, her empathy on overdrive in a shell around her, feeling for any shift, any change in the quiet peace of the town. She trusted herself to know if he was sneaking up on her, but she turned around in the street anyway, noticing every shadow’s position, every shiny surface illuminated by the moon and stars.

  Still nothing after ten minutes. There were noises in the forest outside the village and some sounds of conflict but nothing near her. If any of them had found Jack, someone would have yelled by now. Shit. Fuck. Hell. Damn. She was going to have to do what all her training, knowledge and experience told her not to do: provoke the killer’s wrath and hope to piss him off enough to flush him out. Without dying, that is. That was the tricky part.

  “Hear me, Jacky! It’s your favorite foulmouthed Dr. Key! All I want is Jenna freed, alive and well, then you and I will throw down, you sadistic, twisted piece of shit!”

  Silence greeted her ears. The Inn was coming up on her right and she crossed to the left side of the street, her senses beginning to tingle a little. Slowly, she reached for the gun behind her back and grasped it, finger on the trigger, ready to draw and fire.

  “What’s the matter, Jack? You afraid of a woman with a weapon? Or do you only take on frightened, uneducated Cockney hookers, tranny men or young girls with no defensive skills? Come out, Jack, try fighting someone armed and dangerous for once, you fucking coward!”

  Dammit, still nothing except a warning tingle. Okay, time to shelve the bitch and bring out the Marine.

  “Jack, you cock-blocked, fanged-faced chicken shit! I’m walking these streets, Jonesing for you, baby! That’s right! I’m half-naked, on display, and all for my favorite sick twist! Are you hard for me, you crazy fuck, or are you still so impotent with living women that you’ll have to use a knife to get me off instead of that ineffective, limp wiener of yours!”

  The rush of hatred, malice and evil that came staggered her back into a doorway, where she gasped for a moment, getting her shields more firmly stabilized. Evil: an evil so oppressive that she nearly gasped as it rolled over her like a malignant fog.

  Bingo! Success! Great. Typical. She’d pissed him off by casting aspersions on his manhood, just like any other male. That was easy, now where the hell was he? Trying to home in on where the malice was originating from, teeth chattering, legs shaking, she kept moving, keeping up her tirade of the most vulgar, filthy, foul and downright nasty dialogue she could loudly produce, watching the Inn but knowing he wasn’t in it. That was what he wanted her to think. Soon she was moving deeper into the town.

  The heavy, stifling feeling of evil was getting worse. She was going in the right direction. Good. She knew his trigger and had an idea of his location. Now to turn it up a notch.

  “Come on, Jack, did I rattle your cage a little back in England? Did I upset you by escaping you in France? Or did I do it just now, when I mentioned your inability to fuck any woman due to your unfortunate erectile-dysfunction problem? You’re nothing but a run-of-the-mill rapist with a knife, Jack, not a genius serial killer. You’re ridiculously common and you know it.”

  Yeah, like I know this is the stupidest, most suicidal thing I’ve ever done in my life, she thought as the oppressive, evil presence in the air grew more intense, but she continued her verbal harassment. She wanted him so blind with rage that he would reveal himself, giving her time to call for help before he attacked her. She prayed that Trocar, Tanis or Pavel was somewhere near. Maybe then she’d live through this.

  Gill also had her mind consciously and completely closed off to Aleksei. First off, he’d be way pissed off with what she was doing at the moment, probably fly to her side to yell at her, which would abandon Perrin, who was with him, and blow their rescue by tipping off Jack to a Vampire Lor
d’s presence.

  Second, if things went badly, she didn’t want him to feel her die. Shit, if it came to that, she’d send him a last thought and let him know it wasn’t his fault if she bought it out here tonight.

  “Feeling your love there, Jack! Trying to scare me off after you went through all the trouble to get my attention? Well, fuck you! Oh wait, you can’t! That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you killed all those women in Whitechapel and those transvestite hookers in Soho!

  “You couldn’t deliver to a woman, so you killed them. Then, when you finally understood that you’re a raving homosexual, you tried the boys but you couldn’t get it up for them either, could you, Jacky? They had to die so they wouldn’t spread it around that Jack the Ripper, Master Vampire, legendary serial killer, has got a broken dick!”

  Lucky for her, with her senses on autopilot, she felt the strong disturbance that came with a new wave of his rage, pin-pointed it and looked up. The Vampire in question was poised on the sill of an upstairs window several buildings down.

  Gillian skittered out into the street, away from the building, to give herself room, then leveled her gun at him.

  “Jack, how good it is to see you again,” she said in her sultriest voice. “Now get the fuck down from there, you sick son of a bitch.” Into the night itself she yelled for Tanis and Trocar.

  CHAPTER 15

  “D R. Key,” Jack said pleasantly when the reverberations from her shout had faded, “how good it is of you to come. I look forward to teaching you better manners and vocabulary before you die.”

  He floated effortlessly down and stood several yards in front of her, dressed completely in stylish black clothing, hands behind his back, apparently completely calm. Gillian knew better. His rage flooded over her, and the essence of absolute, chilling evil continued to beat at her through the night air.

  Seeing him face to face, it all came back to her and she remembered him. Dark curling hair, cut fashionably short, rust-colored eyes, an ordinarily handsome man about five feet nine inches tall. One thing was for sure: Either one of the others had to show up, or she needed to figure out how to kill him now with just a gun.

  There was no way in the nine rings of Hades that she was going to let him get close enough to engage in a fight, though she would dearly love to rip his balls off and shove them down his throat. She had to keep him talking, try to get Jenna located. Then someone with more hit points than she had would arrive. Hopefully he wouldn’t kill her in the meantime.

  “Jenna had better still be alive, Jack.”

  “Your friend? I believe so. She was just now when I left her.” He half turned and flicked his eyes upward toward the window that he had just vacated.

  “Jenna!” Gillian yelled, not taking her eyes off the Vampire in front of her. Not hearing a response, she narrowed her eyes. “She’s not answering me, Jack. Why is that?”

  “I truly cannot tell you, Dr. Key.” Jack smiled at her, the otherworldly beauty of the Vampire immediately suffusing his ordinarily handsome face. “Perhaps she is unwilling to attract my attention.”

  This was getting her nowhere. She needed to get Jenna and get the hell out of there. And where were Trocar, Tanis and Pavel? If Jack had injured her and she even now lay bleeding to death upstairs, Gillian would never forgive herself.

  “I want my friend released, right now.” To anyone listening she yelled, “I have him! Come down the street from the Inn!”

  “I want you, Dr. Key.” His voice hit a previously unknown sensual register, sending shivers down her spine. Vampire voice foo from a sexual sadist. Oh yay.

  Ew! Ew! Ew! Touché, Mr. Ripper. Terrific. Now she was seriously creeped out.

  “Fine, you can have me, but let her go first.” To herself, she was praying silently, Please, everybody, get the hell here, now!

  Stylish eyebrows arched. “Just like that, you would surrender yourself into my tender keeping?”

  “Just like that,” she agreed. “Jenna would do the same for me.”

  He looked at her askance, turning up the volume on his hatred, rage and evil, smiling that eerily lovely smile, and tuttutted at her. “Dr. Key, you know better than that. I am a Master Vampire and that is very close to a bald-faced lie. I am quite sure you would come along, but you would be fighting and screaming. So no, not just like that.”

  Hera’s hells. When did he ever shut up long enough to kill anybody? Gillian speculated, then had another thought on how to extend her lifetime a few more minutes.

  “Look, Jack, you know I said those things just to get you out here but I think I might be able to help you if you let me.” Where in the name of all that was holy was the rest of her party?

  “Really?” One eyebrow arched. “Help me in what way?”

  “Well, how about if we start by figuring out why you’re so pissed off at everything sex related.”

  Gillian tried putting on her understanding therapist face while stalling for time. “I mean, you’re not that bad looking; you’re handsome even. It’s not like you couldn’t get a date. So I’m wondering, what happened to you to make you like this? If someone molested or abused you when you were a child, that’s not your fault. You don’t have to take out your anger on others. You don’t have to be like this. We can work through your anger together if you are interested in getting better.”

  He laughed then. It was an unnerving sound and felt like broken glass slicing across her aura. “Oh, Dr. Key, I am not a stupid man, I assure you. The only interest you have in me at the moment is to delay me long enough for your friends to arrive so you all might kill me. You think to coax me into your clutches with promises of redemption and salvation. To lure me in like a fish? A baited animal?”

  The laughter cut off like a switch, which was even more unsettling. “And you are very wrong about one thing in your assumption of my proclivities.”

  “Really? How am I wrong about you?”

  “I do not wish to be cured. I like what I am.” Something in his eyes changed to a look that was so dark, so terrifying, so absolutely-without-hope-for-redemption evil, that Gillian knew she was about to die.

  “Then you’d better ask yourself one last thing.” The expression in her own eyes grew so cold and so completely without emotion that his face registered surprise as he looked at her. Women . . . Humans never looked like that, they feared him.

  “And what, pray tell, is that, Dr. Key?” Gods above, his voice never changed timbre even though his rage was pounding at her.

  “Is this the hill you want to die on?” She quoted a regular Marine saying, cocking her head to look at him, a very chilly smile creeping over her lips.

  “We are not on a hill, Dr. Key.” The Ripper was taking in the picture of her. Dressed like a wanton slut, but her eyes and smile were as cold as his own. Her hands were absolutely steady on her gun. They each meant to kill the other. This night one of them would die.

  “You are. You just don’t realize it yet.”

  His eyes dilated as his gaze raked over her from head to foot, taking in the short skirt, her nipples visible under the white linen, the boots which made her legs look muscular and firm. The way she stood with her legs apart was tantalizing. He could detect her scent from where he was; smell the sex all over her.

  She’d been with someone earlier when he’d come for her. He hadn’t been able to enter the castle compound, something had kept him out, but he could hear the cries. Yes, she and the dark-haired whore he held prisoner had been fucking tonight. Too bad he’d had to settle for the other one when he could finally enter the yard. Just seeing the foul-mouthed bitch standing with her legs apart, open to the night under that flimsy garment, knowing that someone had already put a cock up inside her tonight, excited him beyond what he thought possible.

  “Do you remember the Mary Kelly kill, Dr. Key?”

  “Sure do.”

  “My masterpiece. You remind me of her.”

  Involuntarily licking his lips, he fixed his eyes on where her legs met
under her shirt, imagining what he was going to do to this little tart’s body, much as he had done to Mary Kelly over a century before. His hand trembled as he reached down to fondle his groin through his pants.

  “Are you really without undergarments under that man’s shirt?” he rasped at her, clearly excited as he grasped his concealed organ, moving his hand up and down its length rapidly.

  Ye gods. That was so gross. Gillian immediately wanted to take a shower to wash off that look he was smearing all over her. Completely disgusted, she managed to keep her face absolutely neutral except for the chilly smile.

  Jack the Ripper hell, more like Jack the Wanker. At least he wasn’t taking it out to beat off. She definitely couldn’t have handled that.

  “You bet, wanna peek?” Practically gagging but wanting to keep him doing anything except killing her or Jenna, she kept the gun trained on him with one hand, while she slid her hand suggestively down her breast, stomach and to the hem of the shirt, his widened eyes following her all the while he continued stimulating himself.

  Gillian wasn’t about to flash him so she only lifted the hem farther up the side of her thigh, just high enough, then let it fall. To her horror and disgust, his eyes glazed momentarily as the hand moved faster, hips thrusting forward. The Ripper’s face flooded with relief as he groaned heavily in release, breath hissing through his teeth, emptying his seminal vesicles inside the sober black cloth. His eyes never left her, still stroking himself as the aftershocks made him jerk and gasp.

  “Oh yeah, that was real attractive,” she said mostly to herself. Unfortunately he heard her.

  “You loathsome whore.” The word was hissed as his face became suffused with the rage that she’d known was there all along. He brought his other hand around to the front. There was the scalpel—his substitute penis. She stared. The blade and his hand were stained dark with blood. Jenna’s blood. Shit. Shit. Shit.