4
The Ripper!” boomed one officer as he rushed by in panic.
“The Ripper?” A crowd had gathered and I heard someone take up the officer’s cry. Another followed suit, and soon the park was full of voices raised in a cacophony of fear. People were running this way and that, as though they were a flock of sheep who’d discovered a wolf in their midst.
“I see him!” another officer yelled, swinging a club in the air and taking off toward a grove of trees. I watched in horror. Damon was fast, but this was broad daylight. It would only take one person in his path to slow him down long enough to be caught.
To ensure Damon had enough time to escape, I knew I needed to create a distraction. “Help! Police! Help!” I shouted, an idea forming in my mind. I grabbed Cora’s waist and pulled her close to me.
“Pretend you’ve fainted,” I whispered under my breath. “Help!” I called louder.
An officer running by slowed and turned toward us, his eyes flickering with suspicion.
“My sister fainted!” I called, allowing my voice to break a bit for dramatic effect. Playing along, Cora had gone heavy and limp in my arms.
Two more officers halted, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Seconds were paramount, and I was hoping this pause would give Damon time enough to escape. Why had he left the tunnel? He knew he was on the front page of the paper. He knew Jack the Ripper was the name on everyone’s lips. Why was he always tempting fate?
“Boys, keep going. I’ll tend to this,” the first officer ordered, charging at me. The other policemen took off in Damon’s direction, but the ruse should have gained him thirty seconds on them. Time enough to put significant distance between himself and his pursuers.
“Please, come quickly!” I continued, my voice ragged as the officer puffed up the hill toward us. I felt Cora’s sides involuntarily contract and knew she was laughing at my admittedly terribly overacted performance. “Please help!”
The officer leaned over to inspect Cora, and she stilled. “Probably just fright,” he said, prying her eyelids apart with his pudgy fingers. At that moment, Cora righted herself unsteadily.
“What’s happening?” Cora asked, fanning her face with her hand. “I heard the Ripper was here, and I just … why, fear must have overtaken me.” Cora blinked her large eyes up at the officer.
“Yes, ma’am, you fainted,” the officer said sternly as he fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and rubbed it over his sweaty, moon-shaped face. He was in his late forties and looked like he’d rather be chasing the Ripper than dealing with a hysterical young woman. “You shouldn’t be out here, even with your brother. A murderer is on the loose!”
“Oh, thank you for protecting us,” Cora said. “I don’t know how to repay you, except to pray that you catch the Ripper soon, Officer…”
“Officer Evans,” he said gruffly, tipping his black hat at her. “And I don’t want to be rescuing you again!” he called over his shoulder as he jogged down the hill. The rest of the police had disappeared into a patch of trees, and I only hoped Damon had outrun them all.
Cora turned toward me, her blue eyes wide, the flirtatious expression she’d given the officer wiped from her face. She looked deadly serious. “We need to go back to the tunnel and find that idiot brother of yours.”
I nodded, pressing my lips together. If Damon knew what was good for him, that’s where he would hide out until this all blew over.
I grabbed Cora’s hand, acting as if we were just out for a stroll. Cora squeezed it, and together, we made our agonizingly slow way through London’s winding alleys. The streets smelled like sewage and rotting vegetables, and the cobblestones were covered in a thin layer of water. I tuned into my vampire senses, picking up the whoosh of blood coursing through millions of bodies. But nowhere did I hear Damon.
Instead, what I heard was fear. I couldn’t help catching strains of conversations between passersby.
“Said he fled London, but what good does that do? Still means the Ripper’s terrorizing our country.”
“And for the killer to be that well-off? Shows money doesn’t buy common moral decency.”
“My bet is he’s back on the town and will be terrorizing again tonight.”
“I’m telling you, any man who allows his wife out of his house after dark is asking for trouble.”
“What are you doing?” Cora asked curiously.
“Sorry.” I straightened up and shook my head abashedly. Concentrating on the conversations wafting past us had pushed me into full-on hunt mode. My head was cocked, my jaw set, and my eyes were flicking back and forth across the crowd. “People are talking about the Ripper.”
“Of course they are.” Cora set her mouth in a firm line. “All of London wants him dead. I know Damon thinks he can outwit everyone, but he cut it really close. Let’s just hope he learned his lesson today.”
“He hasn’t learned it in twenty years,” I mumbled under my breath.
Cora whirled around sharply, and I knew she’d heard me. “Stefan Salvatore, I bet there’re some lessons you still need to learn, too.”
I nodded. “That’s true,” I said quietly. I liked Cora’s spirit.
When we got to the tunnel, I took the lead in climbing down. Even from the fifth rung, I could hear the scurrying of the rats, as familiar a background noise to the tunnel as cicadas had been on June days back in Virginia. But underneath that I heard an angry sigh that I’d recognize anywhere.
“He’s here,” I said in relief, taking off into the dank tunnel.
Finally, after a few twists and turns, I found Damon, sitting in a dark corner, illuminated by the glow of a makeshift fire. His hair flopped over his forehead, his dark eyes were bloodshot, and he was reading a well-worn paper. Stubble covered his face, and he looked every inch the outlaw he now was.
“Samuel’s killing me,” Damon said, looking up from the fire. “He has single-handedly made sure that I cannot go anywhere in London. I even wore the disguise. That worked well,” Damon said in disgust, throwing the gray conductor’s hat on the fire. A plume of smoke rose up.
“Why did you go out at all?” I exploded. “You know you’re being watched. You’re the biggest news story in the country!”
Damon shrugged. “You don’t get anywhere without a little risk. People barely looked at me when I was wearing the conductor uniform. And it wasn’t as if I was sightseeing. I was trying to find Samuel, do the dirty work so you wouldn’t have to. Instead, I got chased down like a common criminal.” Damon shook his head in disbelief. “Of course, those police officers had nothing on me. I felt sorry for them, huffing and puffing like that.”
“They almost caught you. You’re welcome, by the way,” I said angrily. If we hadn’t distracted the officers and given Damon the space he needed to dash into the woods, who knew where he’d be by now?
“That was you? ‘My sister fainted!’” he lisped, mocking me. “Well, that was highly unnecessary. I was fine.”
“You could have gotten yourself killed,” Cora said sternly.
“It’s either kill or be killed in my world,” Damon replied tersely. “And I intend to kill Samuel for this. After all, he’s the one who concocted this Jack the Ripper nonsense. And then to attach my name to it! As if I’d ever be so sloppy.” Damon fumed. “He can’t face me himself, so he sends humans to do his bidding. And if that isn’t enough, I read this little item in the paper. The fool’s having a party tomorrow night to announce his political aspirations. Let’s consider this our invitation. His party will be his funeral,” Damon said ominously. The hair on the back of my neck bristled. If there was one thing I knew about Damon, it was that he always followed through on his convictions.
“Do you think he’s compelling the police?” I asked. “Or do you think they recognized you from the paper?”
“How would I know?” Damon asked, throwing his hands up in disgust. “It’s not like I’m privy to his master plan. I thought he was just another London aristocrat, someone I could use to introduce me to the right people. I never imagined he was a vampire with rage issues. If anything, he should have been thrilled to have found another one of his kind. But now, he’s running me out of my city, and I won’t have it.”
“What about Henry?” I asked. “What do you think his motive is?”
“Whatever Samuel says,” Damon spat. “Henry’s a useless sap who follows Samuel around like a farm dog. Not unlike another brother I know.”
But before I could come up with an insult of my own, Cora piped in.
“So who is Samuel, really? Is he that important?” she asked.
“Samuel’s running for London councilor. I was helping him plan his campaign,” Damon said, a twisted grin forming on his face.
“Well, then we need to come up with a plan to stop him. We’ve already wasted a day.” The one thing I’d learned in my two decades as a vampire was that inaction always seemed to backfire. Biding my time and waiting for the perfect moment to strike had never worked. I’d always been late by a minute, an hour, a lifetime. But no more.
Damon smirked. “Stefan saves the day. What a brilliant idea. ‘We need to find him.’ Well, that’s what I was trying to do.”
“You can’t just run around London hoping you’ll run into him!” I fumed. That was Damon’s problem: He acted on impulse, rarely considering consequences. It was a trait that worked when besting humans. But Samuel was a vampire and stronger than both of us combined. Our only hope was to outwit him. “We have to be strategic. Maybe it’s good he’s in the spotlight,” I said, thinking out loud. “It means he has to work that much harder to hide certain things.”
“He’s good at hiding things,” Cora said softly, fingering the vervain charm around her neck.
“Do you remember anything else about Samuel?” I asked urgently.
“Think I didn’t already ask her that, brother?” Damon interjected. “She doesn’t remember anything. She only recalls the warehouse parties. I was the one in his inner circle.”
“I can speak for myself, thank you!” Cora interjected. But when she didn’t continue, it was clear she didn’t have any further information on our enemy.
Damon’s lip curled as he pivoted toward me. I could see sparks from the fire reflected in his pupils. “Let’s pay him a visit,” Damon said.
“Pay him a visit,” I repeated flatly. “Just show up on his front steps? When you’re a wanted criminal? Have you forgotten that we have to be invited into a home by its owner? I doubt Samuel will extend the courtesy.” It was one of the many things that differentiated us from mortals: In order to enter a residence, a vampire had to be asked to cross the threshold. It was a small restriction, but one that meant some places were still safe from monsters like us.
“Thank you for the etiquette lesson, brother. But I don’t need to go inside. All I need is to speak with Samuel, man to man. Or, should I say, vampire to vampire,” Damon explained. “I’m done playing cat and mouse. And I’m not going to leave London without a fight,” Damon said, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“A fight to the death?” I asked pointedly. In New Orleans, when Damon and I had been forced to battle each other underneath a circus tent, our fight had been billed as such. We’d only been saved when Callie started a fire that brought the tent down. Did Damon truly have such a short memory?
“Yes, a fight to the death,” Damon repeated, seemingly oblivious to my allusion. “But a proper one. No surprises, no using humans, no games. Just the two of us against each other. I’m going to go to his door and get the answers. And then, I’m going to destroy him.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re going to head to his house and invite him to fight? He didn’t exactly offer the same courtesy when he tried to kill me,” I said incredulously. It was dramatic and over the top and so Damon. But while a duel was romantic, he didn’t have a chance of winning. Not in his state. I tried to imagine the way Damon’s plan would play out. Samuel may not anticipate us ringing his doorbell as though we were guests. He could be caught unawares, in front of people who didn’t know his secret, and he’d be forced to keep his cover. After all, I doubted he’d stake us in a roomful of London’s political elite, nor could he compel them all simultaneously. Still, the plan was rife with problems. I knew I couldn’t talk Damon out of it, so the best I could do was be there when it fell apart.
“Yes, let’s go. But answers first, duel later,” I said wryly. I wasn’t surprised he’d gotten on Samuel’s bad side. The question wasn’t what he had done, it was what he’d done this time.
“You gentlemen have fun on your fact-finding mission,” Cora said. “I’ll head to the Ten Bells. With Samuel occupied, it’ll be the safest time to ask if any of the girls have seen Violet.”
I didn’t like the idea of Cora going off on her own, unprotected. But she was right; it was safer for her to be in Whitechapel than to come with us to confront Samuel. The look of determination on her face warned me not to argue.
“Fine,” I said after a moment. “I’ll go out for supplies. I’ll be back soon.” I walked down the tunnel without a backward glance, my footsteps echoing against the packed dirt. Every move I made caused a wave of scurrying rats, and I wondered if they knew how futile their frantic search for safety was. Were they oblivious to the fact that if someone really wanted to, they could be killed in an instant? Or, in their tiny minds, did they think of themselves the way I was beginning to think of myself—as a walking target, simply awaiting the moment of my doom?
A few hours later, I arrived back at the tunnel, my arms laden down with two suits, several shirts, a pink silk dress, and a lavish petticoat. I’d returned to Harrods, where Violet and I had shopped to replace our torn and dirty clothes so we could blend in as best as we could. As soon as I’d entered the store, several salesmen had gathered around me eagerly, like vultures feeding on a carcass. By the time I had finished shopping, I was so drained from compelling the crowd of salespeople that I hardly even knew what I was carrying.
As soon as I had my goods, I’d made a hasty exit, intent on feeding. Eventually I’d found a malnourished pigeon on a deserted street, but was still famished after draining its blood.
The sound of laughter echoed in the tunnel.
“Hello?” I called curiously.
A response ricocheted back to me. “Back so soon, brother?”
I turned the corner and saw Damon and Cora, sitting opposite the fire from each other. Cora had an animated expression on her face, and her eyes were gleaming.
“I brought clothes for you,” I said, placing the clothing— hundreds of pounds’ worth of finery, which I’d gotten for free—in piles on the dusty ground.
“Thanks,” Damon said. He leaned over and began picking through the piles, finally pulling out a black wool cloak. I’d thought it might help him to blend into the night. He straightened up and tossed the rich fabric around his shoulders. “You outdid yourself. This cloak makes me look like one of Gallagher’s finest magicians. Don’t you agree?”
I smiled tightly. It was an apt description of the outfit. Gallagher’s was the terrible circus where, as vampires, Damon and I had been held captive and forced to fight each other. We were the only authentic acts. Everything else, from the tattooed woman to the conjoined twins, had been the result of two-bit trickery.
“You don’t look bad, brother,” I said.
“No, he doesn’t.” Cora smiled appreciatively. “Well, I’m off to the Ten Bells, before either of you can stop me. I’ll have you know that I don’t need a man or a vampire to protect me,” Cora said, standing up and flouncing down the tunnel into the darkness.
“Now, there’s a girl you wouldn’t have met in Mystic Falls,” Damon murmured, clearly impressed by her independence.
“Probably because no girls like that would have wanted to meet you. They’d have had the good sense to stay away,” I shot back, even as I wondered what Damon meant. Was Cora becoming a romantic interest for Damon? There was no way that could end well.
“Their loss,” Damon said easily. He threw the hood of the cloak over his head, concealing his face. “Anyway, brother, let’s focus on the task at hand. It’s a lovely day for a family hunt, wouldn’t you say?”