The Ripper Affair

“Le’s ha’at thee, then,” she slurred, and that was when a jet of light cleaved the gloom.

She did not feel the first blow. It was the warm gush down her front that warned her, but her throat was full of that darkness, the same covering his face. It crawled down as if it wished to inhabit her stomach, and the knife came up again.

He fell upon her, and her fist clenched, but only because she thought, “Not m’pence, needs it for a doss I do”, before the void swelled obscenely past her stomach, clawing at her vitals, and she knew no more.

Emma staggered, the shock of her knees hitting the filthy floor only slightly cushioned by her skirts. Her spine stiffened, bending backward as if on a medieval spikehoop, and she was not conscious of her own voice: a high curlew cry that punched a perfect, circular hole in the bleached, sagging wall. Her jewellery blazed, diamonds at her throat emitting shrieking stress-screams, and the jet earrings shattered, their shards driven outwards as if propelled by burning gunpowder. Later, she would find the silver cuffs heat-rippled and all but useless for carrying ætheric force.

Still, they had performed another service: keeping her from being overwhelmed.

Tension snapped and she was thrown back, hitting something almost-soft and tumbling, a brief moment of merciful unconsciousness before the pain swallowed her whole. Even then training did not fail her, but behaved even more mercilessly, shunting the force of the blow aside as the entire building–and the street outside–shivered like a whipped cur. Her own shrieks rattled the walls, plaster dust falling fine and thin, Mikal’s answering curse lost under a wall of rushing noise as he lowered her, his fingers biting cruelly as he sought to stop the wild thrashing.

He had left Clare to see to her, and she did not even recognise the fact.

One of a Shield’s functions was to conduct such an overflow away from her, but this was too immense. A high ringing noise, a wet snapping, peeling sound, and the world settled into its accustomed dimensions again with a thump. Emma sagged, vicious-toothed trembling all through her as hot pain pounded between her temples.

Silence filled the dark stairwell. Soon there would be shouts, and running feet. Even in Whitchapel, such an event as this would not go unremarked.

“Prima?” Mikal, raggedly. “Emma?”

One last pang, ripping through her, phantom blade cleaving flesh and breastbone. She curled around the blow, blind and witless, and Mikal held her down. It passed, and the shuddering, great gripping waves of it, began anew.

“Saw it,” she managed. “I saw it!” Which meant the sorcery performed here, driving itself through the physical and ætheric, had found some resonance within her, and jolted home with explosive force.

The pebble completed its fall, and pinged against the floor. It did not sound right; the entire area bounded by the cold had been changed smoothly and seamlessly to glass. One could peer down into a dim, narrow hallway underneath, and the circular hole punched in the wall had thin, knife-sharp crystalline edges. A nasty smell boiled through, whistling darkness loaded with the breath of the privy-closet that had hidden behind.

At the moment, the crushing ache in her skull and the savage pain all through her body somewhat precluded examining the damage further. Now she was well and truly involved in this affair–all for the want of a pause before leaping in. “I…” She coughed, retching, her stomach threatening to unseat itself. “Hurts.”

“Pax, Prima. I am here.” Was Mikal shaking too, or was it merely her own shivering?

“Dreadful,” she managed, in a colourless little voice. “Home. Shield… home.”

“Yes.”

With that assurance she let go of consciousness again, retreating to the deepest parts of herself as her violated mind sought to compass what had happened.

Two ideas followed her, both equally chilling.

The first was He had no face.

The second? But he had a knife.

Chapter Fifteen Unremembering Such A Thing

The return to Mayefair proved long and tense, the streets clogged with shouting, heaving traffic. It was also cramped, for Mikal cradled the sorceress’s small form and ignored Clare entirely, studying her wan, slack face as if it held a secret and feeling for her throat- or wrist-pulse at intervals.