the street. “Knew what our strengths are. ‘Ow we work. Fuck.”
“What you want us to do?” Will asked. “Rouse the streets? See if anyone saw something?”
“That’ll take ‘ours,” Rip snapped. And Esme didn’t have that long.
How long had it taken Higgins to get her back to his hidden lair? How long to strap her to his table, to insert the needles in her veins that would slowly steal her life away? How long until she was nothing more than a dry husk of the woman she’d once been?
Rip spun and kicked at a pile of crates against the corner, sending scraps and rubbish flying. The streets became black and white; the colour of a graveyard.
Someone caught his mech wrist and he spun, prepared to lash out. Will caught his fist before it could land, yanking his arm up behind him and Rip glared into the face of his master.
“She needs you,” Blade said, letting his mech hand go. “Rein yourself in. Now.”
Rip shut his eyes and sucked in a sharp breath. Wanted to kill. Wanted to tear something apart, anything to stop this helpless, goddamned terror. His shoulders slumped as the anger and fury washed out of him. Blade was right. He was no help to Esme in this condition.
Blinking, the colour of the world snapping back in on him again, he turned to glare up into Will’s burning gaze. “Lemme go.”
Will let him go and stepped back out of reach. “Someone’s got to know where Higgin’s hides. If he’s a Slasher, he’ll be sellin’ the blood down at them drainin’ factories. Someone there buys it on the sly; they’ll know how to contact him.”
“Go,” Blade snapped. “And be quick about it. I’ll ‘unt down below again, see if I can make out any scent trail. Maybe that chemical’s wearin’ off.” He nodded at Rip. “You joinin’ me?”
Chemical.
Rip stared at him. “Where’s he getting’ the chemical from?” He took a step back, his mind suddenly reeling. Getting hard to find bodies, Rip. The sudden memory of Dr. Creavey’s examination room sprang to mind. And the breath-stealing scent of whatever he’d used to preserve those specimens in all of the jars.
The woman on the examination table, her wrists slit and her body eerily pale. Like she’d been drained of life. Rip swore under his breath. Under his nose all along and he’d not realised until now.
What better way to hide the drained bodies than to give them to someone who’d make sure they were never seen again? And would probably pay for them in the process.
“Got an idea,” he snarled. “I’m goin’ to visit an old friend.”
Blade nodded. “Move quick and watch your back. I’ll be in Undertown.”
“Aye.” They all nodded at each other.
“You see somethin’ and you whistle,” Blade said, referring to the whistle’s that would pierce through each of their hearing from miles away. Nothing human would hear them, but the sound would set dogs barking and went through Rip like an ice-pick to the brain.
“If you find nothin’, then we’ll meet back ‘ere in an ‘our,” Rip said, praying under his breath that he wouldn’t see them again until Esme was found.
***
Rip stepped back and placed a solid kick to the middle of the door. The wood splintered with a satisfying bang and he shoved his way through. “Creavey?” he bellowed. “You in ‘ere?”
A light flickered to life as someone hurriedly lit a lantern. Rip’s predator gaze focused on it with deathly intensity. He was moving before he thought, shoving through the door into Creavey’s personal chambers.
Photographs littered the walls. Grainy pictures of bodies on examination tables and the jars in Creavey’s lab. Rip looked away in disgust and found his prey cowering by a stuffed armchair in his stained nightgown. The lantern burned on a small table, next to a book on dissection and a pot of tea.
“Christ,” Creavey snapped. “You scared me half to death, Rip. What are you doing here at this hour?”
Rip strode forward and grabbed the doctor by the throat. He slammed him up against the wall, photographs fluttering like dying moths to the floor as he snarled.
“Where you been gettin’ your bodies from?” he snapped. “You been givin’ someone vials o’ that formalde’yde?”
The colour drained out of Creavey’s face. “Don’t know what you’re… talking about…” he choked out.
Rip leaned forward, his mech fingers closing tighter as Creavey made a strangled sound. “Gettin’ ‘ard to find bodies,” he snapped. “That’s what you said and I saw that girl what I thought done ‘erself