in. Drained o’ blood. You still got ‘er? I’d be curious to know if there’s any needle marks in her elbows, or more slashes across her throat and thighs. That’s ow they do it.” He slammed Creavey back against the wall. “That’s what the Slashers do when they tie someone down.”
Suddenly he pictured Esme lying there on Creavey’s examination table, her body pale and faint bloody marks across her wrist. No. He wouldn’t be too late. He wouldn’t. The thought tore through him like a knife and as he blinked he realized Creavey was turning purple.
Rip let him go and stepped back as the man slumped to the floor, sucking in breath through his badly bruised throat. He knelt down, staring into the man’s terrified eyes. “Now, I don’t got a lot o’ time. Nor patience.” Blackness flickered behind his vision but he reined it in. Later. “You know Blade’s ‘ousekeeper?”
Creavey nodded sharply.
“The Slashers got ‘er,” Rip said in a quiet, deadly-soft voice. “And I want ‘er back. A man by the name o’ ‘iggins. You ‘eard of ‘im? You know where ‘e dwells?”
The stink of urine flooded through the room. “Can’t,” Creavey gasped. “Said he’d kill me if I said anything.”
The blackness obliterated everything. The next thing Rip knew, Creavey was screaming as Rip shoved him down onto one of the frigid steel examination tables in the laboratory. Pinning him by the throat, he yanked a small rolling table closer, with its tray of evil-looking instruments.
“e’s got my woman,” he heard himself say. “And you think ‘e’s the greater danger at the moment?” His hand closed over something sharp. He held it up. “’e might kill you. Some’d say that’d be a mercy to what I intend.”
As Creavey screamed, Rip held the gadget up. A small, razor-sharp wheel of some description. He wound the crank attached to the shaft of it and the razor suddenly started spinning, light glinting off its edges with a buzzing sound.
“Now me,” he whispered. “I don’t plan on killin’ you at all.”
Creavey’s fingers wrapped around the cold steel of his mech hand. “I’ll… tell…” Froth bubbled on his lips as his gaze locked on the gadget Rip held.
Rip stepped back.
The doctor scrambled off the table, into the corner of the room where he cowered. “I couldn’t get the bodies.” He started crying. “The Echelon’s metaljackets started patrolling the cemeteries at nights. What was I to do?”
Rip stared at him. How any man could do such a vile thing was beyond him. He flung the circular saw aside. “So you started buyin’ ‘em from the cursed Slashers?” He kicked the rolling table aside and metal implements scattered everywhere. “Knowin’ what they do to people?”
“It’s easier to examine the tissues,” Creavey whispered. “Without all the blood in the body.”
A vein in Rip’s temple throbbed. “Where is ‘e?”
“I don’t know,” Creavey sobbed. “I don’t. I swear I don’t! I just deliver the formaldehyde to the back of an apothecary in Bethnal Green. They’ve got the bodies there, hidden in a shed out the back. I think… I think there’s a tunnel down into Undertown in the shed.”
Thoughts raced through his brain; a map of the streets thereabouts. “By apothecary, do you mean opium den? Madame Liu’s?”
Creavey nodded.
Heavily defended by one of the gangs as run that part of town. Rip’s fist clenched. “Don’t you go leavin’ the area,” he snapped. “I still got words to ‘ave with you.”
Then he turned and left the doctor quivering behind him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“No!” Esme kicked as the man shoved her back against the gurney. “No!” She screamed as he wrenched her arm back and tightened a leather strap around it.
The room was dank and cold, hidden deep in Undertown. They’d passed dozens of Slashers on the way, splashing colourless liquid all through the tunnels from enormous glass jars. The stench of it took her breath and she knew what its purpose was.
No one would be able to track her by scent. Not Blade. Not Will. Not even Rip.
She’d picked at the cotton on her sleeves to try and leave threads behind, but the sewers were dark and the water washed away the cotton. As Higgins wrenched her through a tunnel, Esme had ripped the black satin from her throat and curled her hand around the small silver ‘E’ until she found a suitable spot. Then she’d deliberately tripped and dropped the necklace just before Higgins shoved her deep into the tunnel system that spawned his home.
“Stay still,” Higgins snarled, waving the hook