Tarnished Knight - By Bec McMaster Page 0,9
through there… But it also came out here. Like the blade was curved…”
Rip frowned. “A hook?”
“A razor-sharp hook,” Creavey said, stepping back and wiping the gore from his fingers. Some of the colour had drained from his florid face. “The type commonly used by fisherman, and also--”
“Slashers,” Rip finished, staring at Flash Jacky’s grisly remains. “The bleedin’ Slashers.”
“I would have to complete my findings but I believe this is the cause of death.” Creavey tugged at his apron strings. “I thought Blade done for the Slasher gangs six months back?”
“’e did,” Rip replied, though a vampire had actually taken care of that. Its haunt had been in Undertown, the dark world that had once been the ELU underground line before half the tunnels collapsed. Only the poor or the very desperate lived there – or the Slasher gangs that had once run rampant through this part of the East End. Initiation into one of the gangs required the sacrifice of a limb, preferably by a man’s own hand. Every single one of them had been enhanced with a metal hook or knife, the blade grafted into the forearm in rudimentary rookery style. Some even had wheels for feet or beady glass eyes that didn’t quite focus on the world properly.
Slashers stole people from their beds and dragged them down below, where they drained a body of its blood to sell to the Echelon’s draining factories. The type of scum Rip didn’t mind running afoul of – preferably with his own knife.
“It’s the way of the East End,” Rip explained gruffly. “Take out one of the groups in power and others spring up like mushrooms.” He thought of Liza Kent’s flat, with its very obvious symbol carved into the door. No Slasher could have missed it and being on the edges of Blade’s turf it was clear what this was. “Whoever they are, they’re challengin’ Blade. Takin’ one o’ ‘is.”
“Someone with no interest in continued existence,” Creavey muttered. “Aye.” Rip stepped back. This explained the disappearance of Liza Kent. Poor girl. No doubt her withered carcass would surface in the streets, drained of all its blood. “You ain’t seen a thing o’ this, you understand?”
Creavey wasn’t a foolish man. “I’ll bury the body myself. Make sure nobody but me sees it.
Rip glared at him. “Just you make sure you bury it. I don’t ‘old with none of this cuttin’ dead bodies up, you ‘ear me?”
“Getting hard to find bodies, Rip.”
Rip stared at him.
“How else is a man to know the secrets of death?” Creavey protested. “You don’t know how much good this could do.”
Rip took a step back, ready to leave the stench of death behind him. “One day someone’s goin’ to show you a first’and look at it, if you keep this up. Just you think on that.”
CHAPTER THREE
Esme tossed in her narrow bed as dawn silvered the sky, then finally gave a sigh and threw the covers back. No point lying here. All she’d do was start thinking about Rip and those sort of thoughts had kept her up half the night.
No sense crying over spilt milk, her mama’s voice whispered in her ear.
Easy to say. Not so easy to do.
Dragging on her heavy wool robe, Esme hopped across the chilly floors and sank her feet into her luxurious slippers. Her breath misting in the air, Esme hurried out into the hallway and down toward the kitchens. She needed to stoke the coals in the enormous hearth so there would be hot water to wash with and set the boilers to burning. They pumped hot water through the walls and floors to warm the Warren in these coldest months.
The routine was soothing. This was the time of day she liked best, when the world was hushed and quiet and she was completely alone. She didn’t have to think then. Eight years ago when her husband Tom had died, she’d thrown herself into work like this too, trying to avoid her own sense of grief. It worked. For a little while. And though this situation was entirely different, it didn’t make it hurt any less.
Face it Esme, you were a fool, she told herself as she hurried upstairs to the washroom and swiftly performed her morning ablutions. Thinking that something existed between her and Rip when it didn’t. Or hoping perhaps. He’d been so distant in the last six months, but before that… Things had changed in their friendship. She wouldn’t have said he was courting her precisely, but they’d