“And go where? We don’t even know where here is!” Kimber pointed out helpfully.
“That’s not the point. We can’t just sit here and wait for whatever they have in store for us.” Gill scooted and kicked the scalpel to her friend. “Here, cut me loose, then I’ll do you.”
Kimber and her dexterous fingers went to work, scraping the blade off the floor and trying not to slice Gillian’s wrists or amputate a finger accidentally.
“Is that guy really Jack the Ripper?” she asked, still shaky.
“I think so,” Gill answered. “His clothing was not quite period, but close enough to the nineteenth century. Did you notice how unobtrusive he was? Even now I can’t remember what the hell he looked like.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean, he’s like an ‘anybody.’ No wonder he was never identified. No one would remember what he looked like,” Kimber agreed.
“No one except his victims. He’s like a chameleon. He blends into his background,” Gillian said as Kimber successfully cut through the right strand and the bindings started to loosen.
That mitigated silence while Kimber fussed with Gillian’s remaining bonds. It took awhile, but she got one of her former captain’s wrists free.
“There!” Gill declared as she slid her hand free and took the scalpel from her friend. After that, it was only moments before she finished freeing herself and then Kimber.
Free but still trapped. Going up the stairs after Jack was completely out of the question. Who knew what was outside the upper door? They didn’t even know what time it was. Damn. What to do, what to do? Gillian remembered her guns; one was still in her pocket, the other still at her back. The Pixies were stupid; they’d missed the weapons. A brief check and Kimber confirmed that she also had her gun. Both drew them out, Gillian deciding to keep the Glock and reholster the Walther.
Kimber whistled lightly. “This gonna help us, boss?”
“I don’t know, but maybe we can bluff our way out.”
Eyes searching the room, Gillian paced the perimeter, Kimber going the other way at a different height. Kimber was muttering to herself. Gill had to ask.
“What?”
Kimber turned, anger in her shining green-gold eyes. “Some fucking therapist you are, pissing off a sick bastard like that. As an operative, you know better than that! What the hell is wrong with you?” She was angry and let Gillian see it.
Gill stiffened a minute then slumped a little. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have baited him. But he’s not my patient, Kimber, and he’s Jack the Ripper. They’re going to kill us. When I’m faced with a deal like that, I get snippy. I shouldn’t have done it with you here and at risk too. Maybe the Pixie venom was fueling my fire, but it was stupid. I’m sorry.”
Her own eyes searched her friend’s. “We’ve been in tight spots before, but never like this, Kimmy. I don’t know if I can get us out of this one.”
Gill was the only person in the world who could call Kimber “Kimmy” and not be shot. It got through. Kimber grinned, despite her irritation. “Okay, Kemo Sabe, bad Vampire come back soon. What we do?”
Grinning, Gill said, “Well, Tonto, you go get the horses and I’ll shoot off the lock, leaving a silver condom behind to remind others of truth, justice and the USMC way.”
They laughed briefly, relieving tension. They were still in a world of shit and they knew it. The search of the room continued as they got back to the business of being marines on a rescue mission.
Soon Gillian found a false wall behind the stairs that transected the northeast corner of the room. A little prying and they popped it free. A door lay beneath the drywall. No one squeaked or squealed at their discovery since that might bring more unwanted company. Surprisingly, both of their bags lay in the room with them. Not surprisingly, the weapons they had carried in them were missing.
Kimber pulled a six-inch miniature crossbow out of her cleavage and holstered her gun. It had just one tiny bolt in it. At Gillian’s look, Kimber grinned. “Hey it may not look like much but it’s accurate as hell at close range.”
“Yeah well, newsflash, I don’t want to be at close range to use it. Now help me get this door open.”
Together, sweating, they managed to pry open the door. It gave suddenly, sliding back wide enough to get them and their purses through. What. The. Hell. Was. That. Smell? Both of them blanched and gagged at the uniquely horrid and sweetish odor that wafted out from the door. Gillian shrugged her leather jacket off and pressed it to her nose and mouth. Kimber followed suit with her poofy purse. Cautiously, they peered into the dank foulness.
Bodies were strewn over the floor, heedlessly thrown upon one another, rotting, decaying, smelling. They looked like women, but from the level of decay it was hard to tell. Gingerly picking their way into the room, Gill led the way. Something wasn’t right. Peering closer at a nearby corpse dressed in what used to be a red dress with bleached blonde hair still affixed to its peeling skull, Gillian had a sudden thought and lifted the skirt up with the muzzle of her gun.
“What the hell are you doing?” Kimber squeaked, then wished she hadn’t breathed as the fumes entered her mouth.
“Look!” Gill snapped, gagging as well.
Kimber looked. Under the skirt, instead of panties, was a thong barely containing male genitalia that were swollen and putrid from decay. The body had been eviscerated.
A quick perusal of a few of the others told the same story. Transvestite streetwalkers. Some looked as though they had been very feminine looking in life. There must have been fifty or more slaughtered bodies in that room. There were indeed a number of female bodies as well, but the ones with the most damage to them, however, were the males. Wondering who had a beef with the local tranny hookers, Gill jumped when Kimber poked her and pointed up.
There was a small basement window about ten feet up. Cupping her hands, Gillian waited for Kimber’s foot. She stepped into the proffered hands and Gill tossed her up to grab the small ledge. Kimber didn’t fool around; she smashed the window with her elbow, protected by the poofy purse, and pulled herself up and through. Turning, placing the poofy purse across the sill in case there was residual glass, she lay flat and extended her hand down to pull Gillian up. By some miracle she didn’t scream when powerful hands grabbed her by the waist and yanked her back and away.
Gillian was climbing on top of the corpses, trying not to slip in putrefying bodily fluids when the back of her shirt was grabbed and she was hauled straight up and through the window. She found herself on her feet, facing a familiar concerned pitch-black face.
“Trocar!” Impulsively, she hugged him then was taken aback when he pushed her back, holding her at arms length to give her a once-over with his eyes.
“You are undamaged I see, but there is an unpleasant odor which clings to your hair and skin.” The elegant Elf wrinkled his nose and held her where she was, discouraging any further physical contact.
“How did you find us?” Gillian asked, ignoring his commentary about eau de corpse.
Trocar nodded toward Pavel, who was hugging Kimber and wrinkling his own nose. “Ah, Pavel, the famous search-and-rescue Werewolf.”
Pavel growled at her. “It is not an activity I enjoy, Gillian, particularly now when you both smell like an open graveyard.”
“That’s exactly what’s down there. At least fifty bodies, some of them male transvestites. There are female ones as well, but it’s hard to determine exact numbers, if you know what I mean.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with Jack?” Kimber inquired.
Gillian looked hard at her for a moment. “I think that’s exactly who it concerns. Whether or not those murders are Dracula’s idea or Jack’s I can’t say, but those people are dead and one of them is directly involved. He hasn’t changed. He’s still targeting hookers. Probably pissed him off no end to find some of them were not of the correct gender; that’s why their bodies are so much more badly mutilated than the females.”
She glanc
ed at the horizon, which was beginning to pale. “We’re nearly safe; it’s almost dawn, but I’m betting our resident psychopaths have these grounds protected during the day too.”
On cue, there was a snuffling from the side of the estate and a Revenant came lurching toward them. They were in an open field ringed by trees on three sides, the estate house itself on the other.
“Goddammit!”
Gillian was at the end of her tolerance, so she fired, popping the creature’s head like a melon. The reverberation of the gun was extraordinary in the quiet dawn. Trocar flinched, covering his sensitive ears, and Pavel actually yelped.
“I am so sick of this…”
“Quiet!” Trocar cocked his head, palm held toward Gillian for silence.
She watched him as he turned slowly and moved back toward the basement window. Pavel let go of Kimber and went to the Elf, nostrils flaring.
“There is something alive in there,” Trocar stated, then looked at Gillian. “It is not Human, but it is wounded.” Pavel nodded to her to confirm.
While Gill didn’t relish the thought of going back into that hellhole, she didn’t want to leave anything sentient behind if it too was to be a victim of the Impaler or the Ripper.
“Shit. All right. I’ll go back down. One of you two come with me since I’ll need your ears or nose to track it down.” She put her jacket back on to avoid the rough edges of the broken window.
Trocar braced himself and lowered her back down, then leapt lightly in after her, Pavel right behind him. Kimber was lowered into the morass of ooze by the Werewolf’s strong arms.
Gill looked at them incredulously. “You all don’t have to come.”
“Course we do, Captain; we’re a team.” Kimber’s irrepressible smile was back. Of course she was holding Pavel’s hand, but the bounce was definitely there.
“Fine.” Gillian pushed Trocar. “Go on; you heard it, you find it.”
He moved forward but angled back to the far end of the basement, kicking bodies unemotionally out of his way. Stopping by the wall, he felt for a few moments with slender, nimble fingers. There was a popping creak and part of the wall separated and slid out. Behind it, covered in chains, manacled with wrist and leg irons to the foundation of the house itself, was a tall figure.
Matted, long black hair obscured the face, the clothes were torn, ragged and bore evidence of hundreds of bite marks. Hands that looked as if they were once powerful drooped life-lessly in the shackles, thin and emaciated as was the body. Little more than skin and bones were beneath the ragged clothing. Black boots that had once been shiny were scuffed, stained and…belonged to Tanis.
“Great Goddess!” Gillian stifled a scream. In spite of her years of combat, all the horror she’d ever seen, this truly shook her. Tanis. They’d found Tanis. Or what was left of him. “Get him the hell out of there.”
Trocar and Pavel quickly snapped the chains, lifting the light, nearly bloodless form from the wall. Tanis hung limp in their arms. Gillian blinked away tears as she pushed the thickly matted hair from his face. He didn’t respond.
“He’s nearly drained dry but he seems to still be alive. Just barely.”
“How can you tell?” Kimber asked.
No one had an opportunity to answer her. A horrendous shrieking filled the small space and fear swelled over all of them.
“Get away from him!”
Materializing from out of the ceiling, a Ghost in all her openmouthed, spectral glory flew at them. “Drop him! Drop him!”
She aimed for Trocar, shedding fear and panic with her screeches and flapping in the nonexistent breeze like a runaway handkerchief. “You must not hurt him any more!”
If Gillian had anything to aim at, she would have shot the damn thing. After Dante and the spirits at the Tower, Ghosts weren’t big on her favorite-entities list at the moment. Trocar, however, had it covered. Whispering a few magical words in his language caused the Ghost to flutter to Earth like a Raid-sprayed butterfly. She continued shrieking, however, forcing Gillian to focus her empathy for just a moment before she ordered Trocar to send the damn thing into the Abyss.
“Shhh, it’s all right. We’re his friends. We want to rescue him. Do you understand me? We want to help him. He is dying.”
Gillian’s voice sounded surprisingly soothing, even to her own ears. The others stared at her as she attempted to placate the Ghost. “If you keep screaming, you’ll bring the whole household down on us. Let us get him out of here,” she said, focusing her warmest, fuzziest thoughts on the finally quieting Ghost.
Forming a little more, the Ghost shimmered and faded in her dismay, voice soft and shivery. “You…you won’t hurt him? Truly, miss?”
Oh hell. The accent was pure lower-class English. Not cockney but servant class from about a hundred years ago. Gillian forced a smile and reached out a hand, the one not holding the gun, toward the incorporeal creature.
“No, hurting him is not what we want. Tanis is a dear friend. We only want to take him home. The best you can do is help us to help him. We need a way out other than that window.” Gillian crouched down, closer, hand still out. “Tell me your name.”
Her commanding but gentle attitude had the desired effect, and the Ghost responded. “Grace, miss. My name is Grace, if you please.”
Grace formed a little more fully. She couldn’t move as yet; Trocar’s spell had her anchored where she was.
Looking her over, Gillian saw a plainly pretty girl with huge, haunted eyes, long brown hair that was twisted back in a knot and a rosebud mouth. The clothing was a skirt and bodice that hung simple, brown and modestly on the Ghost’s thin frame.
“Well, Grace? Do you know how we can get him out?”
Grace nodded, paling even more, if that was possible. “Yes miss, I do.” She inclined her head toward the opposite door. “But that one man, he’s a bad one, he is. Don’t let him see you. You might wind up like me.” Her face crumbled and she started to cry, a lonely forlorn sound that Gillian tried frantically to hush.
“Shhh! You have to stop. Get hold of yourself, Grace, or you will get us all killed!”
The Ghost valiantly tried to stop and wound up hiccuping. Gillian dragged her free hand across her face in exasperation, turning back to the others. “Terrific, just terrific.”
No one noticed the faint movement of Tanis’s head at the sound of Grace’s cries. Another voice intruded on their frustration. “I strongly suggest that you stop what you are doing and step away from the Vampire.”
It would have been commanding coming from Gill or a deep male voice. What it sounded like was tiny musical bells. Grace gasped—no easy feat for a Ghost—and shrank back against the sticky floor. What the hell could cause fear in a Ghost? That was the question on everyone’s mind as all eyes but Tanis’s turned to see the source of the sound.
It took a moment, but through the door came a perfect vision of Fey beauty. Golden-brown hair, wide cornflower-blue eyes, perfectly shaped body encased in a tight, black body suit, commanding bearing and no-nonsense attitude. All together, she would have been impressive if she hadn’t been six inches high. The demi-Fey fluttered in on golden wings and hovered in the doorway, taking note of the lack of movement from the group assembled before her.
“Was I not clear? Drop him, drop any weapons you have, step away from him and line up against the wall,” the musical voice demanded.
“Fuck off, Tinkerbell.”
That was from Gillian, who was torn between laughing her ass off at the thought of using a demi-Fey as a guard for a Vampire and swatting the little twerp against the wall. She did neither.
“We’re a little busy here and I’m not going to debate what we should do with a being the size of Peter Pan’s wiener.”
Turning toward the door, she swung her arm in a gesture meant to incite the others to follow her and started out. “Let’s go. Tanis isn’t going to last much longer.”
“Tinkerbell” hissed, her wings making an angry buzzing noise.
Gillian shooed her away from her face. “I said, fuck off!”
“Gillian, do not.” A raspy warning from Tanis made her stop.
That moment of hesitation nearly got her killed. The demi-Fey spun in midair, expanding in seconds to full size. A fully formed adult female Fey stood in Gillian’s path. Tall, blonde and very pissed off, from the way those wings were fanning behind her.
Gill barely had time to react as Trocar jerked her back a millisecond before the edge of the Fey’s hand chopped in a perfect arced movement across her windpipe, throwing her the rest of the way back into Trocar and making it impossible to breathe. The blow hadn’t fully landed because both the hyoid bone in her throat and her trachea were intact but bruised. As it was, she crumpled to the sticky, smelly, nauseating floor and found herself face to face with one of the murdered bodies.
“Gillian!”
Tanis struggled weakly against Pavel’s and Trocar’s steadying hands. Then, reaching for Gillian, who was still crumpled at their feet, he fell flat against her, shielding her with his large, wasted frame.
“Release Grace, Elf.” The once beautiful voice was as battered as Tanis was, but Trocar complied.
Grace sprang up shrieking again and flew at the Fey. The Fairy simply ignored her and started for Gillian, who was now under Tanis’s body for safekeeping. Drawing a stiletto from a sheath on the calf of her boot, the Fey moved in.
Kimber stepped in front of Gillian and got slashed for her trouble. She cradled the injured arm and, with a look of grim determination, started toward the Fey again, calmly flicking her own stiletto from up her sleeve into her hand. Pavel’s warning snarl shook the chamber, and nobody noticed Trocar move.
Suddenly the Fey was on her back, the Grael’s hands at her throat. She stabbed at him but he knocked the knife away. There was a muffled snap and the Fey went still under him, neck and wings broken. Grace squeaked and wrapped her transparent form around Tanis’s waist while Pavel, Kimber and Trocar went to Gillian, who was still trying to remember how to draw air through her bruised windpipe. Kimber was bleeding from the slash down her arm, so Pavel fashioned a bandage with material from his skimpy lavender kilt, making it even skimpier than before.
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