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My strength.
“Edward?” Brianna asks. She steps out from behind the grave, those huge champagne eyes of hers wide with concern and hope and terror and…andlove. After we hurt her tonight, I didn’t think I’d ever be so blessed to feel her love, but it’s there, written on her features, even if she cannot speak it.
And it is enough for me. She has always been enough for me.
I tear two more of the Ripper’s fingers from the hilt of his blade.
Ambrose clings to Brianna, his perfect jaw square as he watches without seeing. He can put together what is happening from the sounds and smells and his own keen intelligence. He places his body in front of Brianna, as if he can somehow fend off the monster if I don’t succeed.
Ah, Ambrose, always the Panglossian one.
“Take the knife, Ambrose. I can’t hold him for long.” My body trembles as the monster fights for control. His thoughts and memories race through my mind, and I gasp as I’m once more sent reeling from the present moment into some grim and ghastly memory.
A darkened street, the cobbles wet with rain. A woman in a ratty dress, her lips purple from the cold as she swallows the sweet wine I’ve given her. My hunger for her, for her blood, her screams, tugs in my belly.
And then, another memory. This time, I’m standing near the back of a crowd that has gathered around a body. I relish their gleeful dissection of my every stab and slash. Large black boxes snap bright lights, while people gossip about the poor unfortunate woman while they crowd around to get a closer look at her injuries. A man in a faded greatcoat tries in vain to push the crowd back, his face haunted. I think he may be a police detective, similar to Hayes and Wilson who have investigated the murders in Grimdale, judging by the way those around him defer to him and call him, ‘Guv.’ I am intrigued by him. I want to watch him suffer as he tries in vain to catch me—
“Edward, hold him a little longer.”
Brianna’s voice tears me back to the present. She has flung herself into the monster’s path and is trying to tear the knife from his hand. The Ripper tries to push me out of his body so he can deal with her, but I feel her fingers grip his arm,myarm. She gives me strength.
I peel back the final finger and—
CLANG.
The knife drops on the concrete path.
Brianna and the monster both lunge for it, but I’m able to hold him back and she gets to it first. She grips the handle, flips the blade, and plunges it into the monster’s chest.
Ow.
Owowowowow.
OWIE.
That smarts something awful.
I topple out of the Ripper just as he grabs Bree, his hands snaking toward her neck. My ghostly heart leaps into my throat, but she ducks under him and drives the knife deeper, twisting the handle until the Ripper’s mouth falls open into a horrible scream.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he howls, his words piercing the stillness of the night, loud enough to wake the dead. “I am not flesh and blood. I am…”
But he sounds confused. Unsure.
“Your master may be gone,” Brianna places both her hands on the blade’s handle and drives it home, “but you’re still bound by the spell that brought you back from the dead. If you are flesh and blood, then you can die like the rest of us.”
The monster’s eyes widen, red smoke billowing from the sockets. He tosses his head back and, with a final, inhuman wail, he disintegrates.
Where he had been only moments ago with his deadly blade, there is only ash.
Bree drops the knife and falls to Pax’s side.
Pax.
I pull my broken, pain-soaked body together and float over to them. Brianna has his hand in hers, stroking his sausage fingers and sobbing. I press my hand to Pax’s heart. He doesn’t move or react as my fingers slip into his skin.
Pax’s body doesn’t make mine tingle the way Living things do when I touch them.
For he is no longer Living.
