Corroded

desperately attempting to smother the terribly pain he’d inflicted.

The blade I’d drawn was caught underneath me, my fist aching around it. I sobbed my naked pain—fury prime beside it—as his fingers knotted in my hair. He climbed off me, but dragged me backwards by the knotted plait. The agony this tore along my scalp was nothing to the wound he’d already inflicted, but it allowed me the opening I needed.

It surprised him, I think, when I not only managed to get to my knees, but launched myself backwards in a move that turned his own grasping momentum against him. He staggered back, fingers tangled in my hair. It tore the plait free of its pins, loosing hanks of tangled red. I twisted, finally able to get my knife between us, my blood and his now a terrible fragrance in the filthy smoke and fog. I gagged from the odor and pain and fear of it all.

The Ripper did not seem to notice. He lifted me bodily by my hair, his features nothing more than a snarling mask of murderous frenzy. My own blood dripped from his hand, splattering my face.

I gripped my knife with both hands and thrust.

There was nowhere he could go. Tangled by my hair, a fall of bloody red imprisoning us together, he screamed into my face; spittle rained down upon me.

It was as if I felt the skin part, interminably slow. Felt the flesh give away, melting beneath the point. Blood gushed over my hand, a fountain of it hot enough to burn my aching, chilled skin.

He lurched. Jerked hard, as if I’d only just kicked him.

The weapon he’d aimed at me glanced off my armor, leaving his arm curved around my side. I clamped my elbow over it, holding him in place, as his blood pumped over the hand that held the blade.

I stared up into eyes made dark by the dim light and watched surprise replace rage.

“Whore,” he whispered. “Just a—” I needed no more understanding as to the nature of his character. Whether he truly detested women, or simply them what sold their flesh for a living wage, I would never know. He tried again to label me with his madness, to call me whore or something new, but he could not. It bubbled, wet and red, too thick to shape a word from. Saliva trickled from his lips, dribbled to my cheek.

Revulsion seized me. I twisted, sobbing when the act pulled at the wound in my side, kicked and thrashed and pushed until the Ripper’s bulk slid from me. Surging to my feet tore another wave of pain through me—the opium could not keep up. My fist tightened on the hilt of the knife drenched with another man’s blood. Nausea surged.

“I...wanted...”

The voice croaked. Thready, gurgling with effort, it begged for something I could not give. Face down in the dirt, the man who had terrorized a city gurgled into filth, shuddered. “I...”

The distant Wapping train whistled. He jerked, as if surprised—vomited blood instead of words. Whatever he wanted, the act proved too much; it sealed his confessions forever. With a final, ragged gurgle, Jack the Ripper died at my feet.

Something I had no name for broke within me. Something a clergyman might have called my soul, or perhaps another might have called my humanity.

Were I any other, I might have called it innocence.

I had taken a life.

My hands shook. My breath painted the air in front of my face white, and the fog swallowed my shuddering exhale without judgment. Without malice.

I murdered a man.

Shock dulled the world. Eased the cold, even the ragged throb of torn flesh and the slow, hot drip of my own blood as it slid beneath my corset.

Oh, Cherry.

God, that I would be spared this awful, ghostly echo of my memory! I dropped the knife, stumbling away, clapped both hands to my ears and clenched my eyes shut. My features contorted to a terrible mask, and I squeezed as if I could collapse my own skull.

Let go, the woman’s memory whispered.

Opium hallucinations. Not uncommon, after the amount I’d eaten. Yet so horribly timed. “Leave me alone,” I hissed, teeth clenched.

Cold plucked at me. The fog was silent.

I opened my eyes to find myself standing upon the bridge, the far-off gleam of the Wapping train encroaching through the sheet of filthy gray and yellow. My eyes burned. My nose ran. I lowered my grime—and blood-stained hands slowly.

The faint, tinny strains of music tinkled through the heavy silence.

Still, the dream played out.

Note by note, the song shimmered. I turned, looked out over the blanketed railyard and couldn’t pinpoint where.

I must have lost my mind in dreams. I’d given up the reality of it all for the bliss. This surreal landscape was not mine.

And yet I recognized it—a waltz, as often played in the soirees above this soiled drift. One two three. One two three...

I hummed the next few, but my voice broke, and it came instead as a ragged exhale.

A gentle hand slid around my shoulder. “There, Cherry. Do you hear it?”

I swayed, could not summon the will to resist as he turned me. “There’s a girl,” he whispered. One two three. One two three... “There’s a good girl. You’ve done it, Cherry. I knew you could.”

Gloved hands stroked down my arms, laced with my fingers and raised my hands. I looked up, but my eyes would not paint a picture I could understand. All I could see were two glittering eyes under a low hat, and the shape of a firm, expressive mouth as it slid a warm kiss over my knuckles.

There was not enough light to know the face of the man who claimed me.

I shuddered. My knees buckled.

“No,” he said sharply, catching me quickly enough at the side that the wound beyond his fingers pinched. I groaned my pain. My disorientation only became worse. “Stand on your own. You deserve this, Cherry St. Croix.”

“D...” My tongue was too thick, my voice husky with confusion. I clutched at him because if I did not, I would have fallen. His coat was thick and warm, his arms supportive as they came about me. “Deserve,” I managed.

“I told you.” One two three. Slowly, he turned a circle. One two three. My feet found the steps by instinct, the rhythm by hours and hours of teaching.

One two three. He eased me into a waltz that seemed as natural as breathing. Familiarity grasped at my heart.

We danced in silence, swaying to the tiny notes plucking haunting chords through the fog. Yet I had not the will, nor the strength. My energy faded, and as he turned me around, I sagged in his arms.

He caught me tight against his chest. “It’s all right,” he whispered, his breath warm against my temple.

It wasn’t. Weep for the widowed bride...

“I am so proud of you.”

Proud. The monster who had murdered so many was proud of me.

I had earned that, did I?

The bridge beneath our feet began to shake, and even the shrill waltz began to stutter.

I looked out over the bridge and did not flinch as the train whistle shredded this terrible, surreal dream.

“We are much the same, you and I,” he said. An echo of words he’d told me in the shadows of the Thames Tunnel, moments before he’d delivered me to my father’s schemes. Warm lips caressed the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes, wrapped my hands around his where they crossed beneath my breasts, and held tight.

“So you said,” I whispered.

“So you have just proven,” he replied. “No other man is worth you. No challenge is beneath you. I knew you would not fail me.”