Author's Note: If you liked Chapter 1 and you're pouncing on Chapter 2, best to pace yourself now because Chapter 3 is going to be a bear to finish. (Also, I have that professional writing project that's tugging on me at the moment and colleagues with high expectations. You know how it is.) So patience, my good readers, and in the meantime, feel free to click the little review tab below and share your thoughts. (The muse gets curious.)


The goddess guarded her secrets for many years after Bennet Drake returned to London, but she did not fail to keep him under her protection and he felt her presence keenly in those moments when his anger flared and his temper threatened to get the better of him.

Injustice. It thrived in Whitechapel in those days. Poor families woke up hungry for equality, for fairness, and for justice and the only thing available to fill their plates were heaps of the injustice that grew like a great creeping vine through their pitiful patch of city. It wasn't satisfying and it only left people hungrier than they were when they began each day.

As a policeman - first a young bobby and finally as sergeant to esteemed Inspector Edmund Reid - Bennet saw the effects of injustice every day in his work. In all other aspects of his life, he had discovered a sort of balance - the camaraderie he shared with his fellow police officers was comfortable, his routines had their own regular rhythm - from the markets where he regularly purchased goods for his small, spartan flat to the Brown Bear Pub he liked to frequent for a quick pint after a long day - and he even experienced the occasional day when he felt as though he'd really made a difference, that he'd helped make life just a little better.

On the rest of the days, however - to be honest, on the majority of the days - he was forced to swim upstream against his anger at the injustice and cruelty he forcibly fought on behalf of those who couldn't do so for themselves. His reputation as a bully and single-handed quasher of riots was deserved and he didn't hide from it, nor did he shirk his responsibilities to the Inspector when a confession needed to be beaten out of an unwitting criminal in a quiet basement cell at the Leman Street station house. But whereas most bullies enjoyed the fight because it allowed them to feel superior to those upon whom they preyed, Bennet Drake felt no such joy. In fact, the sole (and largely unknown) reason that he became the most successful fighter in Whitechapel had nothing to do with skill or pride or any of the usual characteristics that accompanied such an accolade. No. Whenever injustice was about to be served to another unwitting and undeserving citizen, Bennet Drake became the angriest man in the room and that level of angry aggravation made him impervious to fear. Fury-fueled fearlessness was the most deadly kind there was and so it was no wonder that few remained willing to tangle with him as his reputation spread.

Yet for the most part, the old rage of the desert - the blind kind that had rendered him more monster than man - remained at bay, thanks to Sekmet and her protective hold on him. Moreover, thanks to the openness of heart she had generated within him, he was able to laugh in lighter moments and allow friends like Mr. Reid, Sergeant Artherton, and others to feel the warmth of his admiration when the occasion called for it.

Indeed, the holy man's prayers must have been successful, for rarely did the nightmares attempt to enter his subconscious at the end of a long day. The closest they ever came were during his boxing days - a sanctioned and equal fight he found he began to look forward to with a little too much eagerness - and once this characteristic was acknowledged, he retired his gloves and found that the nightmares retreated to the shadows once more.

Still, the open heart that was the bane of a soldier's existence was likewise a similar handicap in police work - especially in Whitechapel police work - and the goddess' eventual revelation would put that heart into a type of danger that overwhelmed and frightened him more than any desert battle or riot ever had.

It occurred on a cold London morning - the damp kind that went directly into the bones of anyone mad enough to venture forth so soon after the dawn. Two of Long Susan's girls were missing and, with Captain Jackson's help, Bennet and the Inspector came to understand that the missing girls and their current murder investigation were linked. With a small regiment of bobbies for back up, they sought the lair of Sir Arthur Donaldson - a nasty piece of work whose latest hobby, the trio were appalled to learn, involved choking the life out of young prostitutes while in the throes of passion and capturing the entire event on a new kind of moving picture device.

Susan's girls were in grave danger indeed - especially when the men of H Division burst into Donaldson's townhouse and the man himself was nowhere to be found amidst the hung-over and drug-addled people they discovered in a half-naked heap on the second floor.

While Jackson asked one of the barely conscious girls where Susan's missing Rose was, something familiar chose that moment to tug at Bennet. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck in a way he hadn't experienced since his days in Egypt when dervishes were near - an inkling that something was about to happen and he needed to prepare for it. Danger and combat were imminent and he felt it keenly in the struggle with Donaldson's friends as they searched the room for the party's host.

"Get the sword, Sergeant!" Reid cried after one of Donaldson's shirtless cronies swung awkwardly at Jackson in a poor attempt to stop the onslaught of police officers streaming into the room. Jackson was knocked aside, but a swift kick with Bennet's boot dispatched the threat handily and the weapon leapt easily into the sergeant's hand as if of its own accord.

The room searched unsuccessfully, he and Reid glanced out the second-story window - where they glimpsed Donaldson and a struggling young woman in the garden below.

Rose!

"Drake!" Reid exclaimed but the sergeant was already in motion.

A slighter man than the burly Inspector and far quicker on his feet, Bennet took the stairs two at a time, the sword still clutched in his grasp. As he burst into the garden, a war cry ripped from his chest - the kind he hadn't uttered since that wretched day at El Teb. At his yell, Donaldson turned his attention from the girl, eyes reptilian and haughty. He hadn't expected to be caught and wasn't accustomed to being governed by the same ideals of justice that Bennet and the Inspector adhered to. No, Sir Arthur Donaldson fully expected to get his own way in this and every situation and his genuine shock at the appearance of the police only incensed Bennet further. The girl Rose was but a toy to the wealthy playboy - something to be played with roughly for a bit, then cast aside as rubbish when it was broken beyond repair.

In the seconds it took him to cross the short span of grass, present-day London merged with the long-ago the desert in his mind and Bennet Drake became once more a monster whose thirst could only be slaked with hot dervish blood. Arthur Donaldson was a dragon to be slain and, Saint George-like, Bennet pierced him cleanly with the sword before the toff could utter even a gasp of protest. Their eyes locked long enough for Bennet to register the other man's shock as he fell, but once he was down, Bennet observed his work coldly, noting how the blood dribbled from Donaldson's slack mouth and drained the life from his dark eyes for good. Reid galloped up to glance over his sergeant's shoulder, eyes wide and astonished at the skill of the blade work before he remembered himself and stepped back into his position of authority.

"Does she breathe, Sergeant?" the Inspector demanded.

The question - and a desperate, choking gasp from the table beside him - was all it took to bring Bennet back into the reality of the cold London morning and the desert of his mind's eye faded into fog.

"She does, sir," Bennet responded as his shaking fingers unbuckled the horrid leather collar from around her neck, then tore off his own overcoat to cloak her trembling frame. Rouge and blood were mixed in equal parts across her ashen face, her nose was bloodied, and her curls were thoroughly disheveled, but somehow she still managed to be the most beautiful woman Bennet had ever seen.

His heart gave a substantial thud as big as the one he had experienced in the desert when Sekmet had opened it for him and he tried not to let the jolt of it knock him off his feet. Thankfully, her body was light - bird-like - and it took no effort whatsoever for him to lift and carry her to a waiting Maria for transportation back to Tenter Street. She was in and out of consciousness for the whole of the trip as Bennet cradled her closely the way one would a rescued puppy.

He didn't dare gaze upon her face, however. The beat of his heart was already too loud in his chest and the hairs on the back of his neck continued to stand at attention, only now the immediate danger they detected didn't seem as though it would require him to wield a sword or his oft-used billy club. This perceived danger was of a new sort - an altogether unsettling prospect.

As he deposited her tenderly on the chaise in Jackson's disarrayed room, he could avoid gazing at her no longer, for she began to speak in a low whisper.

"I thought..." she started, then trailed off weakly. "...at last... I thought it was safe again."

All Bennet could muster was a gentle admonition. "Shush now. It is - it is safe now."

But as his reassurance landed upon her ears, her eyes looked up into his and he felt the rush of blood flood his ears with another echoing thud.

Hers were the blue eyes of the goddess.

It was Sekmet he looked upon in that moment - and then it was not. The eyes were the same blue and rested beneath the same dark lashes; they were at once confused and all-knowing. They looked not only at him, but also within him - deep into the soul of the wounded warrior who had saved her life.

It was in that instant that Sergeant Bennet Drake felt his wildly beating heart fly from inside his chest cavity and land firmly within hers. The roaring blood that coursed through his veins was so loud that he could hear nor see nothing but the woman before him and he fought to catch his breath. Once, he had placed himself into the care of the goddess and she had protected him from evil. Just now, she had reappeared in his life and aligned him with an entirely new entity, one that could prove far more dangerous:

Bennet Drake was in love.

In his moment of overwhelmed confusion, Rose reached for his heart in the exact same way the goddess had when he had dreamed of their meeting in the desert. He felt himself freeze as Rose's hand tangled in his lapel, for if she managed to rest her hand on his chest, he felt certain he would surely succumb to death on the spot. It was too much, too fast - so it was a relief when her fingers fell limply to her side before they were able to attain their target. Then the dark lashes fell over her blue eyes and concealed them from him once more, breaking the spell.

"Thank you, Drake, I'll tend to her now," Jackson materialized and waved him off with his good hand, but Bennet remained solidly in place. His eyes were unable to leave the face of the woman before him, for a piece of him now dwelled within her and he was reluctant to leave it behind - especially when it was such a vital and vulnerable organ as the heart. Finally, he felt his feet carry him into the hall and he glanced back briefly, mind still racing at the memory of what had just occurred.

"Only the goddess can reveal her secrets to you," the holy man had said and now she had. She had opened the heart of Bennet Drake so that he could receive the one emotion he had long felt certain that he might never experience.

But Shakespeare had written, "The course of true love never did run smooth" and, goddess or no, Bennet Drake was soon to discover the weighty truth of those words.

TBC