Chapter four: Catherine Eddowes

Warnings: lots of gore and eviscerated entrails, so please consider yourself warned...

Acknowledgements: Many thanks once again to Silvereyedbitch for aiding me with the medical details.

A/N 1: I know that my dear fellow author Blackdragonsghost came up with the idea of Damien selling Gerald as a mere servant of the Hunter in 'Crimes of Passion first'. But as Vryce obviously can't tell the genuine truth without endangering the adept's existence, I simply couldn't think of another way to explain Gerald's connection to the Lord of the Forest. Just tell me if you take offence at it, love, and I'll put on my thinking cap again and change it.

A/N 2: For everybody missing Gerald Tarrant: he'll make his appearance in the next chapter. Honest Native American (as the term 'injun' is considered politically incorrect and offensive nowadays ;-))!

A/N 3: Very soon, all hell will break loose at work once again. I'd like to apologize in advance for not being able to update on a regular base in summer. Sorry!

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Dutfield's Yard, Whitechapel, Jaggonath; Sunday, 30th September 1254 A.S., 1.45 a.m.

Stunned speechless, Damien wished the earth would open up and swallow him whole as he remembered the waist-length braid which had been so very becoming to Tarrant's new incarnation on Black Ridge Pass. This couldn't be happening. Mustn't be happening. It had to be a mere coincidence. Or an illusion conjured up by whatever malicious entity intent on making his life a living hell. But the silky, black strand in his fingers seemed so very real that he felt his heart clenching painfully inside his chest. And as if the God of his faith - or the Unnamed himself - had whispered the bitter truth right into his ears, he knew with absolute certainty that whatever had come to pass at the crime scene, the object under investigation was nothing other than hair of the adept's head.

You wanted to know the truth, Vryce. Now live with it, the warrior knight thought dejectedly. For whatever reason, the bastard has regressed to his old ways. Very likely, he just couldn't exist without the sweet pleasure of a woman breathing her last under his hands. Almighty God in Heaven, if you truly have no better purpose for him, why didn't you let him die for good on Mount Shaitan? Or in the vaults of the Hunter's Keep? Everything would have been better than condemning him to this terrible fate. And adding another sin to my already long tally. Healing his failing heart at the knees of that vulking volcano, I'm guilty now for all the crimes he has committed since he has gone on his abysmal killing spree.

Trembling in every limb, Damien buried his face in his hands in a desperate attempt to shut out the world. "For heaven's sake, what's wrong with you?" Dr. Phillips asked worriedly.

"It's nothing. Just let me be for a minute."

"Nothing?" The physician snorted disbelievingly. "You're white as a sheet. I've seen you facing worse without flinching, so don't try to pull the wool over my eyes. Something happened here which has unsettled you to the core. Any chance that it is concerned with the piece of evidence you keep clutching to your breast?"

The warrior knight drew a deep breath. "You've got me there, George," he muttered. "I can't deny that I've known a man with long, black hair once. Haven't seen him for years now. But the mere idea that he could be our culprit... it scares the living daylights out of me. And with good reason."

"I'd like to be honest with you, Damien. Remembering your hint at having firsthand experience with a sadistic serial killer and wondering why a natural-born healer like you gives up a well-remunerated position at the 'Neocount of Merentha' and settles for treating the down-and-out in Whitechapel, I've made inquiries about you. By chance, my brother-in-law is the private secretary of Liam Carruthers, the current patriarch of the Church of Human Unification on Erna. Jonah has told me an interesting story about a certain priest who was supposed to be in league with the infernal fiend called the Hunter."

Registering the stricken expression on Vryce's features, Phillips patted him on the shoulder. "Don't you worry, my friend," he said gently. "It's not up to me to judge. I know you as a good-hearted soul who wouldn't harm a fly, and if there's any truth in this rumour, you certainly had a reason for allying with such a corrupted creature. But in case you know anything which could shed light on these appalling crimes, I beg you to share your knowledge with me. You don't have to carry your heavy burden all on your own."

For a drawn-out moment the warrior knight wavered, torn between the need to get everything off his chest and a strange mixture of guilt, shame and wariness. But instead of accusing him, the blue eyes watching him intently were so full of compassion that he simply couldn't keep quiet any longer. "The man in question... he used to be a... a servant of the Hunter," he whispered, fighting back his tears. "And a friend, may God help me. Running an errand for his master, he escaped the destruction of Jahanna by the skin of his teeth. When we met again on Black Ridge Pass a few months afterwards, he was... changed, and I let the matter rest. Deluded myself into believing that he had finally overcome evil after the Lord of the Forest couldn't exert his influence on him any longer. What a vulking fool I've been!"

"I can't help but thinking that there's much more to the story than what you've told me so far. And that you still care deeply about your 'friend'," the elderly physician retorted with a faint smile. "But I won't pry your secrets out of you against your will. Nonetheless, I can't spare you a very important question. What are you going to do if he truly is the murderer? Could you hand him over to the authorities? Or are you planning to take matters into your own hands?"

"You can't imagine how often I've asked myself this question, George. I don't think I could turn him in. But if he has committed those crimes, he has to be stopped. At whatever cost. God is my witness that I'd rather see him dead than continuing to roam the streets at night, preying upon helpless women like the man he used to serve. But I..."

The sound of running feet put a stop to his explanations, and at the next moment Henry Lamb dashed around the corner, his face beaded with sweat. "The scumbag has killed again!" the young Constable yelled at the top of his voice. "Two in one night. And this time, he has made a good job of it."

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Mitre Square, Bishopsgate, Jaggonath; Sunday, 30th September 1254 A.S. 2.30 a.m.

Bracing himself against the revolting odours of feces and blood, let alone the visual input which could have been a fine inspiration for another one of Regian Torquist's infamous pictures of Armageddon, Damien forced himself to examine the body laying on the blood-smeared cobble stones. Lamb had been right, and the killer had indeed made a good job of it. His general approach perfectly corresponded with the case of Annie Chapman. Once again, he had severed both his victim's spinal cord between the third and fourth vertebrae and her vocal chords, sealing off the trachea afterwards with a piece of massive bone. Then he had gotten down to business, cauterizing the larger blood vessels in the process in order to keep the so far unidentified woman from bleeding out too soon for his liking. When he had been finally through with torturing her for his twisted pleasure, he had punctured the common carotid artery and the internal jugular vein on the left side of her neck with a sharp, pointed instrument. Each of the two inflicted injuries would have been sufficient to cause almost immediate death, and considering the state the corpse was in, the former priest didn't harbour a sliver of doubt that at this particular time the murder victim had welcomed the grim reaper with open arms.

After slicing her open from the xyphoid process all the way down to the pubic region, the Ripper had drawn out the better part of her intestines and arranged them over her right shoulder. A piece of the colon approximately two feet long was quite detached from the abdominal cavity, having been placed between her torso and her left arm seemingly by design. Her womb except a small strip of the uterine wall and her left kidney had been carefully removed as well, substantiating the suspicion that the killer had to have profound medical knowledge. Both organs were nowhere to be found.

It was a ghastly sight overall, but the worst of it were the mutilations of her face. She might have been a good-looking woman once, if very likely now ravaged by years and years of living rough, prostitution and alcohol abuse if her murderer hadn't deviated from his usual prey preference all at once. But now it was hardly possible to visualize her facial features at all. Both of her eyelids had been sliced through, her upper lip and the substance of the gum below it cut in half, and the tip of her nose was just hanging on by a piece of skin. There was another deep gash, starting across the bridge of her nose and then extending down from the nasal bone to the jawline, parting all the tissues of her right cheek other than the membrane of the mouth.

Disgusted beyond words, Damien had to swallow a mouthful of bile. Don't act like a sissy now, Vryce. You've encountered much worse, he reprimanded himself. But that was only half the truth. There was no denying that travelling with the Hunter he had witnessed his own fair share of atrocities your average man on the street never got to see. And had experienced them first hand on more than one occasion. His ally against all odds feeding on his blood and fear for months on end on board of the Golden Glory, the death of cherished comrades, all those times he had had to stand helplessly by when Tarrant had tortured and killed innocents, his moral abhorrence warring with the slowly blooming affection for the human soul ensnared in the body of an undead monstrosity - these ordeals were the stuff nightmares were made of. Even after all the years that had passed, he was still awakened at least once a week by his own screams, his feather pillow soaked through with sweat and tears.

But this was different. In a way, he was trapped as well, trapped in an utterly forbidding daymare from which there was no waking up. The warrior knight gritted his teeth against the surge of frustration welling up inside him. In one single vulking night, they had missed the Ripper twice by a very narrow margin. Like Elisabeth Stride's, the body of the latest victim was still quite warm, and rigor mortis hadn't begun to set in yet, indicating that she presumably had been killed no more than half an hour ago. Lamentably, in stark contrast to the previous murder the killer evidently had had sufficient time to indulge his sick appetites to his heart's content. But although now the fourth woman had died a terrible, meaningless death and Constable Lamb had informed him that the investigation of the police was going round in circles so far, for Vryce personally there was finally a flicker of hope at the horizon. He had to grant the human monster calling himself Jack the Ripper that he was a cunning son of a bitch who had been giving each and everybody the runaround for weeks now. But maybe, just maybe, he had indeed committed his first real blunder tonight, even if in a different way than Damien had previously assumed.

"Oh merciful God in heaven! Please tell me that my old eyes are failing me!" George Bagster Phillip's horrified outcry interrupted Damien's train of thoughts, and he returned to the here and now with a start. On their way from Whitechapel to Bishopsgate, the elderly physician hadn't been able to keep up with his younger companions who had rushed through the nightly streets like hunting hounds hot on the heels of their elusive prey. Finding a cab in Jaggonath's meanest district in the deep of the night had proved an impossible task, and so Phillips had limped along on his own as fast as his old legs could carry him. Still puffing and blowing and his round face flaming red, he stared at the appalling tableau unfolding before him with wide open eyes. "Whoever has done this can't be in his right mind," he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in horror. "I understand your need to protect your former acquaintance, Damien, but we have to put an end to this butchery. I'm sorry for betraying your trust, deeply sorry, but if you don't let the police in on your suspicion concerning the identity of this abomination, I will."

"And would very likely bring them to hunt down the wrong man. Up to now, I have no idea which sadistic bastard has slaughtered these unfortunate women. But I'll be damned if Gerald has committed the crimes."

"But how... why...?" Phillips spluttered, completely bewildered. "Not even an hour ago, you were quite convinced that a former servant of the Hunter was the Ripper. And now you're suddenly insisting that the man in question is innocent. I'd really appreciate it if you felt obliged to explain your somewhat surprising change of mind."

"No problem! Your wish is my command." Triumphantly, Vryce presented a couple of long, black hairs. "This was sticking to her skirt. Without a doubt, it's the same stuff we've found at the site of Stride's homicide."

Dr. Phillips blinked. "Now you've lost me," he said with a frown. "As far as I'm concerned, your discovery just proves that a black-haired raving lunatic has slain both victims. How on Earth and Erna this is supposed to clear your friend of blame I can't even begin to fathom."

"That's because you don't know him the way I do, George. He might have many faults, I don't deny this, but laxness isn't among them. Trust me that he would never make the very same mistake twice. And our killer wasn't in a hurry here. He had plenty of time to eviscerate her, pocket a part of her organs and mutilate her face at his leisure." The warrior knight's features hardened, and a steely glint appeared in his hazel eyes. "I still can't quite put my finger on what's going on," he continued with deceptive gentleness. "But unless I'm very much mistaken, someone is trying very hard to frame Gerald. And trying to set me up against him, for whatever reason. This isn't random but something personal. But the Lord is my witness that I'm going to thwart the vulking bastard. From now on, I will pursue him day and night until I can close my fingers around his miserable neck. And then I will make him regret the day he was born. That's as sure as death and taxes!"