Chapter 14

Druitt awoke as raindrops splashed on his exposed head and drummed on the rooftop. He looked over to Ashley who was sitting against the opposite wall, a look of disgust on her face as she looked up at the black storm clouds which had gathered over head. They sat in silence, observing each other, while Druitt tried to clear his head. A dull headache pounded behind his eyes, an after effect of the teleport he had made hours before.

He got up and peered over the wall looking out over the Sanctuary grounds. A couple of vampires could be seen patrolling, searching for them. He looked over to the gateway. The gates lay discarded on the ground inside the walls, there was one body belonging to the vampire whose neck Druitt had snapped. It lay in the gateway next to two severed arms. There was no sign of the rest of the vampire boss. A frantic banging at the door to the tower made him turn around, his long coat whipping around him.

"It's all right. They've been doing that for hours," said Ashley. "They can't get through."

He walked over to her, slid his back down the wall and sat down next to her on the wet stones.

"We need to talk."

"About what?" she muttered unenthusiastically. She had been re-evaluating her situation as he slept and found she had a lot of things to hide, should he ask.

"What happened to the vampire powers the Cabal gave you? How have you regained control?"

"I didn't like 'em. I got rid of them."

"How?"

"Dunno." Like hell she was going to tell anyone the truth, ever.

"Ashley, anything you tell me here in the future, can stay here in the future, if you want it to."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Damn, she thought. She couldn't get off the rooftop without him, she couldn't get home without him and he wasn't going to budge until she'd given him something. "I did some research on you, after I found out you were my father." He said nothing but listened intently.

"Mom didn't tell me anything you know, not that I asked her. She's hard to talk to," she admitted. "Anyway," she said sidestepping that other awkward subject. "I did some research."

"You know what I did," he said flatly.

"That's not what I meant. I looked you up. You, John Druitt, not Jack the Ripper. The man, not the monster. The man who my mother fell in love with."

He looked over at her, intrigued. This girl was full of surprises. He could barely bring himself to ask the next question, dreading the answer. "What did you find?" he managed, hopefully.

"Not much, everything goes on and on about the Ripper stuff. I found out you were a barrister and a teacher. You played cricket. Your father was a physician and you had a brother," she paused, unsure how he would react to the next bit. "I read about what happened to your mother and grandmother."

"Ah."

"Were you sick? Before the experiment?"

"No."

"But you could have been. It's hereditary isn't it? Did Mom know?"

He laughed bitterly. "Your mother told me recently that, no matter what the experiment did to me, there must always have been a predilection for killing."

"You could be bi-polar."

"Is that what they call it now? I think my problems go way beyond any normal human condition. Ashley, no I wasn't sick. And you're not going to get sick either," answering her unvoiced question. "I made a choice. When the teleporting started to… unravel me, I chose to keep doing it. I chose the excitement, the power. It was the wrong choice but, I made it and now I have to live with it."

"But your grandmother killed herself, they said she was insane."

"Who are they?" he said not enjoying this line of questioning.

"Did she?"

"Yes," he admitted. "And my mother was also sick, depression they called it. They put her in an asylum after I disappeared. She died there alone, thinking I was dead. I am not sick Ashley. There is only one time I have ever wanted to kill myself. To be dead. When Helen shot me, the look on her face alone could have killed me. I betrayed her."

He had never spoken these thoughts to anyone before. Ashley had never asked anyone these questions before.

"Why did you kill those women?"

"I don't know. I don't remember," he admitted.

Ashley thought about her recent blackouts and the things she suspected she may have done. She wondered if he experienced the same things but was terrified to ask.

"Did you kill them?"

"I think so."

They both stared into space, Druitt's mind in Victorian London and Ashley's in denial. They neither of them paid attention to the raindrops as they fell more frequently soaking through their clothes.

"How long have I been gone?" Ashley asked her father.

"About six months."

"Six months? I've been here a week!"

"Maybe time moves differently here."

"If I stayed here another week then I'd be gone another six months?"

"Six months is a lifetime," said Druitt, thinking of all he and Magnus had gone through in the six months they'd lost Ashley.

"I want to go home," said Ashley fervently, thinking of the awful things she had experienced in this hellish future.

"I suppose we'd better be getting back then." He stood and held his hand out to her. She took it and he pulled her up. The rain poured down steadily unknowing that the two it fell on were about to defy the laws of nature. "Without that fireball we're going to have to this the old fashioned way. Ashley?"

"Yes?"

"This is going to hurt. No matter what happens, do not let go. Are you ready?"

"No."

Druitt took a step back.

"What I say in the future stays in the future?" she asked cautiously.

Druitt nodded, "If you want it to."

Ashley took a deep breath. "I don't have the Cabal drug in me any more, it's gone forever. But, it woke up my own powers. I can teleport and I think I can heal as well, like Mom. I don't know about the live forever part though. I teleported when I needed to, to save my life. I don't know how to do it otherwise, and it hurts, like hell. But after a while, a few hours, I can feel my head healing and the pain, the noise… the voice, goes away." He stared at her. The questions about madness and murder made a bit more sense.

"I don't want to get sick," she said quietly, confessed her worst fear.

He held out his arm and she took it, bravely looking him in the eye after admitting the truth out loud. He wrapped his arms tightly around hers and stared into her eyes. "It's not the sickness Ashley, it's the teleporting. It clouds your mind and ends up taking a piece of your soul."

"Then why don't you stop teleporting?"

"By the time I realized there was something worth living for, it was too late."

"It's never too late."

He gave her a smile. Maybe she was right, anything was possible. The rain fell steadily, running down Ashley's face washing away the dirt. He wiped it away.

"I think I might keep you," she said looking up at him. His heart nearly burst it was so full. It was such a shame all this progress would be lost in the brutal teleport ahead of him.

"Think of your mother, waiting for you. Focus on her and nothing else."

Ashley closed her eyes. The world turned blue and ripped into pieces. Their bodies and minds disintegrated into dust and the rain whirled into the empty space they had left behind.

Loud hammering came from the door in the tower and it finally gave in and flung open into the rain. Two vampires ran onto the roof, followed by a slower, very angry armless one.

"There's nobody here boss."

"I can see that you imbecile," he screamed. "Find them! No one stops until we find them!"