Chapter Twenty Nine

The brimstone scent of black powder filled James’s nose, as Lord Thompson’s screams filled his ears. The glass vats had shattered, their contents bursting into flame from the vicious fires released by the small medal, the mad doctor desperately trying to put the flames on his clothing out.

James struggled free from his bonds, diving across the dungeon like laboratory to grab at his pistol as the villain ran out of the chamber. Snatching the compass up in his other hand James gave chase. He managed to squeeze off a short burst of darts at the murderer as he jumped, ignoring the ladder completely, through the trap door leading to London’s sewers. James ran to the dark hole, pulling the candle medallion from his neck. “Candle Light.”

Nothing happened.

“You used the last charge to come here, James.” Anne said, her voice weak.

“Damn it. I am not letting that man get away!” James declared. He looked wildly around, his eyes settling on a small lantern hanging on the wall. Grabbing it he worked the clockwork mechanism set into the base, and finally with a great deal of cursing, the wick lit.

James all but jumped down the shaft himself, half tumbling down the ladder with only one hand to hold him. He peered into the inky darkness of the manmade caverns.

He saw no sign of the man who would be Jack.

“Try the compass.” Anne suggested, more ghostly now than at any point since James had met her. He, for an instant, considered giving up the chase but realized that if he did, there would never be any peace for them. He looked down and cursed. “It’s still spinning. He’s still close.”

“He can’t have gone far then!”

James frowned while looking around him desperately. His eyes caught a section of bricks, where the wet stone did not glisten as it should. Running up he found a shred of his prey’s cloak. “He went this way!” He growled and began to run.

Within moments he reached a turn in the tunnel, and before he could slow a fist shot out of the dark and took him straight into the jaw. James was thrown backwards by the force of the blow, slamming into the walkway only inches from the fast-flowing river of sewage, the air knocked from his lungs. Next to him the glass of the lantern shattered and in the distance, he heard the metallic scraping of his pistol as it hit the ground far from his hand.

“You thought you’d stop me, did you boy!” The monstrous man, with weeping sores and already forming blisters from where the burning chemicals had destroyed his face, yelled out in fury. “Now you die!” The silver arc of his long knife, plunging for James’s chest, glinted in the light of burning oil.

Desperately James brought his arms up, catching Jacks hand between his own crossed wrists. Clutching the man’s arm desperately, James pulled him close, driving the hard heel of one of his riding boots into the killer’s gut. The man gasped, and the knife slid from his hands, bouncing off the stones next to James’s head to disappear into the muck of London’s sewers.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

James rolled to his feet, throwing a clumsy but powerful punch at the burnt man’s head. The older man was the more skilled boxer, however, and cleverly blocked the slow roundhouse with one arm while driving a rough jab into James’s own chin. He followed closely on his fist, grabbing James around the throat and slamming him into the stone corner of the sewer wall. “I’ll choke the life out of you!”

James, his lungs already struggling for breath after already having the wind knocked from him, found his vision dimming almost immediately. With strength born of desperation he brought his arms up, driving his fists into the madman’s elbows. He gasped as the psychopath’s grip broke, only to grunt in pain as a fist drove into his jaw. He hit the ground and slid several feet from the blow, his hands coated in muck as he clawed for purchase on the slimy walkway.

Instead, his hand came down on the cool metal of his pistol.

The rapid steps of Jack behind him were all the aim he had. Desperately, his eyes stinging from the ammonia stench of the noisome stench that now covered him. He rolled onto his back and brought the gun up. The blurred form of the killer was lit from behind by the lantern’s light. He pulled the trigger.

Lord William Donston Thompson jerked to a stop as a half dozen tiny darts drilled through his flesh, his arm coming to his destroyed shoulder even as he staggered to a stop. James, rolling forward onto a knee, fired again.

Without so much as a scream the second Jack the Ripper twisted as gravity claimed him, falling into the vile, muck filled sewer’s river and was carried away.

Elbert cursed, pacing back and forth as his glare returned repeatedly to the frosted windows of James’s home. The pale light of false dawn stained the pane and still James had not returned.

“I should have gone!” He muttered. “What if he’s dead?”

“Why Elbert, I didn’t know you cared.”

The con man spun around, smiling at the sound of James’s voice from behind him. His smile turned to a half step backwards and away from the filth covered man. “What the devil have you been doing?” He demanded

“Wandering the London sewers trying to find Jack the bloody Ripper.” James replied, grabbing a bucket from beside the door. He was thankful, considering the slime that coated him, and dripped off of his coat, that he’d never gotten around to putting any rug’s down on the stone floor of the shop. If he had, he’d most likely be forced to burn them. He already planned that fate for his clothing.

“He got away?”

“No!” Anne yelled, floating next to her cousin. While still pale, she had begun to recover from the strain of rescuing her man and was able to speak loud enough for her cousin to hear her.

Elbert fumbled with the spirit monocle and looked at her. “Blimey, you look like a ghost… I mean… more than usual.”

“I’ll take that in the spirit you meant it.” She growled.

“Lord Thompson did not escape, in the conventional sense.” James sighed. “I shot him, twice. He’s dead, but his body fell into the waters of the sewer, and he was pulled away by the current.”

“It might as well be the bloody river Styx.” Anne observed wryly. “Those waters did not wish to give up their dead.”

“At least you got Anne revenge.”

“It could have been more.” Anne snapped. “The bastard was using his victims… MY uterus in a mad plan to grow his own Royals to be loyal to him! To take over the Empire!”

“You’re joking.”

“She’s not.” James said with a sigh. “Fortunately, the evidence, and the notes, all went up in flames.”

Elbert frowned, noting Anne’s unhappy nod of agreement. “But why better? If it would have proven him the killer, the Police could have closed the case on his murders! Anne could have had her justice, as well as her revenge.”

“But if the evidence remained, someone else could have tried to follow in Lord Jack the Ripper’s footsteps.” James replied. “No, Elbert, it’s better this way. Better his madness ends here and both Lord William Thompson and Jack the Ripper fade into the obscurity of historical footnotes.”

“It’s damn unsatisfying.” Elbert observed.

“Yes, but it’s the way it has to be.”