Capturing the Devil (Stalking Jack the Ripper #4)(110)

“No.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling like a coward. Then I forced myself to remember what had brought me here to begin with. Whom I was fighting for. It became easier to recall I was fearless in the face of fear. I was capable of so much more than I’d ever imagined.

I’d been knocked down, struck time and again by those who did not believe I could accomplish anything other than smiling prettily. I’d been told I was wretched for my curiosity and scorned for following my heart. It was time to tell myself a different tale. One where I was the hero, battling against harmful words and doubts.

“I will not be afraid.” I repeated it silently as I maneuvered to my knees, wincing as a new memory came to me along with the bright spots of pain. I’d forgotten I’d cracked my bones again. I prodded my leg, relieved it wasn’t rebroken, just badly bruised from the feel of it. Determined to escape before the devil returned, I got to my feet and took in the full sights around me. “Don’t be afraid.”

It was a nice sentiment, though like most areas of my life, it proved false as the true horror of my situation came into view. I was not alone in this basement chamber.

Lying on a large slab, as if a tribute to the gods left on some unholy altar, was a female corpse. Half its face was missing its outer layers of skin, the angry red and white of meat and muscle glistening in the dull light. The other half seemed frozen in an eternal scream.

I clapped a hand over my mouth, praying that I could choke my own scream down before the devil found me. I was looking at what remained of sweet Minnie.

Her partially missing face was not the worst of what had been done to her, however. As my gaze slowly moved down what remained of her body, I noticed strips of flesh had been cut away, exposing the milky-white bone beneath. An image of the goat in the meatpacking district of New York City flashed through my mind.

One leg appeared to have been set in a vat of sulfuric acid—there was nothing left but charred fragments of skin and the pungent scent of foul eggs.

Sulfur. I inhaled again, immediately regretting it as the sweetness of decay got stuck in my nose. It was a sickening aroma—worse than any I’d had the misfortune of experiencing before.

I’d woken up in Hell. And Hell smelled of rotten flesh and felt like eternal screams.

My pulse was near hysteria as it rushed through my body. I forced my attention on the rest of the room, all traces of the drug burned out as fresh adrenaline coursed through me. My body understood the laws of nature—it was ready for fight or flight.

Shadows and dust twirled and danced to their own macabre beat, spurring my heart into a greater frenzy. Nathaniel had created a hidden lair in our home to practice his dark deeds, but it was nothing compared to this castle built of blood and bone.

Barrels lined the walls, some larger than others. Human skulls were piled high in one, and I stared, unable to comprehend the magnitude of how many people had to die for the number of skulls needed to overflow from those barrels.

I swallowed my revulsion, continuing to scan what must be hundreds of victims.

Some barrels were small enough to fit a—

I squeezed my eyes shut as a tiny skull caught my attention. Was that Pearl?

What sort of monster would harm a child? I knew who in an instant. It was the very same man who ripped women apart and left them in discarded heaps as if they were rubbish. The one we’d stalked and foolishly assumed was dead. This chamber reminded me so much of my brother’s secret laboratory, and yet it was nothing like it. Nathaniel’s had been dark and twisted, but it was focused on science. This… this was only a crypt filled with death. A tribute and prize of remembrance. A place of torture.

A shiny bit of metal glinted in the flickering light. I slowly moved toward it and wished I hadn’t. It was my brother’s prized silver comb. I stopped breathing.

I wasn’t sure how Holmes had gotten it, but there was no doubt in my mind it belonged to Nathaniel. Which meant the Ripper had snuck into my house in London sometime after my brother had died.

Even though it was the last thing I wished to do, I brought myself back to that fateful November night when I’d confronted my brother with the crimes I thought he’d committed, replaying each detail as if it were a moving picture.

I’d claimed Nathaniel was the Ripper.

I’d accused him of committing such violent acts. But, like Mephistopheles had warned me time and again during that hellish carnival, I needed to beware of

my mind conjuring its own tale. I knew now that it had been creating stories, but why hadn’t my brother confessed the truth?

I closed my eyes, seeing that night clearer. At first Nathaniel seemed surprised, but then he’d recovered quickly. He’d fed me line after line, almost as if he’d made it up on the go. But why? Why lay claim to something so unspeakably horrid if he was innocent? Had he been coerced? What on earth would possess him to—The answer hit me so swiftly, I gasped. It was so simple, yet I couldn’t process it. There was only one force on earth with that power.

Love.

Not necessarily romantic love. My brother likely felt so deprived of true companionship that he’d been led onto a dark, twisted path. I imagined the murderer had seen the hunger in him for the love and acceptance of a friend and exploited it. After my mother’s death, Nathaniel was emotionally broken in so many ways I hadn’t seen, but someone else did.

And used it against him.