Page 15 of If Looks Could Kill

He’s done it now. A double murder, three weeks after the last kill.

Two in one night, less than an hour apart.

He already has the metropolis in the palm of his hand.

By the time the corpses are found and the story gets out, he’ll be the undisputed King of Whitechapel.

Duke of Spitalfields. Emperor of Aldgate. The God of the East End.

Yes, he is enjoying his fame. But what good will it do him?

Tonight’s first kill did not a particle of good. That stupid driver and his pony came along, and he had to scuttle away in the dark, empty-handed. The driver might never have noticed him, but the pony did. So he slipped away and found another woman. Within minutes, he had the ingredients he needed.

Again, he brewed his devil’s brew. A uterus, again, and a proper kidney this time. The coroner’s report on his previous victim said he’d made off with a bit of bladder. Embarrassing.

But the broth of uterus and kidney he drank tonight left his system just as the others had done, and his symptoms remain in full force. His face looks as haggard in the mirror as ever.

Perhaps a kidney was the wrong approach. It makes sense; an organ that purifies must itself be filthy, much as a mop that cleans the floor itself becomes foul.

The heart .

Perhaps recently living flesh is not enough. That baggage’s existence could scarcely be called living. How could ill health beget renewed health?

A young and healthy heart. Harvested from an almost-living body.

He’d always said it: his gentle ways would be his undoing. It was his generosity of soul that drove him to take older lives. They were nearer their end anyway, he had thought. Such humane instincts could cost him his life. But no longer.

He will wait, and watch, and bide his time, and find a younger woman.

Not just any. That one. That girl. He will hunt until he finds that one, and silence her, take her head from off her neck, and her heart from her breast, then live forever.