Page 10 of Taken by the Ripper (Time for Monsters #9)

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he creature from the night of the vampire attack stood near the wall, easy to miss when he blended in with the shadows.

The spikes on his back appeared more pointed and formidable than ever, and his claws almost seemed to grow longer with the flex of his fingers.

The same ripped and broken rags for clothing covered his body, revealing the chiseled muscles blatantly showing beneath.

Black strands of hair fell over his face, but instead of pushing them away from his eyes, he continued to stare back at her with his yellow gaze. Almost as if wary of her. Cautious.

If he wanted to kill her, he most certainly could. After witnessing his lethal speed and prowess against the vampires, she knew one wrong move might be her last.

Despite her quavering voice, she jested, “There is a front door for a reason. It’s rude to enter through a lady’s window.” And to make sure she knew he’d been there before, she added, “Again.”

A deep, gravelly voice spoke back, “I wanted to see if you were well.”

“No fang marks in my neck.” She swallowed as her body chilled with fear when she glanced at the sharp, pointed claws protruding from each finger. “No claws in my chest.”

“I won’t hurt you.”

“Then why are you here?” A part of her thought she might have been hallucinating.

At least until the monster took a step closer into the light, which further illuminated the gray of his skin, the yellow of his eyes, the sharp spines on his back and elbows.

He spoke again, his voice like the deep rumble of a large cart passing outside the window on the street. “A single drop of that blood on your lips could have infected you. I came to make sure that was not the case.”

Nothing made sense anymore. Vampires? Terrifying creatures? Infectious blood? At this point, she might as well check herself into the asylum.

The… thing… took another step closer, further illuminating his body in the lantern light. That’s when she noticed the sharp fingernail-like claws extending from each finger. Except…

Two were missing, each chipped to the nub.

And then she made the connection.

The claw lodged into her door frame. The claw buried in Elizabeth Stride’s abdomen. They were the same. And unless there were multiple of him skulking about the streets…

“You are Jack the Ripper,” she said breathlessly, unsure whether fascination or terror was going to cause her to faint. Because suddenly, she felt extremely light-headed. The Ripper was in her room. He had been there more than once. Perhaps he had come to finish the job from the alleyway.

Despite her frozen limbs, she managed to lean backward enough for her shoulders to brush against the farthest wall of the room. She was trapped. The Ripper had her cornered.

His tail swished back and forth with agitation, though he didn’t advance. “You don’t understand. No one understands. I’m not a murderer.”

“Yet, it was your claw found in one of the victims…wasn’t it?” Her hands shook some more. “Did you mean to kill her?”

This time, his tail fell limp behind him, and his shoulders slumped. “I had no choice. She was infected.”

“With some sort of blood.”

He ducked his head and nodded. “My blood. Those vampires? They kept me captive. Took a lot of my blood. Planned to use it to infect the people of Whitechapel.”

The vampire’s words returned to her mind with a stumbling crash. Feed on the men, infect the women.

She nearly kicked herself when her medical curiosity took over, and her fear took the corner seat in the mental carriage. “Your blood can only infect women.”

His ears momentarily flattened with evident surprise. “How did you know that?”

“I’m more intelligent than I look?” she jested, fighting the urge to collapse into a chair. Or onto the ground. Whichever was closer. “What are you? Some sort of vampire?” But then her gaze raked over his chiseled muscles, and she took another guess. “A gargoyle?”

“I’m a ghoul.” He pinned her with a stare. “Are you going to run off to your detective friend and tell him what I am? He’s been hunting me for some time.”

“I haven’t said anything.” She clamped her mouth shut, realizing the precarious situation she’d found herself in. No one knew what was in her room. If she screamed, she might only put her sisters and patients in danger.

Then again, she preferred that none of them find her body mutilated with her guts strewn all over her and her kidney missing in a large pool of her own blood.

“Y-y-you were here before.” She hated how her voice shook, but in the face of a monster, a ghoul , it couldn’t be helped. Especially when her hands ached and her fingers turned white from clutching the scalpel in her hands so tightly. “In my room. Why?”

“While I’m being hunted by your detective, I’m trying to rid Whitechapel of vampires. You had a patient who was bitten. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to transition.”

“Why my room?”

The corner of the monster’s mouth twitched as he gestured toward the window. “There’s a trellis I could climb. It was easier than walking through the front door. I might have given someone a good startle.”

On any other day, she might have laughed at the image his words conjured up. But she was closer to choking on her own fear than releasing a chuckle. “What happens if someone is infected?”

Another step closer, near enough for her to catch a glimpse of his sharp, black claws on his large feet. “They become a ghoul like me. But more…feral.”

“And you want to prevent that? Why?” Aside from the obvious, of course.

He released a long breath and closed his eyes. Without the yellow of his irises, he nearly blended right into the shadows with his dark coloring. Finally, he opened them again, revealing the sadness in his expression.

“A ghoul is created, not born. I had no choice in the matter for my own transition. But I would not wish this existence on anyone else. Therefore, I kill those who are infected. There is no other option.”

Slowly, she lowered her scalpel to her side. It was a foolish thing to do. But she was feeling rather foolish tonight. “Why, though?”

His attention turned toward the window and the darkness lingering outside.

“Male ghouls are created. Female ghouls are turned. And the females are incredibly infectious, ravenous blood-drinkers. Half of Whitechapel would get turned like them. The other half would die horrific deaths because of their feral thirst.”

“You would have killed me.”

“I did my best to prevent you from getting infected.”

She recalled getting cornered by vampires and nearly forced to drink the blood. The ghoul’s blood. And then she remembered him fighting the vampires while nothing she did could do any damage against their far superior strength.

“You’re sure I’m not infected?”

“Believe me, you’d know. But…”

“But?”

“There are ways to make sure.”

The last thing she wanted was to scour the streets in the dead of night with a feral thirst for blood, killing, and destruction.

Which was why she held perfectly still, fighting against her instincts to run in the presence of a monster, as the ghoul approached with agile movements.

She could tell he was trying to move slowly, but he was too quick and graceful to manage the feat entirely.

She still jumped and gasped in a breath when he almost seemed to disappear and reappear directly in front of her.

She dropped her scalpel to the floor. Her body was too petrified to retrieve it.

Not a single sound escaped her despite her desire to cry out for help.

But help for what? The ghoul wasn’t hurting her.

He wasn’t threatening her. He was just…scary to look at. Inhuman. A monster.

And he was the Whitechapel Murderer.

“May I touch you?” he asked softly, though any sort of gentleness was lessened by the gravel in his voice.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Always.”

For a few long moments, she stared back at him, debating between ducking beneath his arm to flee her room, and braving her fears to find out what he had planned.

Finally, she nodded and held perfectly still.

The heat of his body crossed the short distance between them as he took that last step toward her. His piercing yellow eyes penetrated her soul. His soft, gentle touch spurred her heart into an erratic, unexpected rhythm as he took her hand and brushed a thumb against her wrist.

And then surprise shook her to the core when he cradled her hand tenderly as if he were an infatuated gentleman rather than a creature she had watched tear apart two vampires with its very own claws.

“This will only hurt a little, but it will cause no lasting damage. I promise.”

Before she found a chance to break free from the spell of his ensnaring gaze, she inhaled sharply when she felt the sharp prick of his claw against her wrist.

Instinctively, she tried to snatch her hand back, but he held on tightly to prevent her from retracting it entirely. But then his grip loosened as if giving her the chance to take back her permission.

She didn’t.

Rather, she wanted to know the truth. Was she infected?

A small droplet of blood pooled on her wrist, a perfect circle created from the tiny pinprick of his claw.

He lifted her hand higher but then took her entirely off guard as his dark gray tongue caught the droplet from her wrist. Heat flushed through her face.

Her chest. Her entire body. Until it felt as if she stood in the inferno of the blazing afternoon sun in the desert in the middle of summer.

Fluster tied her tongue in a knot, preventing her from speaking anything more than a stuttering exclamation of shock.

Lastly, her heart betrayed her as it pounded against her ribcage, as her pulse thundered through her veins.

Surely, the ghoul could feel it where he held onto her hand, where his tongue licked another droplet off her wrist. And if he could somehow see in the dark, he likely wouldn’t miss the blush rising to her cheeks and giving her a rosy complexion.

The claws from the hand encircling her forearm brushed lightly against her skin, sending a wave of gooseflesh crawling to her shoulders. His touch was soft. Warm. And unexpectedly thrilling.

“And?” she whispered, watching the way his tongue ran across his bottom lip to catch the remainder of her blood. “Will you kill me? Or let me go?”

“Not you. No.”

She blinked several times as she realized she wasn’t sure which question he’d answered, and she didn’t get the chance to ask.

He said, “I hope you can convince your detective friend to stop looking for me. It will only end badly for him.”

“Detective La Cour is determined.”

“And that makes him foolish. Convince him to stop.”

But recalling the fierce determination in his every pore, she wasn’t sure anything she could say would convince him to call off his hunt for this…this… ghoul .

“I’ll try,” she promised instead.

“Good.” He flipped her hand over and lifted it to his lips, kissing the back of her fingers. Another flush scorched her, and the accompanying shock seemed to nail her feet to the floor and steal any lucid thoughts directly from her mind.

The ghoul dropped her hand suddenly right before the door on the opposite side of the room slammed open and hit the wall. Mazie stormed inside and pointed a furious finger at her.

“You went and got the package?” her sister shouted, eyebrows slanted downward with anger.

“That was my job, and you should have let me do it. I was capable of doing it on my own without you interfering. Therefore, I went all the way to the post office today. For what? To find out you already picked it up?”

“I needed it yesterday, Mazie,” Clara replied calmly as she surreptitiously glanced over her shoulder. The ghoul lingered in the shadows, blended in with the wall well enough for Mazie’s eyes to pass over him entirely. “Although the mother died, the baby survived. I had no choice.”

Mazie stalked back toward the door but then spun around with her finger still pointing toward her. “You think you are better than us. You have always thought yourself better. Arrogant and condescending. I hate the way you treat me. Like my only strength is finding a husband. You think I’m stupid.”

“Mazie—”

But her sister spun on her heel and stormed out of the room, leaving a guilty silence in her wake.

Clara pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed a deep sigh. She didn’t know how to handle this. All she was trying to do was take care of her family and her patients. But pride and delicate feelings? She was not equipped with the knowledge to deal with this.

Remembering she had an audience, she turned around. “What did you mean when you said…” Her words trailed off when she found the room empty save for a pair of flimsy curtains billowing in the gentle breeze.

Jack the Ripper was gone. And all she had of him was the pinprick of blood on her wrist and confusing feelings swirling in her chest.

A monster had kissed her hand. And she had liked it.

She released a breathy, disbelieving chuckle and rolled her eyes. It looked as if it were time to check herself into the batty house. Because dallying with the Ripper was a one-way street to either death or an insane asylum.