Karina Cooper - Corroded

The fog thinned. A woman’s feet, splayed wide, thrust from the shelter of the first train car. Her knees were open, as if she’d fallen without care of modesty, and her skirts had pooled, streaked with dirt.

She lay propped against the siding, her pale hair sodden with her own blood. Her worn features slackened. Life seeped out over her tattered dress. Her skin gleamed stark white in my yellow lens, her blood black; such delightful contrast in my sparkling vision.

A man knelt beside her, as if in supplication to the alter of her convulsing body. He lifted a fist, sharp blade catching what dim light existed from the railway lamps. It winked, glinting with deadly promise, and slammed hard into the woman’s body. She jerked. Blood sprayed as it wrenched loose.

“Stop!” I cried.

He turned, a dervish of shadow and monstrous energy. I saw little enough but for the heavy greatcoat protecting him from the cold and damp, the silhouette of a top hat, and dark hair. Whatever else I might have noted could not make itself clear. I was addled, furious with my delay.

Angry that I had not found the collector, but the Ripper himself.

My rival would never be so inelegant.

How dare he? How dare this ham-fisted butcher mar my chase?

He said nothing, leaping to his feet and sprinting away. I launched myself after him, muscles straining to carry the launcher weighing them down, when my opium-saturated thoughts clicked into place. Five paces gone, and I halted, the world tilting at the suddenness of it.

I’d come prepared, hadn’t I?

With the fragrance of blood rich in the air, a coppery tang that nursed at my bile, I lifted the device to my shoulder, sighted through the rounded cross-hairs at the top. When the Ripper’s fleeing figure filled the circle, coat flapping in his haste, I squeezed the mechanism that would launch the netting.

Thoop! Compressed air whooshed from the pipes at the top, and the device recoiled back hard enough to wrench the whole of my arm. I stumbled backwards, spun about as pain rolled up my shoulder. Yet I could not tear my eyes away from the long shaft of brown that was my projectile.

It opened wide, a spider’s web I remembered from the first I’d seen it, and the weights pulled it wider.

“Got you,” I whispered.

The Ripper, for all his luck to date, could not avoid it. The net barreled into his back, weights snapping taut and swinging in a circle. Enfolding him tightly, it tripped up his long-legged pace and sent him sprawling face-first to the graveled ground. The glint of his knife sailed into the fog.

“Ha!” The sound cracked from me, shattered into a thousand echoes only half the fault of the medicinal resin. I dropped the now empty apparatus, fingers delving into one of my pouches for the usual braided cord I used to bind my collections.

A slow, measured clap filled the space between the Ripper’s harsh cursing.

I froze.

“I am at once disappointed and reluctantly impressed,” said the voice whose rasping quality haunted me.

I shuddered as I watched my own memories play out—the whistle in the dark, my screaming warning.

And then blood.

So much blood as it pumped from the veins of the man who dared to marry me.

The collector melded from the fog, a ghost with no form. As if he’d only waited for the scene to unfold this far. He paused beside the inert Ripper, looking down with an expression I could not see to read. His coat was more tailored than the Ripper’s own, his bowler hat pulled low enough that only a band of his face could be seen between the brim and his high collar. I imagined that I saw the gleam of sharp eyes, felt the weight of a stare that saw everything.

Of its own volition, my right hand plucked the blade from the front of my corset. I would not be caught unarmed this time. “So the puppet-master finally shows his face,” I replied, summoning every ounce of straining courage.

“Not quite.” His figure half-turned, as if to measure the distance between myself and the man he stood beside. “Fine reach.”

I would not thank him.

“Yet I had hoped for more sport.”

“Taking my bounty wasn’t enough?” I demanded, holding my arms loosely at my side. “Coventry give you no sport, big man that he was?”

The collector sighed. “My dear,” he said, in that strange whispering rasp of his that kept his voice so unique and grating, “that oaf was barely enough to get out of bed for.”

Oh, of course. How silly of me. A terrible part of myself wanted to laugh. I choked it down.

“I had hoped you take more time to enjoy my gift,” he continued, nudging the struggling man with the toe of his shoe. “It took some effort to coax him here, you know.”

“Do you expect an apology?”

Now his head turned, that shadowed band between hat and collar fixed in my direction. “No, dear girl.” His tone sharpened. “I expect you to do what you do best.”

My mouth curved up, a vicious thing I could not have stopped even had I wanted to. “I intend to do just that,” I assured him, venom in every word.

I could not see if he smiled, but his voice indicated he might. “This, I can’t wait to see.”

Such arrogance. “You are officially in my sights,” I told him, walking forward slowly enough that I could keep him firmly there. One wrong move, and I’d be prepared. No amount of opium haze, no fear, no threat of loss could save him now. “Collector you may be, but there’s a notice on you.”

“By the blue skin?” He did laugh, and the sound sent shivers over me. He laughed the way nails shrieked cross slate, the way madness infected and illness spread. That he called Zylphia by such a terrible name only made it somehow worse. “Nonsense. You’ve another to collect first.”

My gaze flicked to the cursing Ripper, entangled in the net. “Don’t be daft. I’ve got him.”

“Do you?” The collector turned, presenting me a narrow back. He flicked a hand, and the wink of a razored edge accompanied a whisper of movement. Rope snapped, and the Ripper grunted as he surged to his feet. He did not stop to retrieve his hat.

He simply ran.

“Are you mad?” I shrieked; foolishly so, as it was a question to which I already knew the answer.

The collector’s laugh chortled as he slipped back around another train car. Torn between hunting the Ripper or chasing him, I hesitated a fraction too long.

“May the best collector win,” came the taunt.

Fury lashed my flagging spirit.

I darted after Jack the Ripper.

Dreams unfold as if designed without interference. Terrible things happen, consequences are unleashed, and the dreamers watch as if in a play.

This was no dream, and yet I watched it unfold the same regardless. Too much of the resin, perhaps. Or not enough.

Had I more, I would have devoured it anyway.

I flung the knife I held. As if that dream enfolded me, I watched the winking blade soar through the air, cut through fog and leave vapors in its wake. It found its mark with unerring precision, sinking to the hilt in the back of the Ripper’s thigh. He cursed long and loud, but he did not stop. He did not slow. What madness must have infected him to keep him moving, I could not know for sure.

Given my own resin-saturated focus, I entertained an inkling.

He looked behind him, eyes wild in a face I could pick out as strong-featured yet not wholly monstrous, and bared his teeth in vicious rage.

The shadows combined around him, wrapped him in a cloak of animal savagery.

Yet he did not turn on me. He darted behind a rail car, hobbled fast as he dared, and I lost him briefly in the swirling fog.

Despite the brief flutter of fear that dreamlike sequence had given me, I would not give up this win.