London, England, 1888
London was much different than the peaceful rolling hills of Killarney, and while from time to time, Aaron missed the life he’d left behind, joining Ward’s team in London ended up being the best decision he could have made at the time. Now, over forty years after he’d left his home in Ireland, he was finally beginning to feel as if he had the hang of being a Guardian, though he was still learning.
Sitting in an office with a decent view of Hyde Park in the distance, he went over the notes Ward had provided him regarding the recent incidents in Whitechapel. None of them were quite certain how many victims they were looking at since the area had a reputation for being an uncouth slum, but with the recent demise of a young woman drained of most of her blood with slashes across her neck, it became clear that it was time for Ward’s team to take action.
As usual, the facts in the press were not at all reliable. Ward knew the best way to get information was to have eyes and ears on the police force, so several Hunters and Guardians spent at least part of their time working inside jobs. In most cases, when a Vampire was involved in a suspicious murder, the evidence was quite clear, and once Ward was called in, tracking down the noncompliant Vampire and destroying it was only a matter of time.
In this case, things were much more complicated, and Aaron wasn’t even sure if all of the murders were attributable to the same suspect, let alone the same Vampire.
He paged through the notes again, so enthralled by what he was reading, he didn’t acknowledge the office door when it opened, though he was vaguely aware that he wasn’t alone when a familiar voice said, “Find anything interesting?”
Looking up into large brown eyes, he smiled. Vicky certainly knew how to be stealthy. “It’s all interesting,” he replied as he gestured for her to have a seat, “but I’m still not sure what to make of it.”
“Mind if I take a look?” He slid the folder across the desk to her and took the opportunity to make some notes himself as she read through the documents.
Forty years had come and gone in the blink of an eye. While he spent very little time reflecting on the events of the evening Ward had come to his house in Killarney and found him sobbing into a pile of ashes, his mind did often return to his wife, Aislyn. Now, sitting across from the attractive blonde teammate he’d worked with for over three decades, a woman who was a firecracker and smart as a whip, he reminded himself he’d sworn never to fall in love again. If he couldn’t keep his promise to Aislyn to protect her, the least he could do was honor her memory by keeping his wedding vows.
“Well, it seems pretty straightforward to me,” Vicky replied, tossing the file back onto his desk.
“How’s that?” he asked, steeling himself for what was sure to be a sarcastic remark.
“Seems we’ve got a murderer on our hands,” she shrugged.
He couldn’t help but laugh. “That is the most brilliant deduction I’ve heard today.”
“I try,” she replied, rubbing her fingernails on her shoulder and blowing on her hand.
Unlike any other woman he’d ever met, Vicky refused to wear a skirt. She said it prevented her from working properly, particularly the long, complicated dresses everyone was wearing these days. Instead, she wore a split skirt—essentially pants with very wide legs—with a button-down shirt and jacket. Regardless of her style, there wasn’t a male on their team who wouldn’t proclaim she was definitely a lady.
“Ward gave me the file. He’ll be back this afternoon, but he’s trying to gather more information from one of our informants down at the station. It’s just hard to say if these are all related or if we actually have murderers,” he explained.
“Touché,” she nodded. “It does look to me like those first two, the one from April and the first August death, may not be related to the one last week.”
“I agree. And there’s really no reason to suspect that the first one was even a Vampire, but the police seem to want to lump them together, so Ward wanted me to check into it.”
“Are you going over there tonight then? To Stinkytown?” She crinkled her nose up and shook her head, blonde curls dancing around her face as she did so.
Aaron smiled. “I was thinking about it. Should I bring a nose plug?”
She shrugged. “All of London could be called Stinkytown, I suppose, although having the park out the window does make Kensington a little bit nicer than say, I don’t know, Whitechapel.”
“I agree. It’s nice,” he replied, turning his chair so that he could look out the window for a moment before turning back to face her.
“Reminds me of home,” she said, a lilt of sadness in her voice. “What about you? Do you see the Irish countryside when you glance out the window?”
Scoffing, Aaron said, “No, not nearly enough rocks.” She laughed, which gave him the opportunity to change the subject. “Do you want to go with me tonight?”
“To Stinkytown?” she clarified. “Yeah, sure. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Great. I’ll see if I can find a couple more teammates to join us.”
“Dinner first?” she asked, crossing her legs, which exposed her left ankle.
Temporarily distracted by her flirtatious nature, Aaron considered the proposition. After all, it was just dinner. Just a meal. Everyone had to eat. “I’ll probably be working here until it’s time to go,” he mumbled.
She tilted her head and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “You do eat—sometimes, don’t you?”
“I do,” he assured her with a smile, though the longer he did this job the less essential it seemed to become.
“Okay, well if you change your mind, let me know. It’s meatloaf night at the diner. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes chewing on old boot leather.”
“That sounds very tempting,” he nodded as she stood, smoothing her clothing as she did so.
“See you, Aaron,” Vicky said with a wink as she ducked out into the hallway.
“Goodbye,” he called after her and then released the deep breath he didn’t even realize he’d been holding. He looked down at the wedding ring he wore on his left hand and reminded himself that he was still married, at least in his own mind, and that Vicky would just have to find someone else to have dinner with—though the thought of the pretty blonde Hunter eating with anyone else also made him jealous.
“See, I told you it stinks,” Vicky muttered as the team made their way down an alley, clinging to the shadows, hoping to ferret out a Vampire who might be willing to talk. Though most were not willing to work with “the enemy” occasionally they’d find one who was willing to provide information for the promise of safety.
“Smells like flowers to me,” Edmund, a Guardian who was born and raised in London and was fairly new to the team remarked, flashing his charming British smile at her.
“Nah, that’s just me you’re smelling,” Vicky replied with that delightful grin, and Aaron felt the muscles in his stomach tighten.
“Let’s just focus on the task at hand and put the odors out of our minds, shall we?” he asked, though the rest of the team would take it as an order. Technically, he was only in charge because Ward had given him the file, and he took it upon himself to organize the exploration, but it seemed that more often than not, if Aaron was out in the field and Ward wasn’t, the teammates looked to him for direction. Sometimes, even when Ward was present, he found himself giving instructions, which were quickly followed.
“There’s movement up there,” the fourth member of their team, Frank, an older Hunter with a thick cockney accent, pointed out. “I got butterflies.”
“Me, too,” Edmund agreed, which was an indication that they may have stumbled upon a Vampire in their first try, but when the noisemaker emerged from the shadows, it was only a stray cat.
“Perhaps it is a feline Vampire?” Vicky offered.
“There is something nearby,” Aaron said, though he wasn’t certain where the feeling was coming from either. Not only did he have the same nervous sensation in his stomach that his teammates described, he could sense fear. Wherever the Vampire was, he knew they were there, and knew what they were.
He had discovered his special talent a few years after he first started training with Ward.
At first, he thought he had none, but as his Guardian skills began to increase, so did his ability to sense the emotions of others. Though he wasn’t sure how it worked or even how to describe it, he somehow knew when others were fearful, happy, sad, or in some cases, lustful.
The team continued on, traipsing their way through narrow alleys and down broad streets. Though they were dressed all in black, there was nothing particularly unusual about them, and the humans they passed paid them no mind.
It wasn’t until after they split up that he and Vicky made a discovery between two apartment buildings. “A Vampire’s been here recently,” she said. “I can smell it.” Her special talent, a particularly sensitive nose, allowed her to pick up on the scent of their enemy, though she had to be in fairly close proximity.
“Are you sure that’s not just Stinkytown?” he asked, teasing. He could sense it, too. It was the same Vampire as earlier, and as they closed in, the fear intensified.
“There—up ahead in the corner,” Vicky whispered without moving.
Aaron saw it too, the shadow of a man hunkered against the wall, trying to crouch in the darkness.
From here, the alley appeared to dead end into another building, but they couldn’t be sure there wasn’t another narrow passage that led off to the side; nor could they be certain he wouldn’t attempt to break through one of the glass windows of an apartment building. Before he even took a step forward, Aaron raised his hands so that the Vampire could see he had no weapons. “We just want to talk to you,” he called, his voice clear but not overly loud.
The form didn’t move, and for a moment, Aaron thought they may have a chase on their hands, but a few seconds later, the man unfolded himself and began to cautiously move forward.
“I didn’t do nothin’,” he shouted as he stepped out into the middle of the alley, his hands in his trouser pockets.
“I believe you,” Aaron calmly replied, taking only two steps forward, Vicky behind him. He didn’t actually believe the Vampire was innocent; after all, why make such a statement if it were true? Nevertheless, he did not believe this was the person responsible for the recent deaths in the area that had made the newspapers. “We are just looking for information.”
“’Bout what?” he called, his left foot twitching as if he might turn and run at any second.
Aaron and Vicky took two more cautious steps forward. There was still a good twenty feet between them. “About the murder last week, the one where the lady had her throat cut.”
“She weren’t no innocent,” came the reply, the left foot still twitching. He wore a long jacket and a cap, and with the sporadic movement, the hat jiggled on his head. “She was a streetwalker.”
“We know that,” Aaron nodded, two steps closer. “That’s why we’re just looking for information. Do you happen to know if it’s even our concern?”
The man clearly understood his meaning—was it a Vampire who was responsible or a human? There was a lengthy pause, and eventually he said, “Yeah.”
Aaron felt Vicky’s hand on his arm, her way of hiding her excitement that they’d gotten an answer to a very important question. “What about the first two?” he asked, still keeping his distance. They could hear each other easily now without shouting.
“You mean the one last spring with the pipe? Nah. We don’t work that way. You know that.”
“Didn’t think so,” he replied. “And the stabbing victim? Early August?”
“Nah, I dunno,” he shrugged.
Aaron filed that information away. If that one was a Vampire, it wasn’t the same fellow who was responsible for the death last week. “You know him?’
“Nah. Not yet. But I will. We all will.”
“What does that mean?” Vicky asked, no longer able to stay silent.
The Vampire startled at the sound of her voice, and Aaron put his hand up to still her.
“I dunno,” he shrugged again. “I gotta go.”
“No, wait,” Aaron said, hoping he would give just a bit more clarification. “Who is he?”
“Who is he?” the man echoed. Then, he broke into maniacal laughter which bounced off the sides of the brick building around them, filling the space with the sounds of insanity. “I’ll tell you who he is. He’s the Ripper.”
With that, the man turned and bounded down the alley, disappearing somewhere in the shadows near the end where the other building stood guard.
“The Ripper?” Vicky repeated. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “and I’m not sure I want to find out.”
Ward was back in the office the next day, and he had a bit more information to share, though not much. He called the entire staff into the conference room to meet at nine o’clock sharp, and despite the fact that they hadn’t gotten in until nearly 3:00, the time was no problem for the teammates who rarely slept anyway.
There was a total of ten individuals on the London Team as it was referred to. Over the last forty years, Aaron had watched as the two good Passels, the Hunters and Guardians, began to organize themselves to better fight the evil Vampires. Though technically, the job of the Guardian was to protect whichever of the other two Passels needed protecting, Aaron could never even fathom a situation where he’d need to protect a Vampire.
With better organization came a more concentrated battle effort, which also required funding. Several sources supplied the money to operate their organization, but the primary sources were governments that realized there were supernatural threats beyond their control and wealthy individuals who required constant security in exchange for their generous donations.
While large cities began to form their own teams to protect the humans nearby, there was both a Hunter Leader and a Guardian Leader who oversaw everything, a difficult job since the communication sources just were not there. They did have a direct telegraph service to reach the Leaders, both stationed in the US, and that was Ward’s primary method of communication. The Leaders just happened to be a married couple, and while Aaron had never met them, their reputations for being highly efficient killing machines, as well as organized and effective leaders, preceded them, and he secretly hoped one day to excel so well in his operations in the London Area that he could be reassigned to work directly with the Leaders in America. He was looking forward to meeting Janette and Jordan Findley.
This morning, however, he was eager to share the information he and Vicky had pried from the Vampire in the alley with the rest of their teammates. Vicky was one of only two women on their team. The other, Berta, was a large German Guardian who was known for her ability to pick Vampires up and slam them into hard surfaces—such as buildings or streets—crushing their bone structure and leaving piles of ash in her wake. Spying her squeezed into a chair at the end of the table, Aaron was glad to be sitting far away from her, next to the dainty-in-comparison Vicky, who likely wouldn’t accidentally crush his hand should she get excited and need something to squeeze.
“Are you eyeing Ms. Berta down there?” Vicky asked, leaning over and whispering in his ear.
The feel of her breath against his neck sent a chill down his spine, and he pulled away from her before she could even finish the question. “Of course,” he replied, flashing Vicky a smile. “Who wouldn’t?”
She grinned, but he sensed she wasn’t completely sure he was entirely joking.
Before he could even attempt to reassure her that he was not interested in Berta, Ward began the meeting. “Good morning, team,” he said, leaning forward over the end of the table. “I trust you all had a nice evening?”
He looked around at his teammates as they all nodded before he cleared his throat and continued. “This morning, I wanted to discuss with you a situation we have going on in Whitechapel. You may have heard about the murder that took place there last week. There’s a strong indication that this might be one of ours, though the police are attempting to establish if the case can be linked to two vaguely similar murders from earlier this year. Personally, I feel they are unrelated, but there are a few reasons to think otherwise.
“All of the murders involve a knife, though in the first one, the victim was definitely not bitten, as she lived for several days and did not mention such an occurrence to police. I think we can dismiss that one. The other two involve stab wounds and could be the workings of a Vampire, possibly the same one. I sent a team out to Whitechapel last night, and I’d like to hear from them now. Aaron?”
“Actually, Vicky is going to take this one,” Aaron replied with a smile. While he’d had lots of opportunities to present at these types of meetings, he liked to give others a chance to highlight their skills as well.
“Thank you,” she said, a lilt to her voice as she smiled an acknowledgement in his direction. She had a sheet of notes in front of her, but she seldom glanced down at them as she explained what they had discovered the night before. “Frank, Edmund, Aaron, and I began an exploration in Whitechapel early this morning at around 1:00. We split into two groups, and eventually, Aaron and I made contact with a male Vampire just before 2:00. Through a series of questions, we were able to ascertain that, at least to this Vampire’s knowledge, the first murder on our list, the one taking place in April of this year, was not Vampire related. He was unsure whether or not the early August stabbing was the works of a Vampire, but he said if it was, he knew it was not related to the slaying last week. When questioned about that particular event, he said it was the workings of quote, the Ripper, unquote, and that we would know about him soon. He then began to laugh rather loudly before disappearing down the alleyway.” When she had finished, she turned to Aaron, as if looking for approval, and he smiled at her before turning back to Ward.
“So, it is your belief, based on the information supplied to you by this alleyway Vampire that the first murder is not of our concern, the second may be but is not related to the third, which most certainly is a case we need to pursue, and that the culprit goes by the pseudonym ‘the Ripper?’” Ward restated for clarification.
“Yes, sir,” Vicky nodded. “I think that our entire exploratory team has accepted that interpretation, though Edmund and Frank were not present at the time of the interrogation.”
“Interesting,” Ward replied. “And who conducted the interrogation?”
“Mostly Aaron,” Vicky said. “I only asked one question, and the Vampire didn’t answer it.”
“What question was that?” Harvey, another teammate asked from his seat across the table from the blonde.
“He made the comment that he didn’t know the Ripper yet, but he would know him—that we will all know him,” she explained. “And I asked him what that meant, but he just said he didn’t know.”
“And what do you think it means?” asked Paul, a Guardian seated toward the other end of the table.
“I think it means this Vampire has a lot planned, and we need to catch him right away,” she replied, matter-of-factly.
Ward nodded. “I think you might be right. Excellent job, team. We need to get on this quickly. I want everyone to drop everything else they are working on. I will assign each of you a partner and a station in Whitechapel. If what this Vampire says is correct, we need to stop this Ripper character now before the body count begins to rise. There are enough dangerous humans on the loose in Whitechapel. The last thing we need is a Vampire with malevolent plans unleashed in the area.”