A number of police cars line the street just outside the once abandoned warehouse, their flashing lights illuminating an otherwise desolate district. A few hobos crowd around curiously to see the spectacle before being driven off by policemen posted behind the bright yellow tape.
Inside the warehouse, several men and women in white polyester overalls, under the direction of the bespectacled forensic specialist Neville Lyles, are carefully analyzing the young brunette's mutilated body, taking pictures and collecting fiber and fluid samples from the enclosed crime scene. Lieutenant Faisal stands in a corner with Chief Helmwood, exchanging words and looking over at a dazed-looking young man sitting in the far back row of the theater, bandages wrapped around his chest, head, and left arm. He sits silently, staring blankly at the stage.
“Are you Corbin Graystone?”
Corbin raises his eyes and sees a middle-aged, dark skinned man in uniform, a graying beard dotting his chin. He responds with a slight nod.
“You knew the victim.”
Another nod.
“I’m Chief Helmwood, of the London Metropolitan Police. This is Lieutenant Faisal. He will be overseeing this case.”
The man finally introduces himself and helps himself to a seat adjacent to Corbin.
“The description you gave of the perpetrator… it’s quite…unusual…”
Corbin is silent for another moment, before slowly turning his eyes to the police chief.
“I know what I saw, sir.”
Chief Helmwood lets out a deep sigh and glances up at Faisal, who gives him a slight nod. He shifts his attention back to the young man.
"How are those wounds, my boy?"
"They'll heal, sir. Not too deep."
Corbin replies in a terse manner, staring dead ahead at the crime scene. Helmwood gently places a leathery hand on the shoulder of Corbin's uninjured arm.
"We would like for you to join our investigation."
"Sir...?"
Corbin glances over with a slight start.
"You knew the victim personally, and you saw the perpetrator. I've already spoken to the college. We will be transfering you out of campus security and appoint you as a community support officer for this specific case."
Colt nods in silent agreement, then ponders for a moment.
“And Iley?”
"Yes, of course, the victim's son."
Lieutenant Faisal steps forward and produces a folded document from his pocket.
"If I understand correctly, you are designated as his surrogate guardian, not the victim's immediate family. What exactly is your relationship with the victim?"
Corbin sits in silence for yet another moment, playing out in his mind the phone call he will inevitably be making to Lilia's parents, who haven't spoken to her ever since she decided to keep Iley. As far as they are concerned, Iley doesn't exist, and Lilia is already dead to them. He wonders if they will weep for their daughter as bitterly as he did, if at all.
"Mister Graystone?"
Lieutenant Faisal inquires again. Corbin gazes up at him, and hears the words come out of his own mouth:
"I'm Iley's father."
Elsewhere, a pair of ocean blue eyes slowly open in a black void.
Swiftly sitting up, Kazelle gasps hard but strangely does not feel any breaths drawing in or out, like she was underwater but not drowning, just... there.
She turns her head about in the absolute darkness. Her whole body feels icy cold. She can feel the touch of a frigid stony surface under her hips. She slowly runs her hands across her body and realizes that she is completely naked, except for her choker with the silver bell still dangling from her neck.
Is she dead?
Is this what Hell feels like?
She has never given particular thought to the existence of an afterlife. But if there was a Heaven and a Hell, she had no reason to believe she would be in the former.
Gradually, her pupils begin to adjust to the darkness. She starts to recognize the form of a damp cellar, surrounded by walls of cold, gray stones. As she slowly climbs to her feet, reaching out and laying her hands on the void, she can faintly make out an echo.
She freezes, listening attentively, and hears it again.
The sound of footsteps.
Is this the devil? Coming to bid his welcome to eternal damnation?
She squints her eyes in the direction of the echoing clacks across the cold, hard surface, and vaguely makes out the silhouette of an approaching figure in a black robe. Kazelle's eyes widen as the figure closes into her line of vision.
"Y... you are...?"
There was a stuttering voice of recognition. Yes, there was no mistaking it: The silvery hair over the wrinkles, the black habit, even the umbrella, now being used as a walking stick. This was the elderly nun she had encountered on that rainy evening.
"I've... seen you before..."
"That is correct."
"Are you...?"
"The devil? Goodness, no. Far from such."
The elderly nun lets out a slight snort in her raspy, low-toned voice.
"Although I will say: You'd probably be meeting him right now, if it wasn't for me."
"I don't understand... wait... did you... save me...?"
Kazelle places one hand on her head, trying to recall the moment before she lost consciousness...
""Save' might be a misleading way to put it."
She was laid across a tomb, unable to move...
"And then he..."
The man in robe had carved a pentagram into her flesh. She vividly remembers the sting, the cold blade against her skin...
"There was blood..."
He had driven the blade into her bowels, gutting her like a livestock for the slaughter....
"My stomach..."
Kazelle glances down and hurriedly runs her fingers across the wounds, but finds them closed, sealed by fine, deliberate stitches. She looks up at the nun with a perplexed look.
"You did save me, didn't you?"
"No, you died. I salvaged you."
"Bu... but I'm standing right here, talking to you. Breathing."
"Breathing? Are you?"
The nun raises an eyebrow at her curiously. Kazelle quickly brings her palm to her nostrils and mouth.
No air.
She hurriedly slides the hand down over her bare breasts.
No heartbeat.
She glances up at the nun again, a bewildered look in her eyes.
"Are you beginning to understand, Kazelle Evangelin?"
"You know my name."
The nun produces Kazelle's student ID, which had been kept in her guitar case, and holds it up in two fingers.
"Your corpse wasn't the only thing I recovered."
Before Kazelle can respond, the nun slowly turns to walk away, reaching for a dark object resting against the stone wall. Kazelle immediately recognizes her electric guitar.
"This is a fine instrument. I found it sitting against a tree in the cemetery soon after recovering your body. It would have been a shame to leave it behind..."
She runs her bony, wrinkled fingers across the shimmering black body, sliding across some words engraved in indigo-colored etching.
"'Hades Harp'... Is this the name of your guitar? How appropriate for your current state."
"Can you please... what happened to me?"
The nun turns around to meet her gaze. Kazelle notices for the first time that the color in one of her pupils has long ago faded away.
"I told you, you died."
"Then why am I...?"
Suddenly, a thought seems to strike Kazelle. She blurts out urgently:
"Colette! What happened to Colette!?"
"Didn't you want to know what happened to you?"
"..."
"I suppose it's meaningless to keep you in the dark. I'll be frank: Your friend is dead."
Though Kazelle vaguely recalls seeing the horrified expression on Colette's severed head, the actual revelation is no less agonizing. She stumbles back, trying to draw her breath, but once again feels nothing passing through her airways.
"Now, would you like to know who did that to her... and you?"
Kazelle shoots a stare up into the nun's face, eagerly awaiting her answer. The old woman's one good eye glimmers knowingly.
"Tell me who... no, first of all, who are you? Why should I trust you?"
"Because I am the one who will give you a second... let's call it... existence. You may refer to me as Mother Rahab."
"Second existence... and this place...?"
"This is Jericho."
"'Jericho'?"
"Now, as for the ones who did this to you and your friend... They belong to a group calling itself the 'Rippers Society'."
Mother Rahab paces about, clicking the tip of her umbrella firmly against the stone floor with each step, gesturing to Kazelle with a finger out.
"Have you ever heard of the name 'Jack the Ripper'?"
"Yeah... I suppose... some old-timey serial killer?"
"19th century Victorian era, to be exact. Right here in merry old England. He committed a series of murders against young, single women, and then one day... just vanished. Never caught."
"..."
"The members of this so-called 'Rippers Society' worship Jack like a folk hero... a god, even. They take up the name, calling themselves Rippers. They claim to be carrying on his legacy by kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing young, single women throughout England, like you and your friend, feeding into their deranged idealogy that women should be nothing more than objects to indulge their sexual fantasies. Some of them, I believe, even claim to be his direct descendants."
"What about the police? Why haven't they done anything about this group?"
Mother Rahab shakes her head with a snort.
"The police? Heh... The Rippers Society has members in high places- Law enforcement, government, military, probably even the Church of England or the Royal Courts. I still haven't compiled enough information to identify anyone specifically, but there are definitely people to help keep the Rippers Society's existence out of public knowledge."
Kazelle stands aghast, silently trying to process this sudden torrent of nauseating revelation. Her mind turns to the pale, slim man with the full goatee who gutted her, wondering if he was also somebody in a position of prestige. Mother Rahab studies her reaction and turns to face her.
"I will make you an offer- A condition for granting you your second existence."
"An offer? What kind of offer?"
Mother Rahab reaches into her cloak and produces two objects. Kazelle glances down into the old woman's hand.
One: a small, clear syringe, about the size of a pencil. Inside the transparent tube, there is some kind of greenish fluid, filled about halfway.
The other: A metallic cross, black as charcoal, linked to a thin metal chain.
"I set before you the paths of life and death..."
Mother Rahab explains, her demeanor darkening, more sober than before.
"Take the cross, and you will walk the path of life and peace- a short life, but you will be free from any burden of what I have told you today. You will be laid to rest. And when you awaken again, you shall have no recollection of this encounter. You will be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society as if you are one of the living. Free from the snares of sin until your corpse of a body inevitably decays away."
"Decay...? How long will that take?"
"For an average cadaver... about a month. But as a reanimated corpse, I'd give it about two."
"And what is this?"
Kazelle shudders at the thought of becoming a pile of rotting flesh and points to the syringe.
"I call this the 'z-serum'... "
Mother Rahab pinches it in her fingers and holds it up at eye level.
"Take the syringe, and you will walk the path of death and destruction. I will teach you how to hunt these Rippers. You will drench your hands in their blood and trample upon their corpses until your desire for retribution is satiated."
Kazelle stares at the syringe without a word, a faint glimmer of bloodlust in her eyes. Mother Rahab presses on, her voice raising higher:
"You will become a Daughter of Jericho- the city rife with sin and destined for destruction. You will carry the full burden of your transgressions until you are consumed by its unbearable weight."
Kazelle hesitates for a moment. And then, slowly, reaches for the syringe, touching it with the tip of her index finger.
"I see, so you've chosen..."
Kazelle pulls her hand back momentarily, then reaches out again, laying her hands on both objects.
"I want... revenge, for myself and for Colette..."
She meets Mother Rahab's gaze, her eyes filled with anger and sorrow, but also desperation, a yearning to live.
"But... I also want a chance... a chance to be me again... Tell me... why can't I have both?"
The question, the plea, strikes the elderly nun in a way she hasn't expected: Why can't she have both? Surely it is possible, especially under that man's guidance. And she can still be useful as a Ripper hunter, a Daughter of Jericho...
"This isn't how it's supposed to work, but... very well, I suppose we can try..."
Mother Rahab steps forward, taking the cross, and puts it around Kazelle's neck.
"Now then, my daughter. Shall we get started?"
