Chapter 2
934 Words
Eli
I told myself I wouldn’t go back to the alley.
But by nightfall, my boots were soaked and I was three blocks from Durward, hands buried in my jacket, eyes scanning shadows like they owed me something. Like they remembered me.
Maybe I wanted them to.
The police tape had been taken down a week ago. Quick cleanup. Quicker cover-up. No one wanted to admit that London’s most infamous ghost had maybe—just maybe—started killing again.
I turned the corner and froze.
Someone was already there.
A woman. Pale as frost, long coat sweeping the puddles like mist. She stood with her back to me, staring at the exact spot I always saw in my dreams—the bloodstained bricks. The drain. The knife-mark etched into the wall that no one ever noticed but me.
My heart didn’t beat. It staggered.
She turned slowly, like she’d been expecting me.
“Eli Walker,” she said. Not a question.
“How do you know my name?”
“I know all the names tied to that blood.” Her eyes flickered—a shade between violet and black, like the kind of night that eats stars.
“You knew him,” I said. I don’t know why. I just… knew.
She tilted her head. “Knew? No. But I knew what he was. Same as you.”
“I’m nothing like him.”
“That’s what he said too.”
The silence cracked between us like thunder. I took a step back. She didn’t follow.
Instead, she reached into her coat and pulled out something wrapped in oilcloth. She tossed it at my feet. It hit the ground with a dull clink.
A knife.
Old. Bone handle. Symbols burned into the blade.
“I don’t want it.”
“You’ll need it,” she said. “He’s marked you.”
“Who?”
Her eyes narrowed.
> “The Reaper’s Chosen.”
---
Later That Night
Same time. 3:33 AM.
The call came through the burner phone I kept hidden in a drawer, the one no one had the number to.
Unknown caller.
I answered, throat tight.
All I heard was breathing. Then a voice, low and wet.
> “Check the alley.”
The line went dead.
By the time I got there, the sirens were already screaming. Blue lights lit the fog like a horror show, and cops in rubber gloves were pushing people back.
I ducked behind the back of a trash bin and peeked through the cracks in the tape.
Another girl.
Dead.
But this time, they left something behind.
A message.
Carved into her stomach, ragged and deep:
> "THE BLOODLINE AWAKENS. CHOOSE YOUR SIDE, RIPPER."
---
Then
Age 8
The first time I hurt someone, I didn’t mean to.
We were playing hide and seek in the orphanage yard. It was cold. The grass had more mud than color, and the other kids never really wanted me there. I was just fast. Good at hiding. Quiet in ways that unsettled them.
I was hiding behind the caretaker’s shed when Thomas found me.
He was older, cruel. Called me “the bastard boy” when the adults weren’t around. Said no one wanted me because I came from “bad blood.”
That day, he cornered me. Said I smelled like garbage. Shoved me into the wall and laughed when I didn’t cry.
I don’t remember what happened after that. Not all of it.
Just the sound of crunching. Of screaming. The feeling of warm on my hands.
When they pulled me off him, his nose was broken. Teeth shattered. Blood smeared across my knuckles like paint.
I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t anything.
Just… cold.
They sent me to therapy after that. Said I had issues with “emotional regulation.”
But what they didn’t know—what I never told them—was that, when I looked into the mirror that night…
…I smiled.
And it wasn’t my smile.
---
Now
Whitechapel
Tracking her wasn’t easy. Whoever she was, she didn’t use cards, didn’t leave trails, didn’t exist on paper.
But London has ghosts. And I’d become very good at listening to them.
I asked the butcher downstairs—he said he saw her a week ago near the old apothecary ruins. The psychic on Brick Lane swore she saw “a woman with a death mark behind her eyes” buying wormwood and nightshade. Creepy old librarian near the docks? Said she smelled like grave soil and lilies.
No name.
Just whispers.
They called her Juliet Nocturne.
Sounded made-up. Gothic as hell. But somehow it fit.
I finally caught up to her in the old tunnels beneath Aldgate station. They’re sealed off to the public, but death doesn’t respect caution tape.
She was waiting—of course.
Leaning against the wall like this was all part of the plan. A single candle flickered between us, casting strange shadows across her face.
“I told you,” she said before I opened my mouth, “you’d be back.”
“I saw the message.”
She nodded slowly. “He’s watching. Testing. The Reaper’s Chosen can’t rise without balance.”
“And what the hell does that mean?”
Juliet stepped forward. “It means your bloodline isn’t the only one waking up. There’s more to this game than you know, Ripper’s Son. And if you don’t learn the rules fast—”
She pressed a hand to my chest, right over my heart.
> “—you’ll become the blade. Not the wielder.”
- Writer
