“And then one day you returned to find the tree gone,” Guy said.
Dylan nodded.
“They cut it down, didn’t they?”
Dylan looked into the distance as the memory resurfaced. “They cut down the entire forest.”
Guy shook his head. “Such a simple statement. Yet somehow it epitomizes the very spirit of humanity. The exact same sentiment dominated my world. The same destructive greed reduced it to ash and darkness.”
She looked at him. “You don’t like them, do you?”
His face was expressionless. “No.”
“Then why do you do it? Why protect them?”
He raised the mug to his lips. “Because I’m exceedingly good at following orders.”
“That’s all? That’s your answer?”
He exhaled softly. “We can’t all be kings, Ms. Plumm. As you know very well, some of us must be foot soldiers. There is a more to it, of course. A distinctively valid reason for my role in this travesty. I’m afraid I’m not willing to reveal everything about myself.” A small smile touched his lips. “Unless you’re willing to do the same.”
Dylan did not immediately respond. She analyzed the entire conversation, compiled data and predicted various outcomes. “You want me to help you.”
A raven cawed loudly. Its call was answered by its brethren, thousands of raucous cries exploded from the birds and echoed through the darkened forest. The noise went on, as though the ravens were trying to make up for their earlier silence.
Guy raised a finger toward the branches. “They want you to help me.”
“Do what?”
“Save their world.” Guy steepled his fingers. “You’ve personally experienced how Chimera operates. They have an agenda, one they value so highly that they’re willing to unleash mercenary units in broad daylight on the city streets in order to protect their interests. They are so fixated on capturing this source of energy that they are blind to the associated dangers. Opening a doorway to my dimension will unleash forces so destructive it’s beyond imagining. When that happens, the forest gets cut down again, Ms. Plumm. This time you get to do something about it.”
She shook her head. “You’re talking about completely altering the face of this world. That goes far beyond the parameters of my mission. That’s not what I’m here to do.”
The ravens cawed as though mocking her. Guy gave her a knowing smile. “You can’t spend millennia among a people without forming some sort of attachment, Ms. Plumm. You brought up emotion earlier. The mere fact you would mention it indicates that at some level you understand it. You’ve…developed it. Absorbed it into your system despite any notions of detachment. That tree you planted. It meant something to you. All the memories you’ve absorbed: they mean something to you. This world means something to you.”
“I have my orders,” she said. “I have a role to play. Like you said, we can’t all be kings.”
“You have your orders,” he said. “You keep watch. I understand that. You keep watch, you transmit, you experience. You keep watch.” He smiled. “And sometimes you act.”
Dylan shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, but you do. You’ve intervened before. Like in London, near the turn of the twentieth century. 1888, to be exact. Does that ring any bells?”
Dylan remained silent.
“It should. It was a year to be remembered, and it has been to this day. It’s not every year someone as infamous as Jack the Ripper is born, is it?”
He flicked a coin on the table. It spun for a long time. Dylan recognized the alternating faces of the 1888 sovereign coin: Queen Victoria on one side, and on the other a depiction of St. George and the Dragon.
Guy spoke softly. “You were ‘observing’ from the role of a prostitute named Sally, if I’m not mistaken. That put you close to the plight of the victims. Did your time in that role make you empathetic to those used and battered women, Ms. Plumm? Did you grow to care for them? Or were they mere numbers, statistics you tallied up as either acceptable losses or not?”
Dylan studied him. “You were the Ripper. You murdered those women, didn’t you?”
The sun went missing. The resulting darkness transformed the forest into something raw and ethereal as the brush crackled from nocturnal footpads. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled. The ravens cackled as though appreciating the sound.
“Murder?” Guy’s silhouetted figure tilted its head slightly. “You know as well as I what those women had become.”
Dylan exhaled into the chilly air. “Monsters. They turned into some sort of twisted creatures.”
“Others,” Guy said. “As we refer to them. In a rather ingenious scheme, one of the Others infiltrated the barrier. It sought to spread its corruptive influence though sexual interaction. Prostitutes were an obvious choice. They were widely abundant and could have quickly and easily spread the infection across the city. The good people of London would have experienced grotesque transformations in no time. Widespread panic would have occurred, and the entire city would have been overrun by the monstrosities.”
“But you stopped the possibility of infection by killing the hosts.”
He shrugged. “What was I to do? You know what I was up against. I may have killed the infected, but it was you who removed their organs, wasn’t it?”
Blood slicked her arms as she removed the steaming kidney from Catherine Eddowe’s freshly slain body and placed it in a glass container for later examination. She paid no heed to the grisly stab wounds or the rank, clotted stench of death. She had to work quickly. It was only a matter of time before the body was discovered…
Dylan shifted on the bench. “I wanted to know. I suspected there was more to the killings, but needed additional information. My intricate knowledge of human physiology gave me an advantage the investigators of that time did not possess. The autopsies I performed revealed a new and frightfully aggressive virus had infected those women.”
“Then you butchered your own work to make it seem like the mindless mutilation of a depraved killer. Rather gruesome, that.”
“They were already dead,” Dylan said. “You know because you killed them.”
Guy made a circular gesture. “And so it goes. But you did more than that, Ms. Plumm, didn’t you?”
Dylan remained silent.
“I left the last one for you,” he continued. “I’d ascertained someone else was investigating the killings. Someone smarter than the police. It wasn’t hard to find out who you were. I was watching you, even as you searched for me. I wanted to see what you would do. I left enough clues for you to figure out who the last infected girl was.” He paused “You know who I’m talking about.”
“Mary Jane Kelly,” she whispered.
He nodded. “After Annie Chapman I realized I was chasing the symptoms. I needed to find the source, the creature responsible for the infection. I was so caught up that I nearly missed Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. Had to take both of them down in one night. You know that because you did Ms. Eddowe’s quick autopsy, removing her kidney and uterus for inspection. But you didn’t get a chance to investigate Ms. Stride’s corpse, did you?”
“I didn’t have time,” Dylan said. The women’s dead, ghastly faces resurfaced from her memory banks. “I didn’t realize two women were killed that night.”
“Which left only Mary Jane Kelly.” The darkness had swallowed Guy’s face completely, leaving it a shadowy blur. “Lovely girl, wasn’t she?”
Dylan recalled Mary Jane’s beguiling smile, the perfect ginger shade of her long wavy hair, her green eyes that sparkled with when the light struck them. In Dylan’s form of Sally the prostitute, she had shared street corners with Mary Jane, split meager meals of oily stew, consoled the tears of her sometimes companion after she had been abused by another brutal customer. “Yes, she was.”