“Leave my wife be. She has nothing to do with this. She knows nothing.”
The creature pulled the blade away from my neck, and with a movement faster than I could follow, hid the blade deep inside the recesses of its cloak.
“I don’t care what she knows. She is like all women. A whore. Worth nothing. She deserves what they all deserve. Death. Worse than death.”
But he took a step away from me, toward Richard, something stronger than his hate for my gender drawing him toward my husband.
“Al-Iblis.” My husband said the name like it was a curse, and confirmed what unholy creature I was seeing. Richard had written of it extensively in the manuscript. I knew then what I had hoped was just a collection of tales was true. The world as I had known it and been taught by my church, my parents, my schools, was not the world as it was.
“Sir Richard Francis Burton,” the creature hissed. “I had heard the queen-whore knighted you. You have traveled far since we met in Medina. But you never came back to me like you promised.”
“You lied to me,” Burton said.
The creature laughed, like the sound fingernails make on a blackboard, causing my skin to crawl. “I lied? I told you much truth. Enough for you to go to Giza, to find Kaji. So I lied about myself. What does that matter? You will never know the truth.”
“I know more than I did,” Richard answered him. “I know many of your names now.”
The creature smiled, revealing yellowing teeth. “You do? Do you know what they call me now?”
“In the newspapers they call you Jack the Ripper,” Richard said, a name which froze my heart. I had read of the atrocities committed by the shadow the papers had given that title to. To have it stand here in my hallway; I knew we were doomed. I had read how his hate for my gender had been displayed, most likely with the very same blade that he had held against my throat seconds earlier.
“The Ripper,” the creature repeated. “They are fools. I do not rip. I cut with a precision the best of your surgeons could not even begin to imitate, but they ignore that and worry only about the death of worthless scum.”
“Our surgeons try to save lives,” Burton said.
“I try to save a life also.” The creature pointed a thin, pale finger with a long nail at the end, at its own chest. “Mine.”
“You have lived for millennia.” Richard seemed more intrigued than scared.
I had seen him this way before in dangerous situations, where normal men would have fled for their lives. His only interest was learning more. But this was our house, not a jungle. And this creature — there was no doubt it was more dangerous than any Richard had ever faced on any of the many continents he had traveled to. “Why are you afraid for your life now?”
“This has lived for millennia!” The creature clawed through his cloak and suit shirt, pulling out an amulet on a thin metal chain. The metal was formed in the symbol of two hands lifted up in praise, but there was no body between. “This—” the creature thumped the pale flesh of his chest, “will die soon.”
For the first time I picked up something other than hate off the creature as it turned its head looking down the stairs, toward the open front door. Its voice dropped low, as if afraid of being overheard. “They track me. They want me to go with them. To pass on, they call it. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to die! “
“Why do you hate women so?” Richard asked. “Why do you kill them and cut their bodies?”
“I am not of woman,” the creature snarled. “I was not born of woman. It is a woman who tracks me, who wants me to pass on. They are all evil. Evil. I need blood to keep me going until — I need parts of their bodies. I cannot—” He fell into silence, as if confused.
“Tell me your real name.” I had seen Richard stand upright against a charging tiger in India, rifle to his shoulder, waiting until the last possible second before taking the fatal shot, wanting to see the tiger’s eyes, every little detail. If the gun had jammed then, we would not be here today.
He always pushed — always. It was why I had given my life to spend with him. What woman could resist such a man?
“My real name?” The creature took a few steps until it was opposite Richard in the hallway, its back to the banister. I remained frozen at the top of the landing. I could tell this was desperately tiring to Richard, his right shoulder leaning against the door-jamb. The disease that was killing him from within was making great strides in doing just that as he wasted energy. I also knew that Richard would stand and talk to the devil himself if it would give him more information regarding his tarigat.
The creature seemed to be regarding Richard’s query as if it were some sort of riddle. “My real name means I have to know who exactly I am.” The creature held a hand up toward the hall light as if it could see through the flesh. “I am a Shadow. That’s what I was made to be. The Shadow of someone real. Created to do his bidding. They once called me Lucifer, long ago.”
Those words chilled me. I had always known the things Richard were uncovering would change the accepted view of history, but Lucifer!
“They said I was cast out. But I wasn’t cast out. I was left behind. Do you know what that feels like? To be made, to not even be real, and to be left behind to do his bidding when you are more than he was? More than he ever will be.”
“His name,” my husband pressed. “The one you are the shadow of. What is it?”
“It would mean nothing to you,” the creature said. It twitched, looking to the open door once more. The skin on its face rippled as if worms moved beneath. “They are coming for me. The lackeys. The women. The whores who serve The Mission. To pass the Shadow on which means my death.” He took a step toward Richard.
“I need the Grail,” the creature’s voice went even lower. “I need to know what you have learned of the Grail! It is the only thing that can save me.”
“Tell me the name.”
“Aspasia,” it spit the word out. “The leader of the firstborn. I am his Shadow.”
“Aspasia,” Richard repeated. “I have heard that name. I know who that is.” The creature — Aspasia’s Shadow — stepped forward, close to my husband. “The Grail. Tell me where it is.” It paused, searching my husband’s face, comprehension dawning on its face. “You don’t know what it is, do you? You’ve searched all these years and you don’t even know what it is you ‘ve been looking for!”
That was the most human the creature had been, the shock punching through to its core. I turned, the faint sound of horses’ hooves on the long driveway echoing through the door. The creature heard them too.
It drew the blade as it spun toward me. I didn’t even have time to raise my hand. It had the knife at my throat, so swiftly did it move. “I will slice her open, spill her putrid innards so the world can see the whore she is! Where is the Grail?” The dementia was back in full force.
Heavy boots sounded on the outside stairs. Three men cloaked in black entered, followed by a tall woman similarly dressed. She held up her hand, palm out, as she stepped between the men to the forefront. “Come with us.”
The creature whirled, putting me between him and the men. “I do not wish to pass on. I want my life!”
“It was never your life to have.” The leader was advancing, the others behind her. She reached the bottom of the stairs, slowly coming up. “Your life was to be a servant and you have done that well. We are all servants. Now it is time to pass on.”
“Never!” He screamed a sound like a beast in pain. “I will bathe this world in blood like it has never seen. I will tell these humans the truth of their existence, rip their gods out from their chests, spit on their religions, destroy their beliefs, their petty sciences.”