Chapter 5
"Where'd she go? Where'd she go?! Dammit!" I cursed to myself. I had been tailing her all evening and through her drunken unpredictability I had just lost track. She had been with a few clients tonight and had enough money for a room for the night but kept spending it at the pubs instead. The drinking perpetuated the cycle of services rendered, payments received, and back to the pubs. I followed her to Buck's Row and despite a nearly full moon and little to no fog, I lost her to one of the alleys. I had kept too much distance between us.
I flipped open my pocket watch and it lit with a green glow. I glanced at the time, nearly two thirty in the morn. Cradling the back of it with my right hand, I began tracing the different runes with my fingers on the outside face and traced a complex runecast. As I swiped through several runes, causing them to warm, I finished murmuring my parameters. I did my best to accurately describe her as detailed as possible, time and runes permitting. The emanating green glow constricted and concentrated to a bright bead at the rim of the watch face and began circling in a counterclockwise direction. After a few revolutions, the focused point stopped at eleven o'clock on the watch face and an ever so slight tugging of the enchantment pulled in my hand as if drawn by a strong magnet.
Avoiding the rare streetlamp, I kept myself shrouded as best I could in the moon lit sky. The constant pulling of the pocket watch in hand afforded me my constant eyesight to guide me. Towards the utmost end of the road, a patrolman rounded the corner away from me, apparently not spotting anything along his route. Obviously, the woman had kept hidden due to her profession and did too damn good of a job at it. I slowly pressed forward until I could see the Board School building illuminated in the moonlight against the black backdrop of night. The brief fixation of the building was interrupted by a sudden pull of the watch to my left, an alleyway nearby.
As carefully and quietly as I could muster, I crept up to the corner wall leading to the alley. Leaning ever so slightly I peered into the alley and spotted her and a slender man in a bowler hat pressed up against one another against the wall. His hands pawed at her hungrily. I nearly jumped as she let out a shriek mid-moan as the man suddenly pulled his hand away from her, the fingers of his hand held flat and pointed. His other hand moved to cover her mouth as he stabbed forward with his hand at her throat and abdomen with quick succession. Charging forward, I closed in on the assailant as he turned and looked at me.
As the man looked at me, his rigid features melted away to the softness of a woman, her eyes burning a bright green. Recognition clicked between us for a split second. A snarl ripped across her face as her bloody hand came away from the stomach of the poor woman and hit me with an open palm that struck with the force of a horse’s kick. The strike came at such a blinding speed, not even my preternatural reflexes could have helped me.
My feet left the ground as I was heaved backwards out of the alley, across the street and into hedges across the way. The enchanted watch flew from my hand, out of sight. Landing on my arm with the wet popping sound of a broken bone, my vision doubled as white protruded through skin and jacket. Pain racked up and down my body from the sudden awkward impact with the ground. Earthy smells of the hedge and dirt fought against the smoky stench now common in the city consumed by the industrial revolution.
I watched helplessly, through double vision, as the attacker continued to tear at the woman now on the ground. Even with my distorted view, I could tell the body was limp on the ground, life having already faded away. The attacker's bloodlust continued despite my interruption as she continued to mutilate the poor girl.
"Delilah? Wh- wha...?" I sputtered before darkness consumed me.
