Page 45 of Taken By the Ripper
However, it seemed as if she was the only one in their little trio who hadn’t known. She’d been played the fool. Pining after the handsome detective and longing for the creature of the night.
How much was the truth?
How much was a lie?
And if Jack the Ripper and Detective La Cour were the same person… Was he simply putting up appearances and telling lies to keep the police off his tail? Quite literally? Or was something more sinister going on?
“Ugh,” he groaned as he tried to sit with great effort, clutching his face with one hand as if it pained him. Onehumanhand. He was no longer a ghoul. For now. “My head hurts.”
“Shh,” she cautioned as she placed a hand on his chest and gently pushed him back into a supine position. Every pore in her body wanted to scream at him, to demand answers. But he was injured. Yelling and arguing might only make things worse. “Try not to move until I assess that head injury.”
“Clara?” His eyes fluttered open, but his stare remained unfocused as he tried but failed to maintain eye contact. “What are you doing here? Where are we…”
He trailed off, blinking heavily as he scanned their surroundings. After a moment, he swore and tried to sit up again, but he quickly collapsed into her shoulder when he couldn’t keep himself upright. Still, he stuck out an arm as if to shield her from…from what, exactly?
“Stay still, I said,” she growled as she turned his head to the side to inspect his wound. The side of his head bled profusely. He’d hit it hard. Or perhaps someone had bashed it in. “And while you’re at it,” she said in an accusatory tone when she just couldn’t help herself, “bring back Jack. We’ll need him.”
“Jack?” he slurred, reaching out to her but missing several times until his hand brushed against her knee. “Clara, this looks like a vampire den. We have to escape.”
Clara sat up straighter and stared at him with wide eyes. Shock coursed through her the moment she made the realization, the very instant she connected the missing pieces of the intricate puzzle together.
Claude La Cour didn’t know he was Jack the Ripper.
No, no, no. She must be mistaken! Either she’d hit her head, and it had been Claude the entire time in the prison with her, or somehow, Jack and Claude had traded places. They couldn’t possibly be the same person. It made no sense for him to have no memory of a beastly transformation.
Or Claude could be lying…
The thought struck her and clung on tight, refusing to abate. She desperately wanted to believe she hadn’t been played the fool, that she hadn’t been so desperate for love that she’d allowed herself to get sucked into a lie. The evidence lay in frontof her. The mystery had unraveled. And now she would make him answer for it.
She pointed a menacing finger in his face, her nostrils flaring. “Do you take me for a fool, detective? What game are you playing?”
Claude leaned up on his elbow but groaned and quickly squeezed his eyes shut. “What game am I playing?” he finally gasped, his brows furrowed with pain. “I should ask you the same question. I got your warning and then saw you outside The Ten Bells. You were…panicked. And then I realized why. I called after you. I followed you, tried to keep you from following danger.”
“And then what happened?” she hissed, her gaze raking up and down his long form.
His opposite hand pinched the bridge of his nose as if trying to ward off an ache gathered there. “And then I woke up here.” He dropped his hand and leveled her with a weary, bloodshot stare. “I don’t remember getting clubbed on the back of the head, but that’s the only explanation for this.” He gestured to their surroundings.
She was unconvinced that was all that happened.
“You’re not telling me everything, and you know it. Tell me now, or we’re through.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “So there’s awe? Last I was informed, you chose the monster over me.”
“You infuriate me! I am infuriated!”
“Hush!” He scanned the room with a careful sweep of his gaze. “We don’t want to attract attention.”
“It’s too late for that.” She crossed her arms and leveled him with a waiting stare. “I need to know the truth. What really happened after you followed me?”
Claude sighed and shifted, wincing again after the action seemed to pain him. “I suppose I have not been completelyforthright.” He dragged a finger along the scar that struck through one side of his mouth and out the other. Hisdemon’s kiss.“My line of work is not without its risks. I have never told anyone how I got this, but I suppose you deserve the truth.”
Her gaze darted to the scar across his mouth, and her cheeks filled with heat when she remembered what that mouth had felt like against hers, what it had tasted like.
He continued, “I was aiding one of my colleagues with hunting a banshee in Ireland several years back. The assignment was supposed to be easy what with how much information we already had on the creature. But…” His gaze appeared far away as if he were someplace other than the prison cage. “Things went sideways. My colleague was killed, and I was left fighting for my life. This scar…” He ran a finger over his mouth again. “It’s from a ghoul, a sort of pet the banshee liked to keep.”
“What happened?” she whispered, enraptured with his tale.
“I only remember bits and pieces of that fateful night. The vampire. The banshee. My bleeding face. The leg they shattered when I attempted to escape. I hardly remember a thing. Therefore, when I showed up at the office in Paris, everyone was astounded to see me. I wasn’t sure how I got there, only that I did.”
