“Hsst!”
At that sharp sound from Noah, Jenna froze. Her lungs rasped in the silence and her heart slammed against her ribs. Sweat, cold and dank as the putrid air, clung to hair and skin and eyelashes. She listened . . .
“Bloody bitch!” A man’s voice echoed through the sewers, fierce with some nameless rage that left the tiny hairs along Jenna’s nape and arms starkly erect. Her fingers tightened of their own volition around the butt of her gun. A bloodcurdling scream, high and ragged, pierced the blackness. A woman’s scream . . .
The woman was sobbing out, “Don’t kill me, please, I won’t tell anyone you’re the Ripper, please, just let me go home!” The woman’s voice, clearly British, shook on a wild note of despair.
“That is not Ianira,” Marcus breathed.
“What time does the gate go?” Lachley’s voice . . .
“I don’t know!”
“What time was it when you came through, then?”
A choked-off cry of pain floated through the sewer tunnels. “About—about eight o’clock, I think . . . it was just dusk . . . oh, God, please . . . no!”
She screamed again, high, ragged. The sound cut off hideously. Jenna stood trembling, torn between the need to stay hidden and the need to rush forward, to stop whatever ghastly torture was underway. A moment later another sound drifted through the sewers, a sound Jenna couldn’t identify at first. Heavy, rhythmic thumps, a grating, scraping sound, like someone hacking apart a cow’s carcass. Jenna covered her mouth with the back of one shaking hand. Then they heard footfalls and a heavy thump that echoed like a door closing.