Free Slashback by Rob Thurman Page B

‘save’ people with dark hair. He thinks it’s a sign of evil. Wickedness. At least goes the rumor. If it’s him.” He shook his head. “I’m not certain. It could be or it could be other things. This is a diagnosis I do not want to commit to without more information. Truthfully, I’d rather not commit to it at all.”
    He was looking less and less happy by the moment. “Niko? Did he mention your hair? The rumor also goes that he tends to associate blond hair with whores and whores also with wickedness. Red hair too. Whores, whores everywhere. It’s a theme with him. He is a judgmental bastard. He cannot abide wickedness. Odd in a killer, isn’t it?”
    Niko gave a forbidding frown. “You wish to know if he called me a whore? Is that what you’re asking?”
    “Yes, yes. Don’t be so sensitive. There was a time when next to Caesar that was the highest position in the land. I myself had a franchise of fertility temples—” Niko’s expression darkened and Robin returned to the point. “In deference to your prejudicial ways, let me rephrase: did he mention the color of your hair or call you immoral?”
    “We will go with immoral. Yes, he may have mentioned it.” Niko folded his arms. “What of brown hair like yours? Would he consider you free of corruption, as pure as the driven snow?”
    “No, wicked as well, only slightly less so. He’d still kill me, but I wouldn’t be his first choice like the darkly depraved and the wickedly wanton.” He glanced at both of us, but the usual humor was lacking in the barbs. “But with what Cal has said and his victims in the past, apparently it’s only full-blooded humans he’s after—if it’s him. Being me has always had its advantages, even with serial killers.” He gave a grin, but it also wasn’t the same, not his customary con-man special. He made the effort though. Robin was worried, but Robin was also still Robin. If he had but one finger out of the grave he’d still be using it to yank our chains.
    “If this creature is what I think he is, he’s killed before. Paien history says almost forty people, in the eighteen hundreds in England. All human. History rounded down by about a hundred. Someone, no doubt the Vigil, did an excellent job of covering up the murders and the skinnings from the populace. It was passed off as a few high-strung people startled by an obvious prankster leaping about in the manner of a seven-foot-tall frog while spitting blue flames.” He curled his lip. “Intentionally described to be ridiculous. Supposedly nothing damaged but dignities. This monster became a mere idiotic urban myth to them after the fact. Now it seems the lethal truth he’s always been is back for more. It’s too early for news this bad.” The disdain for bad storytelling was gone. He rubbed the heels of his hands over his closed eyes. “Offhand, I know of no way to stop him as he wasn’t stopped. He simply disappeared. Oh, and those slices to the bone of the victim in your cell phone picture? That’s a J. He likes to sign his work.”
    “Who then?” Niko demanded. “Who is he?”
    “Spring-heeled Jack. Spring- hell Jack.” He gave a laugh, but I didn’t hear any amusement in it. “One and the same. Either way if it is Jack, then he has brought Hell to New York. And I don’t know if there is anything we can do about it.”

4
    Niko
    Twelve Years Ago
    Hell.
    I’d wondered off and on if the monsters came from Hell. But I didn’t believe in Hell. I never had. It seemed too easy. Do whatever you want, say you’re sorry, and then you’re lifted unto Heaven. Do whatever you want, don’t say you’re sorry, and be cast down into Hell. The people in Hell probably didn’t think it was easy, but I had more problems with the Heaven part. If you did wrong, no matter how sorry you were, you still should pay . . . not burning in hellfire. That was over the top.
    But you should pay somehow. Learn your lesson and learn it well. That’s why I leaned