Chapter 170

~~Eric~~

He walked over to the wall of gold, and tore at it with his claws. His claws left a scratch, but nothing more. He tried again, snarling, growling, and eventually roaring with each swing of his claws against the wall. The gate Matthew destroyed to get them into the casino, was apparently nothing compared to the strength of the walls they’d need to break through to get out.

“Quite the m-metaphor,” Natasha said. “You can get in, b-but you can’t get out.”

He snapped her a harsh glare and a quick growl, which earned a growl in return from Arturo. They squared off against each other, baring their teeth and leaning in close enough to pose a threat. One wrong move and they’d rip the other’s throat out.

“Stop,” Brianna said, and she snapped a bark at the both of them. “We—”

“You sent us in here,” Matthew said, throwing his own snarl at Brianna.

“There is tunnel! Connects to other casino!”

“Below us!”

Eric stamped his foot hard, and his talons dug at the crimson carpet as he glared at the others.

“Now we’re trapped! What can—”

A gunshot forced the four werewolves to spin and face the source of the noise. Little Natasha, gun pointed up and away, glaring at them.

“Enough! W-We don’t have t-time for this! This casino connects to the neighbor casino, yes. But now Red T-Tide is guarding the exit, and the connecting path. We have to get back down there, and past Red Tide. How!?”

The four werewolves stared at her, each of them breathing heavy. They knew they were riding the coattails of Kuruth, and each moment they stayed in their war forms, the more likely they’d freak out, rage, and kill anything that was alive, including each other. Natasha knew it, too, from the look on her face, and she glared at each of them like a teacher royally pissed with her students.

Slowly, the four of them nodded, each of them taking deep breaths as they forced their hearts to calm. Breathe, Luna had told him. Breathe.

“Can we fight it?” she asked.

Arturo shook his head. “Maybe with whole pack. Maybe.”

That was a big maybe. As strong as Uratha were, and built from the ground up to deal with threats like spirits, they couldn’t fight spirits strong enough to control entire cities, not without exploiting its bans or using its banes. If they fought it without them, it’d take Avery’s whole pack, Flowing Sanctuary, and Eric, and a lot of luck to bring down something that big. Which made their situation really fucking problematic.

Eric looked down over the railing, and rumbled in his throat. One of the huge spirit’s red tentacles reached up, all the way up, and its tip brushed against the floor near Eric’s talons. He suppressed the urge to slash it open. No point, yet.

Tash came up beside him, careful of the tendril, and peeked down over the railing. “Can we d-distract it?”

“Easily,” Arturo said. “Red Tide is angry. Stupid. Always hungry for blood.”

“Like a vampire?” the little vampire asked. “Oh. You m-mean, it always wants to fight.”

“Yes.”

“So we b-bait it with a promise of a fight?”

“Perhaps,” Flow said. “Black Blood is forcing it to attack us, so there is uncertainty.”

As if someone tied an anchor to Natasha’s neck and threw it over the railing, her head slumped and her body tightened. Eric knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“We have to get out of here, and b-back to the physical world, to tell people what’s happening. If we can’t kill Red Tide, then someone will have to d-distract it.” She pulled her head up against the weight, and looked to Arturo.

Arturo nodded, leaned in, gave Natasha a lick on her cheek, and before she could say anything more, he jumped over the railing.

Everyone stared down over the edge of the balcony as Arturo landed on the floor below them, the third floor, and sliced at the huge red tendril still reaching up for the rest of them. Red Tide let out a bellowing roar, as if a whale had decided to bring down the walls of Jerusalem with only its voice. Everyone covered their ears except Flow, as the vibration ripped through the whole building and churned the blood lake until it boiled.

Arturo leaned over the railing long enough for Red Tide to realize who’d hurt it, before ducking away as a dozen enormous tendrils lashed out for him. The railing of gold and glass shattered, and the entire floor bent under the weight of the spirit as it pulled some of its kraken mass up out of the blood lake. The squid, octopus, monstrous entity, was deeper than the depth of the lake itself. Only maybe eight feet of blood waited below, but something far, far bigger come up and out of it, showing its giant, circular mouth, hundreds of its teeth, and two of its dark, squid-like eyes.

“I know you, Uratha,” it said. “How. Dare. You. Come out and die.”

However strong Red Tide was, it couldn’t lift its own mass, not completely. But it wouldn’t need to. With some of its tendrils pulling on the second floor and already pulling the entire balcony down, cracking and breaking the gold until it slanted down toward the bottom, once it got a good grip on the third floor balcony, the same thing would happen.

But it was distracted.

Tash reached out, and tapped each of her friends on the arm. The wolf in Eric told him she’d just used a Discipline, something invisible, something that warped and twisted air and light and perception, and told everyone and everything watching that there was nothing there to see. It was like a smell, something his human nose would never find. And hopefully since it wrapped him, Brianna, Tash, and Matthew, it’d hide them from Red Tide well enough they could slip past it.

“Go,” she said.

Eric and Flow went first. There was no time to climb down the individual floors, so they did the only reasonable thing: they jumped to the bottom floor. Some of the larger machines poked up from the red waves, and with everything made of solid gold, they were strong enough to withstand his weight. Flow had a harder time, but it managed to come down as a solid, thick stream of water, spinning like a compressed tornado. If Red Tide noticed, Arturo quickly rectified that. They didn’t have a chance to look back and check, but the noises Red Tide made were deafening.

Brianna and Matthew came next, both landing on the fountain bowl held up by the now drowned gold men. Only the bowl remained visible.

Eric breathed deep the smell of blood. The Hisil realm was all ephemera, nothing was made of flesh or metal, but the spirits and the realm itself did their best to emulate reality. They failed in a lot of ways, but Red Tide captured the smell of blood almost perfectly, and Eric had to force down the rising urge in his guts that told him to rip and tear. It only grew worse as he watched the colossal monster smash tendrils against the floor Arturo jumped around on.

Arturo would be fine. He was fast, and all Irraka were sneaky. Once the coast was clear, he’d run, and live to hunt another day. The rest of them, on the other hand, were dead if Red Tide turned around.

Tash jumped down last, and Flow softened her impact with an arm of water. The little vampire landed, wetter now, but otherwise without a sound, and the five of them scanned the area for a path. The flood of blood wasn’t uniform. Certain areas were higher, especially all the areas around Red Tide itself, like when Flow managed its body when moving over floors and ground. There were patches of floor visible with no blood, but too far to reach. And whatever tunnel door existed between the two casinos, it was probably nearby, and buried in red. The casino exit they’d come in from was their only option.

Eric pointed to another gambling machine, some exaggerated, ridiculous gold box. They all nodded, and everyone took turns jumping to the machine. Flow first, again turning into a spiraling tornado of water that bounced on the machine, and shot off into the distance closer to the exit, where no blood waited. They all looked Red Tide’s way, but it didn’t notice. Natasha next, following Flow’s example. Then Brianna, and Eric. It was a hard jump, and Eric didn’t like how the huge gold box teetered slightly when he jumped off it.

Finally came Matthew. When the huge werewolf landed on the gold machine, it teetered over, and crashed into the lake of blood. They’d managed to put a decent distance between themselves and the kraken, so the blood around the machine was only a foot deep. But it was more than enough to launch a huge wave of blood in all directions as the giant gold machine crashed into it.

Red Tide ceased its constant roaring, and spun around, sending glass shards everywhere as its dozen tendrils ripped the railings of the third floor aside before they slammed into the blood with the creature. It glared at them with one of its giant eyes, and again slammed its tendrils, causing waves of crimson to spike up around it.

“Uratha should die. Meddlers. Forsaken.”

That word. Forsaken. It shot fire up Eric’s veins, and he took a step toward the creature. But a small hand on his elbow stopped him.

“Let’s go!” the little vampire said.

He growled as he turned, and the group ran for the exit, now a giant hole from when Red Tide had smashed through it to get in. But they already knew what would happen. A wave of red crashed against them, hard, and threw them all into the chaos of crimson rapids. Flow let out an inhuman shriek before Red Tide’s body overtook it, and its blue waters disappeared beneath the waves.

“Flow!” Matthew said, and jumped back to his feet. Eric managed to stay on his feet long enough to look to the goliath werewolf, but the waves flipped Eric over a second later. Matthew, on the other hand, had enough weight that he rushed through the waves fast enough to reach them, and intercept a giant, red log.

Not a log. One of the kraken’s tendrils came slamming down from above, but Matthew stood in its way, and caught the oncoming behemoth limb before it hit the back of Natasha. The little vampire spun around long enough to realize it, and stared. Matthew had managed to stay standing. The titan slashed his arms to the side, and his claws ripped through the tendril, sending a splatter of blood the same color as the crimson that surrounded them into the drink.

But another tendril came sideways, crashed into Matthew’s side, and smashed him into the ticket booth. More glass shattered, and rained down on them and the blood like sand.

“Kill,” Red Tide said. “Kill Uratha. I can. Permission. Kill.”

Eric found something to get his claws on, one of the giant oversized slot machines, buried in six feet of crimson. He pulled himself up over the surface of the rapids, only to find one of the tendrils pushing under the crimson, creating an enormous wave as it smashed through the slot machines and sent them flying. Eric climbed on top of his machine, and launched himself upward as the tendril swept the machines aside. He landed on the second floor balcony, but it was uneven flooring, damaged and ripped into chunks from when Red Tide was trying to catch Arturo. He had to climb, and before he could find a good foothold, another tendril smashed against the second floor, directly beside him.

The floor shattered. The world turned upside down as he fell down into the crimson water, and went under.

~~Natasha~~

“Matthew!”

Her words were cut short. Crimson buried her, and she closed her eyes as the heavy liquid smashed her back against the gold gate Matthew tore threw earlier, now pushed even further aside by Red Tide’s earlier entrance. She was light enough she held onto the gate, and when the waves passed by, she climbed up the metal until she was near the ceiling of the first floor, blood churning around her legs.

Matthew. Where was Matthew? The wolf stood there, glaring at Red Tide, somehow having blocked the absurd attack, but Red Tide’s next attack sent the werewolf flying, and poor Matthew’s huge body smashed into several of the slot machines hard enough they bent. Glowing coins spewed out of the machine and into the red liquid, and Matthew groaned as he eventually managed to stand up from the red lake. His left arm was backward.

Natasha pulled out her pistol, and shot every bullet in the magazine as fast as she could, straight at Red Tide’s face. Whether the ephemera blood of the spirit’s body didn’t technically wet the pistol, or she got lucky, she didn’t know, but the pistol worked fine. Unfortunately it was just a 9mm, and the bullets couldn’t penetrate the monster’s hide. They hurt it, enough it pointed one of its eyes at her, and charged.

It was like watching a tsunami of blood, coming straight at her.

Before Red Tide could smash her into the gate and through it, turning her into spaghetti cinders, Arturo leapt down from the third floor balcony, and landed on Red Tide’s body. The creature bellowed and twisted, turning around with surprising speed, tendrils slapping the red lake even as they smashed pillars and gold machines hard enough to shatter them. The floors above collapsed, and fell into the lake around Red Tide, and all the while Art ripped and tore at its body. Tash’s bullets couldn’t penetrate it, but werewolf claws could.

Brianna erupted from the blood, next to Natasha.

“Brianna! We n-need to—”

The werewolf let out her own challenging roar, and charged Red Tide. Oh no.

“Matthew! We—”

The huge werewolf’s limbs snapped into place, and once he could stand up again, Matthew followed Brianna’s example. Oh no no no.

Another werewolf came up from under the blood. Eric! Before she could even call his name, the werewolf ran at Red Tide as best he could, red liquid parting against his waist. Every single wolf roared, like a chorus, and the three werewolves in the crimson jumped at Red Tide. Matthew managed to jump over one of the tendrils, but Eric and Brianna were thrown aside harder than if a bus had hit them going fifty.

Okay, everything was going from bad to worse. The werewolves were going berserk, and without them, she wasn’t getting out of the shadow realm; wasn’t like she was going to leave her boyfriends behind anyway. Where was Flow?

“Flow! Flow!” She jumped down in the red water. With Red Tide distracted, it only reached her knees, most of its mass pulled toward the center of the huge casino, in the empty space between all the balconies above. “Flow! Come on, I n-need you.”

A patch of water floated in the crimson, close to the torn open gate. Like oil on water.

“Flow!” Tash managed to get to it, and she reached down for it, but her fingers passed through it, unable to grab it. “Flowing Sanctuary!”

Some weird groaning noises came out of the water, and two glowing white eyes appeared. But that was all. No body, no giant mist arms or mystical wings, or any of the swirling tornado water Flow normally used as a body. Still alive, but couldn’t form. Did it need time? Did it need Red Tide to leave, so it wasn’t surrounded by its blood body again?

“What do I do what do I do.” She pulled out her sword and clutched it tight as she looked back at Red Tide. Arturo wasn’t on its head any longer, now wrapped in one of its tendrils. But Red Tide’s grip didn’t last long, as Brianna came up from the blood underneath the tendril and got her teeth into the limb. Blood squirted out of the red leathery tentacle, and it only got bloodier as Brianna got her claws into it and tore through it.

Red Tide didn’t expect that. It didn’t expect Uratha to give it so much trouble, judging from how it slammed its tendrils, like an upset toddler. It shrieked and roared, like some sort of angry whale, again loud enough that the blood lake churned and vibrated. It swung the tendril as it let go of Art, and the werewolf crashed into the sloped floor of the broken, collapsing second floor balcony. A second later, he was up, and jumping down at the kraken yet again.

Red Tide saw it coming this time, and slapped Arturo out of the air, sending him soaring until he landed near Natasha. She covered her eyes with her forearm as the wave of crimson hit her and knocked her on her ass. When she lowered it, Arturo was half standing, half leaning against a wall, arm broken, and one of his legs too.

“Art! Stop!”

Arturo glared at her, and she froze. She recognized that look. Matthew had given her that look once, when they’d been trapped in the tunnels beneath Dolareido. Arturo had managed to calm him down while Matt tried to rip their way free through mountains of rubble, but it’d been clear the larger man had been a hair’s breadth away from going berserk. It was easy to forget how volatile Uratha were when the violence started.

Art growled through clenched teeth before he looked back to Red Tide. His ears stood up, and he stumbled to the side, like a wolf trying to get into a better position before the prey charged into it. Red Tide was coming.

Tash stared up at the huge monster as it came for them. Matthew and Brianna were stuck between being wrapped in, or currently fighting, a giant tendril each, their claws tearing into the huge limbs that were crushing them. Eric bit and ripped another, but Red Tide managed to ignore him long enough to look straight at Tash and Arturo. And it charged.

Arturo scrambled, not in fear, but with frustration. His limbs weren’t working, and every inch of him wanted to attack Red Tide. Red Tide knew it. It rushed them hard and fast, and Tash covered her face with her arm as she prepared to get thrown around like a ragdoll. If the huge kraken broke the limbs of Uratha like it was nothing, there was a good chance it was going to turn her into kindling.

Blinding white light buried her instead.

She let out a squeak as the light snuck around her forearms and punched through her eyelids, and she braced for inevitable death. Sunlight? Fire? What happened?

Her eyes adjusted eventually, and she lowered her arm. Not dead? Nope, still alive. A quick peek left and right showed she was still in the same place, despite the white light that now covered everything. She looked down, and gulped. Something was underneath her, glowing gold slightly. It was behind her. It was beside her, and above her.

She looked up.

“F-Flow?”

“No.” The angel face smiled at her, glowing white eyes similar to Flowing Sanctuary, but on a face that looked more like a ball of white light, now gentle enough to not burn her eyes.

“S ... Safe? Of Grey Street?”

The angel smiled. Its face and its body looked like they were made of solid gold light, human shaped but without any defining features. Two white eyes and a white, tiny smile, were the only facial features against a blank canvas of glowing gold. Behind it, two angel wings spread out, the same gold as its body, and they were massive.

Its stomach was open, sorta, gold body having encompassed around Natasha in a bubble. Safe almost looked like a pregnant woman, holding a sphere that connected to her stomach, with Tash safely inside.

“B-But, you’re...”

This was not the Safe of Grey Street she remembered. Safe looked like an egg, with wings! She, er, it had been an egg with wings, both the first time Tash ever saw it, and the last time, though it’d been a much bigger the second time. And, the last time, Tash did see the hints of something ... human-ish inside the egg.

“I have a new name,” Safe said, hints of femininity in its otherwise powerful, multi-layered voice. It almost sounded like a choir. “Sanctuary, of Dolareido.”

“Sanctuary?” Tash gulped as she stared up at the angel, and then peeked down behind her at the pool of water also named Sanctuary.

Nodding, Sanctuary released its protective bubble. Its arms spread out, letting it go, and the light of the sphere fell away, like a flower opening up to bloom. The rolls of gold gently flowed back into the angel’s stomach, and once again, the angel had the slim figure of a tall, muscular woman.

It turned around, leaving Natasha standing behind it, and it faced Red Tide.

“Cease, Red Tide. These Uratha and Kindred are under my protection, as is Flowing Sanctuary.”

Red Tide had already ceased, stunned by the interference. It stared at Sanctuary, weird mouth half under the blood and churning it like a slow motor.

“Black Blood and I. Arrangement. I kill.”

“Black Blood does not own Dolareido, and you know it.”

“We have a pact!”

Sanctuary spread its wings, and tiny bits of gold dust fell from them onto the floor around it. Red Tide hissed and pulled back, and the red lake it brought with it pulled back as well. Flow, now a puddle, came to a stop on the casino floor.

The werewolves stared at Sanctuary with dropped jaws. Its radiance must have broke through their berserking, because each of them stopped biting and tearing at Red Tide. But Red Tide still had two of them in its grip.

“Then we are at an impass,” Sanctuary said. “I will defend Dolareido, and give sanctuary to those who need, and deserve it. Black Blood will destroy this city, and you are helping ... him.”

Him? Everyone had trouble figuring how to call spirits’ gender, because sometimes they did look masculine or feminine. But the Uratha insisted they were all ‘its’, and that included Black Blood. Didn’t it?

If Black Blood really was Mictlantecuhtli, then, that made sense. A very weird sense, but, sense.

Red Tide roared again, and slashed out with two of its tendrils, straight for Sanctuary. Sanctuary did not move. It held out its hands, and more gold light erupted from them, a wall of light, curved, like the one that’d encompassed Tash earlier. The tsunami of blood crashed against it, and Sanctuary did not falter. Waves of red shot out to the sides, blocked by the huge barrier, and Tash stared through the gold wall at the endless flood that could not reach her.

Arturo could, though. His body passed through the barrier, as if it were a sift blocking anything not alive.

“Art!” Tash let out another squeak as she ran over to him. “Art, you—”

“Alive,” he said, voice a guttural growl. He forced himself to his feet, and stared through the gold barrier at the waves of blood that continued to crash against it. His eyes were wide. “Must save others.” Alive, but barely out of Kuruth, if he couldn’t formulate a sentence.

The others! Eric had managed to get out of Red Tide’s way, and was standing on the fountain, beside the Kraken. Matthew and Brianna were still in its grip, though, and while Red Tide was distracted, it was still tightening its grip on the two wolves.

“Jessy, now,” Sanctuary said.

“Jessy!? W-What—”

Tash and Arturo both fell back as a blast of wind and light crashed against them. Sanctuary pushed its barrier forward, and it erupted, an explosion that cut through the blood and parted it, all too similar to another scene from The Ten Commandments. Whatever Sanctuary did, it was big, and it sent the blood to the sides of the casino hard enough it pushed over hundreds of gold machines, and launched thousands of glowing coins through the air.

The blast wave hit Red Tide hard, and the creature roared as it stumbled back. It was so big, stumble wasn’t the right word, more like a giant slab of concrete getting pushed along the ground by a hurricane. Whatever Sanctuary threw at Red Tide, its giant squid-octopus-kraken body smashed against the back wall of the casino.

Something on four legs ran past Tash, and she almost slashed at it out of reflex. But it went past her, straight up to Red Tide, and up its face. It wasn’t very big, not as big as a werewolf, but it was big enough that the spikes on its body tore through Red Tide’s squid face, and pulled another giant roar of pain from the monster. It got the kraken in one of its eyes!

Red Tide’s roar turned into an alien shriek, and its tendrils went wild, slashing at everything nearby, and letting go of its two hostages. The werewolves flew in random directions, both crashing against walls before falling into the blood. They didn’t stay there long. Sanctuary darted over to them, wings carrying it far faster than it should have been able to fly, and it wrapped Matthew and Brianna in gold bubbles, before taking them back over to Tash and Art.

Before Tash could say anything, Sanctuary did it again, and grabbed Eric and ... Jessy! And brought them to Tash.

“Let’s go,” Sanctuary said, and again, it smiled at Tash. “Quickly.”

“R-Right.” She got up and made for the exit. It really wasn’t much of an exit anymore. The gold gate was mostly gone, and Red Tide had smashed through the revolving doors, and put a hole maybe thirty feet wide in the gold wall. Like an octopus, it’d fit its body through a hole far smaller than it, to get into the casino.

Everyone went into automatic mode. Eric helped with Brianna, Arturo helped with Matthew, and Jessy ran beside Natasha, still on all fours. It was her strangest form, an animal form she’d developed years ago, something like a giant wolf, but covered in spikes. She still had a human-ish face though, with a snout and teeth way too big, making the whole form terrifying.

“How!?” Tash yelled as they got outside into the blood soaked streets.

“Safe came and found me,” Jessy said. “I was trapped under some rubble, and one of those blood wraiths found me when I finally got out. It saved me.”

“Saf—Sanctuary came?”

“It’s been trying to stop Black Blood for a little while now, I guess. It came ‘cause it knew something was up, what with Red Tide wrecking everything.”

Tash looked behind her at the angel. And it was an angel. Sanctuary followed behind them, with Flow at its side, a little tornado of water, barely more than five feet tall, half its usual size. It looked drained.

“Quickly,” Sanctuary said. “The tear, right? In here.” It ushered them to the right, and they dashed in.

They came in through the revolving doors of another casino, and went through the same process as before. A shocked spirit told them they needed a ticket, they ignored it, and tore through the gold fence blocking off the rest of the casino.

“Where’s the basement?” Tash asked.

Arturo pointed to the staircase, on the other side of the casino.

They got five feet before the wall between the casino they were in, and the casino they’d just escaped from, cracked, like an earthquake ripping a canyon through the Earth.

~~The Ripper~~

“You can’t.”

I can.

“Bullshit. I am in control. I am in control!” He tried to let go of the sword. Every drop of will and vitae he could find, he poured into the hand. Let go of the sword. Let go of the sword.

When I realized what I had to do, I found a way, you fucking asshole. There’s no way I’m letting this continue.

The hand holding the sword slowly pointed the long blade toward him. It was too long to point the blade at his chest, not with his hand on the handle, but that wasn’t Jack’s goal anyway. Apparently, the kid was thinking nuclear.

“You’re just a fucking kid. A child! A stupid, useless, worthless, weak maggot!”

Julias knew differently.

Slowly, the longsword found its way to his neck. The Ripper pushed, twisted, writhed and fought, but all it accomplished was the sharp blade sawing gently against the blood barrier along his neck. The blood barrier was fading. Somehow, despite all the energy and rage the Ripper poured into the coiling dark crimson snakes that made him a god, the fucking kid was weakening it.

“You won’t, you fucking little shit. You won’t leave your precious Miss Big Tits behind. You won’t leave your—”

They’re all dead if I let you live. Antoinette will understand.

“You ... won’t ... have ... me!”

Shit shit shit shit shit. He squeezed the handle harder, until his arm trembled, bones threatening to break, but the fucking kid kept the blade where it was.

The Ripper looked around, panic surging through him. Someone had to stop him, save the kid from killing him and himself. Sándor? Dude was still clutching his head like something had popped inside it. Damien? That dude was one step away from collapsing into torpor. The werewolves? The ones that managed to get their heads above the mist were either coughing up blood and falling right back down, or were staring at him, shocked, and looked about as ready to move as Damien. Fucking useless and weak, every last one of them. What fucking good were they now, if they couldn’t stop Jack!? Useless!

He managed to get his second hand on the sword, but it didn’t help, dooming the second hand to squeeze and shake violently, but accomplish nothing.

“Someone fucking stop me! Stop me before this fucking kid kills himself!” Again he stared around at the group of useless fucking shits he’d annihilated, but every last one of them stared on. One of the wrecked werewolves managed to get their ruined head above the mist, and they stared at him too, as dumbfounded as the rest of them. Clara.

Looking up didn’t help. Some of the ghosts were back, including Sabrina, and she stared down at him even more confused than the fucking mouth breathers. Fucking useless!

He forced his legs to move, until he managed to get himself over to one of the giant pillars of stone, and smacked his head against it. Jack refused to let him summon enough strength to so much as rattle his brain, let alone knock him into torpor. He tried again, and again, but it wasn’t long before Jack forced him to walk away from the pillar, all while forcing the blade against his neck harder, and harder. The only thing that kept it from cutting straight through, was every fucking ounce of will the Ripper had.