Whitechapel Gods Read Online Free PDF

bit, if you would, my boy,” John said. “He’s not quite ready.”
    He turned back to Bergen as Penny bent to his task. John waved one yellow-nailed finger in Bergen’s face. “Hobby will go with Boxer. You get Penny.”
    Bergen glanced over at the boy’s face. It hung slack and expressionless even as he sawed away with his knife. Bergen was about to protest that the boy was too young, but thought better of it. He may have already killed more men than I have.
    “I cannot use him,” Bergen said. “He cannot be made a scout on account of his silence, and he’s not nearly a good enough shot.”
    John knitted his fingers together. “You’ll find his talents more than make up for his little deficiency, I think.”
    John’s smile grew wider and wider.
    Bergen nodded slowly, realising. Penny is along to murder me if I try to go to the baron.
    John smiled, his message understood. “Lots of beasties to hunt in the downstreets, too. Like your old grounds, eh?”
    “Africa is a land of beauty,” Bergen said. “Your Whitechapel is a Hö
    ¨ lle auf Welt .”
    “It’s not my Whitechapel,” John said, then added with a twinkle, “Yet.”
    It’s the queen’s Whitechapel, you traitor. Bergen buried the thought, hoping John hadn’t read it on his face.
    He indicated Penny, who stood impassive, holding fresh gauze over the ruins of the prisoner’s ear. “The child will need arms. Have him meet me in the warehouse when you are done with him.”
    “It won’t be long” was the reply. John returned his attention to the two children still huddled down in the shadows of a far corner.
    “Come forth, come forth, my beautiful, innocent little sons,” he said, beckoning with his skeletal hands. “This will be your trade someday. Best learn.”
    Bergen’s stomach turned. He yanked the cord that rolled the door to the side and strode out.
     
    Bergen walked into the workshop to find Mulls shouting and bashing his fist on a table.
    “What do you mean it’s not done, you rotter?”
    The shop master, Ferdinand von Herder, leaned comfortably back on his stool and sighed deeply, as one might when dealing with an unruly child.
    “Good sir,” he began, his voice ancient and tired, “the weapon is not ready. Nor will it become ready until our mutual patron furnishes me with more nickel and copper.”
    “Is there a problem?” Bergen asked.
    Mulls whirled about, coming up straight when he saw who had just spoken. He was one of Scared’s children, raised in the filth of the streets and badly ravaged by the clacks, but loyal and capable, if not amiable. His already primitive features had become a mess of stray wires and misshapen bits of iron, and his thick limbs bulged in some places into unnatural angles.
    Von Herder cocked his ear and turned his sightless eyes in the direction of the door.
    “Herr Keuper, is it? Welcome. Mr. Mulligan seems to think he should be the bearer of our only functional steam rifle.”
    “Wouldn’t be a problem if he’d bloody made two of them like he s’posed to,” Mulls complained.
    “You will carry a flasher,” Bergen ordered. “And an air rifle loaded with steel rounds.”
    “Fine.” Mulls snatched an air rifle and a belt of ammunition from the weapon racks lining the wall and headed for the stairs leading back to the maze. He mumbled under his breath, as if the others couldn’t hear him, “Stupid hun, hogging all the good stuff to yourself.”
    Bergen and von Herder waited for his muttering to fade with distance. Two teenage assistants in the back of the room disturbed the silence, having hardly slowed their pace at all during the argument. When von Herder spoke, he did so in German.
    “Unpleasant men are not hard to find in this country, don’t you think, Herr Keuper?”
    Bergen shrugged, though he knew von Herder couldn’t see it. “Herr Scared attracts only the worst. The Englisch are mostly a jovial people.”
    The old mechanic blinked his milk-white eyes and scuffed his