Jekyll & Hyde Inc.

Chapter Two

BACK FROM THE DEAD

It was dark when Daniel woke up. He pushed the bedsheets away and started to sit up, only to stop abruptly when the pain hit him. He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out. He had that much pride left. He dry-swallowed a handful of pills from the bedside table, breathed slowly and steadily until the pain died back to a bearable level, and then carefully swung his legs over the side of the bed.

It had to be heading out of night and into morning, because enough light made it past the closed curtains for him to make out his surroundings. Not that there was much worth looking at. His flat had only ever been somewhere to come back to, when he wasn’t working. Daniel sighed, and decided he might as well get up. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep again.

His pajamas stank from the night’s cold sweats, and he slowly stripped them off and let them drop to the floor. He had difficulty getting dressed, because of what had happened to him in that terrible cellar under the bookstore. Everyone at the hospital kept telling him he was lucky to be alive after so many serious injuries, but he found that hard to accept on days when he had so much difficulty just doing up his shirt buttons. His fingers were numb this morning, which was a good thing. On the really bad days it felt like his hands were on fire.

Daniel finally forced himself up onto his feet and shuffled out of the bedroom, heading for the kitchen. He didn’t bother to turn on the lights. He preferred the gloom, so he wouldn’t have to look at what his life had become. He moved slowly around the kitchen, getting out the mug and the tea bags and turning on the electric kettle. He found the ritual comforting, even though he wasn’t sure he actually wanted any tea.

He’d been found in the wreckage of the cellar, more dead than alive. Not by police reinforcements, but by the local fire brigade responding to an anonymous call. The bookstore had been completely burned down, but the firemen dug Daniel out of the cellar in time to save his life. Daniel was still having trouble deciding whether that had been a kindness.

The investigating team found a few bits and pieces of Oscar, but no trace at all of Paul or Nigel. Daniel kept insisting that they were both dead, murdered by monstrous creatures . . . but no one believed him.

He was suspended without pay the moment he left hospital. Pending a Board of Inquiry that no one seemed too eager to set in motion. An unauthorized raid was bad enough, but an unsuccessful one? Best to let it just fade quietly away, and be forgotten. Commissioner Gill had also been suspended, for exceeding her authority. Or at least she would be, if anyone could find her.

The police review board interrogated Daniel over and over again. He told them everything that happened in that awful underground abattoir, but they couldn’t accept any of it. Not about the homeless people being dissected alive, or the Frankenstein doctors (the board really didn’t like it when he used that name), or the huge, hulking figures who’d shrugged off Tasers and took no harm from flailing batons.

They told Daniel the force had no record of a firm called The Cutting Edge. That there were no reports of missing homeless people in the area. And that there was definitely no such thing as a glass ceiling in the modern police force. They made it very clear they thought he was mad, or lying. They didn’t believe a word he said.

Especially when he wouldn’t shut up about the monsters.

So now his time in the police force was over. A cripple, and a disgrace. The man who only wanted to help others couldn’t even help himself. Daniel looked at the cup of tea he’d made, and wondered what he was going to do with his day.

There was a knock at the front door. It took him a while to react. He didn’t get visitors, these days. Friends and colleagues had been conspicuous by their absence, the media had stopped bothering him once he made it clear he was never going to talk to them, and his parents hadn’t wanted anything to do with him from the moment he told them he was joining the police, instead of following the university course they’d mapped out for him. His father told him to his face that he’d broken his mother’s heart.

He did phone his parents once, to let them know he was still alive. Daniel’s father said he’d told him nothing good would come of choosing to work in the gutters, to help people who weren’t worth saving. He said Daniel had brought it all on himself, by turning his back on the life his parents had sacrificed so much to make possible.

He wouldn’t let Daniel talk to his mother. And he told Daniel never to call again.

While Daniel was still working his way through all of that, the knocking came again—louder, and more impatient. Whoever it was, they weren’t giving up. Daniel made his way slowly through the flat to his front door, groaning quietly to himself as the pains came and went. It took him so long his unknown visitor knocked a third time, hard enough that the door jumped and rattled in its frame. Daniel hauled the door open and then stood very still, staring in shock. Wrapped in a long grubby coat, Paul looked like he’d lost a hell of a lot of weight. His face was gaunt, almost painfully bony, and the taut skin was so pale as to be almost colorless. His eyes had sunk back into the skull, and looked a lot darker than Daniel remembered. Paul smiled briefly at Dan, little more than a quirk of the lips.

“Hello, Danny boy. Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Paul . . . ?” said Daniel.

“Well, you look like shit,” said Paul. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Why not?” said Daniel. “It’s not like you’re interrupting anything.”

He stepped back, and Paul slipped quickly past him. He seemed to drift rather than walk, and his feet made no sound at all on the bare floorboards. That last thought struck Daniel suddenly, and he glared at Paul.

“How are you able to walk? I saw that creature snap your spine!”

“I got over it,” said Paul.

There was something wrong with his voice, Daniel decided. It sounded harsh, painful . . . as though every word was an effort. He closed the door, and looked Paul over carefully. There wasn’t much left of the man he used to know. The lazy, overweight Paul who breezed through life because he just couldn’t be bothered had been replaced by an emaciated scarecrow. He didn’t say anything, just fixed Daniel with an uncomfortably intent gaze until he felt obliged to say something.

“Where have you been, all this time?”

“Underground,” said Paul. “Out of sight.”

He looked around Daniel’s flat, still mostly hidden in the gloom. Daniel reached for the light switch.

“No,” said Paul. “Don’t. Please.”

Daniel looked at him sharply. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Paul use that word before.

“Would you like some tea?” he said finally, for want of anything else to say.

The quick smile came and went again. There was no humor in it.

“I don’t drink tea.”

Daniel felt suddenly tired of the whole conversation. It wasn’t like he’d wanted any company. But the return of a man who was supposed to be dead demanded he at least make an effort.

“What are you doing here?” he said, with as much politeness as he could manage.

Paul was suddenly standing right in front of him. Daniel blinked confusedly, and almost fell back a step. Up close, his old friend was unhealthily pale. His lips had no color, and his eyes were disturbingly sharp. His long coat was in foul condition, and spotted with stains. He smelled like recently disturbed earth.

“We need to talk,” said Paul.

“All right,” said Daniel, trying to pretend this was a normal conversation. “Let’s start with: What are you doing up at this hour? You never used to be a morning person.”

“I had to come while it was still dark.”

“Dark as your heart?”

“It never gets that dark,” said Paul.

“Where have you been hiding yourself?” said Daniel. “Everyone’s been looking for you.”

“I know,” said Paul.

“Is Nigel with you?”

“He’s with someone else now,” said Paul. “We don’t talk.”

“Wait a minute,” said Daniel. He closed his eyes for a moment, as a wave of weariness washed through him. He put out a hand to the nearest wall, to steady himself. “I need to sit down. I’m not a well man, these days.”

He shuffled over to the nearest chair. It took a while, because every movement hurt. Paul waited patiently for Daniel to settle himself, and then sat down facing him.

“I can’t stay long, Dan.”

“What’s the problem? Do you turn into a pumpkin when the sun comes up?”

“Something like that.”

Daniel frowned. “Are you worried you might have been followed here?”

“No,” said Paul. “I can’t stay because it will be light soon. Please, Dan, shut the hell up and let me talk. I have so much to tell you.”

Daniel shrugged, and then winced despite himself. “Get on with it, then. I’m not stopping you.”

Paul sat very still in his chair, staring unwaveringly at Daniel. “You must know you were never supposed to survive. They left you for dead.”

Daniel nodded slowly. “I did wonder why the surgeons didn’t take my body with them, so they could harvest my organs. I thought that was what happened to you and Oscar and Nigel.”

“They had other things in mind for me and Nigel,” said Paul. “They left one body behind to show what happened to policemen who interfere.”

“And then I had to go and spoil everything, by not dying after all,” said Daniel. “And not keeping my mouth shut.”

“The only reason you’re still alive now,” said Paul, “is because no one believed you when you talked about the monsters.”

“It was all true!”

“Of course it was,” said Paul.

“What were those oversized freakshows?” said Daniel.

“Creations of the Frankenstein Clan,” said Paul. “And yes, you did hear that name correctly. Tell me, Dan, did you ever wonder what happened to all the monsters everyone used to believe in? The vampires, werewolves, and mummies . . . ”

“They weren’t real. And most of us grew out of fairy stories.”

“They used to be real,” said Paul. “Real as you and me. They just chose to reinvent themselves, to disappear into the underworld of crime. These days, the Frankenstein Clan deals in illegal surgeries. The Vampire Clan deals in all forms of seduction. The Clan of Mummies deals in drugs. The werewolves supply muscle and enforcement, for when the Clans don’t want to do it themselves. All the shit work, basically. And the ghouls make sure the bodies are never found. Because they’ll eat anything.”

Daniel looked at Paul, lost for words. His first thought was that his friend had been driven out of his mind by his experiences, but that didn’t explain how a man with a broken back could walk into his flat. And if there was a way for a broken body to be repaired . . . Daniel wanted to know about it.

“I was so sure you were dead,” he said finally. “How are you still alive?”

“They wanted to know how we’d found out about them,” said Paul. “And the best way to be sure I would tell them everything was to make me one of them.”

“A criminal?” said Daniel.

“A vampire,” said Paul.

“And they say I’m crazy,” said Daniel.

Paul surged forward, grabbed Daniel by the shirtfront, and lifted him out of his chair as though he was weightless. Daniel’s feet kicked helplessly above the floor. He grabbed Paul’s wrist with both hands, and then snatched them away. The skin was horribly cold, like touching a dead man. Paul marched Daniel across the room and slammed him against the far wall. Daniel cried out at the pain, and Paul clapped his other hand over Daniel’s mouth to silence him. The hand smelled like something dead, but Paul wouldn’t let Daniel squirm away. He pushed his face right up against Daniel’s, and then he smiled slowly, revealing jagged, pointed teeth. His breath stank of blood and death. And his eyes were full of all the darkness in the world. Paul eased up a little, and Daniel turned his head away. In the mirror hanging on the wall beside him he saw his reflection . . . and no one else. He seemed to be hanging unsupported in mid air.

His heart lurched painfully in his chest, and he made himself look back at Paul. The eyes boring into his were as inhuman as a shark’s, and the smile was full of predator’s teeth. For the first time, Daniel realized Paul wasn’t breathing. They were so close Daniel should have been able to feel Paul’s breath on his face, but there was nothing. His old friend stank of the grave, and things that had been dead too long. Daniel stared wide-eyed into the unblinking eyes before him, his mouth crushed under a dead man’s hand, and wished he’d never survived to know such things were possible.

Paul slowly lowered Daniel to the floor, let go of him, and stepped away. Daniel breathed deeply, trying to get the dead man’s smell out of his nostrils. He rubbed hard at his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to forget how the dead flesh had felt. He was shaking so much he had to lean back against the wall to steady himself. He glanced at the mirror again. Paul was standing right in front of it, but there was no trace of him anywhere in the reflection. Daniel made a sound, deep in his throat, and Paul laughed softly. He went back to his chair and sat down. Daniel watched him, until his heartbeat and breathing had returned to something like normal. And then he went back, and sat down opposite Paul again.

Because his world had just been changed forever, and he needed to know what the hell was going on.

“Sorry about that, Danny boy,” said Paul. “But I needed you to believe me.”

“All right,” Daniel said steadily. “I’m convinced. You’re a vampire. Is this what happened to Nigel?”

“No,” said Paul. “He’s something else now. Listen to me, Dan. This is important. Do you still want to help people? To defend them from monsters who prey on the weak and the vulnerable?”

“Yes,” said Daniel. It was one of the few things he was still sure about. “But I can’t be a cop anymore.”

“You could be a hunter of monsters,” said Paul.

“Of things like you?” said Daniel.

“I hate what I’ve been made into,” said Paul. “Driven by a hunger that never ends, always at the beck and call of things worse than me. No one trusts me, so I get all the worst jobs. Like disappearing innocent people, when they get too close to the truth about how things really are.”

“People like me?” said Daniel.

“You’re not dangerous enough to be a problem to them,” said Paul. “Though you could be, if you wanted.”

“Have you . . . fed, yet?” said Daniel.

“Of course I have! I didn’t have any choice. This is what I am now.” Paul shook his head slowly. “The only chance I have for revenge on the monsters who did this to me, and all the others who make this world a living hell for everyone else . . . is you. That’s why I risked everything to come here. You’re the only one I can trust to do the right thing.”

“Look at me!” Daniel said harshly. “It’s all I can do to walk from one end of my flat to the other. How am I supposed to fight monsters?”

Paul produced a card from inside his coat. “This is the address for Jekyll & Hyde Incorporated.”

Daniel couldn’t help but smile. Paul didn’t.

“You have got to be kidding . . . ” said Daniel.

“I don’t do that anymore,” said Paul.

“But . . . Jekyll and Hyde? Really?”

Paul smiled, showing his teeth. “Set a thief to catch a thief. Or a monster to kill a monster. Go see them, Dan. They can tell you everything you need to know. And . . . they can put you back the way you used to be.”

While Daniel was still struggling to get his head round that, Paul rose to his feet. He produced a book from inside his coat and thrust it into Daniel’s hands. A battered old copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Paul smiled.

“Do your homework before you go to see them.”

“Aren’t you going to give me Dracula, as well?” said Daniel.

“No,” said Paul. “Stoker got it all wrong.”

He drifted silently over to the front door.

“What about Commissioner Gill?” said Daniel. “Do you know what happened to her?”

Paul looked back at him. “I happened to her. The Clan sent me to shut her up, and after what she did to us . . . it was a pleasure. Listen to me, Danny boy: I can’t help you directly in this, but I will be around. In the background.”

“Is there anyone you’d like me to contact?” said Daniel. “There must be people who’d be glad to know you’re back . . . ”

“Let them think I’m dead,” said Paul. “Because I am.”

He left, closing the door quietly behind him. Daniel sat alone in the quiet of his empty flat, and looked at the address on the card.