Hyde, an Urban Fantasy

by Lauren Stewart

  Yippee, I can’t wait. “I’ll be here.” For how much longer? He felt a faint pull from Hyde in his gut as the drug’s effects faded. Once it was entirely gone, he’d need the straps again. But taking more—before the last dose had been metabolized out of his system—seemed tragically stupid, especially considering how drastically the first dose had hit him.

  Eden’s eyes were shy again, like she regretted her reaction to seeing him moments before. “See you later, Mitch.”

  He nodded, not knowing what else to say to her. He wished he regretted her reaction earlier. Or his. It would make things a lot easier. He knew it had to end, knew he’d be the one to make it so. Did he want her with the caveat that he’d have to spend the rest of his life in a cage? Living only for her visits. Never trusting himself to be outside or around other people. Not that he cared about other people, aside from having a small problem with actually murdering them. But how would that be enough for either of them? With that danger always hanging over their heads. As unromantic as it was, the idea that he’d be unable to financially support himself was beyond what his oh-so male ego could stand. What a lovely life they’d have together—he’d be a kept man. Literally. Kept in a cage until she came home after a long day at work. Yeah, that’d be what every woman dreams of.

  Mitch avoided Eden’s eyes. Too much to tell her, too little time in an already unfortunate moment. So he’d get to obsess about that discussion for a while longer. Goody.

  “Don’t be too long, Jolie. I may need you.” He didn’t apologize for taking her away from Carter’s side. He knew she’d be happy to have an excuse to leave the hospital. He knew she had no attachment to the guy. She’d probably agreed only because it would be the proper reaction for someone who actually cared about people. But not Jolie. No. At some point, Mitch had rubbed off on her.

  Maybe the truth was that he’d rubbed everything off and had nothing left to hold him together.

  CHAPTER XLIII

  Carter was unmoving, his breath regulated by the machine to his side. It also tracked his heart rate and brainwaves, sending quiet, hollow beeps that echoed in Eden’s ears. His head had been struck once. On the side, just above his ear. But the bandages were wrapped all the way around, covering his forehead, ears, and most of one eye. A bruise peeked out from under the gauze protecting a broken cheekbone. One arm had been neatly tucked to his side, attaching him with tubes and tape to multiple bags of fluid and medicine. His other arm was loose, limp under her hand.

  With her other hand, Eden picked at the edge of the sheet, reading the imprint left by the hospital supply company. Blue cursive lines she traced over and over with her eyes.

  Jolie stood behind her, occasionally shifting from one foot to the other. It was better than the pacing she did earlier, as if searching for an excuse to leave the room, but not being able to think of an adequate one.

  Eden wished she’d just go. The woman’s nervous energy was bouncing off the walls, creating more tension in Eden to take along with it. She didn’t know if Carter even knew they were there or what happened to someone’s thoughts while they were comatose. But, just in case he felt them there, she didn’t want him to know how terrified they were that he wouldn’t make it back.

  “Jolie, maybe you should go check on Mitch now.”

  “Really?” She sounded relieved. Not surprising.

  “Yeah. I think he needs you more than Carter does at the moment.”

  “You’re probably right. I should get back. Are you going to stay?”

  Eden nodded, keeping her eyes on Carter, wondering if she should just sleep here. If the hospital staff would even let her. She wasn’t a family member, not on paper at least, so they’d probably kick her out soon. But they were all either of them had. “For a while. I can get a cab back to the house later.” She sighed. “I don’t have any money.”

  Jolie rummaged around in her purse. “Here.”

  Eden took the twenty dollar bill Jolie held out. “Thanks, I’ll pay you back.”

  “Whatever. Take this too.” She handed her a cell phone. “The code to unlock it is ‘6969’.

  How clever. Undoubtedly Jolie’s favorite sexual position. Put that on the list of ‘Things I Never Wanted To Know About Jolie’.

  “Mitch’s number is speed dial one,” Jolie said. “Call me immediately if he wakes up.”

  If he wakes up. She’d said, ‘if’. Eden swallowed. The doctor had repeated the ‘We’ll wait and see,’ but his averted eyes had clued her in on his true diagnosis. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

  “Yep,” Jolie said as she high-tailed it down the hall.

  Eden vowed to never, ever wear heels again. The sound of Jolie’s clicking on the tile grated on Eden’s nonexistent nerves. When the sound had faded, she laid her head down next to Carter’s arm and closed her eyes. Maybe if she willed him to wake up, spoke to him in her dreams, he’d come back. But maybe her will wouldn’t be enough.

  § § §

  The drug was out of Mitch’s system now. And with its disappearance, came more activity from Hyde, pushing at the wall of Mitch’s flesh, trying to get free. Straight out of the movie Aliens, for fuck’s sake. If Mitch looked at his belly, he wondered if he’d see Hyde’s face break through his ribcage, growling and showing off his fangs.

  When Mitch saw Jolie come into the room, he sat up quickly. “First shoot me up, then tell me about the boy scout.”

  Jolie picked up a vial and, with a practiced hand, filled the syringe with Morphine.

  “Half the dose of last night, Jolie. That was too much.” He hadn’t turned, which had meant all the drug’s effects had been leveraged on the man, not the monster.

  “I was thinking the same thing. I need you to be aware tonight.”

  Not sure what that meant. But the needle’s pinch distracted him from his thoughts. Tough guy’s afraid of a tiny, little needle. Impressive.

  “How is the kid?” he asked to focus on something other than the push of the plunger.

  “What?”

  “Jesus, Jolie. At least feign some interest in him.”

  She looked offended . . . or guilty for being caught, Mitch couldn’t tell which.

  “Oh, Carter. He’s in a coma. They don’t know if he’ll come out of it. Eden is crying a lot, slobbering a bit.” She shrugged and pulled the needle out of his arm, rubbing it with a piece of gauze. “Does that make me a bad person? That I’m not more . . . drooly over him?”

  He looked her over from head to foot. How many years had they known each other? Seemed like forever. They’d worked together, partied together, slept together, but there was nothing real between them at all. He would have a hard time even calling her a friend. Everything he’d wanted—a beautiful woman who was just as emotionally cold and unwelcoming as he was. After. After he told her the sexual part of their relationship had to end. Before that, she’d been more clingy, needy, perhaps more drooly. But he’d been honest. And things had cooled down eventually and become exactly what he needed. Strangely, he’d never actually considered if it was what she needed. She would have said something if it wasn’t. Jolie was hardly one to hold her tongue.

  A wave of heat swept through him, not as harshly as the previous night, but definitely something uncomfortable. He blinked, trying to keep his eyes focused.

  Jolie smiled at him. “You’re feeling it, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I am.” He heard the slur, recognized the timber of his own voice, but felt detached, as if it didn’t really belong to him.

  Her face was beginning to fog, multiply. Eyes doubling, then tripling. Dark brown hair getting impossibly full as his vision blurred. He smiled. Jolie is very beautiful. Not Eden-beautiful, but definitely beautiful. Eden is truly beautiful. How many times had he repeated “beautiful”? He giggled and leaned back onto the mattress.

  “. . . you’ve had enough, Mitchell . . . too much. You need to be awake . . . I need Hyde to . . .”

  He couldn’t catch her words or they weren’t all
being put together by his brain. But her lips were definitely moving, so she was saying something.

  “What did you say, Joles?”

  “Nothing, Hon. You . . . rest now.”

  His head sunk into the pillow. Closing his eyes helped him concentrate a bit better. He thought about the kid. Poor bastard. Didn’t think Chastity would’ve done it, but it sure as hell looks that way. Wrong place, wrong time. Mitch thought about what Carter had said. Drug dealer. Eden. Chastity. A hot brunette was the last one to see the girl ali— Wait.

  Something didn’t compute. What was it? His head was fuzzy. He couldn’t connect to the idea that was teetering at the edge of his mind. No, something was wrong. He couldn’t grasp onto it. He wanted to catch hold of that detail, the one that danced around his brain, just out of reach. Brunette. Chastity. No, that’s wrong. He opened his eyes and looked at the woman peering down at him, just outside the bars. Right before he lost consciousness, he said, “Chastity’s hair . . . not brown. Jolie, what’s—”

  CHAPTER XLIV

  Nurses came into Carter’s room regularly to check on the machines and take his vitals. They ignored Eden. She ignored them. With no windows in the room, she had no idea how much time had passed, how long she’d been by Carter’s side or how much longer it would be until he opened his eyes and saw her there.

  Jolie’s ringtone startled her. Eden unlocked the phone with Jolie’s oh-so-creative code. The caller ID said: ‘Mitchell’, with a picture of his irritated face looking back at her. She easily imagined his annoyance when Jolie took the photo. She’d seen it in-person countless times in their relatively short relationship. Relationship? Could she actually call it that?

  “Mitch?” she asked.

  “It’s me, Eden.” Jolie spoke quickly, instantly setting Eden on edge.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Eden, hurry. You have to get back here. It’s Hyde. He’s—he’s—Oh God! He’s out!”

  “Jolie?”

  The phone clicked off. Eden shot out of the chair, sending it skidding out behind her. With a quick glance to Carter, she silently apologized for leaving him and ran out the door. She caught a cab outside the hospital, shouting the address at the cabbie and telling him to hurry. She tried calling back, but no one answered. Oh God, what was happening? What was she going to find when she got there?

  The phone, gripped tightly in her hand, rang. Thank God. “What’s going on?”

  A male voice she didn’t recognize responded. “I was just going to ask you the same thing, Cabot.”

  “No, this isn’t—”

  “Shut up! What the hell happened to Colfax’s handler?”

  “Handler?” she asked on an inhalation. What the heck was a ‘handler’ and why did the man know her last name?

  “The kid, Carter Poole. What happened? Did Colfax’s Hyde do it or did you?”

  It was as if the cab had just entered a tunnel, the world outside disappearing from Eden’s perception. All that was left was the cell phone against her ear and the man on the other end of the line. What should she say?

  He rescued her from her indecision. “Where are you? Why didn’t you send me a report as soon as her handler went down? If this is some kind of passive-aggressive bullshit about the emails, I’m not amused.”

  Eden took a deep breath. She needed to find out who this person was and how Jolie was involved with Carter and Chastity. “I haven’t been near a computer.” She tried to make her voice sound like Jolie’s—sassy, snobbish and bitchy.

  “And, of course, you were about to use the Smart Phone that is currently stuck to your face to email me, right?” he spat.

  Could she claim that she forgot her password? Would he believe that? “I couldn’t get into my email on the phone. I forgot my password.” When he didn’t respond, she kept talking, getting sucked deeper into the lie. “It was auto-filled on my phone. I dropped the damned thing and the battery fell out.”

  “Are you kidding me, Cabot? How the hell do you forget four fucking digits?”

  “What can I say? It’s been a long day.”

  “Fine. Since you’ve got me on the phone, tell me what happened. Then, when you get a chance, I’d really appreciate a written report.” His voice shot out bullets of sarcasm wrapped in a mocking tone. “But since you’ve been having a tough day, there’s no rush.”

  “I can’t talk right now. I’m in a cab. But, yes. The kid,” her voice broke, “is in the hospital. Unconscious. I don’t know what happened, but I’m on my way to find out.”

  “So he wasn’t another one of your little mistakes?”

  “My little mistakes?” A spasm gripped the muscles of Eden’s neck. “No.”

  “Well, if it was her Hyde, we need to bring the girl in until we can get her dosages right. We can’t have her going around killing people, now can we?”

  Eden didn’t respond. Her mind was so overwhelmed that speech was impossible.

  “We’ll leave that to you.” The man’s laugh was dry and humorless. “I want a full report in my inbox twenty minutes before ASAP, so you better remember the goddamned password. Do you understand me?”

  Jolie’s password. “My four digit password, right. Understood.”

  “Forgot your password. That’s such bullshit. You just love being a pimple on my ass. But your playtime is running out.” His voice thundered. “Do what you’re supposed to and do it right. Last chance, Cabot. You hear me?”

  “I hear you.” After he hung up, Eden checked the phone log. There were only three numbers in it—the man she’d just spoken to’s, Mitch’s, and Carter’s. Oh my God, Carter. Tears flowed down her cheeks.

  The “medicine” I found hadn’t been cocaine, had it, Carter? It had been for me. You’d been giving it to me. All this time she’d thought . . .

  As the cab slowed down, Eden’s attention was brought back to the real world. They were pulling into Mitch’s driveway. Mitch. Jolie was in there with him, and he had no idea what was going on. This time even Eden knew more than he did, which wasn’t saying a lot. What if Jolie had already done something to him? Made him into one of her ‘little mistakes’?

  Eden tucked the phone into her pocket and repeated Jolie’s password again. Later she would see if she could get into the email account, but right now she needed to focus on getting Jolie away from Mitch. Or Hyde. She hoped she didn’t have to deal with Hyde too. For once, Jolie might have been telling the truth and Hyde might be out. Maybe Jolie was already dead. Eden threw the money in the front seat and opened the door before the cab had come to a stop.

  The driver yelled, “You want any change?”

  “Keep it!”

  The door was unlocked so she didn’t slow down, stumbling up the stairs, screaming Mitch’s name. The door was closed. No sound from the other side. Eden took a deep breath before turning the knob. Shoot, she should have gotten a weapon or something. What the heck was she doing? Be smart, Eden! Eyes darting around the hallway, she saw a glass vase on a table, wilted flowers sagging out of it. She ripped the sling off her arm, ignoring the pain in her shoulder as she dumped the flowers onto the floor. Splashing brownish water onto the ornate rug and her pants, she tested the vase’s weight. Heavy. But she could wield it. It might not do a lick of good against Hyde, but what would?

  A yelp came from inside the room—Jolie. Eden had to move, had to try to help. She needed Jolie alive. So she could beat information out of her.

  She cradled the vase in her arm and opened the door. The first thing she saw was Hyde, definitely Hyde. He was bigger than Mitch, courser features, not as refined or as beautiful. His muscles bulging, his chest heaving, his face furious. His growl shattered any sense of adequacy Eden might have felt before she opened the door. His hands clenched the bars, two fitting into each palm.

  She stepped into the room, her hands tight around the vase, eyes sweeping the room. She blinked. Hyde was still in the cage. Pissed off as hell to be there, but he was definitely still in the cage. The padlock was s
till closed. Yet another lie. Jolie didn’t know Eden had spoken to Jolie’s boss. So what was the game-plan? Eden couldn’t get Mitch away from Jolie, couldn’t let him out, when he was Hyde.

  She ignored the grunts coming from the cage. She could have sworn the yelp had sounded feminine. But Jolie wasn’t there. Not unless . . . Stupid. Behind the door.

  A second too late, she flipped around and saw something moving fast, swinging toward her head. She jumped sideways. The cane clipped her bad shoulder, sending pain shooting into her hand and chest.

  “Damn it, stay still!” Jolie slammed the door with her foot and stood in front of it, barring Eden’s escape.

  “What are you doing?” Eden screamed.

  Jolie’s eyes were wild, uncontrolled and angry. “Should’ve used this.” She looked down to what she held in her hand along with the cane. A syringe.