Jekyll, an Urban Fantasy (11 page)

§ § §

The second Eden woke up, she jerked off the mattress. Same damned room, different day. Maybe different week, who knew? She hadn’t wanted to close her eyes around her enemies. But even two weeks of constant slumber didn’t seem to be enough. And assuming that she hadn’t been out for longer than a few hours, today was the day she’d see Mitch.

She didn’t care what Alex said, Eden was going to talk to him, touch him. A drive-by wasn’t enough. Not to appease the ache she felt every time she thought about him. God, it was brutal. Remembering his face, his voice, his body. Everything about him brought a smile to her face. But it was short-lived. Because right after that initial sense of ‘holy crap, I want to taste him so frigging bad’ was quickly followed by a ‘oh crap, what if he never lets me inside of him again’. If she’d eaten anything in the last twelve hours, she’d have thrown it up by now. Anticipating and dreading the moment they stood close enough to touch.

Someone knocked on the door. Then she heard Alex say, “Eden, can I come in?”

“No,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes. She had no expectation of privacy, here or anywhere else.
First
she’d had to deal with Chastity ripping off her clothes every chance she got. And she imagined that when The Clinic henchman had brought her here, they hadn’t gotten her into the hospital gown with their eyes closed. No. Her body wasn’t hers—before
or
now.

She got off the mattress and went to the door, flipping the pathetic excuse for a door lock. It was
not
the thought that counted. Then she laid back down on the mattress and closed her eyes before yelling, “Come on in.”

Alex was carrying a black garment bag and smiling. Eden hated it when she smiled—it just meant Alex was about to do something to show how
likeable
she was. Eden hated her.

She held the bag out. “It isn’t much, but it’s better than the scrubs.”

It wasn’t as if Eden had anything else to change into. The clothes she’d been wearing when they kidnapped her—despite their protestations it was for her own good—had been tattered anyway. From when Hyde had ripped them off her. Wow, she really needed to make new friends. The crowd she was hanging out with right now sucked.

“You bought me clothing?”

“No, I
brought
you clothing. I don’t wear it anymore, and I thought you might like it. Now that you’re going to stay, we’ll get your things out of storage and—”

Eden jolted up. “What did you say?”

Alex’s smile got bigger. “It’s just a summer dress, Eden. Really not anything to get worked up about. There are some flats in there too.”

Eden ripped the bag out of her hand. “I’m not talking about the dress. I’m talking about my stuff. Why did you move it?”

“Oh,” she said slowly. “Well, we needed to make sure Carter hadn’t left anything behind that tied him to us. And since he was unconscious at the time, we thought it was best to just move everything. But you can have it back whenever you want.”

“
Now
. I want it back
now
.” Her jaw was so stiff, she had to speak slowly and carefully to get the words out. “I want you to go get a truck and fill it up with all my worldly possessions that you felt you had a right to paw through. And I want them all put back.
Now
.”

“Okay, I’ll put someone on it.”

“No, Alex. Not someone.
You
. I want
you
to do it. Because, for some ungodly reason, you seem to think that this is normal. That it has no effect on me whatsoever. I want you to take my life, which I assume is now in boxes, and I want you to
move
my life. And as you get more and more tired and achy, I pray that you will
finally
understand that I am a person. I have feelings. I have memories. And
no one
has the right to touch those without my permission. Do you understand?”

At least the woman had the decency to look ashamed. “Yes, I understand. I’m sorry. It wasn’t my choice.”

“Whose choice was it?” Eden asked, opening up the bag. It didn’t matter. Her point had been made, and all she really cared about was getting out of here and seeing Mitch again. And she knew she wouldn’t get a decent answer, anyway.

“I don’t know. Someone above me. They don’t discuss those kinds of things with me.”

Surprise, surprise.
Eden pulled out the sundress, holding it up and trying to imagine Alex wearing it. “No offense, Alex, but I never pictured you as a sundress kind of person.”

“I’m not.” She looked down at the khakis and button-down blouse that she wore. “I bought it because I thought it would impress a man I was interested in.”

“No offense, Alex, but I never pictured you as the kind of person who was interested in men, either.”

Her shoulders slumped and she tilted her head. “Wow, Eden. That wasn’t very nice.”

“What does ‘nice’ have to do with anything?” Eden shook her head. “Our relationship isn’t about being nice to each other, Alex. It’s about being honest.” Or pretending to be, at least.

“You want honesty?” she snapped, all pretense of politeness gone. “
Honestly
, if you don’t help us, Mitch will die. He’ll become more and more violent. He will hurt anyone around him—
without
transforming. And then, at some point, he
will
transform. And he’ll stay that way. The man you know and love will disappear, and all that will be left is evil.
That
is what happens to Hydes, Eden. If they live long enough.”

Her mind refused to believe it. The image of Hyde momentarily superimposing on the image of Mitch that was constantly there. Mitch was strong. He’d been regulating Hyde’s visits for fifteen years. But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Jolie had been doping him with a drug, the serum from The Clinic, the whole time. How long would he be able to fight without it?

“What about the drugs?” Her voice caught. “What if you give him the serum?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said, looking somewhat pleased about Eden’s discomfort. “He’s already been without it for a few weeks. We’ve tried to observe him, but aren’t able to get too close. Not if it threatens the whole operation. He and Landon are on a warpath against us.”

“Wow. Are you actually surprised by that? You don’t get to secretly drug someone for fifteen years and expect them to just let it go.”

Alex sighed, glancing at the door. When she started speaking again, it was almost a whisper. “That’s why you need to convince him. But unless he agrees to come in peacefully, and without causing any damage, we can’t take the chance.”

These people spoke in riddles without ever getting to the punch line. “I can’t exactly convince him by shouting, ‘Hey, Mitch! Let’s go over to The Clinic for drugs!’ out of a car window.”

“We’ll figure something out soon. Don’t worry.”

Don’t worry—the most useless phrase ever spoken…by anyone…anywhere.
Especially
by Alex.

Eden had
everything
to worry about. The last time she’d seen Mitch, he’d told her to go away. Not a great place to begin a discussion. Would
anything
have changed in two weeks? She wanted to believe part of the reason he was on a ‘warpath’ was to get her back. God, how she wanted to believe that. But she also knew there was a chance that she had
nothing
to do with what he wanted.

“And what happens if I fail?” she asked.

Alex sighed. “We may be forced to put him down. Before he hurts anyone. It’s too dangerous to have him anywhere near the public.”

“So The Clinic
does
kill people.”

“No, Eden, we don’t. But he won’t be a
person
for long.”

Mitch was supposed to be at his office right now, checking out the two-week-old damage from a breakin that the building’s security had only discovered this morning. Because they’d called the police. And the-devil-knows that any police file with
Mitch’s
name on it would stick around for at
least
thirty-whole-minutes before it somehow got ‘lost’. But he still had to pretend like he cared, pacify the building’s manager, and act shocked at the invasion of his space.

Instead he was lying on the floor of her empty apartment.
Very productive.

“This is getting more and more pathetic, E. Shit. I’m even talking to you now.” Mitch opened his eyes and noticed a new water spot on the ceiling tile. He’d have to talk to the building superintendent. Mitch didn’t want her to come home and get rained on. He’d paid her rent for the next few months, praying she’d find her way home if he never found her himself.

He wondered if she’d be mad if he bought her a house. Nothing huge or ostentatious, just a little house. With bars and a steel door, of course.

He lifted his arms, wiping his elbows where the cheap carpeting left grooves in his skin. How long had he been here this time?

You need another hobby, asshole
. But he couldn’t relax anywhere else. His favorite place while they’d been together was now the most painful reminder. His bedroom. Even if he
didn’t
spend every night in the cage, anticipating Hyde’s unwelcome appearance, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep in the bed he’d shared with her. So, when he was feeling particularly morbid, he’d come here to her apartment, imagining it wasn’t stripped bare. That her stuff was still scattered around her room. Hoping to inhale her scent instead of dust. At least he could talk to her privately, without thinking that every time he rolled over, he’d see her there.

Everything had been taken away from him so fast. Every clue. Every piece of her life. And no matter how many people Landon spoke with, no matter how many people Mitch threatened,
no one
would tell them anything. Every lead led straight to a dead-end. How could he fight an enemy he couldn’t see? One that was so good at covering their tracks that he spent every miserable day fumbling around lost, looking for signs that weren’t there.

He covered his face, pressing his hands to his skin, trying to keep his sanity contained.

Fuck
. If Landon knew Mitch still came here, he’d be pissed. Or just weirded-out. But Mitch wasn’t about to tell him. Primarily because Mitch knew how fucking psychotic it was. This wasn’t even really her home. Never had been, or so she said. But there were so few places he could still find hope. Hope of finding her, being with her again.

It felt like it had been forever-ago that he’d told her to leave, that they’d never work out, couldn’t be together. And it turns out that he couldn’t be
apart
from her. He laughed bitterly. Another mistake piled on top of the thousands before it. But
this
one had toppled the whole thing over. This one had broken him so badly, he might never be able to stand up again. Because this one had given someone a chance to harm her. If he hadn’t been such a colossal asshole, he would’ve let her stay,
begged
her to stay. If he hadn’t been so damned weak and sobby, he would’ve at least watched her go. But no, he’d had to run away like a little girl, crying ‘weeweewee’ all the way back to his cage. If he’d been braver, he would have been there to stop them from taking her. And now there was nothing left for him to do.

He tried not to think about it too much. Because it made him dangerous to himself and everyone around him. But he
knew
she could already be dead. And when those thoughts hit, he wanted violence, craved it, felt the need pull at him like a drowning man needs oxygen. His chest caved, empty, with nothing inside to fill him.

He lifted his head and then drove it back hard onto the floor. With the headache only mildly-numbing him, he got up and went to the door. He had just enough time to go talk to the manager of the office building, feign shock at the violation, and get home in time for Hyde’s next visit.

“Come back to me, Eden. Be alright. If you’re alright, then I’ll…I’ll…”
You’ll what, asshole?
He’d love her. He’d love her so hard she might get smothered by it. He’d be with her…until the next time she really needed him.

The bottom line was that every time she really needed him, he’d already run away.

§ § §

Eden scratched her back where one of the safety pins poked at her. Alex’s dress wasn’t Eden’s size, so she’d had a choice—either gather-up the back and keep it together with a few heavy-duty safety pins or just let her breasts hang out. Tough call. At least Alex’s jacket fit. More or less. Florida storms didn’t offer the biting cold of the more-northern states, but the jacket provided protection from the onslaught of rain slamming the Earth, the sky punishing anything in its way. Though the rain would stop soon, the dampness would stick around for the rest of the night. And then the showers would start again. Hurricane season in Florida—as unpredictable as anything else in her life right now.

Pulling the jacket tighter, she shielded her face with her other hand and walked outside for the first time in two weeks, a guard at her side. Since she had no idea where she was and knew the guard was watching her every move, she didn’t try to run. She’d wait. Once in a vehicle, the few seconds it would take for a guard to climb out to follow her would give her a better chance.

Under a car port, looking oh-so-dry, Fields stood next to the open door of a huge black SUV. Another guard stared at her from near the hood. They were both wearing sunglasses. Eden had to laugh at the cliché. Until she saw the gun holsters both men wore. That wasn’t funny in the least.

The handles of their weapons didn’t look right. They were too boxy, and their holsters were longer than any she’d seen—not that she’d ever been close to one that she knew of. Of course, it was hard to be sure what Chastity had done with her free time.

“All this is for me?” she asked. “You really shouldn’t have, Fields.”

He shook his head. “Not for you. For him. If he tries anything.”

Her stomach dropped. “I thought you guys didn’t do that sort of thing.”

“We protect what needs protecting, from whatever source the danger comes from.”

“And you think I need protecting from Mitch?”

“No…maybe. We’ll see. Alex told you that he could be different, right?”