Jekyll & Hyde Inc.

Daniel looked at her. There had been something in the way she said that . . . 

“What kind of person were you, before you drank the Elixir?”

Tina’s voice was suddenly quiet and reflective. Her gaze was far away, lost in yesterday, as though she was looking at someone else’s life.

“I was a party girl,” said Tina. “The legendary good time had by all. I came from a nice, respectable family, with all the comforts and everything to live for—so of course I couldn’t wait to throw it all away. I ran off to London the first chance I got, and less than a year later I was dying by inches, just like you . . . except I did it to myself. And then Edward happened to be around when I started a fight in a club, and he saw something in me.”

“He offered you the Elixir?”

Tina snorted loudly. “I grabbed it out of his hands. Couldn’t wait to be somebody else.”

“Did you know it could kill you?”

“I didn’t ask; but I wouldn’t have cared. I was a drunk, a junkie, and riddled with so many STDs I was a danger to be near. Now look at me. I’ve been fighting Edward’s war for ages—not for any cause, or because I’m grateful to him. It’s just so much fun.”

“Does Edward know that?”

“Who knows what goes through that old gargoyle’s mind? He probably does. Probably thinks it’s funny. And a very suitable attitude for a Hyde.”

“Have you killed many people?”

“Not people, Daniel. Monsters.”

Daniel must have looked like he doubted her, because she leaned forward and fixed him with a cold stare.

“I have hammered a stake into a vampire’s chest, and cut a werewolf’s throat with a silver knife. I once beat a Frankenstein surgeon to death with my bare hands, because he wouldn’t say he was sorry for what I’d caught him doing to a child with a scalpel. You only think you know what monsters can do. Before this, Edward used me as his private assassin, to take out targeted individuals who might have got in the way of his plans. Now he’s finally unleashed me on the Clans—and I couldn’t be happier.”

Given what they were planning, Daniel supposed he should find that reassuring, but he wasn’t sure that he did. He looked round the bar again. All the other customers had given up even pretending to drink or talk to each other and were looking steadily at Daniel and Tina, as though they were waiting for something to happen. Daniel drank some more brandy. It didn’t help.

“How much longer, before we can go after the Frankensteins?”

“There’s plenty of time,” said Tina. “More than enough to let off a little steam.”

She took a firm grip on the brandy bottle, leaned back in her chair, and looked challengingly around the bar. A man at the next table grinned at his friends, caught Tina’s eye, and raised his voice to make sure she heard him.

“Will you look at that? They’ll let any kind of trash in here, these days. I know what you are, sweetheart, and what you need. So why don’t you come over here and get down on your knees, where you belong?”

His friends laughed loudly, and then they all leered at Tina, daring her to do something.

Daniel set his glass down and started to get up, but Tina was already on her feet. She sauntered over to the next table and smiled down at the man who’d made the remark. And then she smashed the bottle over his head with such force that his face was slammed down into the table. The bottle broke, blood flew on the air, and the man didn’t move again. One of his friends jumped to his feet, shouting obscenities, and Tina rammed the jagged end of the bottle into his face and twisted it. He fell back, screaming, his face a horrid mess.

The other men overturned the table in their eagerness to get to Tina, but she just stood her ground, grinning. She punched one man in the face with such force that all his bones shattered, back-elbowed another in the throat, and then picked up the discarded table and hit the others with it, sending them flying.

Daniel took his time getting to his feet. Tina seemed to have matters comfortably in hand.

More men came charging forward, from all over the bar, and Tina laughed happily as she went to meet them. Facing overwhelming odds, and not giving a damn. Tina struck men down and trampled them underfoot, a vicious Valkyrie in an elegant evening gown, and no one could stand against her. Though that didn’t stop an awful lot of men from trying.

More patrons joined in, on both sides, and just like that everyone in the bar was fighting everyone else. Blood flew, people crashed this way and that, furniture was broken up to provide improvised weapons—and Daniel finally understood what everyone had been waiting for.