Jekyll & Hyde Inc.

Daniel tried to say no, but his voice wouldn’t work. A slow cold horror ran through him as he started moving toward her, and found he couldn’t stop. Until Tina grabbed him by the arm and hauled him back, glowering fiercely at the vampire.

“You can’t have him,” she said. “He belongs to me.”

The vampire lashed out at her. Long black fingernails sliced through the air with vicious speed, but Tina had seen that coming and was already somewhere else. The vampire seemed to see her clearly for the first time. Her eyes widened, and her mouth became a vicious snarl.

“Hyde!”

Tina punched her in the mouth with all her strength—and the vampire just stood there and took it. She grinned at Tina, her smile spreading impossibly wide to show off jagged teeth. And while she was busy doing that, Daniel kicked the legs out from under her. The vampire fell to the platform in an ungainly heap, and Tina booted her off the edge.

And just like that, all the noise stopped. Daniel and Tina turned to find all the vampires and their victims standing very still, staring at them with cold and hungry eyes. As though a whole shoal of sharks had just scented blood in the water. The name Hyde moved through the crowd in a whisper, as though the word was an obscenity.

“Okay . . . ” said Tina. “Now what?”

“Don’t say that like this is my fault,” said Daniel.

“You’re the one who flirted with the old bat.”

“She took advantage of me,” said Daniel. “Or at least, I’m pretty sure she would have.”

“Tell me you have a plan,” said Tina.

“Make them hurt,” said Daniel.

Daniel and Tina grabbed the garlic gas grenades out of their backpacks, pulled the pins, and lobbed the grenades into the gathering. Pungent-smelling clouds billowed across the platform and the vampires quickly retreated, choking and howling and covering their faces as best they could. Glimpses came and went of the reality behind the glamours as the vampires’ concentration was disrupted, revealing decaying corpses wrapped in the rotting remains of their grave clothes. They were really nothing more than things that had died and been buried, and then burst out of their coffins to dig their way out of the ground, so they could walk the world again and feast on the blood of the living. Old-time, old-school monsters, with nothing of Humanity left in them. Some of their victims cried out in horror as they finally saw what it was they’d been worshipping.

But the gas clouds were already beginning to disperse, and Daniel realized the station must have hidden extractor fans working, to keep the air fresh for the victims. Most of them had already moved to surround their masters, forming human shields. Some of them produced knives while others had straight razors, but they all looked ready to use whatever they had.

Daniel glanced at Tina. “Why would they bring knives to a party?”

“To get the party started,” said Tina. “It’s always all about the blood, here.”

Daniel tried to feel some sympathy for the victims, but they made it difficult, by being so obviously ready to kill him and Tina, if they could. They had given themselves, body and soul, to their masters; and they loved it. They bared filed-down teeth, and tried to look scary, as though they were the threat instead of their masters. Daniel met the vicious stares and wildly waving blades with a growing anger. The victims were standing between him and his prey, and he would kill them all if he had to. Because it was necessary, and because the choices they’d made disgusted him.

The vampires searched the underground station with their bloodshot eyes, until they were sure there were only two Hydes, and then screamed at their victims to attack. Without a moment’s hesitation, the victims surged across the platform like a pack of maddened animals. They showed no fear of what the Hydes might do to them, perhaps because it was nothing compared to what their masters did to them every night. They crossed the intervening distance in no time at all, and swarmed all over Daniel and Tina.

None of the victims were particularly strong or fast, but there were so many of them they were able to hit the Hydes from every side at once. Punching and kicking, slashing and stabbing with their various blades, desperate to bring the Hydes down. But for all their hate and frenzy, there was no real force to anything they did. Their masters had used them up.

Daniel and Tina struck the victims down with almost casual violence, and bones broke and blood spurted as they fell dead and dying to the platform. The masters had taken so much from them, there wasn’t enough left to hold them together. But even as bodies piled up around the Hydes, the remaining victims kept pressing forward. Because they would rather die than fail the ones who’d made them what they were.