Jekyll & Hyde Inc.

“I’m not sure we could take Edward Hyde,” said Tina. “He might actually be stronger than both of us together. He’s been a Hyde for so long . . . ” And then she stopped, and grinned suddenly. “Be fun to try, though.”

“What about the other Hydes?” said Daniel. “Could we get them to side with us, against Edward? If we told them the truth?”

“Who’s to say they don’t already know?” said Tina. “We were set up to do Edward’s dirty work for him, and then be discarded afterward. The moment he didn’t need us, he could just throw us to the other Hydes . . . ”

“Would they kill their own kind?” said Daniel.

“They’re Hydes,” said Tina.

Daniel nodded reluctantly. “You know them better than me.”

Tina frowned. “Not really. I was never a part of Jekyll & Hyde Inc. Until Edward put us together, I’d never met another Hyde.”

“There’s a reason for that,” said Nigel.

Daniel and Tina looked at him sharply, and he smiled slowly.

“And so we come at last to the great secret at the heart of Jekyll & Hyde Inc. There are no other Hydes. There used to be . . . but Edward killed them all, one by one. You two are the only Hydes left, apart from him.”

Daniel and Tina looked at each other, and for a long moment they were both too shocked to say anything.

“But . . . I used to go drinking and fighting with them!” said Tina.

“Hope you have good memories of that,” said Nigel.

“Why would Edward kill all the other Hydes?” said Daniel.

“Because he felt threatened by them. He wanted to replace them with new and weaker Hydes, created by a diluted version of the Elixir. But he couldn’t make any more. I don’t know why. Perhaps some important ingredient isn’t available any more. The only way he could get more Elixir was to kill the existing Hydes and harvest what remained of the potion from their corpses. Apparently a lot of it gets lost during the extraction process.” Nigel smiled coldly at Daniel. “You drank the very last dose in existence.”

“Of course!” said Daniel. He turned to Tina. “That’s why he made such a point of showing us that lab this morning. It was all misdirection, to make us believe he still had control of the Elixir.”

“It would explain why the attacks on the Clans were left to us,” said Tina. “He didn’t have anyone else. We were his last chance.”

Daniel nodded quickly. “Remember when the mummies said Edward asked them if they would help manufacture the Elixir? That’s why he was concerned about what they might have said: because it might have led us to the truth.”

“That’s why Edward had to launch his war against the Clans,” said Tina. “He had to destroy them before they found out how weak he really is.”

“It was never about waiting for the right person, after all,” said Daniel. “He had to go with me because I was all he had.”

“So,” said Nigel, raising his voice to draw their attention back to him. “You have to take care of Edward, to stop him building a new power base from the criminal underworld . . . and save the humans and the wolves from the last real monster in the world.”

Daniel’s gaze was still fixed on Tina. “There’s no way we could persuade Edward to step down, or change his plans.”

“He’d fight us to the death,” said Tina. “But can we take him? You saw what he did to the tiger.”

“I’m starting to think he arranged that deliberately,” said Daniel. “To warn us not to mess with him.”

“We could always visit the armory and load up with really big guns,” said Tina.

“You think Miss Montague would just hand them over? She’d be bound to suspect something, and get word to Edward. Our only real chance is to hit him without warning.”

“You’re ready to do that?” said Tina.

“Why not?” said Daniel.

Tina grinned brightly. “You know how to show a girl a good time!”

“But could you kill him?” said Daniel. “After everything he did for you?”

“He saved you too,” said Tina.

“But at heart, I’m still a copper,” said Daniel. “I didn’t go through all of this just to see the monster Clans replaced by something worse. If you’d known what he was planning, would you have gone through with it?”

“Probably,” said Tina. “I spent a lot of time learning how to kill monsters; and I wasn’t about to be cheated out of the experience. But . . . he could have trusted me with the truth and he didn’t. So to hell with him. What about you, mister policeman? Could you kill Edward?”

Daniel smiled suddenly. “I signed on to kill monsters. All of them.”

“I never liked the man,” said Tina.

“Does this mean you’ll do it?” said Nigel, breaking in impatiently.

“Yes,” said Daniel. And then he turned slowly, and fixed his old friend with a thoughtful stare. “But what about you?”

“What about me?” said Nigel.

“Paul knew he’d gone too far,” said Daniel. “That he’d become something his old self would have hated. So I have to ask: Have you killed people?”

Nigel met his gaze steadily. There was no guilt in his face, nothing to suggest Daniel’s question meant anything to him.

“When the moonlight fills my head I run with the pack, and kill whatever they chase. We’re predators—and everything else that lives is our prey.”