Jekyll, an Urban Fantasy (23 page)

“Will you two shut up?” Landon yelled. “This is why I never wanted kids.”

Mitch laughed. “She started it.”

Landon smacked the steering wheel with his fist. “I don’t know if you guys are going to
kill
each other, or
fuck
each other, or
fucking
kill each other, or
kill
each other fucking. I really don’t. But whichever it is, just get it over with so we can all have some goddamned peace.”

“This was a great idea, Landon,” Mitch said, looking at the outside of the dilapidated two-story building. “Any chance there’s a hideaway key?”

“We’ll have to break it down.” Landon pushed them out of the way and took a few steps backwards, readying himself to kick it in.

“You mean, you want to break your foot,” Eden mumbled, stepping in front of him. She unclipped a safety pin from her dress.

“What are you doing?”

She looked at them like they were stupid. And maybe she was right. But that didn’t have
anything
to do with their confusion.

“It’s a gift from Chastity,” she said, bending it and then hunching down near the door lock. “A leftover skill she imparted to me.”

That was how she’d gotten out of the cage.
A fucking safety pin
. He’d have to speak to the cage company about that sometime really soon. Because that was just
wrong
.

After a few minutes of fiddling, she stood, pushed the door open, and held out the disfigured safety pin.

“Impressive and highly disconcerting,” Mitch muttered. “Remind me to keep a few of those handy from now on.”

She stood back to let them pass. Mitch nodded to Landon to go in first, because there was no
way
he was going to let her be last. If she ran for it, he’d have to chase her down. And frankly, he wasn’t up to it. She followed Landon inside without glancing back.

The windows were all boarded up, so the only light downstairs came from the outside streetlights through the open door. Then the room turned red. Mitch had a moment of paranoid flashback until he saw the cheesy red lamp with sparkling fringe that Landon had just flicked on.

“The sun will be up soon,” Landon said. “So we’ll have light if we take the plywood off a few windows. But only the ones facing the alley. No need to broadcast our being here to the whole neighborhood. I hope neither of you is afraid of the dark.”

Not the dark, just the darkness.

Mitch shut the door, locking it with a multitude of chains and deadlocks, closing them off from the outside world. “You always take me to the nicest places, Landon. Did you come here a lot before it was shut down?”

“You were right about needing a ball-gag, Eden,” Landon said.

They wandered around the downstairs. Even
before
the raid, the brothel must have been a sad place, not a romantic one. They all went upstairs together, Mitch’s sarcastic commentary and the noises from the street the only things they heard.

“Pick a room, any room,” Landon said, opening various doors as they came to them. “Except for you, Turner. You get the kinky one.”

Mitch watched her move in front of him. In the limited light, all he could see was her shape which, frankly, was beyond enticing. And the way she’d fought… If he hadn’t caught the Taser dart with his back, she might’ve been able to dodge it. Or deflect it with one of those handy safety pins.

Things would be easier if it weren’t so damn hard to look at her from any other position than behind. Confidence radiated from her, so different than what he remembered. Except that wasn’t exactly true, now was it? He’d already seen two sides of Eden—the first unsure, sassy-but-sweet, able to deal with him,
compete
with him, even though she was soft, kind.

But then when they’d
really
been together, put aside all their bullshit and
really
been together, he knew Eden was different. Different than anyone he’d ever known. Different than the woman he’d thought she was.

His belief started to slip. Like his grip wasn’t strong enough and the facts were tugging against him. Hard. He shook his head, trying to reclaim his surety that she couldn’t possibly be the same person. She’d definitely changed, but…he trusted her. He’d
never
be able to trust Chastity like that. Fuck it all. He just didn’t know.

He inhaled sharply when she stepped into one of the rooms, disappearing from his view. He rushed to the doorway, holding onto the walls, wanting—no,
needing
—to see her.

And he did—
only
her. Her head turning from side to side as she examined the room. Her hand running along the surface of the low furniture. Her foot nudging the futon. With her touch, she brought each object in the room into focus, made them real.

The room had been designed to look Japanese…
ish
—futon on a low wooden slat frame, dirty rug made from some weed-looking things. A cheap decal of Mt. Fuji stuck on the window allowed the only light inside. Next to Mt. Fuji was a sharp point of light—probably from a streetlamp directly outside the window.

“Go find your own room. This one’s mine.” Her words were sharp, but quiet, subdued. Like she was telling him to leave her alone, but didn’t want him to listen.

“Yeah.” He backed away slowly, equally unsure. “Night.” This time he left because she’d
asked
.
The emotional shit just gets in the way. Focus on the goal, not the woman.
Unable to come up with another method of avoidance, he went to his room. His cage. A BDSM-themed room for people who wanted to pretend to know what being confined felt like. They had
no
fucking idea.

When a cage is your only choice, it isn’t hot. It isn’t kinky. It isn’t sexy.

It’s pain. Sharper than the strike of a fancy flogger, than a furry paddle, or padded cuffs.

External pain was only a minor nuisance to Mitch. It was the stuff on the inside that scarred, wounded, destroyed. If the Doms and Subs who’d ‘played’ in this room had any idea what it was
truly
like, they’d shed tears. From a place their ‘play’ would never,
ever
touch.

A few feet in front of the open cage-door was a throne, upholstered with red velvet fabric. Presumably where the Dom sat, watching her captive-submissive. Mitch turned the thing around so it faced away from the cage and sat down. He was in no rush.

Was he like the submissive? Trusting someone enough to let them lock him up? No. It wasn’t a
choice
for him. It was a necessity for
Hyde
. But he trusted Landon. He
had
to. Because if he let the doubt in—the fear that the cop would never let him out, that he’d be caged for the rest of his life because those he trusted betrayed him… Well, he’d be broken. Even
more
than he was now.

How many mistakes had led up to this moment? Could he even count that high? Trusting the wrong people, letting himself believe in them when he shouldn’t have. Until they killed his sister. Allowing someone who had loved and accepted him, knowing all the evil he was, out of his sight. Allowing them to take her away from him.

And then it had happened again—with Eden. What the fuck was wrong with him? Couldn’t he learn the fucking lesson?

He felt his shame become anger.

His anger become rage.

His rage become inhuman.

“Landon!” he screamed, rushing to the cage and throwing himself inside. “Landon, I need you! Now!”

Landon came running in. With one look of
‘Oh, shit!’
he slammed the door, looking around for something to bar it closed with.

“Something we should have thought about sooner,” Mitch growled. What the hell was strong enough to hold Hyde inside?

Landon scrambled to the chair and pushed it towards the cage.

“That’s not going to work.”

Then
she
ran in and slid to a stop just inside the door. “Did you bring what I gave you?” she asked Landon.

“The serum?”

First
she
nodded, then
he
did.

“I’m not taking it,” Mitch said.

“Your pride is going to kill you.” She didn’t make eye-contact as she crossed the room and slid that stupid-ass pin into the lock. When she started wiggling it, she stared at the ceiling, concentrating on what she
felt
instead of what she
saw
.

When it clicked, she stepped back and looked at Mitch. After a deep breath, she shook her head and let out a sigh of relief. “You can stay in there for as long as you want to, but you won’t change. Not tonight anyway.”

“How the hell do
you
know?”

“I can feel it. I can feel
him
.” She set the pin down on the throne, and calmly left the room, leaving the two men glancing between each other and the lock she’d just fastened.

Hyde was humming, encouraged by Mitch’s weakness. He wasn’t pushing to get out, though. His activity more like a reminder of who he was and what he could do. Mitch didn’t need the reminder.

“Is she right?” Landon asked.

“I don’t know if she can ‘feel’ him, but he’s mellowed.” Damn it, how could she possibly know Hyde better than he did? “Probably just a lucky guess. But just in case…”

“Yeah. Just in case.”

Mitch took a deep breath and shook the door. The bars were far weaker than his cage at home, used as a toy versus a prison. But the door didn’t open. The lock didn’t give.

“Think it’ll hold him back?” Landon asked.

“Not without a chemical back-up. How much narcotic did you bring?”

“This is all there was.” Landon reached into his pocket, pulling out two syringes. One was bigger, less familiar, filled with cloudy white serum. The other was the kind he usually used, containing the poison he usually used. It was almost full, which meant that he
might
be able to squeeze two doses out of it, unless Hyde was truly determined to get free.

“Fuck! In all the excitement, I forgot to go shopping. Any chance you brought my cell phone?” Although his supplier’s was probably his most frequently-called number, he’d never thought to memorize it. But it wasn’t technology’s fault, it was his own stupidity’s.

After Landon shook his head, Mitch said, “Plan B. Can you hit me hard enough to make me unconscious but not brain-dead.”

“I’d love to try, but it won’t be effective in the long run.” How long of a run did they have? “I should be able to get something on the street.”

Mitch ran his hands over his face. Landon
used
to have morals, but somehow Mitch had been able to wipe them away in only a few weeks. Sending an ex-cop to go score drugs for him had to be some kind of criminal
coup de grâce
. “I’m sorry, man. I’d go myself, but—”

“Hey, what’s a little drug-dealing between friends? Whatever I find may not be of the same quality, but…”

It’ll do.
Anything
would do. And if it came with a nice arsenic filler, well… What more damage could
that
do?

“Are you okay now or should I stay?”

Mitch shook his body. It was buzzing. But how much of that was because of the Taser, and how much was because of Hyde? He reached a hand through the bars, turning his arm, judging how much room he had to maneuver. The space between each bar was slightly wider than his cage at home. “Pull the chair a little closer. Then leave the key and the syringe on it.”

Landon had a question in his eyes as he dragged the throne towards the cage.

“Closer.”

At last the question overwhelmed him, and he asked, “Why am I doing this?”

“Because I want to be able to get at them if I need them. What if I have to go to the little boy’s room? I’m not going to piss in the corner of my cage.” Like an animal.

Realization hit Landon’s face a second later. “Oh. You sure Hyde’s arm is too big to fit through?”

“You’ve seen him. You tell
me
.”

Landon bunched his lips together and then nodded. “You sure you don’t want me to pull a mattress in here and—”

“Back off, Landon! I’m a grown man. And I don’t want to fucking
spoon
with you.” He dropped the volume of his voice. “Again.” A good laugh now and then was all he could ask for. He needed it. And from the look on Landon’s face,
he
needed it too.

“Yeah, well…I wouldn’t get any sleep anyway, what with your snoring.” He set the morphine and the make-shift key on the throne and tucked the other syringe into his pocket. “Sleep tight, darlin’. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

§ § §

Mitch spent the next hour or so pacing, the irony not lost on him. Caged and pacing like a fucking lion, driving himself more and more insane with every about-face. When exhaustion set up house, he grabbed the morphine. He couldn’t use all of it and he couldn’t waste a drop, just in case Landon couldn’t get any more. So, shakily, he shoved the needle into his arm.

He watched the plunger go down, bit by bit, eyeing the fifty percent mark ahead. 100-90-80. At fifty, he should pull out. But what if he didn’t? What would happen if he just kept pressing? His thumb twitched, teasing,
daring
him to do it. Give in. Dump the whole damn thing into his vein and end this.

Eden could go on her merry way, doing whatever the hell she wanted. Landon could go get himself killed. They didn’t need him. He was a liability. Can’t go too far if you’re always on the look-out for a cage for your compadre. Can’t just run for it if you have to wait for the motherfucker to turn back into himself.

And if what she’d said was true, Mitch’s time was limited anyway. Should he just finish it? End Hyde with the same dose he ended himself. Maybe he should’ve asked Landon to leave the other syringe. If it really
was
the serum, he’d be able to control Hyde, or at least not worry that the bastard would explode out of him at any moment. And if it was
poison
, no one would ever have to worry about Hyde again. Or about him.

Mitch didn’t believe in suicide. He’d fucked up enough times to deserve to live forever. To pay for his sins by being who he was and having to live with himself. Plus,
offing
himself would be an insult to the memory of his sister, Shelly. After all she’d done to keep him alive—including dying.