The Diabolical Miss Hyde

by Viola Carr

  I poke through them with my toe, incredulous. The Thistlewood Club. Is this what Temple’s bloodthirsty crime pamphlets pay for? Holy seditious libel, friends. There’s enough here to hang him a dozen times over. Further into the lamp-lit dark, broken bottles lie skewiff, oil and ink pissing out in dark pools, and . . . sweet baby Jesus, there’s Matthew Temple, on the floor in a mess of crimson death.

  He’s choking, pawing at the blood that pumps red rhythm from his opened throat. And as the blood glows redder, brighter—as his life seeps away—it’s as if the rest of the world fades to sepia. It’s lurid, shocking. A lunatic’s oil painting of beauty.

  In the corner crouches a growling yellow beast.

  Head too big for its body, twisted limbs, deformed spine ridged with bumps. Fur in damp clumps, narrow jaws dripping with saliva. Around one paw, it wears a bolted metal contraption, like a clunky manacle wrapped with crackling copper wire. Its hackles bristle with coarse golden hair, and it rakes the floor with ugly claws, splinters cracking. Amber eyes, shiny with hunger, fix on mine

  (hers)

  and something in ’em recognizes us, because it howls with rage fit to curdle my mouth . . . and leaps.

  I lurch out of the way, graceless. The beast slams into my shoulder. I tumble, and my skull cracks the floor again, hard. Thump! I’m dizzy, I’m fumbling for my weapon, screw these skirts, where is that pocket? My sweet steel sister is singing, don’t let her go hungry . . .

  The creature twists to all fours and advances. Spit drools in strings from its jaws. It stinks of wet fur and blood. Its flat eyes gleam, inhuman. I scrabble away on my back like a crab, desperate. I can’t escape, it’s poising to spring . . .

  Crack! Blinding blue light melts my eyeballs. Aether zings, fire and thunder.

  And the beast yowls in pain and blurs across the room into the dark.

  “After it!” Captain Lafayette sprints into the dim backwaters of the office, and boom! Another aether explosion, loud enough to shake the room and shower me in plaster dust.

  Only this time, it ain’t his pistol.

  Dazed, I chase after him through the dust cloud. The back office is dim, narrow, cluttered with lithograph frames and stacks of movable type. No windows. No doors. No exits.

  Just a smoking hole in the wooden wall, six inches wide, charred at the edges. And the monster is gone.

  I catch my breath, try to rein in my heartbeat. Lafayette holsters his pistol, dust drifting from his hair. If I were a lesser woman, he’d be my bleedin’ hero.

  “You missed,” I accuse.

  A flash of glorious smile. “You moved.”

  Bumps tingle my arms, and something sweet and tempting melts like warm chocolate over my heart. Fact is, for all his damned annoying attitude, the world’s brighter and less ugly with him in it. He’s sunshine through my rain clouds. A light on my black-crusted soul.

  Curse him. I wipe my dusty face. “So what was that? Your ugly little brother?”

  “I told you I was a hunter. That’s the thing I’m hunting. Seems you and I are on the same trail.” He turns those heaven-blue eyes on me, and it isn’t the raw, bleeding look he gave me that night in Seven Dials. It isn’t even the dark, fiery look of desire. It’s bruised, bewildered, a little bit awestruck.

  It’s the look he gives her.

  He called to her outside. Saw her enter this building. Now no one’s here but me.

  Oh, shit.

  A wet gurgle breaks the mood. Temple’s still alive. I dive to my knees, press my palm to his throat, try to stop the blood, but I’m not Jesus fucking Christ. I’m not even Eliza Jekyll. “God’s innards. It’s everywhere.”

  A shadow flits across Lafayette’s face. As if he’s seen death before and knows the bastard’s ugly face. He pokes at something on the floor with his toe. “Knife,” he reports softly. “Stabbed in the throat, just like Billy Beane. Good God.”

  I grip Temple’s hand, despairing. “Hush, now. You’re not alone.” The best I can do. Damn it, it’s all I can do. Poor bastard. How we’ve underestimated you.

  Temple stares up at me, pleading. He’s trying to speak, but bright red froth spurts from his mouth. Red like his waistcoat. His hair’s soaked with it, that stupid autumn-leaf tuft of his, and stupidly I wipe it back from his cheek, but it just keeps dripping.

  I scream, but it comes out as a gurgling mess. I’ve never felt so helpless. His face slackens, and the blood goes from a spurt to a trickle.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “Don’t die. Please, don’t die.”

  But he does. His breath rattles, and the sparkle in his eyes winks out.

  God fucking damn it. My skirts—her skirts—are soaked with warm gore. My hands run with it, it’s soaking my sleeve to the elbow. I don’t even bother to wipe clean.

  Because I killed him. Never mind that bristly-haired monster that just zapped out of here with the portable half of Clara’s teleportation machine bolted around its paw. Temple tried to help us, and we treated him like scum. You’re in danger, he’d scribbled. He knew the killer were after us. He tried to tell us—put himself in harm’s way, for God’s sake—and this is what he gets.

  The man was more than we gave him credit for. But we assumed.

  It don’t matter that we were Eliza at the time. I’m not some drug-addled fantasy of hers brought to life. We’re two halves of the same damn person. And I can’t pretend anymore that what she does—what she wants and fears and longs for—is naught to do with me.

  Lafayette watches me. “I’m sorry. He was your friend.”

  “No. But he should’ve been.”

  He offers me his hand. I haul myself up. Blood gums our fingers together. It seems right, somehow. My cheeks burn, and I close my eyes.

  It hurts. It’s marvelous. A strange satisfaction, not having to hide anymore.

  “So.” I open my eyes again. “I’m her. She’s me. And now you know.”

  His gaze is steady, unafraid. “I think I always knew. Since that night in Seven Dials, anyway.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You saw me, in the moonlight. You saw what I would become, and you didn’t run.”

  I edge closer, restless. He smells of aether and steel. “And what if I like what you become?”

  He lets my hand go. “Lizzie, you shouldn’t. I’m dangerous.”

  “But—”

  “When I’m that creature”—a spit of distaste—“I want to kill you. I want to tear your flesh to scraps and have my way with your bleeding remains. The curse is that powerful.”

  His poetic description makes me squirm. But it’s dark, compelling, like my nightmares. Such wild, uncontrollable impulses . . .

  “So,” says I, after a moment. “How did you, er . . . ?”

  “How did I become this way?” A little laugh. “A beast attacked me in the Kashmiri jungle. I barely escaped alive. The wound festered, and then it healed. I felt stronger and healthier than I’d felt in my life. I imagined I’d dodged a bullet, so to speak. Then the moon waxed. I thought it was a nightmare, until I saw what I’d done.”

  I ache for his sorrow. At least Eliza had Marcellus to guide her, that first time. To explain what was happening. Lafayette had no one. “It happens at the full moon?”

  “And other times. I can’t change at will, at least not so far. Certain circumstances set it off. I, er . . . haven’t quite figured out the rules yet.” He bites his lip. Sweet lord, that’s a sight. I want to taste the little bruise he’s made. Kiss his flushed mouth, forget who and where and what we are . . .

  “So why return to England? India’s the perfect place to put yourself in lavender.”

  “I killed someone it was my job to protect.” He’s strangely detached, as if once the wound in his heart bled freely and he screamed curses at the sky, only now it don’t hurt so much anymore. “The air howled with my guilt. I needed to escape.”

  I understand exactly what he means. “And now you’re a monster-hunter for the Royal, eh? Nice twist.”<
br />
  “It isn’t for the reason they think. There’s safety in it, so long as no one finds out. I was hoping this other fellow might help me.”

  “The ‘Moorfields Monster,’ eh?”

  “Apparently.” He shrugs, rueful. “Same reason I sought you out, and Mr. Finch. I’ve tried all kinds of remedies, as you see”—he fingers that odd bracelet he wears, the silver one with the seal, and I wonder what kind of charlatan spellwork resides there—“but nothing works. I’d heard rumors of Henry Jekyll’s experiments. I thought if the elixir could split a man in two . . .”

  “. . . then it might be able to put you back together.” My stomach swells with salt like a drowned woman’s. I feel as if I’m being forced to eat a pudding the size of a house.

  A cure. As if I’m a plague, a foul disease to be eradicated. The fleas in Eliza’s hair, the dirt under her nails. Unwanted.

  I want to jump up and down, yell like a thwarted child. He’s mine, bitch. Not yours. Mine . . .

  I find my voice, a stab of fake bravado. “So you know me, and I know you. What now? You gonna arrest me to shut me up?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  He turns my hand over, studies my smeared nails. Is he afraid to look at me? “Can I trust you, Miss Hyde?”

  Daring, I take his hand and press his palm over my racing heart, where my flesh is soft and warm. “What do you think?”

  He hesitates.

  Just an instant of indecision, but it’s enough for me.

  “Fine.” I turn away and laugh as if I don’t care. But like a gutted fish I’m torn gritty and ragged inside. “Guess you always did like her better.”

  He catches my shoulder, pulls me back around. “Look, I’m sorry that—”

  “She won’t have you, you know.” Bitterness scorches my guts, fiery like rotgut gin. “Not Eliza. She’s in love with someone else. What a fucking pity you had to lower yourself to my level.”

  “Lizzie, that’s ridiculous—”

  “You know what? Forget it.” It hurts, deep inside, a tumor I can’t never cut out. “You don’t trust me? Fine. Maybe I’ll call on that crusty old bastard in the Tower after all and tell him what his precious investigator really is—”

  Boots thud on bricks, and a gang of men burst in.

  We jump apart, as if we’re doing something indecent. Already I miss his warmth, his scent, the touch of his hand. In this moment, I’m certain as death that I’ll never know them again.

  Coppers. Two constables, stovepipe hats and polished buttons. And then that fat inspector with the cigar waddles in.

  Eliza’s anger chimes, low and resonant like the bottom end of a piano.

  Crap. I can’t run now. I can’t change, not in front of Reeve. Will he recognize Eliza’s dove-gray gown? Ask my name? Equate me with his famous lady in red?

  Curse my weak woman’s heart. My jealousy seems so stupid now. Will Lafayette drop us both in it? He’s every reason to want us gone. Apart from Finch—whom he can blackmail in an instant—we’re the only ones who know Remy’s secret. And as for what happened that night in the cage, well, I don’t flatter myself that he can’t get it elsewhere in a heartbeat.

  I’m replaceable. Just another girl. Just another whore to look away from.

  If we were her right now, would he act the same?

  “What the hell’s going on here, then?” Reeve plants his stocky legs apart. “Lovers’ tiff?”

  Eliza bristles, and I open my mouth to say fuck off, you smarmy little weasel.

  But Lafayette cuts in. “Naturally,” says he. “I was just wooing this lady over a man’s bleeding corpse when you blundered in. That’s Matthew Temple, the resident publisher, if you hadn’t figured it out. I don’t think it was suicide, do you?”

  Reeve eyes Lafayette sourly. “A riot’s going on out there. Isn’t that more like your business, Royal Society?”

  “Funny. I was about to ask the same of you. Isn’t controlling an affray a police matter?” Lafayette fires me a blue-eyed warning shot. Be quiet, Lizzie. Don’t make a fuss . . . but it’s Eliza he ought to be glaring at.

  Eliza, who’s seething just beneath my skin. Who loathes this self-important, woman-hating squeezer with every muscle. It’s men like him who keep her down. Who obstruct her at every turn, who think she’s stupid and useless for everything but needlework and pushing out babes.

  “Where’s your pet doctor? Swap her already for this saucy bit of skirt?” Reeve gives a gruesome leer. “Can’t say I blame you. What’s your name, dolly?”

  Mist. That’s what’s buzzing in front of my eyes. Boiling mist, the color of Temple’s waistcoat. Eliza’s furious. I’m furious. At Reeve, at Temple for dying on me, at everyone who ever looked at us and assumed, the way we assumed Temple was a shallow idiot with no conscience or politics just because he wrote lurid crime stories for a living.

  I grin my best shit-eating grin. “Fuck you, copper. That’s my name.”

  Reeve points his cigar at me. “Arrest that woman.”

  “Bastards, get your hands off me!” I struggle, but the constables are already grabbing me, pinning my sticky wrists together behind my back. “What you charging me with?”

  “Foul language, disturbing the peace. Being a mouthy twat.” Reeve brandishes his cigar. “Oh, and standing at a murder scene covered in blood, when you’re already a suspect. Constables, I’ve reason to believe this woman’s a murderess. Take her away.”

  I fight and kick and scream bloody rage, but there’s two constables and only one me and I can’t break free. “Remy, tell ’em it weren’t me,” I plead. “I didn’t mean what I said. Make ’em let me go.”

  But Lafayette’s gaze slides away, blue as aether flame with guilt, and he don’t speak a word.

  SHOPPED

  THE BOW STREET CELLS STINK A LOT WORSE FROM the inside.

  The crushers heave me in and slam the iron-barred door. I land on my chest, splosh! Mud and shit splatter my face. I crawl to my knees and let the curses blister off my tongue and roll after ’em up the stairs.

  A bunch of greasy blokes is crammed into the cell next to me. We’re separated only by bars, there’s no wall, and I hear snoring, farting, the mutters and complaints of bored and thirsty men. That Geordie kid ain’t here. Probably off somewhere getting the tripe beaten out of him.

  I wipe muddy hands. “Baby Jesus,” I mutter, “you lot stink like a sewer.”

  “Shut up, you moldy snatch.” Sullen, from the rear of my murky cell. Great. I’m not alone.

  “Piss off, Limpdick.” My throat burns, swollen, as if a poisonous toad is buried in there. That final image of Lafayette—stripped of his courage, suspicion like a beacon on his face—rips me raw. I told him I’d betray his furry little secret to the Royal, and he believed me. My eyes ache for tears, but I won’t weep.

  I won’t.

  I clang my head against the bars, frustrated. The rust-coated iron is unbreakable in my fists. Luckily for me, no one’s in this cell but me and Mr. Limpdick. They’ve emptied my pockets, taken my stiletto. Even pulled the pins from my hair, and it flops stinking onto my face. The light in here . . . well, there really ain’t no light in here. Just a few queasy leaks, from cracks in the floorboards above. The stench of ordure, sweat, and bad breath makes me want to rake out my mouth with a brush.

  I am, as they say at the Metropolitan Board of Works, knee-deep in shit.

  I can’t stay here. I’m weary, and already, Eliza mutters and wriggles beneath my skin. My bruised heart clenches for her. She won’t never survive in here, with her stiff manners and nice ideas about fairness and equality. This dank, filthy place is Miss Lizzie’s world, and I’m damned if I’ll make Eliza suffer it just because I can’t solve my own problems.

  Solving problems, after all, is what I’m here for.

  I grip the bars and bellow at the copper on duty at the top of the stairs. “Oi! You there! Mr. Crusher, sir!”

  He don’t answer. Probably used
to prisoners hollering.

  “Ain’t no place for a lady down here, is it?”

  The bloke in my corner guffaws. “Good thing you ain’t no lady.”

  He’s old, maybe forty, mud caked on his coat and at least a week of bristly gray beard. In here on his own. Hmm, thinks Miss Lizzie. Could it be because them other blokes might tear strips off him? A snout, maybe, what stirs up radicals and then betrays them to the brass? Some corrupt putter-up what entraps good honest villains and sings like a canary? Or just some filthy sod like Billy Beane, whose crimes they despise?

  I spit in his direction. “Oh, aye? A limp dick, that’s your problem,” I yell out again. “Constable, never mind. I were a-fearing for my poor woman’s virtue, but there weren’t no cause. This bloke’s dick is just as limp as can be.” And I kick mud at him, splashing his face with piss. “Couldn’t raise a stand for the fanciest whore in London—”

  He comes for me. I dance aside and slam his head into the bars. Clang! A fine noise he makes, too. “Ha ha! Beaten by a girl. What do you say to that, gents?”

  The blokes in the next cell jeer and make ruckus. Any entertainment’s good down here. I bang Limpdick’s head again and knee him in the guts a few times. “Constable!” I holler. “Damsel in distress down here. You gonna be a hero?”

  At last, the copper’s coming down, boots splashing on the steps.

  What’s my plan now? No idea. I just hurl Limpdick aside—splat!—and get ready to run.

  The policeman lifts his lamp to peer into my face, and the halo of light swings, crazy-like. It’s Mr. Avid Reader, from the corridor outside the morgue. Blond boy, daft eyes. “What’s going on here?”

  “He attacked me,” I announce. “What a beastly fellow. Let me out of ’ere, guvnor, or I declare I shan’t last the night.” The clowns in the next cell are laughing. Behind me in the mud, Limpdick groans and bleeds, and hastily I kick him quiet and fan out my wet skirts to hide him.