by Max Turner
I nodded. We were both big on Alexander the Great. Attack, he believed, even in defense. It seemed reasonable. But I’d only been in two fights before. In one I got trounced. In the other I died. Not a great track record. And I remembered clearly what Baoh had told me: Do not do to others that which is harmful to yourself. It didn’t seem like the best fight strategy. But I had no more time to consider it.
Hyde had arrived.
— CHAPTER 40
HELL HATH NO FURY . . .
The darkness around us was complete. There is no light underground. Not unless you burrow right through the crust to the molten rock below. Hyde was a shadow. A black shape against a black background. But Charlie and I could see him. Our eyes were built for it. He stood to his full height and stepped forward. He looked like a demon. Huge. Taloned. Emanating anger. One eye was swollen shut. The other looked like a hollow pit. A tooth was chipped, and he walked with a slight limp. Mr. Entwistle had done some damage. But for all this, Hyde still smiled. I heard his throat rumble—it might have been a laugh. Then he spoke. This time, the word came out like a raspy gargle. I understood clearly.
Welcome. . . .
Charlie shifted beside me. We were shoulder to shoulder. I understood his strategy. Be like a berserker, those Viking warriors who charged fearlessly into battle. No thoughts of self-preservation. No hesitation. Just relentless assault. Well, that wasn’t me. I had no idea who Hyde was. What he wanted. Why he’d done the things he’d done. A part of my mind insisted on understanding.
“Where is the boy?” I asked.
Hyde stopped. His head snaked forward, his good eye narrowed. He squinted at me, then at Charlie. He must have seen something he didn’t like. He attacked. I expected a lunge. A charge. Something similar to what Charlie and I had witnessed that first night at the zoo, when he’d ambushed Mr. Entwistle. But Hyde must have understood the value of unpredictability because he did the last thing I’d expected him to do. He jumped straight up. His arm snaked out and he smashed off a stalactite, one of those cone-shaped rocks that was hanging from the top of the tunnel. Then he wound up and hurled it at me.
I twisted and the chunk of rock shot past. It was moving with the speed of a bullet. In the meantime, he closed the space between us. After watching him limp down the tunnel, I hadn’t expected him to move so quickly. He pushed Charlie aside, then hit me flush on the chest with his fist. The punch lifted me cleanly off my feet. An instant later, I smashed headfirst into the rock wall behind me. I felt a shock wave run down through my spine. Pain followed, and the kind of paralysis you feel when your nerves are on fire. My eyes swam. I was on my back. A few seconds passed before I could move. I rolled over and pushed myself slowly up to my knees.
I could see Charlie. He was attacking Hyde with reckless abandon. Like a berserker. No thoughts of self-defense. The knife swung back and forth in wild arcs. Had it still been poisoned with dioxin, he might have had a chance. But his opponent was stronger. Faster. And patient.
Hyde backed up, circled, waited. Charlie swung again and again. Then he overextended himself. Hyde shot forward, caught my friend around the wrist with his long fingers, twisted the knife loose, then slammed him against the wall. Bones snapped and Charlie sagged to the ground.
I rose awkwardly to my feet. The back of my head was burning. I could feel blood running down through my hair and along the skin on the back of my neck. My legs were unsteady.
Hyde picked up the knife and came toward me. The sight of him was terrifying. There was death in his eyes. It made my whole body shake.
Get around him, a voice in my head told me. Stick to the plan. Get the boy.
It was Luna. She must have come back. The sound of her voice was like a jolt of electricity. I snapped to attention.
Hyde was only a few steps away, limping. It gave me an opening. I ran for the near wall, jumped up off the rocks, and soared past him. It almost worked, but I jumped too high. I’d expected Mr. Entwistle’s armor to weigh me down more than it did. My shoulder scraped against the top of the tunnel. It slowed me enough that Hyde was able to spin, reach up, and get a hand around my ankle. Then he introduced me to the floor. My eyes sparked. Spots dotted the darkness. I rolled over onto my back and gasped from the pain.
A new shadow flitted across my vision. Darkness within the darkness. In that instant, I had an epiphany, more sudden than a spark. First, Mr. Entwistle’s words came back to me. Be a saint, he’d said. Then Baoh’s eyeless face drifted through my mind. Do not do to others that which is harmful to yourself. Just like that, I knew exactly what to do.
Hyde stood over me. I rose and started shouting as if my pants were on fire. I knew I’d never beat him, but I might have been able to outrun him. He was hurt. It gave me a small edge. But that would mean leaving Charlie and the detective’s son if he was here somewhere. That wasn’t what saints did. Instead, I kept my eyes on the knife. The handle, too small for his large fingers. The blade—slightly curved, like a half moon that angled to a point. He swung. I stepped back. The knife whistled past. He punched out with his other hand and knocked me flat. I stayed down. It would make things easier. An instant later his fingers closed around my throat. I flailed. I kicked. I pushed and squirmed. It didn’t matter. Escape was impossible. But escape was not my plan.
Hyde drew the knife back a fraction of an inch, then his whole body exploded toward me. He aimed for my heart. I managed to deflect his hand low. The point of the blade hit an armor plate and stopped. I kept struggling. He aimed a second time. The knife sparked, but stopped again. Then he got wise and worked the tip of the knife to an area between the platinum plates. He must have done this before in his fight with Mr. Entwistle. An instant later he rammed the blade through. I had just fractions of a second before the pain arrived. Fortunately I’d told my hands what to do ahead of time, so they were already on the move. I grabbed his wrist and hung on. He wasn’t going to get the knife free. Not in time. Then the pain paralyzed me. Locked my fingers in place. I squeezed as hard as I could and prayed it was enough. And I kept shouting.
Hyde twisted the knife. My shout became a scream. He pulled. My hands were too weak to stop him. The blade slipped out slowly. Metal on metal. I ran out of air. For an instant, I felt despair. And the fear of failure. I needed to make more noise and couldn’t. But I’d held on long enough, and I’d filled his ears with my screams. Mr. Entwistle would have been proud. I had martyred myself—like a saint.
The shadow I’d seen earlier was now beside us. I heard a hiss like that of an aerosol can. Then Hyde jumped back. His hands were over his eyes and face. He snarled. Then I felt Ophelia’s hand on my chest.
“Don’t budge,” she whispered.
I couldn’t have moved with a team of oxen helping me. My stomach had a hole in it. I was in pain from head to toe.
Hyde stood. Whatever Ophelia had sprayed in his face was working. His eyes were horrid. Bloodstained yellow. Furious. Then he fell to his knees. His hands rose up to the sides of his head and he let out a howl. He started to change. His arms shortened. Thickened. His fingers, too—from long and clawed to thick sausages. His teeth receded. Hair disappeared. Not just from his body, but from his face. Even the top of his head. But the greatest change was in his legs. They went from long and lean, feet stretched up at the arches, to something that looked like a pair of tree trunks. And there lying on the ground beside us was Detective Baddon.
— CHAPTER 41
THE WEREWOLF
Ophelia stared at the detective, unspeaking. I tried to sit up. Her hand was still on my chest.
“Just lie still,” she said. “I know it hurts, but it won’t be fatal.”
“Where’s Luna?” I asked.
Ophelia looked surprised for a moment, then glanced over her shoulder. “She’s not with me.”
“She was here. She must have been. . . .”
Ophelia shook her head.
Had I imagined it? I was certain I’d heard her voice.
Beside us, Det
ective Baddon moaned.
“What did you do to him?” I asked.
“I used the wolfsbane.”
“Will it kill him?”
She shook her head. “No. Wolfsbane is lethal, but not to werewolves. It doesn’t kill them. It transforms them. There were teeth marks on the flowers Charlie brought me. I think Hyde chewed it when he needed to turn back into Adam.”
Amazing! And more impressive, Ophelia was able to turn this knowledge to our advantage. I guess it was true—knowledge was our best defense. Or in this case, our best offense.
“Did you know it was him?” I asked.
“I wasn’t positive, but you never can be.” She turned to face the unconscious detective. “But I suspected it was him when his son was taken from the hospital. The boy isn’t a vampire, so why would Hyde care about him? And Adam was nowhere to be found. He would have called or at least put up a fight.”
My mind started putting the pieces of the detective’s story together. It started by answering the most obvious question. How was this possible? Only one explanation fit with what I knew. The day he’d been attacked in his house, back when he lived in Toronto, it hadn’t been a robber with a bottle. The police must have fabricated the story. If they were part of the Underground, they wouldn’t have wanted him to know the truth. That he’d been attacked by a werewolf. Perhaps the same one that Maximilian had been hunting. The boy must have been infected, too. It explained his illness. Like his father, he must have been a lycanthrope.
Beside us, Detective Baddon began to stir. He had his hands on his head. As soon as he came to, he started groping around as if looking for something. “Where are my glasses?” he muttered. He was totally confused.
“Are you all right?” Ophelia asked.
At the sound of her voice, the detective jumped as if someone had kicked him. He couldn’t see. “Who’s there? Where am I?”
“It’s Ophelia. And you’re underground. You won’t be able to see. There’s no light.”
I heard him take a deep breath. “My leg is killing me. Was I sleepwalking again?”
“Not exactly.”
He was on his hands and knees. He stood and started to wobble. Ophelia reached out, took his arm and helped him to sit again.
“Where is my son?”
Ophelia wasn’t certain.
“He might be farther down that way.” I pointed in the direction Hyde had come.
“Who was that? Is that Charlie?” asked the detective.
“No.” Ophelia still had a hand on his shoulder. “No. It’s Zack. He’s hurt. It would probably be best if you two stay here and let me go ahead.”
I hoped she was kidding. I didn’t want her to leave me alone with Detective Baddon. What if he changed back? With Charlie lying nearby helpless, and me with a hole where no hole should be, Hyde would find himself with a handy meal right at his feet. Ophelia was obviously thinking the same. She stepped over to me, then bent down and put her mouth next to my ear.
“I’m leaving these with you,” she whispered. “Just in case.” She put a small aerosol can into my hand. It was the wolfsbane. She must have made a serum of some kind from the monkshood we’d brought home. In my other hand she placed the knife, the one Hyde had rammed into my stomach. Then she stood and started up the tunnel. She stopped when she saw Charlie lying across the small rivulet of water.
“Dear Lord . . .”
I could hear her shifting him carefully. “Is he dead?” I asked.
“No, he’s breathing. But the base of his spine has been shattered. . . . Don’t worry. We can fix it.”
“What about Mr. Entwistle?”
“Did you find him?” she asked.
“Yes. We dragged him into a cave. It’s right above us.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t matter. We can heal all of you. We just need to get you out of here. Give me a moment. I’ll be right back.” Then she took off in search of Detective Baddon’s missing son.
I clenched my teeth. It was getting harder to hold my stomach together. As the pain intensified, the feeling of weakness in my limbs grew. I was starting to feel cold. This was definitely spoiling my first visit to the Warsaw Caves.
“Is it bad?” Detective Baddon asked.
“No, it just hurts.”
“Stomach?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “I’ve heard it’s the worst place to get shot.”
I could imagine at least one place that would top it, but I kept that to myself. Still, there had to be something to what he’d said. Whenever a samurai committed suicide, he sliced his belly open because the pain was off the charts. It was the only way to restore lost honor. I guess that was more or less what I’d done. Committed a kind of suicide. But Ophelia had arrived just in time.
The detective was still rubbing his neck. Funny how wrong I’d been about him. About Hyde’s alter ego. I’d imagined someone ten feet tall. But Detective Baddon was probably three hundred pounds of solid muscle, most of it in his legs. We hadn’t considered that he might be Hyde. He probably hadn’t considered it himself.
“How did I get here?” he asked.
I took a few breaths to ready my body for speech. “You ran.”
The detective didn’t understand. He rubbed a hand over his head. “So I was sleepwalking.”
I shook my head. Pain ran down my neck and back.
“Where did you say Mr. Entwistle was?” he asked.
I didn’t get to answer. Detective Baddon started coughing. I heard him muttering something about the air not being right. His voice was off. I turned. He was standing. Stumbling. His hands were pressed against the sides of his head. Then he started to change. His eyes got bigger. Blacker at the center. They yellowed, then focused on the canister in my hand.
There’s more than one way to trigger a transformation, Mr. Entwistle had said. Obviously, whatever it was that made Detective Baddon turn, it was in this tunnel. As I watched, he lengthened. Thinned. His teeth descended. Hair rose on his head and arms and face. He looked over to where Charlie was lying beside him. He smiled, then he stepped toward me.
I raised the can and pointed it at his face, but before I could press the nozzle, he turned and fled. I took a deep breath. Would it be an overstatement to say I’d just dodged a bullet? Maybe—but that same bullet was heading straight for Ophelia.
I rolled over onto my side. Blood from the wound in my stomach mixed with the thin stream of water on the tunnel floor. It must have been worse than Ophelia thought. I was weak. Too weak to stand. I started crawling.
“Ophelia . . . Ophelia!” I shouted her name as loudly as I could. The effort caused me to black out. Like a sleeper who nods and wakes up, I came to as my head sank. It happened twice more. “Ophelia!”
She’d be trapped with Hyde by herself. Her only defense was the canister of wolfsbane in my hand.
I reached Charlie. Ophelia had straightened his body so it lay flat and straight on the ground. His breathing came in shallow fits. My movement and shouting must have roused him from unconsciousness. His eyes fluttered open. He saw me and groaned.
“How did we do?” he gasped. The words were hard to make out.
“Not well.”
“I feel cold . . . I can’t move.”
“Your back is broken.”
He seemed to take this news remarkably well. “Hyde?”
“He’s going after Ophelia.”
His eyes started to water. He must have known we were finished. “Any more good news?”
I laughed, then coughed up a mouthful of blood. “Yeah. I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you.”
His head moved just a little. “What are friends for?”
My teeth were down. One of them was broken. I rolled up Charlie’s sleeve.
“Wait,” he said. “Are you sure this won’t kill you?”
It hadn’t with Luna. I still didn’t understand why. But what did I have to lose?
&n
bsp; Charlie started sputtering. Tears were spilling out of his eyes. They were crimson. “Don’t hesitate this time. Do what you have to do.”
I wasn’t going to argue. Instead, I drank. Charlie gasped. I took what I needed and left him with a slow pulse. I told myself this was necessary. That one of us had to be strong or Hyde would finish us all. Permanently. It didn’t change the feeling of wrongness about it. But what choice did I have? My stomach was in knots. Actually, it was in sliced-up knots. They started to twist and burn. The pain in my chest and limbs disappeared. So did my doubt—the feeling that this was a mistake. Ophelia was alone with that thing. Was he evil? Did he deserve to die? It didn’t matter now. Not to me. So I picked up the can and knife and sprinted down the tunnel.
— CHAPTER 42
CAVE-IN
I ran down a steep slope and around a corner. I could have tracked Hyde by his scent but it wasn’t necessary. He was shouting. The sound was ferocious.
Where is my son?
His voice was coming from a smaller enclave that branched from the main tunnel. I ducked inside. The entrance was low and braced with thick logs. So were the walls. It looked like a cave-in that hadn’t finished collapsing.
Hyde was holding Ophelia off the ground. He had one hand around her neck. In the other was a hospital blanket.
Where is he?
His voice was quiet now, but still terrifying. He could easily have killed her, and she must have known it.
What are you waiting for? Tell him where his son is, I thought.
But she didn’t know.
Hyde turned my way. He saw the canister in my hand.
Drop that.
“No.” I ran straight for him.
I was a terrible poker player. I couldn’t bluff. Some people can hide what they think and feel. I can’t. So the only way I could bluff was to not bluff. If he snapped Ophelia’s neck, she’d die. But I could bring her back. And if he did that, I’d blast him with the wolfsbane and turn him back into his human self. He couldn’t allow that. As Hyde he was invincible. As Adam Baddon, he wasn’t.