I made my way down the corridor where in just a few hours teachers and students would flood. If I did die, who would be the first to find me? That idiot Messerschmidt? Would he scream to see my body? Would there be blood, given what I was about to drink? Would it pour from my mouth, spilling from my corroded stomach?
I picked the lock on the classroom door, fingers more sure.
My father had also chronicled his excitement upon finding and teaming with an unidentified American collaborator who was so clearly Dr. Jekel. Have located and begun correspondence with U.S. chemist who believes himself in possession of valuable documentation and taken him into confidence . . . Begun efforts to relocate temporarily in hopes of collaborating . . . If successful, the potential to secure both our reputations is tremendous . . . Implications for treating personality disorders . . . criminal rehabilitation . . . social controls . . .
My father had written of finding Dr. Jekel through simple genealogical research. And reading between the lines, I could see that Dad had then used a potent combination of guilt and the promise of fame and fortune to convince Jill’s father to help him find a cure for his looming madness. Judging from some of the passages, I found that my father had not only expected to save himself; he’d sold Dr. Jekel on grandiose dreams of potentially using their findings to revolutionize the treatment of everyone with criminal impulses.
Jekel and Hyde’s magic formula for a safer society!
How ironic was that fantasy?
I locked myself inside the chemistry room and thumped my bag onto my lab table, not hesitating for fear that the slightest falter would cause me to rethink the whole doomed adventure. For I was all but certain that the formula would never work. The odds were too long—and the potion itself too toxic.
Dad, though, had believed that he and Dr. Jekel were drawing close to an answer. My collaborator feels confident that a breakthrough . . . that SUCCESS . . . is imminent . . .
And then, abruptly, the proposed journal article had been abandoned. The last saved date was close to the previous Christmas. Not long before the murder of Dr. Jekel.
Glass clinking against glass, I assembled the implements and ingredients that I needed and moved quickly to mix the chemicals, unable to push away the question that gnawed at my mind: should I kill my father before I risked killing myself?
If I did so, I would almost certainly be avenging Jill’s father’s death and probably gain retribution for my own mother’s murder, not to mention saving future victims. Because the beast that had overtaken Dad would kill again.
But, god forgive me, I kept working alone in the school.
Perhaps a small part of me clung to the faint, faint hope that the formula which I hurriedly mixed, which bubbled and seethed in the Erhlenmeyer flask, might actually save me and enable me to bring my father back, too.
Or perhaps I was a coward, unable to murder, along with the beast, the man who had given me life. The stern, demanding, undemonstrative egomaniac who had nevertheless written, at the very start of his most important work, a draft dedication: For my son, Tristen—that I may save him, too.
I worked hurriedly but with precision, checking my notes and mixing the chemicals. Addition half litre filtered water . . . Messerschmidt would have been in awe had he witnessed my efforts.
And finally, as the modern Dr. Jekel’s document indicated, I added the strychnine to the already dangerous potassium dichromate and poured that lethal mix into the flask.
Strychnine. An alkaloid mistakenly believed medicinal back in the nineteenth century. A chemical that would have been commonly found in pharmacies, and which, in the amount that I held, would indeed shake the drinker to his very core.
Refusing to think further, to consider the future, the way the solution might feel as it seared my throat, paralyzed my lungs, I raised the flask before my eyes, toasting my own fate, and was actually about to say “cheers” when I heard my name screamed from the doorway.
“Tristen! Stop!”
Chapter 42
Jill
“TRISTEN, DON’T,” I begged when I saw his hand hesitate. My backpack slid from my shoulder, thumping to the floor, and I stepped closer. “Please. Let’s talk first.”
“How did you even get in here?” he asked, confused, fingers wrapped around the throat of a flask that was filled to the brim. He looked to the door. “I locked that . . .”
“I just picked it,” I said, opening my hand to show him the paper clip. “Like you taught me.”
“Oh, hell,” Tristen groaned. “I should never have shown you—”
“What’s in there, Tristen?” I edged even nearer, terrified that he would tilt the flask to his mouth and drain it dry before I could reach him. “What’s in the formula? How is the salt altered?”
He didn’t answer the question. “I think you should go now, Jill.”
A cold knot formed in the pit of my stomach. “Tristen . . . what is in there?”
He still didn’t answer but set down the flask and came around the table, stopping me with two firm hands around my upper arms. “Jill,” he said, boring into my eyes, “you really need to go.”
I knew then that whatever Tristen Hyde was about to drink, it wasn’t just dangerous; it was probably deadly. He didn’t look scared. He looked resigned and determined, and that expression tipped me off more than raw terror would have. I’d seen that look on Tristen’s face the day he’d first asked me to help him with the experiment. The day he’d promised to commit suicide if he couldn’t cure himself.
“Tristen, you don’t really believe this will help you, do you?” I asked, fighting back emotions that were about to overwhelm me and make me irrational. Fear at the prospect of seeing somebody actually die. And something more. Terror at the prospect of losing Tristen. Forever. I wouldn’t be able to bear it. Because even if he didn’t love me back, I loved him.
Loving him was stupid and pointless and maybe wrong. He was dangerous and arrogant, and he broke every rule that I followed, and lured me to break them, too. But I knew in that moment that it was true: I had somehow fallen in love with a guy who was about to take his own life. “You’re killing yourself, aren’t you?” I asked, hating that my voice broke.
“Perhaps,” Tristen admitted. “Of course, I hope that the formula will save me. But there is a strong chance that I might not survive drinking it.”
Although I’d suspected that, hearing him say it made my blood run cold.
“Why now?” I asked, trying to reason with him. “Why not wait, Tristen? You’re not even sure the beast is real. Not one hundred percent!”
“I’m sure, Jill,” he said evenly, still holding my arms. His fingers tightened slightly around me. “I am positive.”
I searched his face, almost like I was looking for some hint of the monster in his eyes. But all I saw was Tristen: complicated, sometimes frightening, occasionally violent, even. But also capable of great good, great warmth, a willingness to sacrifice his life for others. For Becca, in particular, if my suspicions were right. “How do you know?”
“I dreamed last night,” he said.
“You’ve dreamed before.”
“This time I concluded the dream,” Tristen confided. “I finally saw the outcome . . . the actual murder.”
“That doesn’t mean anything!”
“I saw her face, Jill,” he continued, loosening his grip on my arms, not so much restraining me as just holding me. “I saw her face as she died. As the monster killed her.”
“I don’t understand . . . You knew all along who it was.” Becca. How in that awful moment could I be jealous again? But I was.
“No, Jill,” Tristen said, brown eyes miserable, “I was wrong. He didn’t kill a silly cheerleader.”
“No?” My voice sounded strangled in my throat, because somehow . . . some clue in the way he was looking at me gave me the answer to the question I was about to ask before I could even voice it. “Who—who was it, Tristen?”
“You, Jill,” h
e said. “I—he—murdered you.”
Not Becca, but me . . .
We stood together in the lonely classroom: me and a guy I loved who swore that something inside of him wanted to kill me. Yet I wasn’t afraid of him.
Trust me, Tristen had said.
And somehow I did.
I was scared, but not for me. Just for him—even when Tristen, pinning my arms, revealed very matter-of-factly, “He wants to kill you right now, Jill. And not just in fantasy.”
And how could I describe the way it felt when Tristen pulled me closer—voice throaty with what I thought were sadness and need—how could I ever capture how it felt when he said, “It’s been you all along, Jill. He wants you as much as I do. But I’ll be damned, genuinely damned, before I let him have you.”
It was maybe the world’s sickest declaration of affection, complete with a touch of black humor, but it rang as perfect to my ears.
Tristen cupped my chin in one hand then and bent over me, wrapping his other arm around my waist, and I had my first real kiss with a boy—a man . . . a monster and a martyr, who might very well be dead in the next few minutes.
Of course Jill Jekel wouldn’t have a normal kiss good night at the front door after a movie or a school dance.
Of course a relationship that started at the edge of one grave would culminate on the brink of another.
Of course that first kiss would not just be to say good night but probably goodbye.
Chapter 43
Tristen
OH, HOW THE BEAST INSIDE of me roared and snapped and snarled when I finally kissed Jill Jekel the way I’d wanted to for—how long?
Could I trace my attraction to that night in the diner when she’d walked by the window, her demure lace blouse somehow more intriguing than Becca Wright’s skintight T-shirt? Or had it started in chemistry class, where I watched that glossy ponytail swinging in hypnotic rhythm? Was that when she’d first mesmerized me? Or had it been the day I’d held her at her father’s funeral, felt her cling to me, so in need of strength, protection?
How ironic that as those soft, pink lips finally pressed against mine, uncertainly, and as Jill’s hands fluttered to find their proper place—my shoulders? hips? chest?—and as her mouth yielded to my gentle pressure, opening so I could feel her timid tongue against mine one time before my own mouth was seared and wrecked forever . . . How ironic that a kiss born of a desire to protect was all but overwhelmed by my struggle to control a force within me that wanted nothing less than to destroy Jill herself.
As she hesitantly drew closer into my embrace, resting against me, the beast wriggled in my soul, trying to break free, to take control.
Stop now, Tristen, I told myself. Stop before you black out.
Stop before you do something that can never be undone.
Yet the feel of Jill in my arms, the exhilarating, intoxicating mix of passion and tenderness that she elicited in me—it was like nothing I’d ever felt with any other girl, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to make the feeling end. I wanted the kiss to go on and on, fairly certain that it was my last, completely certain that it was the best, and I drew Jill even closer to me, hungry for her, a condemned man trying to savor his last meal even as he hears the construction of the scaffold just outside the cell.
“Oh, Jill,” I murmured, wanting to tell her that I loved her. Wanting to say so much but not wanting to pull away long enough to say it. “Jill,” I whispered, nuzzling against her soft, soft cheek, hoping she heard everything I wanted to express just in the way I spoke her name.
“Tristen . . .” I heard my emotions echoed in Jill’s voice, too. Sad, desperate bliss like my own. Her heart raced against my chest.
And I heard something else, too, intruding upon my thoughts. “Yes, Tristen . . .”
Its voice.
As I folded Jill to me, caressing her back, stroking her throat with my thumb, the words echoed softly but clearly from somewhere deep inside of me. A place that I was only beginning to recognize.
I’d felt the beast twisting within. But this was the first time I heard it speak.
Stop, Tristen, I told myself—even as I continued kissing Jill. The attraction, the passion, escalating as she ventured to slip her hands around my neck. Just one more minute, Tristen, and then never touch her again . . .
I thrust my hand into Jill’s hair, nearly dislodging her ponytail, hurrying the kiss, knowing that I couldn’t continue much longer.
“Jill, Jill,” I groaned when we both wasted a precious moment separating, needing oxygen to fuel an escalating intensity. I wanted her so badly. Wanted more than this before I died. “Oh, Jill . . .”
My own voice sounded strange in my ears. Yet somehow familiar. A voice I’d just heard.
Hurry, I told myself. Hurry or stop . . .
“Don’t stop . . . Don’t stop . . .”
Shutting out the command, silencing my now vocal foe, I tried to focus on Jill, tightening my arm around her waist, my lips grazing her throat. “Her soft, soft throat . . .”
“Tristen,” Jill murmured, sounding breathy but a little nervous as I nipped at her neck, hearing myself make a low growl of need. “Tristen?”
“Yes, love,” I murmured against her ear. “Yes . . .” “Yes, yes . . .”
Yes . . . Just another moment, and I would release her forever. “Oh, Jill . . .”
I didn’t mean to be rough or desperate, but time was running out, and I clamped hard upon her mouth, our lips grinding together, my hand digging into her hair.
“Take her, Tristen . . . And what you start I will finish . . .”
No . . . No . . .
My head began to ache from the struggle, a crushing pain, and I sensed that I was losing. Yet I couldn’t stop kissing her. This was my last chance . . . I clasped her more firmly, moving her back against the desk, trapping her, pressing our bodies together. Her hips wriggled against mine.
“That’s right. She wants this, too. Don’t listen, if she protests. She wants this . . .”
“Tristen,” Jill cried out softly, her hands no longer uncertain as I crushed her against the table. No, her palms were pressing against my chest, pushing back against me. Against us.
“Ignore her. Trap her there. Bend her backwards . . .”
“No, Tristen!” Jill called more loudly. More insistently, as if she knew that I was far away and she was desperate to reach me. “STOP! PLEASE!”
I was so far gone, losing to the beast, that I scarcely heard her. But her plea, the sound of her voice—the voice that I loved—it was enough to reach me even as everything began to grow black.
“Stop, Tristen,” Jill whimpered, on the verge of tears. “Please . . . stop . . .”
Like the dream. It was just how she sounded in the dream.
Without a word I snatched my hands away, released her squirming body, and stepped back, dragging the back of my hand across my mouth, which was wet with my saliva, Jill’s saliva. We were both breathing hard, almost panting. Her slender shoulders heaved. And her beautiful hazel eyes were wide with fear.
My stomach clenched to see the terror there.
No. I hadn’t wanted that. Never. Never to scare her. Or hurt her.
“I’m sorry, Jill,” I whispered. “So sorry.”
I’d almost failed to protect her. I’d wanted to be with her so badly that I’d almost been complicit . . .
Jill stared at me, face pale, hands raised slightly as if to ward me off should I step toward her.
“Oh, god.” I buried my face in my hands, afraid that I might break down. Too sickened to face that look in her eyes. “Oh, god, no.”
We stood apart in silence—as distant as we’d just been close. Jill didn’t try to touch me, and I didn’t try to excuse or explain myself, although I longed to tell her that I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t a guy who would . . . Especially not with her . . .
And yet—I almost had . . .
“Tristen?” Jill finally prompted, voice quiet. I heard the f
aint sound of the slipperlike shoes that she always wore tapping against the linoleum and then felt a tentative hand on my shoulder, and I nearly did break down.
She was better than me. Braver than me. She should have run screaming for help. Yet she touched me.
Dragging my shaking fingers through my hair, I stepped out of her reach and turned my back on her, unworthy of her concern and unable to show my face. “Leave, Jill. Please. Leave.”
She didn’t listen to me. Instead she stepped closer and stroked my shoulder. “Tristen . . . was that . . . ?” She seemed unable to finish the question. But I understood.
Was that the beast? Or you?
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It doesn’t matter now, Jill.”
Straightening my shoulders, I went to the lab table, not giving her a moment to protest—if indeed she even thought of protesting. I raised the foul-smelling flask to my lips and without hesitation drank as much as I could, downing the disgusting brew in huge thirsty gulps, heedless of dosage, heedless of the havoc the strychnine would wreak on my body, because at that point I didn’t give a damn about a cure, and I wanted the agony. I’d seen the look in Jill’s eyes—the betrayal, the terror—and I wanted nothing less than to kill both the beast and myself.
Nothing less would do to punish what I’d nearly done.
Beast or no beast—I’d been there, too.
Chapter 44
Jill
HE HAD TO CURE HIMSELF.
I told myself that as I watched Tristen raise the dark concoction in the beaker to his mouth.
I’d felt and heard the beast start to overtake him when we’d kissed. Felt Tristen slipping away from me, becoming somebody, something, completely different. The boy who’d first touched his lips to mine and the animal that had tried to pin me against the desk: they were two different beings entirely. They felt, spoke, looked, even smelled different. Tristen’s skin itself had roughened, and his beautiful, warm brown eyes had taken on a gray, metallic sheen.