Simon Green - The Spy Who Haunted Me

The Hyde studied him curiously, and Peter actually flinched. “I am this thunder, this lightning,” said the Hyde. “I teach you this: man is something to be overcome. I . . . am the tumour in the brain, and the wind that uproots trees, and the thing that hides under your bed at night. And I love it. It is a glorious thing to be free of fear, to be the thing that everyone else fears. Oh, my dear sirs and madam, you have no idea how good this feels . . . to throw away the constraints of man and all the chains society binds us with to hold us down. To be free at last, because the only real freedom is the freedom to do anything . . .” He laughed soundlessly again. “I am everything you’ve ever wanted to be but didn’t dare admit to yourself. I will do what I will do, and none of you can stop me. And when they finally find what’s left of your bodies and see what I’ve done to them . . . they’ll cry and puke and scream their minds away.”

He broke off because Honey’s shimmering crystal weapon was suddenly in her hands. Her lips had pulled back in a deadly smile like a death’s-head grin. The Hyde giggled suddenly: a harsh, high-pitched, soul-destroying sound. And then he surged forward impossibly quickly, just a blur in the firelight. He slapped the weapon contemptuously out of Honey’s hand and threw her to the ground with a single vicious backhand slap. Blood from her mouth and nose flew on the air. She hit the ground hard.

Walker was pulling an Aboriginal pointing bone from his waistcoat pocket. Peter was drawing a large handgun from a concealed holster. The Blue Fairy was chanting a curse at the Hyde, old elf magic . . . but his voice was a deep slow crawl. Because I had armoured up the moment the Hyde started moving, my golden armour sealing me in and insulating me from the almost subliminal effects of the Hyde’s presence, I could think clearly now, no longer blinded by the impact of his foul nature.

I still hated him just as much.

I surged forward to meet the Hyde, my armour moving me so fast the world slowed to a crawl. Even so, he sensed me coming and turned away from Honey to face me. Which was what I wanted. I fell upon him, my fists slamming into him like golden hammers. Blood flew from the Hyde’s face as I turned it into pulp. I felt as much as heard bones in his face and skull break and splinter. The Hyde didn’t give an inch. He struck at me with fists like mauls, but the force of his blows merely smashed his hands against my unyielding armour. He had the strength of his terrible condition and the conviction to fight without restraint, but in the end he was still mostly a man, and the armour made me so much more than that.

He was a Hyde, but I was a Drood.

I beat him to death with my spiked golden fists. I killed him: for what he was, and what he’d done, and what he intended to do. He went down still fighting, and he died cursing me. I broke his arms and legs, smashed in his ribs, drove my fist deep into his skull. And when it was done and I stood over his body breathing harshly, blood dripping from my spiked hands, I didn’t feel anything. Anything at all. I looked slowly around me. Honey was back on her feet, pressing a handkerchief to her bloody mouth and nose. Her eyes were very wide. For a moment, I didn’t recognise the expression on her face. She was looking at me the same way she’d looked at the Hyde. As though one monster . . . had been replaced by another.

I looked down at the dead Hyde. I’d half expected him to turn back into his original, human form, but he hadn’t. Only the potion, or the plant, or whatever he’d taken, could make that transformation happen.

I armoured down and looked at the others with my naked, human face. I was shaking. Walker looked at me thoughtfully. Peter’s face was blank, empty, as though he didn’t know what to think. Honey came slowly forward to stand before me. Her mouth was swollen, and already dark bruises were rising on her coffee skin.

“It’s all right, Eddie,” she said. “We understand.”

“Do you?” I said. “Maybe you can explain it to me. I never lost it like that before. Never . . . lost control, so completely. You can’t afford to lose control when you wear the golden armour. I never knew . . . I had that much rage and anger within me.”

“We all have a Hyde within us,” said Walker. “Perhaps his presence awoke some of that in us.”

Peter moved around the Hyde with his phone camera, filming the dead body from every angle. When he was finished, he put the phone away and looked at me. “So,” he said. “What do we do with the body?”

“Drop it in the river,” said Honey. “Let the alligators take care of it. Nobody would want to claim it, looking like . . . that.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Where’s Blue? Where’s the Blue Fairy?”

We found his body on the other side of the fire, almost hidden in the darkness at the edge of the firelight. His neck was broken, the head lolling to one side. His eyes were open and staring, and a small trickle of blood had run down from his slack mouth. He looked . . . confused, as though he couldn’t understand how such a thing could have happened to him. I knelt down beside him and closed his eyes.

“Damn,” said Honey, standing behind me. “The Hyde got him.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so . . . It all happened so fast . . .”

“He was never strong,” said Walker. “Just one blow from the Hyde would have been enough.”

“It’s not as if he’s such a great loss,” said Peter. “Never trust an elf.”

“Shut up,” I said, and something in my voice shut him up immediately. “Leave me alone with him,” I said, not looking back. “Blue and I have private business.”

Walker escorted Peter back to the fire. Honey hovered behind me for a while, but when I wouldn’t look around, she went away too. Let the others think what they liked; the Hyde didn’t do this. He hit Honey, and then I was upon him. He never had a chance to get to anyone else. Someone in the group killed Blue while the others watched me beat the Hyde to death.

Two members of our group gone, both dead of a broken neck. Both sacrificed to a prize that might not even be worth it. But someone thought so; someone in our little group was playing for all the marbles. I let my fingertips drift over Blue’s copper and brass breastplate. All the elven protections had been stripped away. Not an easy thing to do. But even so, the torc should still have protected him. All he had to do was activate it . . . Unless he really was too scared to use it.

I’d brought him out of his retirement. I’d brought him to Drood Hall, found a place for him in the family, in our army. Tempted him with the prospect of a Drood torc, and then was surprised when he couldn’t wait and stole one for himself. He was a friend of sorts of many years; and I’d brought him to this place, and his death. And I didn’t even see it happen.

“Sorry, Blue,” I said quietly. “But you have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

I touched a fingertip to the golden circle around Blue’s throat, and the strange matter of the torc flowed up my hand and my arm and was immediately absorbed by the torc around my neck. Blue’s body would have to go back to his people, to the Fae Court, but he couldn’t be allowed to take the torc with him. Even though it was the only real achievement of his life.

And then I stopped and listened as the Blue Fairy’s voice came to me, clear but faint, as though it had to travel a long way to reach me.

“Hello, Shaman. If you’re hearing this, I’m dead, and you’ve taken the torc back . . . Ah, well; easy come, easy go. I’m leaving this message for you in the torc, just in case. Hope you don’t mind me calling you Shaman. I always knew Shaman Bond better than Eddie Drood. I liked Shaman. He was my friend; I was never sure about Eddie. It must be complicated, having to be two people and live two lives. Perhaps only a half elf could understand . . .