A Monster Inside - Book of the Amulet - ITV's Jekyll and Hyde

9 - Enter Stage One

"I thought of angels choking on their halos/ Get them drunk on rose water/ See how dirty I can get them/ Pulling out their fragile teeth/ And clip their tiny wings/ Anything you say can and will be held against you/ So only say my name/ And it will be held against you.

Just One Yesterday
-Fall Out Boy

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She had done it. Managed to escape, I mean. Hyde hadn't even noticed she had gone, let alone became concious again. The Jezequel House, her house, was only a few more yards away, and then she might have lost him. Her wound in her shoulder had started bleeding again, and she was started to regret not having covered the trail of blood she had left behind.

:/:

"Hold on. I can sense something", the Goblin whispered, snuffing his nose up to the air. Nixold his name was and, though he masqueraded as Max, he still kept some of his demonic traits. "Human. Bleeding quite a lot".

"We can't have a witness", Stheno hissed, and slunk out of the shadows. She smiled for a moment at Keres. "Can I do the honours?" Keres pondered for a second, feeling an itch in her lower jaw as her fangs tried to extend. She craved blood, but she could see the psychopathic lust in Stheno's eyes, so she nodded. Stheno immediately stepped off the back foot and rushed into the wood, following the scent, shedding her disguise as she went.

:/:

Crack

"What was that?" Renata whispered to herself. She looked around panicked, and gulped. "Teken?" she asked into the darkness, trying to be optimistic about who was following her, but found no hope in the scenarios she had made up in her head. "Teken!"

Nothing. Nothing but silence. Then:

"Afraid not, sweetie", Stheno lisped, and walked into Renata's view. The sunlight made the scales on the snakes glow like emeralds, and she glared through slit golden eyes. Renata inhaled sharply, and her shoulder went numb with fear.

"A-Are you going to kill me?" she stuttered, backing up until she had her back against a tree trunk.

"Well of course I am. But I'm going to be kind".

"Kind?"

"How would you like to die? Strangulation? Poison? Being turned to stone? I'm sure if I ask Hyde nicely he'll put a sword through your heart".

"Is there an option for 'None of the above'?"
Stheno cackled, and from behind her came Keres, Hyde and Nixold. The other three demons had headed London-wards, hoping to inaugurate themselves into society. Renata felt her heart sink a little when she saw Hyde among these... monsters. Though he labelled himself as one, she, or anyone else that knew him for that matter, ever thought that he lived up to it. They never wanted him to. Yet here he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with creatures from Hell, and it saddened her to see it.

"No", Stheno bluntly put, and slithered towards her. In a state of panic, and the pessimistic side of her calling out that she was going to die, she rushed towards Hyde. She held onto the lapels of his jacket, almost manically desperate, and thought of what she was to say. Her last words to the last person she would see. In some way she hoped it would be Teken; in her purposeless daydreams she saw herself and him living to old age, but she knew that life would happen whatever she dreamt.

"Run, Hyde. Run like Hell because you always need to. Laugh at everything because it's always funny. Never be cruel and never be cowardly, and if you are..." she started, looking into his deep, brown eyes. "Always make amends". She could feel Stheno's eyes boring into the back of her head, and she knew she didn't have long, so if she couldn't tell Teken personally, this would have to do.

"Whatever happens now Hyde, it's not your fault, and I will never hold it against you. But... Isabella Charming, Hilary Barnstaple, Maxwell Utterson, Olalla Jekyll, Maggie Hope, Garson, Lottie Jekyll, Ravi, Vishal and Gurinder Najaran. Remember those names. Because they are who you are. Be brave, Robert; I believe in you. Tell Teken I love him if you see him".

Hyde didn't answer. He didn't say a word. He didn't even speak when, instead of Renata standing in front of him, there was a stone statue with her features indented into it.

"Hyde?" Keres asked, breaking the silence.

"She was nothing compared to what we can achieve. Everyone has to make sacrifices", he replied, without an ounce of emotion crossing his face. She grinned to herself, sliding over to him and passing her hand across his shoulder blades.

"Now that's" she started, facing him and running her fingers down his jacket lapels, as if she was ironing away all the evidence that Renata had put on him. "What a king sounds like". A grin crossed Hyde's face as he swiftly hiked away from Renata's stone-cold body, the only thought on his mind being his destination: London.

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"How we going to do this then?" Lottie asked, watching her father gather up two knives that he had stashed in his jacket.

"Like this", he replied, and, with a knife in each hand, he forced one into the wall, making a deep groove in the rock. Slightly to the side of it, he drove the other into it. Testing the strength of the knives, he lifted his weight off the ground experimentally, and quickly swiped the knife out of the wall and put it in an arm's length above it. It all seemed like awfully hard work, but he kept at it, making quick progress.
Lottie could only look on in awe of her father's strength. How could she ever copy that?

Well, maybe she didn't have to. Her powers, her telekinetic powers. If she could move objects without touching them, then surely she could make it up the wall, right?
Louis was now at the top of the wall, clinging to the thin edge, shouting down at her, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. She needed to concentrate.
Pulling back her ebony black hair from her face, she closed her eyes and just thought of climbing the wall, the stone flying past her as she progressed up it. She felt something. Like air pressing down on her shoulders. Cautiously she opened her eyes to see her father smiling back at her. Lottie looked down; she'd done it. She rolled her eyes at the waywardness of her subconcious; she was doing a very happy, happy dance.

"If you'd have told me you could have done that, I would have hitchhiked", he chuckled, stowing away his blades in his pockets.

"What about you? I've never seen a 50 odd person move so fast up a wall". They chuckled for a moment, then the laughter died down and she could sense Louis was about to say something important.

"Right, okay. This is the last time I will see you for a while, so one piece of advice: however terrified you want to be, don't be scared. Because if you're afraid; it will make the course harder, and it will make getting Robert back harder as well".

"Okay... What do I have to do exactly?"

"They'll be an obstacle, and there will be a letter in each room. There's seven in total and they hold the way out of here. So, chin up and let's get out of here".

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