The fight had barely started, but the scent of blood had already spread through the air. It stained the carpets, seeped into the unwashed broken floorboards, and sprayed on the peeling wallpaper. While the outside of the house had been pristine, the inside looked like it should be condemned.
The creature inside him was reveling in the death around them, trying to stretch toward the surface—it wanted out. In times of violence, it always became difficult to suppress.
Sin maneuvered around those fighting. He walked deeper into the house, searching for hidden enemies. Slipping cautiously around a corner, he caught sight of a man disappearing into a room at the end of the hallway. While many of those he had killed so far had been nameless, mere grunts, this man he knew.
Albert Jones—a man Jayden hadn’t gotten close enough to read, but one he had seen with all of those in charge of the small branch of miscreants.
Following Jones, Sin eased the door open and found an office, but the room was empty. Sin cautiously walked inside, but he sensed the danger too late. His other side was too distracted by the stench of death to notice, and while his other senses were heightened, they were too focused on keeping the other at bay.
He missed the hidden door, and he underestimated the depravity of his opponent. A gun went off. Sin cried out in pain when bullets tore through his shoulder and chest. They were not normal bullets, but enchanted ones that caused massive damage. Someone’s life had been sacrificed to forge them.
The roar of pain he let out next was animalistic. It shook the ground as a fury that was not his own rose to the surface. And then his beast broke free.
But Sin was not a true shifter. He was an oddity, a freak. There was no being inside him that he could call his other half, no animal that stayed willingly by his side. No, it was a creature that he felt but barely saw, its mind too separate and filled with murderous intentions.
Sin’s body, not truly meant to undergo such drastic changes, contorted painfully, bringing tears to his eyes. The colors of the world drained to gray. His nails turned into claws as the beast’s blinding rage took over. Bones popped, limbs lengthened, and skin tore, until it ended in an explosion of blood and flesh.
His personality, all that he was, became subdued, and a mind much darker than his replaced it.
Jekyll wiped his blade off on the dead man’s clothes. He turned in time to see Hyde sever his opponent’s head with his twin blades. A spray of blood coated his brother’s face. Hyde’s preference for up-close battles usually meant he ended up covered.
Hyde let out a maniacal cackle that had a smile pulling at Jekyll’s lips. It appeared all his brother had needed, to pull him out of the funk of his latest breakup, was a little bloodshed.
Just then, another man came around the corner. Theguy’s gaze went from them to the bodies on the ground, before letting out a yelp.
Jekyll rolled his eyes when—for dramatics, no doubt—his brother licked one of his blades and grinned wickedly. The action sent the man fleeing. They started to chase him, but froze in place as a loud animalistic roar broke through the commotion of the battle.
Hyde clucked his tongue. “Well, shit. That’s not good.”
“Oh, hell,” Jekyll cursed. Together they took off, with the hope of finding their leader before someone else had the unfortunate luck of doing so.
They followed Sin’s scent to a back hallway, one they reached just as a bloodcurdling scream was let loose. Pausing, they stared at the door it had come from.
“You have the shot with you, right?” Jekyll asked. They had to get Sin out of here. And to do that, they would need to shoot him up with a concoction that temporarily forced his other side down.
“Of course,” Hyde stated, his expression hard. Any joy the man had felt from slaying their enemies was now gone.
Taking a deep breath, Jekyll prepared himself for what he was about to face.
“Let’s do this.” With a nod from his brother, he pushed the door open.
It was a bloodbath. The walls and floor were coated—like someone had thrown buckets of paint on them. A shredded body laid in the center of the room. And crouched over it was a monstrous beast, feasting on its innards.
Covered in black fur, the only hint of the man it had been before were the patches of suit hanging on by threads.
Even crouching, the creature was huge. Having faced it before, Jekyll knew it stood around eight feet tall. Thething’s limbs were unnaturally long and skeletal. Its yellow eyes were sunken in, and the creature always appeared to be on the brink of starvation.
But its half-dead appearance belied its strength. The beast’s claws could tear an immortal in half. Vaguely wolf-like, it had an elongated snout, with fangs just as deadly. The thing’s fangs and claws were currently dripping with blood.
The beast that was Sin’s other half growled, its eyes glowing with malice. The thing knew them, and it knew what was coming.
“Hello, beastie,” Hyde crowed and taunted it by waving the automatic injector in the air.
Snarling, it charged.
“It was nae much of a fight. The men surrendered,” Roth informed him over the phone. “Of course, they were outnumbered.”
“Nice to know my father isn’t a complete idiot.”
