Chapter Text
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If she looked hard enough, Wednesday always noticed the cracks of any facade. Nothing fooled her for long.
Jericho called itself wholesome, but smelled faintly of blood and rotting corpses shoddily entombed only three feet below the ground, as if someone had been in too much of a hurry to bury a body properly. While Nevermore was the unspoken scythe of death — a thing the townsfolk pretended wasn’t there for their own sanity, the blade hanging forever aloft over their necks — Jericho was something far, far worse. Rotten to its core, the bones brittle and the flesh half melted off. It wasn’t even a particularly interesting corpse. Lacked any charm, any color. It was just — lifeless.
And deep down, everyone in town knew this.
Still, surprisingly, there were always new parts of Jericho that Wednesday was discovering.
Tonight, she walked past a half dozen houses that lay on the eastern edge of town, their windows broken like missing teeth. The streetlights flickered, and sometimes Wednesday heard footsteps in the quiet behind her, ones that never revealed their owners. For a school night, only Thursday, she knew she had limited time. Enid and Thing would get distressed if Wednesday didn’t return before the morning bell, but she had more pressing priorities than a dismembered hand with a penchant for overly dramatic exclamations and a werewolf that had the fashion sense of a bleeding unicorn needing to be put out of its misery.
Because someone had delivered a note, written in blood. There was a time and an address scrawled across a white sheet of paper stained red, stuck to her door with a knife. And the most interesting aspect of all, the knife had also been speared through a heart. A human heart.
All of that left as a calling card to capture her attention.
Wednesday didn’t know whose heart it was, but it had been ripe and still bloody, almost warm, as if almost still beating. The mystery of it intrigued her enough that she was willing to satiate her curiosity. Thus, when she stopped at the last singular house on the road, miles away from where anyone else could hear screams, she found an old and unloved house. She confirmed the address and studied the facade of the building, all while folding the bloodied piece of paper into neat quarters and tucking it back into her pocket.
It wasn’t much to look at, this house.
The paint was peeling awfully, drained of color where the sun had hit it too harshly like bleached bones, but she pushed the gates open and looked around.
At the back, she found a statue that brought about a familiar sense of doom. Galling in its size, almost to a ridiculous point of overcompensation. The short snout came to a cruel jagged end, the mouth displaying every tooth chipped yet still somehow sharp. Across the skin, marks left over from a hundred forgotten fights. The stone was mottled with age and mildew, streaked with black where rain had wept down its ribs, giving the illusion of dried blood. The claws were impossibly long, curling inward. Muscles bulged beneath its coarse, chiseled fur, each strand etched with obsessive detail, as if the sculptor had loved the creature more than any human could be loved. And lastly, its eyes—wide demonic pits bulging from its sockets underneath the shadow of its heavy brow—they did not have the familiar bloodshot red appearance, but she could still recognize it.
Wednesday, of course, knew the look of a Hyde when she saw one now.
That answered one question. Who had sent her the human heart? It was Tyler. Wednesday was certain. She had suspected as much from the onset. He’d disappeared after the sheriff’s hunt for him had gone unsurprisingly nowhere. It was almost two months since his escape from Willow Hill’s Psychiatric Hospital, and he’d left a trail of corpses almost as cold as the clues he’d left behind to find him.
Other questions remained a mystery. Why, for one, did he choose to contact her now? And who had he murdered for the heart — another question. This was most certainly a trap of some kind, but the statue in the back was a dead giveaway if he’d planned any sort of surprise attack. Tyler knew her, and he would know that she would not be so easily baited and trapped, much less killed.
There was only one way to find out what this was all about.
Wednesday moved to the house, turned the knob on the back door, and was unsurprised to find it unlocked. Inside, shadows welcomed her. The place smelled faintly of mold and the metallic tang underneath that spoke of fresh spilled blood, sharp enough to make her teeth ache. She let her instincts lead her, a pull like an inescapable itch under her skin. Then she heard it—faint, rhythmic, a breath mixed with a growl—coming from somewhere below.
The basement door yawned open like a mouth.
Each step down felt heavier than the last. The smell intensified—copper, sweat, and wet fur. The single dangling bulb cast an anemic yellow glow over the room, and there he was — shackled to the far wall, wrists bound with thick iron. Barefoot, shirtless, hair damp with sweat. His eyes—too bright, too wild—locked on her immediately.
“Wednesday,” he greeted, and his voice was both familiar and gratingly knowing. “I knew you couldn’t resist the invitation.”
He looked thinner than she last saw him, his skin gone pale except where fever flushed it high on his cheeks, a mottled bloom that made him look half-sick, half-alive with some terrible affliction. Wednesday was surprised to see him bound, and could only assume he’d done that to himself — although why presented a question. She doubted those old chains would hold him for long if he decided to bring out his other physical form. Sweat slicked his hair to his forehead, dark strands curling and clinging like ivy to stone. The muscles in his forearms were corded and tight, but there was a tension in him that played across his skin like livewire. She could see the strain in his neck, the way his jaw flexed.
“Did you like my gift?” he asked her.
She halted at the edge of the steps. “These games grow old between us.”
He smiled wildly. “I thought you’d appreciate the macabre romantic overture. I gave you a heart.”
“Don’t make me throw up in my mouth,” she retorted, flatly. And not from the sight of a severed human heart but from the implications that the gesture held any ounce of courtship. “Who did you kill?”
“The owner of this house,” Tyler replied, idly. “Don’t shed too many tears over it. He was a man with a fetish for Hyde flesh. I disabused him of his unsavory ways.”
Wednesday did not respond to that. Other than offering the man’s family a discount on a plot of land or funeral services, there wasn’t much else that she could do for him. The circumstances that led her here had unfolded without the benefit of her premonitions, and there had been frustratingly little in the way of clues leading her to Tyler’s whereabouts. He seemed to know this, a flush of delight over his face as he studied her. This game of cat and mouse was already tiresome, especially since Wednesday would rather partake in a bath of flesh-eating bacteria than play along with Tyler’s fantasies of delusional grandeur.
“You have one minute to plead your case,” Wednesday offered, “or you become someone else’s problem.”
“What? You’ll call the sheriff? Like that wouldn’t result in more pointless death. They can’t contain me, Wednesday. You know this. You’d really ring them up only to bring them to their deaths?”
“What part of me screams that I have issues with death?”
“The part that always seems to save the day,” Tyler refuted, knowingly. “For a girl that convinces herself she cares about nothing and no one, you do have the talent for playing the dark knight. The town protector. The hero of Nevermore.”
“Pernicious lies,” Wednesday said, biting back an eye twitch. “An utterly obvious ploy to get under my skin when we both know the only reason we crossed paths was because I was bored and needed some deathly entertainment in this backwater town. Unlike you, I knew how to bury my kills deep in the dark so that they don’t come back to haunt me — literally or figuratively. You were sloppy, Tyler. Amateurish. It’s why you’re alone.”
His lips twitched. “Dead father, dead mother,” he agreed, glibly. “I killed my master. No wonder you and I get along so well. Death has a fascination with us both.”
“Half your minute is up. Do you have a point to get to, or not?”
A pause. “I have,” he said, voice low, “a proposition for you, Wednesday.” His gaze flicked upward, like he had to force himself to speak the next words. “You want me contained? We both know that this town will never hold me for long. Willow Hill only kept me for one summer.”
“That was an unfortunate byproduct of my provocations,” Wednesday refuted. “Without me, you’d have been locked up there for decades. Say what you will about their psychotherapeutic malpractice, but Willow Hill kept outcasts well contained.” Too well contained. “Even I have to give them that.”
He laughed. “So you’re saying I owe you my gratitude for the escape?”
“Don’t count your blessings yet. I still intend on delivering you back to your cage.”
“What if there was another way? To contain me? For good?”
Wednesday paused, said nothing.
A flush crawled up his throat, his eyes darkening. “I can feel the madness chewing at me from inside my skull, piece by piece. I’m losing myself.”
Her arms crossed, nails digging into her sleeves. “And?”
He’d killed Thornhill, his master. His fate was already sealed.
But the chains bit into his wrists, the skin there raw and abraded, but not from struggling tonight—it was the layered damage of many nights before. The iron links were thick, anchored deep into the brick behind him, but they still trembled when he pulled against them unconsciously, as if testing their faith in their own strength. He’d been doing this for some time, chaining himself up.
He looked away, gaze distant for a beat. “A Hyde needs a master. And you—” His eyes cut back to her, fever-bright. “You could help me. You’ve always been able to get through to me, Wednesday. Stir interest in the beast inside me. I’m giving you the chance you’ve always wanted.”
“What deluded nonsense is this now?”
“Wouldn’t you like to keep me from spiralling into a homicidal void? One that would tear apart everyone in town limb from limb? Even you have loved ones — family, friends. I could rip through every one your little black heart cares about, starting with Enid.”
“I stopped you before. Given you’re already locked up and chained, my job is considerably easier this time.”
He jerked against the chains. The bricks on the wall securing his iron shackles struggled to contain even a brief flash of his strength, dust and debris kicked up into the air. His eyes were the worst of it, flashing a dangerous rage, threatening to bulge out. His teeth looked wrong, too. Not quite elongated, but sharper, as though the change was carving them into weapons grain by grain. The chains wouldn’t hold. Not for long.
Despite herself, Wednesday felt tense and instinctively reached for the vial of poison in her pocket, a crossfire hemotoxin blend that unconventional wisdom said would be enough to kill a beast Tyler’s size in thirty seconds flat. The hard part would be to get him to ingest it, but Wednesday knew if he attacked, she’d have plenty of opportunity to get close enough to his snarling mouth, especially if he was trying to bite off her head.
“What do you propose?” Wednesday demanded, finished with this game.
He straightened, his eyes darkening as the hyde receded by inches beneath the surface. “You’re the only one who can stand to control me now, Wednesday. Keep the madness from taking full control.”
She almost could have laughed, sharp and humorless, but her biting tone gave away her indifference. “You think I’d save you? After what you did?”
“I think you still care,” he countered, and the chain groaned as he leaned forward. “Even if you hate me. Hate and love aren’t so far apart, Wednesday. A thin red line. And when I turn— I think you want to be able to control that part of me as much as you deny it.”
The bulb above them buzzed, flickered, dimmed. She could hear his breathing deepen, ragged, the animal already straining against the man. And for one horrifying second, she remembered what it had felt like when she’d once reached for his touch instead of recoiling from it.
“You’re wasting your breath,” she declared. “You want mercy, you’re barking up the wrong girl.”
“I don’t want mercy,” he said, leaning forward just enough that the chains creaked. “This is about control.”
She let out a sharp exhale. “Control? Don’t try to lure me into one of your adolescent psychological fantasies. We both know you’d never give up control.”
“A Hyde,” he told her, grimacing, “needs a master. I thought I could contain the bloodlust myself, the madness — but I can feel myself slipping further and further into a black void, Wednesday. One I could never come back from.”
“Did you want me to push?” she threatened.
He let out a humorless chuckle. “I’m serious.” His voice dropped, almost a whisper. “Every night it’s harder to keep the line. It’s like… something else is driving, and I’m locked in the back seat, watching it tear through everything. I’m done pretending I can stop it on my own.”
“You didn’t stop it before,” she said, her words deliberate, slow. “You didn’t stop when they were screaming. I stopped you.”
His jaw tightened. “And that’s why you’re here. You’re the only one that has a chance. The Hyde— he respects you, even when he wants to tear you apart.”
She inclined her head. “You think I’m just going to play warden? Sit here like some keeper, just to keep your conscience and your hands clean? The sight of either of them bloody never affected you before.”
“No,” he said, that red burnt color scotching hotter in his stare. “Not warden. A Hyde doesn’t answer to a warden.”
No, it answered to a master. The word hung between them, silent, heavy as chains.
Wednesday said nothing.
“I want to remember myself,” he said, voice low but certain. “I want to have some semblance of an identity beyond a raging carnivore.” He swallowed, trailed off, the implication sharp as broken glass in his throat. “So, you win. You tell me when to move, who to kill, when to stop. You give the orders.”
She stepped closer, until the edge of the bulb’s light caught the shadows of her face. “And in return?”
“In return,” he said, “you don’t hand me to the cops, or Willow Hill, or anyone else who’ll put me in chains. You get to decide what I hunt. Who and where. I’m sure you have a list of people you’d like to cross off.”
“What makes you think I need your help in that?”
“Hunter or hound,” Tyler replied. “Which one would you rather me be? No matter what you may claim, you know there’s merit to this arrangement, Wednesday.”
Her pulse was louder in her ears now, though her voice stayed cool. “You think I’d be stupid enough to trust you?”
“You wouldn’t be trusting me,” he said, lips curling faintly. “You’d be controlling me. Owning me. Don’t tell me that’s not appealing to you. We’re both beyond petty denials.”
She studied him—every inch of the strained muscles, the fevered eyes, the chains dug into brick. He was desperate, despite all the bravado. That much was obvious. She could smell the tang of his fear hanging in the air like pheromones. He truly was at his last grasp of sanity; a Hyde without a master was only madness driven inwards, layers upon layers of insanity folding in upon itself like a slow-acting implosion. He had no chance at ever being normal, but that didn’t mean she had to leash the beast instead of slay it.
“Say it,” Wednesday declared.
Tyler’s head tilted. “Why?”
“Because I want to hear if you mean it.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “You want obedience, or proof?”
“Both.”
The chain rattled as he leaned forward until there was barely a foot between them. “Yes… Master.” This time the word came out like it had teeth, daring her to flinch. “I’ll be yours to command.”
She didn’t flinch, of course. “If you’re mine, then I decide what happens to you. I decide when you eat, when you move, when you breathe.” She paused, ominously. “When you die.”
He smirked. “You haven’t asked the best part yet — how the new bond needs to be forged?”
She paused. “Thornhill already unlocked you.”
He looked at her, gaze heavy and laden with layers of feral possession. “There are other ways to forge a bond,” Tyler said, smirk widening. “I assume you won’t blush like a virgin if I mention some of the carnal ways?”
Wednesday very nearly rolled her eyes. As if anyone growing up in her household, under the same shared roof as her mother and father, could ever proclaim to be bashful when it came to sex. The Addams had been pioneers in sexual rituals when most clans or covens were still in their infancies.
“I hope those chains are comfortable," Wednesday said, with finality. “Because you better be in them when I return tomorrow night. I need to think about this. I need to research if what you’re proposing is even possible. If you’re not here, if I find out you’ve killed another in the meantime, remember—I don’t need to bring someone else here to put you down like the animal you are.”
For a moment, silence. Then, oddly proud and soft: “You’d do it, too.”
“In a heartbeat.” She stepped even closer, until the chain between his shackles and the wall went taut. His breath brushed her face, hot and uneven. “The only reason you’re not dead right now is because you may prove more useful alive to me. Don’t mistake that for forgiveness or anything else filled with foolish sentiment.”
The muscles in his jaw tightened. “And don’t mistake this for weakness. The chains, the begging—these are just unfortunate setbacks for me. The pause before the next hunt. You’re not safe here. You’re not safe with me. Always remember, I killed my last master for abusing my trust.”
“Look how that turned out for you,” Wednesday replied, clipped. “Don’t worry, I won’t be as foolish as Thornhill nor as lenient.”
Something flickered in his expression—recognition, maybe, or hunger. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
“Settle in for the night. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Not going to tuck me in?” he taunted, grinning. Then, a warning: “I wouldn’t take too much time, Wednesday. The longer you wait, the less control I have over the animal inside me.”
“You are the animal, Tyler. Don’t mistake the difference.”
With that, she turned and left him in the basement, slamming the door shut after her.
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