Read Online The Diabolical Miss Hyde by Viola Carr - Free Book Online

laudanum should’ve dulled his desire but it hasn’t. I can feel him—he’s warm and insistent and wrong and I shouldn’t but I want to and my blood burns with the terrible urge to corrupt, defile, destroy.
    I don’t have long. I should go home. Disappear into my dungeon, let those rusty shackles snap tight. Hide from the truth, which is that I’m a bad woman and I’ll break this lonely boy’s heart for the simple pleasure of watching beauty bleed.
    But I don’t care. About me, about Eliza, about anything. Let ’em come. Let ’em torture me, strip me raw, bare my black-rotted soul to the sun.
    Johnny’s sweet mouth hovers over mine. He murmurs, lips drifting apart in easy invitation, and I bury my hands in his hair—such lovely hair, Johnny, you fairy-arse tosser—and the world shimmers into light.

    Darkness, the long empty echo of a wet Chelsea street. The artists’ quarter, lonely and bleak. A doorway looms, wooden steps twisting upwards inside. Cold winter shadows prowl and hunch like beasts. No moon shines. The midnight sky’s black with fog and dirt. Only my candle sheds light, a flickering halo of brightness in hell.
    I edge forward, my heart thudding hard.
    He’s here.
    I can taste it. Feel it in my fingertips like a long skein of wool unraveling, leading me to him. A bloodstain here, a fragment of cloth there. A smear of vermilion oil paint on a shirt; a telltale crimson hair, tangled in a dead woman’s fingers; the unique shape and depth of the loving slices he’s made in flesh. The homicidal artist whom the newspapers call Razor Jack has killed seventeen people that we know of. I should call for help. I should telegraph Inspector Griffin.
    Anything but keep walking into the dark.
    My shoes scrape on the threshold, unnervingly loud. My heart jumps like a frog into my mouth. I’m quivering, my candle’s flame shakes. My courage is lost. I want Lizzie,her bold laugh, her fearless banter, that confident toss of her head.
    But Lizzie’s not here. There’s only me, Eliza.
    I climb the spiral steps, creak, crack. Wind whistles, bringing the oily smell of paint and solvent. I reach the landing. My candle gutters. An artist’s attic boudoir, wide paned windows in the sloping roof. Palettes, brushes, pots of oil and pigments scattered on the floor amongst cushions and torn paper; silken drapes flung scarlet and blue over exposed rafters; a gilt-edged silvered mirror. Oil paintings stacked in the corners, propped against walls: Odysseus resisting the Sirens, triumphant Judith slitting Holofernes’s throat, a waif in gossamer skirts dancing en pointe in a pool of lustrous shadow that might be blood.
    His technique is startling, ferocious, the colors unbridled.
    A half-finished canvas sits on an easel. It’s drowning Ophelia, mad and beautiful, her pale hair drifting in cold black water.
    The back of my neck prickles, and I whirl.
    Glinting green eyes, wild-springing hair the color of blood.
    I stammer, my pulse sprinting. He holds no weapon. He doesn’t attack me. Doesn’t move.
    He just smiles eerily in the candlelight. “Hello, Eliza.” His voice is lilting, gentle. An educated man. He’s wearing black trousers, black waistcoat with four buttons in a square, white shirt with loose sleeves cuffed tight. That outrageous, indecently crimson hair springs over his collar, dances before his eyes. Too long, almost to his shoulders.He has a sharp-pointed nose, a delicate red mouth that makes me stare.
    He’s only a few years older than I. Harmless. A beautiful monster.
    I swallow, mouth dry. I was stupid to come here. But I—or was it Lizzie?—I had to see him for myself.
    The moment stretches.
    â€œI do apologize,” he offers at last. “We’ve not been properly introduced. Malachi Todd, yours truly.” He makes an elegant little bow.
    I dip my head shakily. “Indeed we have