Victoria entered the sickroom carefully, carrying the tray of medicines. The room smelled of impending death. Grandfather wouldn't live through the night.
She set the tray on the small table next to the bed and started mixing the powders. Grandfather watched her, his eyes eager and fierce. But his voice was querulous and his words negative.
"No, Victoria. It's too late. Never again." Still, he watched greedily as she stirred and measured.
"This will cure you, won't it?"
"Yes, perhaps," the dying scientist confirmed. "But it is a different form of death. I stop being me when I take the serum. I disappear. It's like dying."
"A temporary death," Victoria reminded him.
"Maybe not. I haven't the strength to fight him any longer. He has grown so strong. I cannot survive that battle again. He will live and I will die."
But the potion was ready. And the elderly man had neither the will to resist nor the ability to turn his head when his granddaughter held tight to his chin. She forced the funnel between his grey lips and poured the serum into him.
He coughed and sputtered, but Victoria held his lips shut. Not a drop was spilt. The old man swallowed it all.
"It tastes different," he said, his voice already stronger and firmer.
"I added 2% more sulfur to the mix," Victoria boasted. "But I burned it first in a hydrogen flame."
The old man sat up, thinking furiously, visualizing the changes she'd made and calculating the results. "That would nearly double its potency," he marveled.
"Yes. I think so."
The scientist threw off the blanket and came off the bed. "This is terrible!" he said in alarm. "I will be lost. There will be no way back now."
"Very true," his granddaughter agreed. "This will make it permanent."
"What have you done?"
"I have followed your example, Grandfather. From my earliest memories, I knew that nothing was more important than those foul-smelling chemicals and the effects they had on the body. You had me as your lab assistant when I was a mere toddler. And Mother married a man just like you. Now it is my turn to make the experiment."
Grandfather was trembling with fear and rage and the painful spasms of his improved formula. Thick, dark hair replaced the wispy white threads that had decorated his pate for so long. His thin, ropy arms swelled with healthy muscle. His very bones thickened and grew longer. It was hard to tell with that white nightshirt on, but Victoria dearly hoped he was growing thick and long between those meaty thighs as well.
As she watched in fascination and horror, Doctor Henry Jekyll's emaciated body became young and powerful. His wizened visage became brutish and ape-like. A pained howl emerged from that tortured, expanding throat.
And then, the transformation was complete. The beastly figure grinned at the girl he saw before him. "Victoria," he said with a sneer.
"Hyde," she said in acknowledgment.
"It has been a few years," the monster noted.
"A few. Yes." Victoria tried hard to quell the old panic and dread this creature dredged up in her. He was bigger than he'd ever been, nine feet tall, almost three feet wide at the shoulders. She'd once seen this thing rip a man in two with his bare hands. He was even stronger now.
"You're looking good," Hyde remarked, leering at her, feasting his eyes on her tits and the span of her hips.
"I grew up," Victoria answered.
"You're old enough to fuck, I think," the monster said.
"I'm your granddaughter," Victoria scolded.
"I am a man without limits," Hyde roared at her. "I have no morals. I have no conscience. Your grandfather chose to weaken and kill those sad little self-judgments. And now, I'm thinking my granddaughter's all grown up and I want to fuck her."
"You'll get your chance," Victoria promised. "But I swear you won't enjoy it."
"You let me worry about that," Hyde gloated. "I will take my pleasure in your skinny little body whether you want it or not."
But Victoria had prepared well. The potion flowing through her grandfather's veins had more than one surprise in it. A strange, strained expression came over Edward Hyde's twisted face as his heart started skipping beats and a chill sweat broke out on his skin.
