Club Monstrosity

by Jesse Petersen

  She glared at him. “How did you get into my apartment, dickhead?”

  He laughed. Hardly anyone used dickhead as a curse anymore. Natalie was a throwback in so many ways.

  “Oh, that!”

  He reached into the pocket of his jeans and held out her keys, complete with the little pink cartridge of pepper spray attached to the key ring.

  “Here you go,” he said. “Though I don’t know why you have pepper spray. You’ve got monster strength and good ears. Or is it for show, since so many women in the city carry it for protection? You constantly think of all the details when it comes to fitting in. I always sort of admired you for that.”

  She blinked as if she didn’t really understand the words coming out of his mouth.

  “You stole my keys,” she said, more to herself than to him. “When?”

  “Blob’s apartment,” he said with a shrug. “Figured we could meet here and decompress.”

  That wasn’t entirely true, but it was as good a start as any.

  “Asshole.” She advanced on him with a scowl befitting any monster. “You realize you pissed my roommate off—and now she’s moving out!”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, I heard her through the door. But I never would have raped her.”

  Natalie shook her head. “Am I in The Twilight Zone? Is this really happening?”

  “I don’t know about The Twilight Zone, but that’s not the point. The point is . . . sorry about your roommate.”

  For a moment, Natalie just stared at him, but then she pressed her hands into his chest and shoved as hard as she could. To Alec’s surprise, he staggered back a step. Just a few hours before, he’d been musing on how Natalie never went monster . . . but here she was, brown eyes flashing, dark hair flying around her face, and all her impressive strength on display.

  She was a monster. And for the first time Alec truly saw her. She was . . . hot, actually. He’d never noticed just how pretty her face was or the way her eyes sparkled.

  “You aren’t sorry!” Natalie growled, a fitting interruption to his very weird thoughts. “I can see in your eyes that this is just a big joke to you, just like everything else is. Well, some of us have to live. And work. And pay our damn rent, which is why I had Whitney living here with me in the first place. It wasn’t for her awesome company, by any means.”

  Alec knew all that. But he wrinkled his brow anyway, like he didn’t have a plan. Nope, not at all.

  “Come on. She’ll get over it in the morning.”

  “No.” Natalie sank down on the bed Alec had vacated and rubbed her temples. “This time, I think she might not. She was going on and on about all the things she doesn’t like about living with me.”

  “Do you really listen to nineteenth-century music?” he asked.

  She glared up at him. “Seriously?”

  “Sorry.” He shrugged. Now was the time to announce his plan to Natalie. “I’ll tell you what . . . I find myself currently, um, between residences, as well. How about I move in and I’ll help you cover the rent, huh?”

  Natalie’s mouth dropped open. “Wait, you got kicked out of your apartment?”

  Alec nodded. It had happened a day before. The notice had said something about excessive noise infractions (like it was his fault that he thrashed and howled when the full moon was close).

  He had intended to mention it at the meeting, but then Blob hadn’t shown and looking for him was the priority. When he was hanging out with Natalie, he’d kind of remembered some roommate problems she mentioned now and then, and . . . poof. Somehow he’d ended up with her keys and a potential solution to his impending homelessness.

  Natalie was still talking. “Are you trying to tell me you just happened to create enough problems to make my roommate move out?”

  He didn’t answer, but raised both eyebrows.

  “You . . . you . . . mutt!”

  “Hey! Hurtful!”

  With a groan, she flopped down on her back on the bed and threw an arm over her eyes. “You did this on purpose.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute, just stared at her. Well, first at her boobs, then at her. She was pretty pissed. Like, legitimately pissed, not Linda-getting-attention pissed.

  When she moved her arm to stare at him, he actually felt sheepish.

  Mmm. Sheep.

  “You did, didn’t you?” Natalie asked as she pulled herself into a seated position, almost as if she hoped he would deny it.

  He shrugged. “I heard you mention a couple times what a bitch she was . . . and you were right, by the way. I tried to be nice to her when she got here. I explained I wasn’t a random guy but a friend, and she still started yelling like a banshee on crack. Drama queen.”

  Natalie sighed. “Yeah, a little. But—”

  He interrupted her. He could see he was working past Rage Natalie and he couldn’t stop now. “That girl totally did not deserve a nice pad like this or a roommate like you. And I admit . . . when it gets close to the full moon, I . . . well, sometimes I trash a place, so it’s hard to keep an apartment on my own.”

  Natalie shook her head. “You think the fact that you trash your apartments is going to be a selling point for me letting you live here?”

  “You have monster strength,” Alec pointed out. “When you shoved me, I staggered, and that’s pretty rare, having a bit of monster strength myself. You could help me control myself. Lock me up in a room during full moons and stuff.”

  Natalie just stared at him, but her expression had softened a little. Alec could see he was close to getting what he wanted.

  “C’mon, Nat!” he pleaded. “Wouldn’t it be nice to live with someone you didn’t have to hide your true identity from? Someone who doesn’t mind weird music, or at least remembers when it was cool, and keeps your same hours?”

  “Monsters sharing an apartment . . .” Natalie mused.

  He tilted his head. “I’ll be such a good dog. Bring you your slippers?”

  She smiled before she could help herself and then rolled her eyes. “Fine. Fine, you can stay here. But you better cover your half of the rent or I swear I will put you out on your fine ass before you can howl or whine.”

  He grinned. “So my ass is fine, is it?”

  “Shut up!” Natalie grabbed a pillow and tossed it at him.

  He caught it, but then set it aside and stared at her evenly. She shifted beneath his close inspection, but didn’t break the stare.

  “So,” he said. “Want to talk about our real problem?”

  “That you’re a narcissistic sociopath?” she teased.

  He didn’t smile, though he normally would have. “No. Blob. Ellis.”

  Natalie squeezed her eyes shut. “No, I don’t want to talk about that. But I guess we have to, don’t we?”

  Alec sighed and then took a seat next to her on the bed. When she opened her eyes, she jolted in surprise and then lunged to her feet. She paced away from him to the tiny window that looked out over a dirty alley below. With his good wolf ears, he could hear her trying to settle her breath, though if that was because of him or the circumstances, he had no idea.

  “So you and I agree that, whatever Kai wants to say to explain this away as ‘coincidence,’ this is a big deal, right?” Natalie asked without looking back at him. “I mean, two of us, dying like we did in The Story? That’s too much to be dismissed as a fluke.”

  “Yeah.” Alec nodded as he thought of poor Blob all blue in the freezer. He’d always liked the guy. He certainly didn’t deserve to go like that. “We agree. We’re all in danger. And we’re going to need to address that tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Natalie repeated with a shake of her head as she finally looked at him again. “But that’s not our regular meeting day.”

  “Didn’t you get Drake’s text?”

  Natalie’s eyes went wide. “I still can’t believe Mr. Fifth Century texts now.”

  Alec laughed. “Yeah, well, apparently he somehow arranged for us to use the church
basement off our usual schedule.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “How? Didn’t some other group have the space reserved?”

  Alec shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he used vampire mind tricks. Those are real, right?”

  “Yes. I’ve felt them a couple of times.” Natalie let out a heavy sigh. “Shit, I hope he didn’t do something like that. It’s way too obvious, even to dimwits. That’s exactly the kind of behavior that could only make this situation worse.”

  Alec blinked. “Worse? Is that possible?”

  She turned back to the alley below and shivered. “I hope not.”

  7

  Alec had been living with Natalie for all of five seconds and he’d already told her a lie. When he said “I’m going to work” as he’d left that night, he’d actually meant, I’m telling you what you want to hear so that you won’t ask questions. He had something else to do, someplace else to be . . . and he doubted Natalie would approve. Actually, he knew she wouldn’t, and for some weird reason that actually mattered to him.

  He’d spent years going with the flow, making sure everything and everyone around him was superficial. Oh sure, the guys at work liked him enough to sometimes have a beer with him or ask him to play poker. And girls flocked to him at clubs and joined him in bed without having to be asked twice.

  But that didn’t mean anything he shared with those people was genuine. Alec didn’t really make friends or have girlfriends or do more than hang out a few times. It was too dangerous. The last time he’d let someone get close was over a hundred years ago, and that poor girl had ended up dead in a ditch with her throat ripped out.

  Not by him, of course. By a bastard who was trying to convince his village of a “Wolf Man” on the loose. But still. Those were the dangers of Alec’s lifestyle. No, not lifestyle. Lifestyle implied a choice in how one lived.

  This wasn’t a choice. As some little pop star kept singing on the radio . . . he was born this way. And monsters weren’t easy to love.

  But with Natalie, there was something . . . different. He didn’t have to be scared for her life or her future; Natalie could take care of herself in dangerous situations. And she was as hard to kill as he was, even if things got . . . bad. Plus, he didn’t have to worry what she would say when she found out what happened to him during the full moon. Natalie got it.

  She might not get him. But she got it. And sometimes, even against her better judgment, she might even like him. Now, was that going to lead to anything? Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact that there was a possibility it might made him much more worried about what she’d think of his current “extracurricular activities.”

  So he was just going to keep tonight’s agenda to himself. If anything came of it, then he’d think about telling Natalie what was really up.

  He stepped up to the same building he’d been at just a few hours before. Blob’s building. Somehow he expected to see crime scene tape and cops swarming everywhere, but the place was quiet, like nothing had happened there.

  Natalie thought he was a big joke, and that was his own fault. Over the years, decades, centuries, he’d learned that playing the fool was the best way to keep people out of his business. No one ever thought he had any . . . Or any brains to go with it.

  But he had a bit of both.

  He stepped inside and was assaulted by the same filth they’d encountered earlier. He went up a floor and down the hall to one of the apartments: 215. One he’d been to plenty of times, though he hadn’t mentioned that to Linda or Natalie when they came here looking for Blob. It only would have caused too many questions.

  He knocked and the door opened only as far as the chain would allow. A bright, wild eye appeared in the space and then softened with recognition.

  “Alec, my brother,” a male voice with a decidedly fake Rastafarian accent said.

  The door shut, the lock slid free, and the door opened to reveal a very skinny, very white man with long, stringy dreadlocks and a dirty beard. The apartment smelled like patchouli leaves, stale socks, and some other gross aromas.

  Sometimes Alec cursed that sensitive doggie nose of his.

  “West,” he said as he shook the other man’s hand and was dragged in for a chest bump. Shit, the kid was an idiot. He’d been pretending to be Jamaican as long as Alec had known him and the act got pretty old.

  “So, my best customer,” West said, motioning to the couch as he relocked the door. “Back for more already? You were just here a couple of days ago, man.”

  Alec shook his head. This was why he hadn’t told Natalie about being in the building before. She clearly didn’t approve of the pot use, even though it was truly for medicinal purposes. And he wasn’t about to tell her that his dealer lived here.

  “Naw, man, I just heard you had some trouble here with the cops. Thought I’d come see for myself if you were still breathing and operating.”

  West frowned and for a second the accent slipped. “Yeah, dude.” Then he was all smiles and no-worries attitude again. “Some fatty upstairs offed himself, I guess.”

  Alec flinched. Man, people were mean. Monsters were mean, too, but at least they had an excuse.

  “That the word?” he asked, tone not revealing anything.

  West nodded. “Yeah. So it ain’t no thing. Won’t cause any problems to business, if that’s your worry, man.”

  Alec nodded. “Good. Good thing. But I—uh, actually knew the guy from . . . work.”

  West had no concept of what anyone did for a living beyond selling drugs, so he nodded.

  “Whoa. Trippy, man. Well, sorry about the fat dude. Want to smoke a blunt for him?”

  Alec shook his head. In truth, the pot made his nose itchy. He really only did it for the calming effect around full moon days.

  “Actually, I was wondering if you saw anyone weird here before my dude died.”

  That was the thing about West. He was a pothead and a dealer, but he protected his business. Alec knew he watched his building pretty fucking close. If anyone would know about weird monster-killing commandos or ninjas or something, it would be him.

  West sat down on his old couch and leaned back. He stared at the ceiling like he was thinking. Then he shrugged.

  “Naw, I don’t think so. But lots of people come in and out of this building, right, man? To see me, to see other people. It’s kind of dance central here, even on the weeknights.”

  “But no one out of the ordinary who you noticed,” Alec pressed.

  West shrugged. “Nope. At least, I don’t remember someone weird. Why? The guy killed himself, right . . . or did someone steal something from him?”

  Alec thought of Bob’s swollen face, his blue skin, the look of terror on his face, and the lock that had kept him from escaping his fate.

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “That sucks, man,” West said.

  Alec rubbed his itchy nose and moved to the door. “Thanks, man. I appreciate the assistance.”

  West got up, confused. “Uh, yeah. You’re going to come back and do business, though, right?”

  Alec hesitated at the door. “Oh yeah. I’m good for now, but I’ll be back.”

  West smiled weakly and Alec shut the door behind him. So much for that, and it was the closest thing to a “lead” he had. The only upside was he wasn’t going to have to tell Natalie about this little excursion. Which was of little comfort when he thought of poor Blob and his sad little lonely death just two floors up.

  Natalie slipped into the side door of the Holy Heart Church and moved toward the stairs to the basement. The church was empty except for two older ladies who were wiping down the pews with wood cleaner. When they caught sight of her, both of them flinched and started whispering to each other in Italian. Natalie hadn’t spoken Italian in nearly a century but she remembered enough to know what they were saying wasn’t complimentary. Their voices were filled with accusatory fear she heard loud and clear, even if she didn’t fully understand their words.

  She clutched
her bag tighter as she moved into the basement stairwell. Their reaction caused a visceral one of her own: fear prickled her neck, nerves. She could almost smell torch fire and feel pitchforks poking her in the back before she shook her head and shrugged away the bad memories.

  This was New York City, not nineteenth-century France . . . or England . . . or Italy . . . or Romania. No one was going to chase her.

  She made her way to the meeting room and walked inside. She wasn’t surprised that almost everyone had already gathered for their meeting. She’d pretty much given up on ever being the first one in the room.

  They were a stony, silent group, sprawled in chairs, hardly looking at each other.

  Linda cried softly. Drake paced along the back wall of the room, jerking his cape around his legs every time he pivoted. Jekyll and Hyde were merged, but even as a single, united man they were creepy. He/they gripped their hands together, comforting themselves by sliding one finger against the other and speaking out loud to each other in two different voices, like they were straight out of a Stephen King novel.

  “You’re not late,” Kai said with genuine surprise.

  Natalie frowned as she scanned the room. “I’m also not last. Alec isn’t here yet.”

  In fact, she hadn’t seen Alec since he left for work the night before. She’d had the night off and had indulged in a long bath, caught up on her DVR (monsters chilled to reality TV, too), and finally slept off her migraine.

  But despite the fact he had declared he was moving in, Alec hadn’t shown up in the morning or all day.

  Maybe he’d changed his mind.

  Or maybe something else had happened to him.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” Natalie asked as fear gripped her.

  She could almost picture Alec lying in a gutter somewhere, a silver bullet piercing his heart. She didn’t like the guy . . . much . . . but she didn’t want him to end that way.

  “Oh God,” Linda started to wail. She pressed the heels of her fists into her eyes until it looked painful. “They got Alec—they got Alec!”