Club Monstrosity

by Jesse Petersen

  Kai nodded. “We have to know who our enemy is. Now that you’ve seen her, we know she’s not Rehu or even Hyde or the old man himself.”

  “Okay,” Natalie said slowly.

  “But she could still be a Van Helsing,” Alec finished. “It’s true, we all got so stuck on a guy being involved, it isn’t like we asked about women or looked for them.”

  Kai nodded. “And since we didn’t know much about who did this, that’s why I went to Van Helsing’s and took the book. If they are involved in this, we need all the information about them that we can get. We’ve forgotten too much over the years of the truce.”

  “And what if they’re not involved?” Natalie asked, raising her hands in exasperation.

  Kai shrugged. “Better to be safe than sorry.”

  Alec took the book from the table and set it on his lap. “If you aren’t going to look, I am.”

  He flipped through the pages and his eyes went wide. Page after page had columns running over and over through them. Names, dates of birth and death, details of both, details of children . . . it seemed like the Van Helsings had chronicled everything about themselves, down to their favorite food. It was going to take forever to get through it all without some guidance.

  “God, these things are detailed,” he muttered.

  “Human lives are short,” Kai said with a soft sigh. “They like to keep track of silly things like this.”

  “Yeah, an Egyptian should talk. Weren’t your people building pyramids and putting stories on walls about the time you were . . . born . . . created . . . killed . . . whatever?” Alec asked.

  “Yeah, like I said, humans.” Kai got up and walked around the back of the couch to look over his shoulder. “Look at the recent generations. It doesn’t really matter what the Van Helsings were doing four hundred years ago.”

  “Good point,” Alec said.

  Natalie stayed exactly where she was as the two of them searched through the book.

  “Don’t you want to help?” Alec asked with a quick glance her way.

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see the proud evidence of the history of a family that has taken so much pleasure in hunting and destroying our kind.”

  Alec looked at her full-on, and there was all that normally hidden emotion on her face again. Pain. Fear. He wished he could take it away.

  “I wasn’t the only ‘monster’ my father created, you know,” she said softly, almost to herself. “I’m just the only one left alive. The others were successfully hunted down and killed.”

  Kai stared at her. “By the Van Helsings?”

  Natalie shrugged. “By them or people like them, it doesn’t matter. People who equated monster with evil and acted accordingly.”

  “All the more reason to find out who this person who’s hunting us is . . . and why,” Alec said. “We’re an endangered species, Nat. And I for one don’t want to go the way of the dodo.”

  Natalie seemed to ponder that for a minute, then she got up and moved across the room on slow, plodding feet. “Okay, okay. Let me see it, too.”

  The three of them huddled over the book, turning the pages and reading over the descriptions in silence for a little while.

  “Okay, here we are,” Alec said as he flipped a few more pages to the end of the book. “These are the most recent records of the family. It looks like there are . . .”—he hesitated as he looked over the pages and counted in his head—“seven Van Helsings alive aside from the guy you and Drake met with, Natalie.”

  “Who are they?” she asked.

  Kai shot her a look and motioned to the place on the page where Alec was reading. “Looks like two are kids, too young to be involved . . . yet.”

  “Three live on the West Coast . . .” Alec said. “But there are two here in the city.”

  “Okay,” Natalie said, and she leaned closer to look at the book herself. “God, this handwriting is so old-fashioned. The old man must keep it up himself.”

  “He’s meticulous, too,” Alec complained.

  “Think they meet up once a week?” Kai asked with a chuckle. “Maybe in a church basement?”

  “I’ve been in this guy’s house,” Natalie said with a shake of her head. “He doesn’t even know basements exist, let alone ever been in one. Though I wouldn’t doubt they meet. Probably at holidays. With cognac. To gloat.”

  “But the Van Helsings living in New York are guys,” Alec said. He couldn’t help the disappointment lacing his tone.

  Natalie bit her lip as Alec got to his feet and paced around the apartment. He was annoyed by the dead end, but when he looked at her he could see she was terrified. It was the first time he’d ever seen her like that and he wished he could unsee it.

  “So now what?” Kai asked, straightening up behind the couch and rubbing her eyes with a groan of frustration. “Where do we go if not here?”

  Natalie continued to flip through the book as if there were something magical to be found there. But after a few minutes she flipped it shut in exasperation and a folded piece of paper slipped from between two pages. It fluttered to the floor at her feet. She picked it up and stared at it, her eyes widening.

  “What?” Alec asked. “What is that look for?”

  She stared at him. “Alec, this is the medallion that Trench Coat was wearing.”

  She flipped the paper toward him and Kai, and, sure enough, it was an intricate drawing of the square medallion stamped with flame and ornamented with a large orange jewel. It was labeled VAN HELSING FAMILY MEDALLION.

  “Holy shit,” Alec muttered as he took the paper.

  “Then that means all this is Van Helsing–related,” Kai muttered.

  Natalie got up and shook her head. “But Drake said they don’t use outside forces beyond the occasional mob. So why would they send some woman who isn’t in their family tree? What is she?”

  “There’s one person who could tell us,” Alec said as he tossed the sketch across the table. “The old man himself. Are you guys with me?”

  “Definitely,” Kai said as she straightened up.

  “That bitch made me run,” Natalie said. “I never run. I want to get her for that as much as anything else. Let’s go.”

  The most difficult thing about stalking a psychopath in a wheelchair was that psychopaths in wheelchairs take cars everywhere. And it turned out that cabbies didn’t really comply when you shouted, “Follow that Town Car!” as much as they did in movies. Stupid movies.

  And yet Natalie still found herself sitting on a park bench with Kai and Alec, watching an apartment building across the street from where said Town Car was now parked.

  “He’s waiting for someone,” Alec muttered.

  Kai shrugged. “Let’s not get all excited. It might not be her at all.”

  “Yeah, but—” Natalie began. She didn’t get to finish, because Alec leaned forward and his bright wolfish eyes were focused and intense.

  “Shhh, she’s coming,” he interrupted her.

  Kai looked around and then glared at him. “Where? I don’t see her. How do you know she’s coming?”

  Natalie shrugged. “Dog nose. Trust him.”

  He shot her a quick smile, but it fell as a woman came around the corner and started toward the building they had been watching. Natalie’s heart began to pound. Same blond hair as on the train; trench coat draped across her arm.

  Natalie sucked in a breath. “God, she looks so . . . so normal.”

  “So do we,” Alec said with a grimace.

  Kai nodded. “Good point.”

  Natalie continued to stare at the woman as the driver ran around the Town Car and helped Van Helsing into his wheelchair. The woman froze as she saw the old man and his servant and slowly moved toward him.

  “Fuck, I wish I could hear them,” Kai snapped, leaning so far on the edge of the park bench that she nearly fell onto the sidewalk.

  “Convict ears are on it,” Natalie said, and got to her feet. She took a quick
look up and down the side street and then scurried across. She had to be careful. Van Helsing had seen her before. If he had any inkling that they were following him . . .

  Well, it probably wouldn’t end well one way or another.

  She leaned against a building and ducked into a doorway. She could only hope she was close enough at half a block up. She leaned forward, but she could only hear snippets of what was being said.

  “—Georgia, you are putting—in danger—” Van Helsing’s words were truncated by street noise and the breeze.

  “—loved him—dead—them,” she retorted, and Natalie could see that the woman—Georgia, she surmised her name was—was angry.

  She might not be a Van Helsing, but she had the focused drive of one. The old man said something else Natalie couldn’t hear and then reached up to briefly touch the woman’s face. She turned away and moved toward the building. He watched her go and then motioned for the driver to put him back in the car.

  Natalie pressed herself back against the door as the car drove away.

  It only took a moment for Alec and Kai to join her as she stepped out and stared up at the building the strange woman had disappeared into.

  “So, what did you hear?” Alec asked.

  “Her name is Georgia,” Natalie said, her tone flat as anger rose up in her.

  That bitch had stalked them. She had caused Ellis’s death, forced Blob—kind Bob—into a freezer to die slowly and probably painfully; she had poisoned Jekyll and sent Hyde off on a spree that Natalie didn’t even want to consider.

  She was little more than a terrorist, attacking with no thought to consequences.

  “Okay, I’m seeing a crazy monster face here,” Alec said, touching her arm and snapping her back to reality. “Let’s not go all Hyde before we have a plan. What’s her relationship to Van Helsing?”

  “I don’t know,” she said through clenched teeth. “He was warning her—I’m guessing about us. But she said something about love and death.”

  “Driving forces for any good monster novel,” Kai said with a shiver.

  “Let’s go,” Natalie said through clenched teeth. She started up the street toward the front door to the building.

  “Wait,” Alec said as he caught her arm. “Whoa, there, cowgirl. Where are we going?”

  Natalie looked first at Kai, then at Alec. “I want to talk to her.”

  “I don’t know, Natalie,” Kai said with a shake of her head. “It seems risky when we don’t really know who she is. What if we watch her for a few days—”

  “No!” Natalie cut Kai off with a firm shake of her head. “Not good enough. If we wait, she could target someone else in our group. Even if we’re all on the lookout for her, she’d still have the upper hand.”

  She stared at the nondescript apartment and thought of the nondescript woman who had caused so much pain and fear in their lives.

  “I want that . . . that person to face a monster without being able to attack it in secret. If we’re going to take care of this, let’s take care of it. Once and for all.”

  Kai pursed her lips and Natalie could see her friend searching her face. “Wow, you really are monstering out.”

  “It’s kind of terrifying and awesome at the same time. I can hardly keep from hugging you right here on the street.” Alec shook his head wildly.

  “I think I earned it,” Natalie growled low in her throat. “The monstering out, not the hug.”

  Kai shrugged. “I’d say we all have. So, yeah, let’s go in and see her.”

  “Okay,” Alec said. “But we’re going to have to be smart. There’s a doorman to get through, so we have to be careful and quiet.”

  “I’ll take care of the doorman,” Kai said. She fluffed her hair and pulled a little bottle of lotion from her purse. After a quick application, she popped a couple buttons on the top of her blouse and headed for the door. “You two watch for your opportunity.”

  Natalie blinked as she watched her friend shimmy up to the doorman and start flirting.

  “That was unexpected,” she whispered to Alec.

  He grinned and motioned toward Kai. “Impressive, though. Look, the guy is already drooling all over her. He’s not watching, so let’s go before she decides to back off.”

  He grabbed her hand and the two of them slipped past Kai and her new friend and into the foyer hallway of the building. Stopping their progress, Alec grinned and began searching the mailboxes lining the hall. “Georgia, right?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, but we don’t have her last name.”

  “Don’t need it. There’s only one G. on these boxes here. G. Winslow, seems as good a place as any to start. Five-fifteen.” Alec moved to the elevator and pressed up.

  “Not six-sixty-six?” Natalie asked as the elevator jolted and began carrying them upstairs.

  “That would be a little obvious, wouldn’t it? Besides, that’s Drake’s apartment number, isn’t it?”

  Natalie stared at him. “Are you kidding?”

  “No. He specifically picked six-six-six as his apartment number,” Alec said, grinning.

  The door dinged and slid open. “I never know when you’re kidding or being seri—”

  Natalie didn’t get to finish. As she stepped from the elevator and into the hallway, someone hiding just outside the doors caught her arm and hauled her away from Alec.

  Taken off guard, for a moment Natalie didn’t fight. She just stared at the woman who now held her arm in a death grip. Georgia Winslow.

  The same Georgia Winslow who had a small, but very deadly, pistol pointed directly in Natalie’s face.

  16

  All of Natalie’s monster instincts screamed at her in no uncertain terms (and in several languages) to fight. Her chest burned with an itch of rage that she hadn’t felt since the last time she was chased with pitchforks. In any other moment, any other century, she would have roared to life and fought like a banshee.

  Only she couldn’t. Georgia Winslow’s gun was right in her face, there was no way even the worst shot in the world would miss her at this range. Monster strength and monster healing aside, she wasn’t sure she could survive that.

  And then there was the fact of Winslow’s crazy eyes.

  Natalie had seen madness hundreds of times over the centuries. There had been madness in monsters driven to their edge by living in hiding. And she’d seen madness in humans. First in her creator/father. The “good doctor” had been wild with it by the time he was killed, hurtled from a balcony by one of his own creations.

  Later, she’d seen even more madness in the crowds who hunted her, a madness created by fear or hatred, built to a frenzy by mercenaries and profiteers like the Van Helsings.

  Whatever the cause, it was never good.

  It wasn’t good today. There was only insanity in the other woman’s stare and nothing else to balance it out. That meant Natalie wasn’t going to be able to debate with her.

  “What are you looking at, freak?” Georgia hissed. “Stop staring and come with me, bitch.”

  She caught Natalie’s arm and started to haul her along the hallway toward the apartment Natalie and Alec had been heading toward in the first place. Georgia was surprisingly strong, too. Not monster strong, but the chick did Pilates or lifted weights or something.

  Alec had been holding back, blocking the elevator door with his shoulder, which was sending a piercing buzz through the hallway. But as Georgia dragged Natalie away, he moved forward toward them and let the elevator shut.

  “Hey, now. There’s no need for this.”

  His voice was quiet, but Natalie could see anger glinting in those wolfish eyes of his. He was coiled and ready to strike. She could only hope he had control over himself enough that she wouldn’t get her face shot off.

  “Watch yourself, Wolf,” Georgia hissed as she bumped her door with her hip and hauled Natalie inside. “These are silver bullets.”

  Alec froze and the color drained from his normally tanned cheeks. “Shit.”
>
  “Yeah, shit.” Georgia laughed, a dry humorless sound. “You were next on my list, but I’m more than happy to take the zombie out instead.”

  Natalie sighed. This wasn’t really the time, but come on!

  “I’m not a zombie exactly—” she began.

  “Shut up!” Georgia snapped, and shoved the gun harder against her temple. “I don’t want to hear you talking.”

  If the silver-bullet reveal had slowed Alec down, the effect didn’t last long. He scowled and took a long step toward the door. Georgia responded by yanking Natalie into the apartment itself.

  “Don’t. Silver bullets, Alec,” Natalie whispered, meeting his gaze.

  Everything in her willed him to stay back and stay safe. If he got hurt—no, killed because of her, she didn’t think she could live with it.

  “No, I’m not going to back off, Nat. You should know better by now.” He shifted his focus to Winslow. He edged forward until they were all inside and pushed the door shut behind him. “Listen, Georgia—”

  Her captor yanked Natalie closer and her gun hand began to shake. “How the fuck do you know my name?”

  Alec sucked in a breath. He was fighting for calm with every fiber of his being. Which Natalie appreciated, since she was going to be the one with the bullet in her skull if his full-moon rage took over.

  “I could ask you how you knew Natalie and I were coming up the elevator.”

  For a moment Winslow hesitated, then she shoved her gun flush to Natalie’s temple again. “You first.”

  “We followed Van Helsing,” Alec said in that soothing tone that had probably gotten the panties off dozens of women.

  “That idiot,” Georgia bit out. “I told him he shouldn’t have come.”

  “And just how did you know to grab me?” Natalie urged. Talking to Winslow was at least slowing down the shot to the head the woman was so desperate to deliver.

  Georgia shot her a side-glance. “I saw you on the street when I came up to the building.”

  Natalie’s eyes went wide. They’d all been watching Georgia and she’d shown nothing to make any of them think she recognized them. Perhaps there was something else besides the madness in this woman.