Club Monstrosity

by Jesse Petersen

  At least Natalie had to try to find out. It might be her only hope.

  “We’re not here to hurt you,” she whispered. “We just want to talk—”

  “I don’t care why you’re here, you freak,” Georgia interrupted. Her voice was angry, thin, shrill, and broken. “That’s what you all are—freaks! Monsters! I know that, even if no one else does. You think you can hide from what you are? You can’t. I won’t let you. He was right, you know. When he told me about monsters, I didn’t believe him, but over time—”

  Natalie ground her teeth. Clearly this little tirade was going to go on for a long time if she didn’t nip it in the bud. “Jesus, you sound like the worst kind of horror movie,” Natalie said through clenched teeth. “Will you stop the pointless drama monologue and just get to the point? Then you can kill me or turn us in or whatever it is you plan to do.”

  Alec’s eyes widened. “Seriously, Natalie? Right now you want to antagonize?”

  She shrugged. Right now she had a gun to her head, her neck was getting a crick from twisting all weird, and she was tired of being hunted.

  She was just tired, honestly.

  “I just want to know why I’m getting shot this time,” Natalie snapped.

  Georgia was breathing heavily. The heat of it stirred Natalie’s hair. “I’m doing this for Sam.”

  Alec’s eyes narrowed. “Sam?”

  Georgia blinked at tears. “My husband.”

  “Samuel Van Helsing,” Alec breathed. “He was in the book.”

  “Well, he’s dead,” Georgia snapped.

  Alec blinked. “But . . . he wasn’t listed as deceased. It said he was still living in the city.”

  “The records,” Georgia said with a shake of her head. “The old man is always behind on updating those things. Sam died three months ago.”

  Natalie swallowed. “How?”

  “We never should have let the war end,” she whispered. “He told me that over and over again. He told me that we could make his family name one of honor again. One of fear.”

  Natalie stared. Georgia’s eyes had lit up with an almost religious fervor. She wasn’t a real Van Helsing, not by blood. She was a fucking acolyte. A fangirl.

  “His grandfather told us to leave it alone. He tried to break us up, said I was feeding into Sam’s worst impulses, but he wouldn’t leave me. And he wouldn’t stop. Not until you killed him.”

  Natalie and Alec stared at each other, then she shook her head slowly.

  “I—I haven’t killed anyone.”

  Georgia shook her by the arm. “Maybe you didn’t, but your kind did, and you’re all the same.” Her breath caught and the tears that filled her eyes began to roll down her cheeks. “I brought one of you to him and he was struck down like an animal.”

  Alec took half a step back, the color draining from his face as her accusation sank in. “Wait, are you saying you think someone from our group murdered your husband?”

  Georgia’s face crumpled, filled with real and true pain. For a brief moment Natalie actually felt sorry for her. Except for the gun-to-her-head part.

  “I don’t think it, I know it!” Georgia sobbed.

  Her hand shook even harder, and that included her trigger finger. Natalie kept waiting for the gun to go off and for all this chatter to have been pointless.

  “Listen,” she said, hoping to calm the woman down. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but all of us, er, monsters are just trying to fit in now. We don’t do that kind of thing.”

  “What?” Georgia smirked. “Murder? Please don’t try to pretend away the past.”

  Alec flinched. “Not to get all don’t-be-a-bigot and everything, but murder is why some of us were labeled as monsters in the past, not all of us. One way or another, we’re trying to move on. To fit in and have normal lives.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Georgia screamed. Control was gone now. Reason was gone. “He killed my husband!”

  “Who?” Alec shouted back, just as unreasonable. “Tell us who! Was it Ellis? I can’t imagine it was Bob or even Jekyll, but was it?”

  “It doesn’t matter which one of you,” Georgia said. “You’re all going to pay.” Her tears stopped and her voice became flat and almost emotionless. Terrifying. “Sam told me we had to finish what we started generations ago. I’m the only one left with the balls to do it.”

  Natalie froze. Georgia wasn’t kidding. And she was unstoppable. There was about to be a bullet in Natalie’s brain and she had a feeling that would end any of her monster healing ability. She wasn’t freaking Wolverine . . . not that he was real . . .

  “Hey,” she said in a last-ditch effort to save herself. “Aren’t you supposed to burn me alive? If you shoot me, doesn’t that mess up your classic novel/movie death system?”

  “You’re right.” With a scowl, Georgia shoved her aside, turned the gun on Alec, and said, “This is for you.”

  She fired the gun before Natalie could stop her. Everything felt like it moved in slow motion. Natalie lunged for Georgia just as Alec turned away from the gun’s explosion, but she saw that she couldn’t stop the bullet.

  What she could see was that at that same moment, the door to the apartment flew open and Kai jumped inside, diving in front of Alec with a strange, guttural cry in a language Natalie had never heard before.

  The bullet hit Kai in the side and her warrior declaration turned to a pained grunt as she fell to the floor. Immediately, blood began to seep from the wound in her side and she let out a strangled sound of pain.

  Alec dropped down beside her. “Kai!”

  Natalie took a quick glance at the two of them. Alec ripped the bottom of his shirt and smashed the fabric down on Kai’s wound as the mummy writhed in pain.

  The rage Natalie had felt when she saw Georgia on the street doubled, tripled, only this time there wasn’t anything to stop her from unleashing it. For the first time in almost a century she felt like the monster she was.

  And she was going to live it.

  With a massive roar and a swing of her arm, she swatted away Georgia’s gun before Georgia could fire a second time and hurt another one of her friends. Georgia might have worked out from time to time, but she was still human—and Natalie felt Georgia’s arm break as the gun skittered across the floor.

  Georgia howled, her cries of pain mingling with Kai’s, but, despite her injury, Georgia rushed toward Natalie, not away.

  “Bitch!” Georgia screamed.

  Natalie caught her arms, squeezing extra hard on the injured one, and the two women began to grapple. They slammed across the apartment and crashed into furniture, toppling bookcases and dumping their contents, flipping chairs hard enough that their wooden legs flew off.

  Behind them, Kai let out a groan. Natalie turned to look at her friend and Georgia took advantage of the distraction. She yanked on Natalie’s hand to free herself and instead two of Natalie’s fingers, which were attached by delicate scar tissue, tore free and skittered across the tile floor and under one of the few upright chairs still in the living room.

  Natalie roared in pain. And wrath. Her ability to think, to rationalize, seemed to have been removed along with her fingers. All she could do was react. With a grunt, she caught Georgia by the waist and lifted her over her head. There was an open window across the room and she found herself moving toward it.

  A brief moment of clarity came upon her as she stood staring at the curtains fluttering in the breeze. She had to stop. She had to become more human than monster.

  She began to lower Georgia to the floor, but before she could finish, the other woman yanked a switchblade from her boot and slammed it deep into Natalie’s arm.

  Natalie screeched. “Goddamn it! Why did he have to put so many nerves in there?”

  Georgia stabbed again and Natalie threw her away.

  Unfortunately . . . perhaps unfortunately . . . she threw her in the direction of the open window. Natalie fell on her knees against the sill and watched as the other woman
spiraled five floors down.

  She was strangely quiet, staring up in triumph at Natalie . . . at least until she smashed into a parked car below and set off its car alarm. It beeped with an increasingly sickly sound that was soon followed by screams as people on the street realized what had happened.

  Natalie spun around on her knees, clutching her fingerless hand and her bleeding arm against her chest. It was over.

  But at what cost?

  Alec grabbed Kai’s hand and pressed it over the bloody shred of T-shirt he had been holding against the gunshot wound to her side.

  “Here,” he snapped, hoping a strong tone would keep her focused despite the pain and probably mortal injury. “Hold this, I have to check on Natalie.”

  But to his surprise, the mummy waved him off. “Go!” she ordered. “I’ve got this.”

  Alec put What the hell? on his list of questions to ask later and slid on his knees across the floor until he reached Natalie.

  She was still slumped over, her back against the windowsill Georgia had just departed over. She was holding her bleeding hand and arm, but she was staring straight ahead. Not blinking. Her eyes glazed over.

  At least she was breathing.

  He reached out and then hesitated. The last thing he wanted to do was have her freak out when he touched her. It would only make a bad situation worse. He did, however, have to get her aware enough to get out of here, with a busted-up mummy in tow. The cops were certainly on their way.

  “Natalie,” he said softly.

  She continued to stare into nothingness.

  “Natalie!” he repeated, this time much sharper.

  Finally, she blinked and shook her head. The fog in her stare cleared and she looked over at him.

  “Alec?” she whispered. “Is Kai okay?”

  “Better than expected,” he said. “I’m worried about you now. Aside from the finger thing and your damaged arm, are you okay?”

  She looked down at the stubs where her fingers had been and flinched. “I can reattach them.”

  He nodded. “Okay, I’m going to find them right now. But once I do, we have to go, girl. The cops are going to be here in a minute.”

  “The cops,” she repeated, her voice still way too blank for his liking. “They know me from my job. They said they knew where to find me.”

  Alec caught a glimpse of the bloody fingers under a chair a few feet away and dove over to sweep them up. He counted them and the number matched how many Natalie was missing. With a sigh of relief, he held them out to her.

  “That may be true, honey, but even your job can’t save you from being questioned and arrested if the police find us in this dead woman’s apartment. Especially if you’re missing fingers and bleeding all over. I think they might put two and two together.”

  Natalie nodded as she took her fingers and put them in her purse, which had come off her shoulder in the fray. She stared down into the half-full bag at the torn digits and let out a hard, loud burst of laughter.

  “Oh shit, my fingers look ridiculous in there,” she muttered.

  Alec groaned. Yeah, she was all fucked up from what had just happened. So now it was time for some tough love. Tough like. Whatever.

  “Look at me,” he snapped as he grabbed her shoulders and shook. “You have every right to lose it a little bit, and I promise you that as soon as we’re back at our apartment, I will hold your hair while you puke or cry or whatever. But right now I need your help, Natalie. So snap out of it.”

  She blinked once, twice, and then she pushed to her feet and nodded. “Yes. Of course.”

  She spun on Kai and looked down at her. The mummy was doing all right, considering she’d been shot. Pressing the T-shirt against herself, she watched Natalie and Alec with unmasked interest.

  “Can you get up?” Natalie asked.

  Kai nodded slowly and started to push to her feet. Natalie caught her arm and slung it around her good shoulder to offer her support.

  “Okay, Wolf. What’s your plan to get us out of here?” she asked.

  Her voice was bright, but falsely so. Still, Alec appreciated and respected her attempt to get it together.

  He peeked out the door. No one was out there. Anyone home right now had probably already run downstairs to see what had happened, or was getting the full show from the comfort of their own windows.

  He waved for Natalie and Kai to move into the hallway in front of him, but when Natalie started for the elevator, he shook his head.

  “The lobby area will be crawling with witnesses and maybe even cops,” he said softly. “I think there’s a back stairway over here. Let’s take that.”

  She followed him around a few turns in the hallway and, sure enough, they found a fire stairway. There was an alarm attached to it, but with a few flicks of his wrist, Alec disconnected it and pushed the door open, revealing a dimly lit stairwell.

  Through the thin walls, Alec could hear the sirens approaching. An ambulance for Georgia, even though he doubted the woman would need it. Being dropped five stories and hitting a car? Most monsters couldn’t survive that, let alone humans.

  And the cops were probably out there, too. Interviewing witnesses who might talk about three people fitting their description entering the building. Worse, someone might say that Georgia hadn’t jumped or fallen, but had been thrown. From certain angles in the buildings around them, Alec was sure someone could have seen Natalie hurtle the woman to her death.

  “Alec,” Natalie whispered as she met his eyes.

  She was thinking the same things he was. Only they hurt her a lot more.

  “It’s okay,” he reassured her. “I won’t let anyone get to you, I promise.”

  She hesitated for a minute, then nodded.

  “How’s Kai?” he asked as he led them down, step by step.

  “I’m okay,” Kai groaned. Her stare was still filled with pain, but she was helping Natalie by taking steps on her own and holding some of her own weight.

  It took them what seemed like forever, but finally they stood in front of the exit door. Based on location, Alec figured it went to a back alley. At least, he hoped it did.

  Alec disconnected its alarm and slowly opened the door. To his utter relief, there was no one outside, just a smelly trash receptacle and a few pigeons pecking around for food.

  “Okay,” he whispered as he looked around for any trouble and eased into the alley with the girls behind him. “Let’s just be careful. Cool. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

  Natalie shifted her weight and motioned to Kai with her still-fingerless hand. “Um, how do you suggest I do that while hauling Kai?”

  Kai glared at her. “Let me try to walk on my own. Oh, and put your damn hand in your pocket; it looks crazy with those stubs.”

  As Natalie flinched and did as she’d been told, Kai straightened up. She sucked through her teeth in pain, but managed to stay upright and take a few practice steps on her own.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said, her voice stronger than before. “But can I have your jacket to cover up the blood? It’s a little obvious.”

  Alec shrugged out of his hoodie, even though it covered up his torn shirt, and handed it over. A bit of belly showing was way better than Kai’s bloody side exposed to any and all bystanders.

  She zipped it with a tiny grunt of discomfort. It looked weird over her suit, but not as weird as a big spot of blood on her ribs.

  “I’m sorry,” Natalie whispered. “I’m so sorry you’re hurt.”

  Kai turned on her in surprise. “It’s okay, Natalie. It’s not anyone’s fault but Georgia’s.”

  Natalie flinched at their attacker’s name. She was wrecked by this, but that was something to deal with later.

  Alec led the way out of the alley with Kai behind him and Natalie taking up the rear. The street was visible at the end of the alley and they moved out onto it cautiously. It wasn’t the side of the building where Georgia had fallen, though, but around the corner.

&
nbsp; The sirens were really loud now; there had to be ten police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks on the other side of the building. Still nothing on their side, though, except a few pale bystanders getting out of the way.

  Quickly, Alec hailed a cab. Once they had all climbed into the back, he told the driver to go to Natalie’s apartment.

  The cabbie nodded and turned up his radio as he rounded the corner and took them right in front of the scene with the cops.

  Natalie stared out the window and Alec looked with her. They had already covered Georgia’s body up with a sheet. A crowd was gathered, staring and taking pictures as the cops made measurements and collected information from the doorman.

  “What happened?” Kai asked, her tone strained as she glanced at the cabbie in the rearview mirror.

  He shrugged, unmoved by the scene they were passing.

  “From the radio, it sounds like some lady killed herself. Splatted right on that poor guy’s Honda.”

  Natalie flinched at the cabbie’s throaty laugh, then leaned back against the seat and shut her eyes. From the tension on her face, Alec could see that she was reliving that last moment with Georgia over and over again.

  And Alec was afraid she wasn’t going to be able to forgive herself. Even though her actions had saved all their lives. Including her own.

  And for that, Alec was eternally grateful.

  17

  “Wow.”

  Natalie stared at Kai’s ribs. They should have been shattered, bloody, broken. But instead her skin was red, and there was no hole where the bullet had hit her not an hour before. No blood except for what had dried on her skin and clothes after the initial attack.

  Kai shrugged as she looked down at the red welt on her skin.

  “Yeah.” The mummy shrugged. “It’s pretty hard to kill me. There’s a book and words and spirits dragging me back to the underworld and the whole deal. That bullet hurt . . . a lot. And it will rattle around inside for a bit before it finds a way out, but I’m going to live after all.”

  Alec sighed in relief. “Good. I’d hate for you to have put yourself out for me.”