“As you can see, I didn’t,” Kai said, but she was smiling at him.
He turned serious. “Really, though, thank you. I would have been dead if that silver bullet so much as grazed me.”
Natalie shivered at the thought of Alec taking the hit Kai had. The day wouldn’t have ended so well then. They probably wouldn’t have been able even to get him out of the apartment before it was too late. The rest, losing him . . . she wouldn’t even let herself think about.
Kai shrugged, but despite her nonchalant attitude, she actually seemed moved by his thanks.
“We’ll find a way to even it out someday.” She pulled her shirt down and zipped Alec’s hoodie back over her bloodstained clothes. “For now, I’m going home for a steamy bath and a very strong drink.”
She turned toward Natalie. “Are you going to be okay?”
Natalie stared at her in surprise. “What? I mean, yeah. I didn’t get shot.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Kai’s face softened. “And you know it.”
Natalie shrugged. Were her tangled emotions all that transparent? That was more than a little embarrassing.
“Yeah. Well. I’m fine,” she insisted. Lied. Whatever. “I promise. Go home and feel better.”
Kai hesitated but then patted Natalie’s good arm and made for the door. Alec escorted her out, and in the foyer Natalie heard Kai tell him to take care of her. She flinched. How could he? He couldn’t change what had happened. No matter how much they both might wish he could.
Alec came back into the room and stood staring at her. Then he reached out and took her purse from the console table and dug in it until he found her disconnected fingers.
“Want these?” he asked softly.
She nodded.
“Have thread and a needle?”
“In that weird drawer in the kitchen,” she said.
He smiled. “The one with all the warranties and pens and crap?”
“That’s the one.”
Natalie shook her head as he walked away. Had she ever been pissed at him for working it out so he could live here? She had no idea why. There was no way she could have done this alone, or with Whitney as a roommate.
He came back into the room with the needle, thread, and a Diet Coke.
“I figured you’d want the hard stuff,” he said as he put the opened can next to her good hand.
She took a long swig. “You’re a saint.”
“Never been called that before,” he muttered as he sat down next to her on the couch.
He took her hand and set it on his lap as he threaded black thread through the needle. She flinched as he made his first few stitches, but when she looked at his handiwork, she couldn’t help but be impressed.
“Those are good stitches. Small,” she said.
He smiled at her briefly, then went back to his work. “Thanks. Don’t worry, I won’t scar you.”
“Thanks, you know how vain I am about that kind of thing,” she teased.
He was quiet as he finished stitching, and Natalie stared at him as he worked. Her mind kept flashing back to that afternoon. Only this time all her memories had to do with Alec.
Georgia had pointed a gun loaded with silver bullets at him. Worse yet, she had fired it at him. Only luck and Kai had kept him from being dead.
“Alec,” she whispered.
He tied off his last stitch and set the needle aside. “Yeah?”
“I—I thought she was going to kill you.” She shook her head. “And I—I—”
Alec pushed her hair away from her forehead and nodded. “I know. I felt the same way. When she had you . . . I was terrified. But we’re okay. Just don’t forget that we’re okay.”
Natalie shut her eyes. Was she okay?
“I killed a human.” Tears she hadn’t shed for years welled in her eyes. “Doesn’t that make me a monster?”
Alec’s expression softened and he shook his head. “Georgia Winslow . . . okay, let’s just call that bitch Van Helsing . . . she held you at gunpoint. She nearly shot me and she did shoot Kai. We tried to reason with her, but she was crazy, Natalie.”
Natalie pondered that for a moment. It was all true, of course. All perfectly reasonable. But she still felt so wrong and empty and sad.
“And I killed her,” she whispered.
Alec tilted her face up to look at him. “Monsters in those stories about us . . . they never have a motive, honey. That’s what makes them so awful. They kill for the sake of killing. But what you did was self-defense. You killed to defend yourself and your friends from someone who had already proven she would end a life without thought.”
Natalie considered his words for a moment and they comforted her. She cupped his cheeks and pulled him closer for a long kiss. When they parted, she rested her forehead on his. “Thanks.”
“Thank you,” he whispered.
She pulled back. She could see what he wanted in his wolfish eyes, and she wanted it, too.
“I want to stay,” she said as he rested a hand on her knee and gently stroked. “A lot. But . . .”
He frowned. “But?”
“I should go in to work. Someone has to make sure Georgia’s death is marked as a suicide. To protect myself.”
Alec cupped her chin. “To protect all of us, Natalie.”
She nodded. “Yeah, to protect all of us.”
“Hello, my name is Natalie and I’m a Frankenstein’s Monster. It’s been a week exactly since anyone discovered my true identity,” Natalie said as she stared around the circle.
There were fewer monsters left now than there had been a few weeks ago when this all started, but for the first time she felt like the people in the room were her friends. When she smiled, it was genuine.
“What you are is a hero,” Linda said.
“Yeah,” Kai agreed. “And you got us back into the church basement. How did you do that? I thought we were too weird for the Catholics.”
Natalie smiled as she looked around the room. The meeting room in the church basement might be musty and dingy and dimly lit, but it was home.
“Actually, I didn’t have to do anything but ask nicely. Apparently there was some kind of misunderstanding with Drake. He used his mind control powers and scared the bejesus out of the poor priest.” She shook her head. “But a few kind words and explanations from me . . .”
“What kind of explanations?” Alec laughed.
She held back a grin. Alec wasn’t very wolfie at present. They had survived their first full moon together. With a lot of growling, locking up with steel chains, and some monster strength being used on both sides. And afterward, she had finally been rewarded with a lot more than just kissing.
If anybody asked, which no one had, he was her boyfriend now.
“The priest now thinks that Drake is in the advanced stages of some kind of neurological disorder,” Natalie explained, clearing her mind with a shake of her head. “So he’s not going to take him all that seriously anymore. He was very understanding. I think he might even pray for us.”
Drake folded his arms and glared at her, and this time Natalie couldn’t hold back her laughter at his sour expression.
“Being monstrous doesn’t solve everything,” she said. “Sometimes it just takes being human.”
Alec grinned. “Miss Self-Confidence appealed to their Christian nature.”
Natalie waved her hand at him. All this praise being lavished on her was a bit too much. Especially since she was still torn about the things that had happened a week before and everything she’d done since.
“Okay, okay,” she said with a blush. “Enough of this silliness. Why don’t we just start the meeting? Kai, do you want to run it?”
Kai shook her head. “Nope. I think you’re doing fine.”
Natalie leaned back in surprise, but then she shrugged. “I think our first order of business is to talk about Hyde. Has anyone heard from him?”
The blank, concerned faces around the room told the story. Natalie shook her head. At the m
edical examiner’s office she had kept an eye out for reports on dead people with Hyde as a suspect, or even his own body coming through the morgue after a fight or a suicide . . . but nothing had come across her desk so far. He didn’t answer his cell phone and hadn’t been home for a week.
“We’ll keep looking,” Alec said with a sigh. “Maybe he just took off to some other city.”
“No,” Natalie said. “With Hyde, I can’t believe it’s that easy. He’s hunting and hiding, I’m sure of it. And it’s not going to be easy to calm him down even if we do find him. Not without Jekyll.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Alec reassured her, just as he had been reassuring her for days.
Natalie nodded. There was really nothing else they could do about it yet. “Next order of business: Is there anything else to report since Georgia Winslow-Van Helsing’s death?”
Kai frowned. “That’s more your department. Have we discovered if her suggestion that one of us killed her husband is true?”
Natalie shook her head. “I was able to access his death certificate and he was murdered, though the police labeled it as a mugging gone wrong. No suspects. So she could be right.”
Kai’s frown deepened. “We just have to keep digging, then. Keeping investigating.”
Alec nodded. “It’s all we can do.”
“As for Georgia herself, the death was officially labeled as a suicide, right?” Kai asked. “I thought I saw that in the paper this morning.”
Natalie nodded slowly. “Yeah. They already suspected it. Since her husband’s death, she had been pretty despondent. It was put on her death certificate about three days ago and the case was closed.”
Kai sighed in relief. “Good, so that’s over.”
“Not quite,” Drake said, getting to his feet. “In fact, I fear it’s only the beginning.”
Natalie turned on him from the podium at the front of the room. “What do you mean?”
He dug into his pocket and brought out a folded sheet of expensive, very old-looking paper. “I received this from Van Helsing last night.”
Natalie hesitated, just as she always did when dealing with anything to do with the Van Helsing family, but finally she took it. Once she had unfolded it, she read it out loud:
The truce is over. Prepare for war.
Natalie handed the paper over to Kai and shook her head. This was to be expected. Between his grandson’s death and Georgia’s, there was no way Van Helsing could keep quiet.
But fearing a war was coming and seeing it confirmed in black and white were two different things.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath.
She waited for someone to freak out, probably Linda, but instead the Swamp Dweller lifted her chin in a surprisingly tough display of heart.
“You know, if he wants a war, I guess he’ll find we’re finally ready for him.”
Alec smiled at her. “Way to go, Green-Eyes.”
Linda blushed and ducked her head.
“And you’re right,” Alec continued. “I’m officially done running and hiding. This is where I belong and I’m not going to let some moth-bitten old man tell me where to go.”
“Neither am I,” Drake said with a wry smile. “Though I’m a bit moth-bitten myself.”
“I’m here to stay,” Kai added, folding her arms.
Natalie smiled. Although the idea of a war wasn’t a pleasant one, she had already faced a nightmare and come through it. With her friends at her side, she knew they could survive the next thing.
“I’m going to live my life,” she declared. “And I’m living it here. Write him back, Drake. Tell him to bring it on.”
Things heat up between the monsters and the Van Helsings, and between Natalie and Alec, in the next Club Monstrosity novella: The Monsters in Your Neighborhood. Check out an exclusive excerpt on the next pages!
Here’s a sneak peek of what’s next:
The Monsters in Your Neighborhood
If only the Blob hadn’t died, Natalie would never have been in this position.
Which sounded like a ridiculous statement if it was said out loud. And that was why she wouldn’t. Ever.
But ridiculous or not, it was true. Because Bob the Blob (yes, the giant hunk of a man that the term conjured up images of) had died six months ago, now Natalie was in charge of the support group for monsters that met twice a week in the basement of the Holy Heart Church on East 125th Street in New York City.
She shook her head as she looked out over the small group of men and women before her. Kind of men and women. Things was more like it, though they masqueraded as human. They certainly were as annoying as any human. Case in point . . .
One of the women in the circle got to her feet and smiled nervously. “Hello, my name is Linda and I’m a Swamp Dweller. It’s been fifty-seven years since my identity was last uncovered.” Her smile fell. “Unless you count that thing six months ago with that awful Van Helsing woman. Which I don’t.”
She collapsed back into her chair and folded her arms with a shiver like she’d been the only one to go through “that thing,” like she was the only one with problems in their group.
Natalie sighed. Since their group had been attacked and several of their members killed six months ago, she had grown closer to all the monsters . . . a lot closer with some of them. Now when she looked at them, she saw their strengths, their weaknesses, the moments that bound them all together.
Except for Linda. Fish Sticks, as Natalie’s boyfriend, Alec, occasionally called the Swamp Dweller, was so whiny. It was hard to see her as anything but an irritant.
Still . . . even on nights like tonight, Natalie could admit that in the past month or so, Linda actually had gotten a bit better. The makeup that covered her green scales was of higher quality. Her clothes were cuter. She even had increased confidence.
So maybe she’d figure things out eventually and become bearable. Maybe.
“Hello, Linda,” the group droned.
Natalie nodded to the next person in their circle. “Pat, why don’t you go next?”
The newest member of their group rose to his feet. He pushed at the tentacles that blocked his mouth and spoke in a deep, low tone that would put Darth Vader to shame.
“Good evening,” he intoned with a great gravitas that seemed to bring a sense of importance to the room. “My name is Patrick. I am what Lovecraft called a Cthulhu, although my people have never adopted that silly, hard-to-pronounce name.” He sat back down.
“What do you call yourselves?” Natalie asked.
She had learned from the group notes Blob had left behind that it was best to respect what a monster liked to be called. She got that. Nothing annoyed her more than being called a Frankenstein. That was the damned doctor, not the monster.
“Actually, our species name is not something that can be pronounced by human vocal cords. It is really not worth trying to say as it may burst some eardrums.” Patrick nodded toward her and if the crinkles around his dark eyes were any indication, he was smiling.
“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” Natalie said with a light laugh. “I’m not sure we could explain the bleeding and crying to the church.”
Patrick nodded. “Indeed. That would be quite awkward. Thank you for asking, though. As to the second part of the introductions, up until a few weeks ago, I did not leave the sewers, so I have not been discovered for decades. Drake has been encouraging me to join your group for a very long time, and so I finally decided to take the chance.”
“We’re glad you did,” Natalie assured him. “I realize the trip aboveground is difficult is for you.”
She said she realized it, but understanding it was something different. Unlike the others, Patrick had to fully cover himself in heavy robes to sneak into the basement of the church. Here with his fellow monsters, he had disrobed and his dark gray wings, swirled with touches of vibrant reds and regal purples, folded against his back like a fallen angel, but they couldn’t really be hidde
n under normal clothing. And he had no way to mask the massive, thick tentacles that covered the lower half of his face.
He could not walk in the world of humans and not be seen. So he had to cower, only revealing himself at night for the occasional peek at the outside world.
It was sad to Natalie, really. Too bad she didn’t know anyone to set him up with. Matchmaking had kind of been on her mind lately.
“Aren’t you worshipped like a god?” came another voice from the circle.
Natalie shot a glare at Alec. The Wolf Man of their group (and her boyfriend of six months and the reason for her nascent matchmaking tendencies) tilted his head and stared at Patrick with interest.
Patrick nodded. “Yes. That part of the mythology created by my stories is true, indeed.”
“And your name is Patrick,” Alec mused with a cocky grin. “Is it ‘All Hail Patrick,’ then?”
Natalie was ready to smack him with a rolled-up newspaper and call him a very bad dog, but Patrick’s deep, rumbling laughter kept her from doing so. The Cthulhu leaned back in his chair and shook his head, sending his tentacles swaying gently around his face.
“I do not think that would be very powerful, would it? But it is easier to pronounce. I do not think you even have the syllables in English to attempt it. Perhaps, when I know you better, I shall whisper it to you for when you wish to worship.”
Alec grinned first at Patrick, then at her. “I like this one, Nat. He’s a keeper.”
“And you are an idiot,” Natalie said and sighed. “So introduce yourself and get it over with.”
“Alec, Wolf Man. And I do count that Van Helsing mess six months ago as my last ‘outing.’ ” When Natalie stared at him, he shrugged. “That’s it, babe, nothing else to say.”
She sighed again. Alec was just coming off his last full-moon cycle, and he was always more ridiculous and lighthearted when “that time of the month” was over. Seriously, it was like living with a woman with the weirdest form of PMS. Except there was the constant shaving. And he was super-hot.
“Next, then,” she said with a final withering stare for her boyfriend.
Club Monstrosity Page 19
