The Monsters in Your Neighborhood

by Jesse Petersen

  “You think she would protect him, even after everything?” Natalie whispered.

  Kai raised a brow. “I think matters of the heart are way more complicated than just ‘good or evil’ and ‘yes or no,’ don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Natalie agreed, but she was having a hard time keeping it together enough to talk at all. If Linda betrayed them . . . well, their entire plan was going to be a hundred times more complicated and dangerous.

  “Still with us, Linda?” Kai asked, her tone filled with false brightness.

  “S-sure,” Linda stammered, clenching her hands in and out of fists at her sides. “Just nervous.”

  To Natalie’s surprise, it was Rehu who offered a soothing word of comfort to a woman she knew he despised. “Of course you are. But we’re here and we will be there for you.”

  “Has he been reading self-help books or something?” Natalie whispered.

  Kai grinned. “Something like that. He’s been reminded, multiple times, that he’d do better to try a little harder rather than go around smashing things and threatening people. We’ll see how long it lasts.”

  “I can hear you, you know,” Rehu grunted, and Kai’s grin turned to laughter.

  They reached the door to the hotel and Linda smiled nervously at the doorman. “Hi, Charlie.”

  The doorman tipped his hat even though it was clear he had no idea who she was, and let them in. Being an older hotel, the Viceroy didn’t have the sprawling lobbies of some of the Times Square hotels, but it had a class and charm that the big-name chains might kill for. Women in fur coats and men in tuxedos loitered about on the massively expensive furniture, chatting about totally “the 1 percent” kind of stuff. It was all posh and elegance.

  “Come on,” Linda muttered, keeping her eyes down as they went to the elevator. She pushed the button for the penthouse and up they went.

  “Wow, so he obviously isn’t hurting for money,” Rehu said with a shake of his head. “Being a psycho is lucrative.”

  “He’s a lot of things, not just a psycho,” Linda said in faint defense of her “man.”

  The door opened and Linda sighed. “He’s going to look through the peephole when I knock, okay? So stay back a little, otherwise he will find a way to escape.”

  “We’re fifty floors up,” Kai said. “How is he going to escape?”

  “Probably go all monstered out, climb out the window, and King Kong it up the side of the building,” Linda said with a roll of her eyes. “How else would he do it? Just stay back, I know what I’m doing.”

  Kai leaned back in surprise, but nodded. “O-kay.”

  As Linda moved in front of the door, took a deep breath, and raised her hand to knock, Kai whispered to Natalie, “Um, ‘King Kong it up the side of the building’?”

  Natalie shrugged. “He was already crazy-powerful when he monstered out, and he got all of Jekyll’s benefits, too. I assume that means twice the strength or whatever it takes to wall climb up the side of a building at this height.”

  She couldn’t say more because the door opened and Hyde’s voice came from within.

  “About time you got here,” he drawled, a cruel twist to his tone. “What do you have to report?”

  There was a moment’s beat when Linda just stared at him, and Hyde cursed before he started to slam the door. Luckily Rehu was on top of things and jumped forward, wedging himself into the space and forcing his way into the room.

  Natalie and Kai pushed inside; Natalie grabbed Linda and hauled her in with them, then slammed the door behind them. Natalie watched in pure hatred as Rehu hauled Hyde over to the couch and threw him down.

  “Stay there,” he growled, his eyes containing a sudden, disconcerting red tint.

  But Hyde wasn’t a normal human who could be pushed around. He growled and got bigger, his hair growing, his muscles straining, his fangs distending ever so slightly.

  “Bitch,” he spat toward Linda in a garbled, angry voice as he shrugged out of his straining jacket. “You brought them here?”

  Linda shifted and refused to look at him. “I—I had to, Hyde. This has gone too far.”

  Hyde stared at her, eyes bright and animal in the lights of the hotel room. “You don’t know how far I can go, little girl. Not even half of it.”

  He pushed toward Linda in a menacing fashion, but Rehu slapped a palm on Hyde’s chest and thrust him back down onto the couch.

  “I said sit.” He leaned in close to Hyde. “And while I respect your strength, Edward, recall that there are four monsters in this room to just one of you. So don’t make me rip your arms and legs off.”

  Hyde glared, but settled back on the couch with a preternatural calm, smoothing his straining dress shirt as if he weren’t half monstered out, adrenalized, and surrounded by old friends who were ready to kill him.

  His gaze slipped to Natalie. “How’s your boyfriend, sweetheart?”

  She folded her arms. “Where were you when you triggered him to attack me in the apartment?”

  He smiled. “Figured it all out, did you? Are you so certain?”

  “Where were you?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. I don’t think that’s what you really want to talk about, but I’ll tell you . . . later.”

  She wanted to go off on him. To make herself that horrifying Creature authors and directors had been creating for hundreds of years. She wanted to show him that her strength could overpower his in a heartbeat and destroy him.

  But tonight she couldn’t use brute means to get what she wanted. She had to use brains.

  “You know why we’re here,” she whispered.

  “That silly book and the trigger mechanism for Alec, I suppose.” He arched a brow, tone and face filled with humor. “So what’s your big plan, Natalie? To control Alec all his life with that thing and hope the chip inside him doesn’t malfunction or the remote doesn’t fall into the wrong hands?”

  She swallowed. He was reciting her greatest fears, but she could not respond. “If it came to that, yes. That’s what I would do.”

  “Interesting.” Hyde looked at Linda, and the expression wasn’t the cruel and calculating abuser he had shown even a moment before. “Linda, love, why don’t you run and fetch the items? You know where they are in the bedroom.”

  Linda hesitated, but then scurried down the hallway to the bedroom. Natalie shifted. Why wouldn’t the Swamp Dweller look at her?

  She stepped up to Hyde. “Why did you do this? Why attack us, why work alongside Van Helsing? You’re a monster, for God’s sake. You’re turning on your own kind.”

  “You sound like Jekyll.” Hyde laughed. But then his smile fell. “He used to say that to me. Now he’s in my head, like an echo, but I can’t ever see him, can’t ever catch him.”

  Natalie frowned. She had never had a psychic connection with anyone like Hyde once had with Jekyll, but she could well imagine that its loss would be very hard. And she didn’t doubt Hyde truly felt it. A fact that would have made her feel very sorry for him if he hadn’t, you know, tried to kill everyone she cared for.

  “But why turn on us?” she pressed, this time softer.

  He glared at her. “Jekyll was the only one who ever kept me from destroying you all in the first place. Do you think I wanted to go to that pathetic fucking group every week? To sit in that disgusting basement and talk about ‘feelings’ and hear you whine about your little problems? If you had been monsters—real monsters—it might have been one thing, but you all want to be human.”

  “And you want to kill humans,” Kai finished softly.

  He shrugged. “Most of the time. Especially since they killed my brother. Any one of you could have prevented that. Any one of you could have saved him.”

  “How?” Natalie asked. “We were trying as hard as we could to figure out who was attacking us. If I had known, I would have done anything in the world to stop her even earlier.”

  “Ah, that’s right, your little investigation. Instead of just attacking the perso
n who was following us.” Hyde shook his head in disgust.

  “So you hate me,” Natalie said. “Fine. But why go after Alec and Kai and Rehu, and why work with the Van Helsings?”

  “Because it’s easier to kill all those birds with one stone, my dear. The Van Helsings will be easy to take care of when I’m ready.”

  “Even with the Creature they control?” Natalie asked.

  He smiled. “You don’t think I have ways to alter that control? Other remotes, timers, a dozen other plans?”

  Hyde pushed to his feet and when Rehu moved on him he wagged his finger back and forth. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Slowly he pointed behind them. Natalie turned and gasped. Linda was standing in the entryway to the room with a basket containing a thick, ancient book and a small white controller in one hand, and a gun in the other. A gun trained on everyone and anyone in the room except Hyde.

  “Linda, what are you doing?” Natalie asked, backing away, as if being slightly farther from the bullet would help.

  Shoot her and she’d definitely hurt, hopefully heal, but hit the right places and she would die. Judging from Hyde’s wide grin, he knew all the right places.

  “Fucking bitch,” Rehu spat as he glared at Linda. “Was this your plan all along?”

  “Rehu, dear,” Kai said, voice strained. “This may not be the time to go all rage-face, okay? Linda, honey, why don’t you come over here and point the gun at the bad guy, okay? Hyde.”

  “Don’t condescend to me,” Linda whispered as she nudged ever closer to Hyde’s side. The gun didn’t shake even if her voice did.

  “We’re not trying to,” Natalie reassured her with a quick glare for the mummies. Seriously, did they like getting shot? “We just want to understand what’s going on right now.”

  “Are you the stupid one, Natalie?” Linda asked with a half laugh. “It seems pretty clear what’s happening.”

  Natalie forced herself not to call her a name and to remain calm. “When we were together earlier, you told us how you knew Hyde wasn’t good for you. You said you were sorry and wanted to help us.”

  Linda blinked like it was hard to think, and that was when everything became clear to Natalie.

  “Do you have a chip in you, too?”

  Linda squirmed, and now she did begin to shake. “I don’t know. Yes?”

  “Aw, come on,” Kai said on a long sigh. “Seriously. Being around you people is exhausting.”

  “Linda was willing to go so far thanks to the best . . . or was it the only . . . sex in her life, but not all the way,” Hyde explained as he pulled another remote from his pocket. It was engraved with an L on the back, but otherwise looked identical to the one in Linda’s basket and to the one Desmond Van Helsing had used to control the Creature in his house.

  “Now hold your gun on them, my dear, while I offer them their choice,” Hyde continued, patting her head like she was a dog before he slipped the basket from her hands. “You lot only get to have one. Which do you pick? A remote or the book.”

  Natalie’s lips parted. “No. We’re not leaving here without both.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  He smiled, utterly cold, then pressed a button on Linda’s remote. She jolted, twisting and turning as if an electric current ran through her. She hissed like a lizard before she stiffened, eyes blank, and turned the gun to fire a bullet into Rehu’s skull. He gasped and immediately slumped into a pile on the floor.

  “No!” Kai screamed, dropping to her knees beside him. She smoothed a hand over his forehead gently and glared at Hyde. “You can’t kill him that way, you know it.”

  “Well, you’re right.” Hyde smiled. “Normally I can’t kill him that way, only hurt him, but if I read the right spell from this book . . .”

  Natalie watched in horror as he made a big show of flipping around in the book. Then he opened it to a page where he’d placed a bookmark.

  “Ah, yes, here we are.”

  He narrowed his eyes and began reading in the Demotic version of ancient Egyptian. As the words flowed from his mouth, Rehu began to bleed from his wound and his eyes began to dim. Kai seemed frozen, her own skin pale with the effect of the words.

  Natalie rushed forward, willing to take a bullet if it meant saving them. But Hyde didn’t have Linda shoot this time. Instead, he lifted the controller in the basket and pressed a button.

  Natalie skidded to a stop and stared at him, stared at the controller.

  “You—you just triggered Alec,” she whispered, her heart sinking as she thought of Pat and Igor, trapped with him in the sewer. She could only pray that the thing in Hyde’s hand had a limited range. It was their only hope.

  “Alec?” Hyde chuckled as he turned the controller over to show her the letter engraved on the back. An I, not an A. “No. This one isn’t for Alec. It’s for Igor. He has Alec’s trigger, not me.”

  16

  The sewer system in New York was everything Alec had always assumed it would be in his very worst imaginings of such a place. He tried to hold his breath as Pat led them through the long, rounded corridors and past flooding rivers of awful, but it didn’t help.

  “How do you control the smell?” he finally gasped as Pat came to a sealed round door.

  With a swipe of a card, it opened and revealed a large, warmly lit room. In wonder, Drake, Alec, and Igor stepped inside. As Pat closed the door behind them, Alec looked around.

  The place was very homey, despite its thick concrete walls and exposed industrial accoutrements. The furniture was nice, and there was a great computer setup that contained not just a laptop with Internet, spotty or not as Pat said, but a series of screens where the Cthulhu could monitor intruders in the surrounding tunnels. He even had art hung thoughtfully on the walls by a variety of modern artists.

  “It does not smell in here,” Pat said, in answer to Alec’s question from a few moments before. “I have sealed it too tightly.”

  “What is this place?” Igor asked.

  Pat sighed as he let the hood of his cloak fall so his tentacled face could be seen.

  “Once upon a time it was a monitoring station, but then they automated their system in a different way. I have changed the lock and keyed it to my pass card.”

  “Why doesn’t the city ever find you here?” Drake asked, moving to examine Pat’s art.

  Alec smiled. The two ancient monsters had something in common there, which was almost heartwarming.

  Pat shrugged. “Well, someone may have hacked into their system and led them to believe this shaft has been completely sealed to, say, prevent vermin problems.”

  “You hack?” Alec asked with a smile. “Me, too! We’ll have to compare notes sometime.”

  “We will; I have heard from Natalie that you are a wonder.”

  Alec’s smile grew. Good old Natalie, always praising him to the hills. She would stand by him . . . even if he destroyed everything around him against his will.

  That smile fell in an instant and he paced to the monitors.

  “You can relax,” Pat said. “No one comes down here. No one even knows it exists.”

  Igor tapped his lip as he looked around. “Good lines, really nice taste in what you have. Actually, it reminds me of . . . what was that eighties show with the Terminator actress and Ron Perlman?”

  Pat rolled his eyes. “Those shows are ridiculous. Let us not even talk about it.”

  Alec paced away from the two of them to look at the cement wall. The back of his head itched. He didn’t know what that meant or if it was tied to the chip in his skull or what.

  “Do not worry, Alec,” Pat soothed, as if he could read Alec’s thoughts. “We are going to take care of it.”

  Alec turned to the kindly Cthulhu with as bright a smile as he could manage because he knew Pat meant well. He would have said something to that effect, too. Patted him on the arm, maybe. But before any of that warm and fuzzy friendship crap could take place, Igor let out a horrible, bloodcurdling scre
am.

  Drake, Pat, and Alec spun toward him. Igor was thrashing about the room, slamming into the very furniture he’d been admiring a few moments before, slashing at pillows with long claws that had suddenly pushed out from his fingers. His face twisted, becoming red like the muscle was pulsing beneath the skin. His eyes bulged, his shoulder lifted, mimicking the hump he’d long ago had removed.

  “What is going on?” Drake asked as the three of them backed away from Igor in surprise.

  Alec shook his head. Igor was an assistant. It was what he had been made to be by Natalie’s father all those years ago. Twisted and warped into a monster like them, Igor couldn’t help but serve. And certainly Hyde, who had been friends with old man Frankenstein, had known that. Igor’s compulsions could be easily twisted, especially with help from some modern technology.

  “I think it’s safe to say I’m not the only one with a chip in his head,” Alec said as Igor bull-rushed the three of them.

  Drake immediately poofed into bat form as Alec dove to one side and Pat to the other. Igor smashed into the door behind them. He spun around and growled out an incomprehensible sound before he swung his arms again, slashing at the two remaining victims within his reach.

  Alec dodged claws. Pat had moved farther away. Bat-Drake was dive-bombing Igor, fluttering around his head, the assistant swiping at him as well.

  “Igor, listen, listen, you’re in there,” Alec said between dodges of fang and claw. “You have to control this.”

  But even as he said it, he knew it was bullshit. He hadn’t been able to control it, even a little, when he had been triggered. Whatever was real or good about Igor was currently turned off. He could kill them all and not even remember it once he came to his senses.

  “Alec, Natalie said to hit you in the head,” Pat shouted. The sound of the Cthulhu’s voice turned Igor’s rage on him.

  The little man dove, grabbing on to Pat’s cloak and tearing it free to reveal the full twisted nature of Pat’s body, from the long tail that unfurled around his legs to his wings, which extended as he was attacked, to the tentacles that swung down to the middle of his bare chest.