Club Monstrosity (16 page)

“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 V
AN
H
ELSING
F
AMILY
M
EDALLION
.

“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.

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.