The Monsters in Your Neighborhood (16 page)

18

Alec could hardly breathe as they were taken to the end of the hallway to the huge office where the Van Helsing family was gathered. In the corner, the Creature they controlled stood by, a collar around his neck chaining him to a wall. He stared forward, unblinking. Alec saw Natalie flinch as she stared at him.

“Are you sure you all aren’t vampires yourselves?” Alec asked the family as the snotty butler closed them into the room. “The hours you keep make me wonder.”

The elderly Van Helsing wheeled his chair forward. “You keep the same hours as what you kill if you are to be a decent hunter.”

“Interesting that you use the word
decent
when you and your family are anything but,” Natalie said with a purse of her lips that was the only visible betrayal of her rage and fear.

Alec had to hand it to her, she was putting on a poker face for sure.

Her pointed, chilly words garnered no reaction from Van Helsing or any of his grandchildren. They just stood there, a stone-faced, murdering wall of judgment.

“You brought someone new,” Lydia Van Helsing said, breaking the silence as she pointed toward Igor.

In response, he smiled, all fake Southern charm as he held out a hand toward her. “That’s right, we haven’t met. I’m Igor, assistant. Nice to meet you.” He looked around. “The place is a tad dark. I could give you some pointers on brightening it up a bit when this is all over.”

Lydia pursed her lips and ignored him, continuing to direct her comments to Natalie and Alec, who could barely contain a giggle at how perturbed Igor made the group.

“We told you to come alone.”

Igor stepped back. “So that’s a no on the interior design tips, then?”

Lydia speared him with a withering glance and then looked back toward Alec expectantly.

Alec shook his head. “Sorry, we don’t take orders. We wanted someone to assist you in the surgery, and that’s sort of Igor’s thing.”

“That
wasn’t
our arrangement,” Gemma said, and Alec was beginning to realize how much the four Van Helsing grandchildren looked alike. Were they siblings? Cousins? Clones? Whatever. Didn’t matter. He had to focus.

“New rules,” Natalie all but spat. “You know how it is. Igor is nonnegotiable, I’m afraid. Deal with it.”

The five of them exchanged looks and the younger Van Helsings muttered to each other in tones that couldn’t be understood. Finally, the old man broke the tension with a slap of his hand on the armrest of his wheelchair.

“Enough of this foolishness,” he snapped. “Get moving, Desmond, I grow weary.”

Lips thin from irritation, Desmond Van Helsing stepped forward, past his grandfather, and held out one thin, soft hand. “The book, please, Mr. Dunham.”

Alec stared at him. The elder Van Helsing looked so small in his wheelchair, so wizened and harmless. But he ruled the roost and it irked the younger, stronger man to no end; anyone with eyes could see it.

“When Granddaddy bites the big one . . . or gets the big bite by one of us, I guess, depending on your version of our war . . . does that mean you get to take over, Desi?” he asked. “That must be exciting for you, the idea of not being his lapdog anymore. Want me to help you along?”

Desmond’s eyebrow twitched just a fraction with anger, though Alec wasn’t certain if it was because of his implication about the older Van Helsing’s demise, the nickname, or if he’d hit on something else.

“You are unable to hope, even for a moment, that the war will end if my grandfather dies,” Desmond said, his hand still extended. “We’re stronger than ever and more determined to destroy you than you could possibly understand.”

“You’re right about that, I’ll never understand your continued focus on our demise,” Natalie interrupted. “In the old days, yes, you got money galore for your ‘extermination’ services. But people today don’t want us dead. They wouldn’t pay you for it, that’s for sure.”

“Are you sure?” Lydia repeated. “You really need to check your stats online. There is a very, very popular hashtag on Twitter called #killthemonsters that sprang up after the original one, #monstersinnewyork.”

“And you didn’t have anything to do with that, I’m sure,” Natalie sneered, though she was annoyed they’d somehow missed that one.

Lydia straightened her glasses. “I give the people what they want;
they
make it trend. So I wouldn’t rule out those mobs you fear so much. Or the moneymaking possibilities once your identities are totally revealed.”

Her smile made Alec’s skin cold. “Such as?”

“First we sell the exposure rights to the media, then we sell our monster-controlling technology to the government. You don’t think they might consider monster soldiers, ones they can control? Or monster ‘
assistant
s
’
”—she shot a cold look toward Igor, who flinched—“we could sell to families all across the country? Buy your monster butler from the Van Helsing Corporation, just five easy installments of nine hundred ninety-nine dollars. We’ll clone, market, and civilize your kind yet.”

Alec’s stomach turned with every word, every suggestion. He’d been around a long time. Lydia’s plans for product marketing were exactly the things he feared most.

“Book,” Desmond barked. “Now.”

Natalie shook her head and pushed herself squarely between Alec and the angry Van Helsing grandson. “Let me say this slowly and clearly so that you’re sure to understand. Fuck. Yourself. Asshole.”

He blinked. “What?”

She smiled. “Do I need to use smaller words?”

Igor rushed forward, an unexpected deal broker. “What she means is that we’re not giving you anything until you remove Alec’s chip. Got it?”

Alec could have laughed at Igor’s lifted chin, his attempt at tough language. He looked ridiculous, with his tiny little body and nonthreatening face. But Alec
didn’t
laugh. He’d seen Igor’s baby fists of fury once already. He doubted the Van Helsings would be ready for such a thing as Igor truly monstering out.

“I will say this one more time,” Desmond snarled. “I want that book.”

“I want a lot of things,” Natalie countered. “Fix Alec and you can have the book. Don’t fix him and I can throw it into the fire right now.”

Before Alec could respond, she snatched the fragile book from his hands and rushed to the fireplace, where she held the book out toward the flames.

“Natalie,” Alec began, his tone wary as he stared at the book in her shaking hands. “We don’t know what will happen if you do that.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, never taking her stare from Desmond. “Because I see in his eyes that he doesn’t want the book burned. Maybe because if I burn it, it will keep mummies from
ever
being killed. Maybe because there are other spells in here that he wants worse, spells that are part of their control-the-monsters, kill-the-monsters master plan. I don’t know. I don’t care. Either way, he’s going to fix you right now.”

Desmond’s jaw was hard from being clenched so tightly, but he turned toward Alec. “Lay down on the couch,” he ordered.

Alec cast a quick glance toward Natalie. Her eyes were wide and she swallowed hard as he eased toward the spot Desmond was pointing at. He lay down and stared up at the ceiling, knowing this might be it for him.

Knowing that if it was, there was going to be an end to this war no one in this room had ever expected. Because he was pretty sure Natalie would go apeshit if he died and kill everyone around her in a monster fashion that would have made Mary Shelley herself cringe in fear.

Natalie couldn’t stop shaking as she watched Desmond withdraw surgical tools from a drawer in his grandfather’s desk, and then motioned for Gemma Van Helsing to join him at the couch. Even from across the room she could see they stared down at Alec with malevolence bright in their eyes.

“Hurt him,” Natalie cautioned, “and I will end your bloodline in spectacular fashion.”

Gemma jerked her face toward Natalie, her eyes a bright mask of fear. Desmond didn’t respond, but just reached for Alec to position him properly.

Igor rushed forward. “Aren’t you going to wear gloves?” he asked.

Desmond looked up at him, clearly annoyed. Igor shook his head.

“Seriously, maybe everyone
does
need a monster assistant.” He dug into his pockets and pulled out gloves for everyone.

The Van Helsings took the offering gingerly, but did tug the surgical latex on.

“Roll over,” Desmond ordered. “And . . .
Igor
 . . .” He all but sighed Igor’s name, like it was the most ridiculous thing ever. Natalie supposed it was, for humans, even ones named Van Helsing. “Hold his head steady.”

“No anesthesia?” Natalie called out.

Gemma cast a quick glance over her shoulder. “We need him awake so that we can see his reactions. I’ll numb the skin before we cut.”

Natalie’s heart promptly lurched to her throat at the word
cut
. Of course they would cut. His head. Into his brain. Where he had a chip that could kill him.

She couldn’t breathe. She just couldn’t breathe as she tried to get a better look at what Desmond, Gemma, and Igor were doing. They were so crowded around Alec that it was impossible to see anything.

To Natalie’s left, Lydia sidled closer. “Funny, I wouldn’t think a
thing
like you could care about another thing.”

Natalie stiffened. Clearly she was giving away too much and Lydia felt she could use Natalie’s emotions against her.

“If he dies, are you capable of weeping?” Lydia whispered, her tone low and nasty.

Natalie glanced at her. “I’m capable of turning you into a human pretzel. While I’m weeping. Does that clarify?”

Lydia opened her mouth, but no sound came out, and she finally stepped away just out of arm’s reach. Not that it would matter. Natalie was so much faster than these puny humans.

But she didn’t want to have to go berserk and kill them. Because that would mean Alec was . . .

She shook her head and returned her attention to the surgery team just across the room. They were murmuring to each other, but she couldn’t hear what was being said, nor tell from the tone if things were going well or not.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Desmond stepped back and motioned for Gemma and Igor to roll Alec onto his back. Natalie tensed as his arm flopped off onto the floor when they did so. It hung there, limp.

She inched closer. “Is he okay?”

Igor motioned for her to come over. She staggered toward Alec, praying, hoping, focused on him to the point that she no longer cared about the others in the room, despite how dangerous they were.

The first thing she noticed as she reached him was how pale he was. His lips were almost blue and his forehead was cold and clammy with sweat. She tucked the book under one arm and reached out to take his hand.

“Alec?” she whispered.

“The book, Miss Gray,” Desmond whispered, right next to her ear with his crisp English accent and his almost-cold breath. He grabbed it and slipped it out from under her arm.

She didn’t care as she dropped down on her knees next to Alec. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow, almost more panting, which was something he did when he was close to becoming a wolf, too.

“Why isn’t he awake?” she asked without breaking her gaze from his face.

No one answered for a moment, then Igor did. “The surgery is exhausting, I’m sure. Dig around in anyone’s brain and they’ll be a bit out of it.”

“Is he okay, though?” she asked, shooting Igor a glance. The little man did not look particularly pleased at present. He looked . . . worried, and her heart felt like it was going to stop.

“Natalie—” he began, but she turned her face away.

“Stop,” she murmured as she pushed Alec’s flopping curls of hair off his forehead. “Just don’t say anything else for a minute.”

“Look,” he continued, even though she’d just said to shut up. “It’s hard to say. Brain surgery is . . . tricky. Give him a while and then we’ll be able to tell.”

Natalie blinked back tears, her mind racing with all kinds of worst-case scenarios. Worst-case scenarios were even weirder for a Wolf Man.

“Could he die?” she whispered.

Igor cleared his throat and then said, “Yes.”

She flinched. “And could he end up a vegetable?”

From the couch, Alec shifted, and then, without opening his eyes, he grumbled, “I don’t like vegetables. Carnivore, remember?”

Relief flooded her as she leaned down to press a kiss to Alec’s forehead. “You’re an idiot,” she whispered.

“Love you, too,” he said, opening his eyes. They immediately went wide. “Look out!”

She began to turn to look toward whatever had caught Alec’s eye. She caught a flash of slashing metal, but she couldn’t react.

At that moment, Alec morphed, almost instantly, into a Wolf Man.

19

Natalie heard Igor screaming, “Rutabaga!” and for a minute she didn’t understand what he was saying. All she could do was stare at Alec. His fur pushed from his skin, his teeth distended, his claws curled, and he pushed from the couch with an angry, vengeful roar, shoving her aside in the process.

The shock of what she was looking at jolted her back to reality and she realized that Desmond Van Helsing had a sword and was now grappling with a very angry werewolf. A werewolf who should not have existed, since the moon wasn’t full and he’d just had a surgery to supposedly correct this irregularity.

“Rutabaga! Rutabaga!” Igor continued to howl at the top of his lungs.

Donald Van Helsing, the great hulk of a man who had never spoken in all the times she’d come here, moved forward.

“Are you saying
rutabaga
?” he asked, his voice deep and rumbly. “Well, the rutabaga can’t save you now!”

Lydia Van Helsing smacked him across the back of the head as she lunged for a drawer in her grandfather’s desk. “Don’t talk, you moron, just attack.”

Her sister-cousin Gemma wheeled the old man to a corner of the room for safety and Lydia yanked something from the drawer, aimed it at the Creature in the corner, and pushed a button.

Natalie screamed as she realized it was the captive Creature’s trigger. An assumption proven true when he began to tear at the chains holding him and broke them like they were Tinkertoys. He lunged toward her like a bull on a mission to destroy a particularly irksome bullfighter. She dodged his swinging bricks of fists and rolled out of the way.

The door burst open and Drake and Pat swept in. Drake’s fang was distended and all his old-man confusion seemed to be erased, leaving him a frightening vampire on the hunt. And Pat had shoved aside his protective cloak and was revealed in his full glory. But unlike in the sewer, when he had been uncovered and quite beautiful, now he was terrifying. There was a light to his normally kind eyes and as he extended his wings and flew up to the high ceiling of the office, he let out a cry that seemed to shatter the very air around them.

Alec covered his ears for a moment, but then leapt at Desmond, tackling him and knocking the sword from his hands, the two of them tumbling across the floor, grappling.

Natalie stopped focusing on them and started focusing on her real problem: the Creature. He was still coming at her, growling and swinging. One hit wouldn’t kill her like it would a human, but enough of them and he could probably damage her beyond the point of fixing. Of course, the same was true if she hit him enough, too.

But she didn’t want to kill him. She wanted to help him.

“Please listen to me,” she said, trying to keep her tone calm as he growled at her. “I don’t know your name—”

“That one is Cain,” Igor provided helpfully before he ducked away from Lydia, who had turned her attention on him.

“Cain,” Natalie said with a sigh. “Okay, do you hear that? You have a name? You’re not just a thing, a weapon. Please, listen to m—”

She was cut off as he caught her across the chin with a kick that seemed to come out of nowhere.

“Motherfucker!” she barked as she flew across the room and smashed into a table, shattering it into hundreds of pieces. She snatched up the biggest remnant and got back to her feet.

“Look,” she tried again as she swung the shard of wood to keep him back. “I can help you. Turn on the Van Helsings and we can get ahold of that trigger. I’ll turn you off and we’ll get the chip out.”

But he wasn’t hearing her. He wasn’t aware of her at all. He just kept coming, just kept swinging, ignoring the chaos of all the Van Helsings brandishing swords and Alec in full werewolf, ignoring everything.

He was just focused on her. Killing her.

She shook her head. “Sorry, man,” she said, and then tossed the wood aside and rushed at him.

Hitting him with all her strength, she knocked him back across the room with the same ease with which he had sent her flying. She rose up and began to rain her own punches down on the Creature, slamming his head back against the floor. He swung upward, connecting with her jaw. He wasn’t going to knock her out as long as she dodged some portion of the blows, but her vision blurred and the world got dizzy nonetheless.

“Please don’t make me do this,” she said between punches, then she raised both fists above her head and thrust them down, striking him clean between the eyes.

The skin broke, sending a trickle of blood down his cheek like a tear, and he collapsed backward and lay deathly still in the middle of the room.

She pushed off of him, rising to stare down at him. His eyes were open and unblinking. Had she hit him hard enough to kill him? Do enough damage to the brain—kind of like the zombies she hated to be compared to—and it would end their kind.

But then he blinked. His blank stare cleared and he looked up at her.

“A-another?” he said in a lightly Eastern European accent.

She stared. Or . . . it would jar the chip in his brain, she supposed. “Y-you’re awake?”

“Yes. And you’re a Creature, too.”

A vase flew by her head and Natalie just barely escaped being hit. She looked around at the carnage of the fight.

“Look, I’ll explain everything to you ASAP, but for right now, please help us.”

He looked around, too, and blinked. She didn’t know how long he’d been under Van Helsing control, but he obviously didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Wolf Men battling humans, Igor snapping at Lydia’s hands like a rabid little dog, Pat swooping and dive-bombing the screeching Gemma and the big, stupid Donald Van Helsing. In the corner, Drake and the elder Van Helsing grappled like they had for sixty years. It was only Van Helsing’s wooden stake gripped in one hand that gave him any chance against the vampire.

Old-man fights. Yuck.

“Um, yeah, I’m going to need an explanation.” He pushed up and past her. “But not until after I get that one.”

He pointed toward Donald, who was conveniently barreling toward them.

“You took me!” he shouted, and hit the man as hard as he could. The blow destroyed Donald’s face and knocked him out, but Cain didn’t stop. He rained punches down, one after another, with the obvious intent of taking Donald’s life.

Natalie stared, the whole scene moving to some kind of slow-motion movie moment in her mind. This was war . . . all over again. And what did they get from war? Nothing. They’d never gotten anything except fear and horror and being forced to run, being forced to kill and become true monsters just to survive.

She stepped up on the coffee table, which was somehow still intact despite the carnage around it.

“Stop!” she cried out, her voice so much deeper and more monstrous than ever before that even she was a little taken aback. “All of my monsters, stop now.”

Slowly, everyone stopped and turned to stare at her. Donald lay limp in Cain’s big arms, but he was still breathing; Gemma had a black eye and an obviously broken wrist; and Igor had a slash across his face that would need stitching. Drake and the oldest Van Helsing had done their damage to each other.

She stared at Alec. He was still a werewolf and had slashed Desmond during their fight, but to her surprise he actually stopped when she told him to do so. She’d never seen that before. He’d never been capable of such restraint before.

But maybe it was the trigger. That was the only reason he could be a werewolf right now. Someone, perhaps Linda in another betrayal, had triggered him. And now he was being shut down like an electronic doll brought out for fun and then forgotten in the toy box.

She flinched.

“Enough,” Natalie said, wiping blood from her own lip.

“Enough?” Cain shouted, shaking the unconscious Donald like a bloody rag doll. “Who are you to tell me what to do? Do you know what they’ve done to me?”

She nodded. “I do. They’ve been doing it to us for decades, centuries, even. To all of us. And we’ve let them. We’ve played into their wars, we’ve run from their mobs, we’ve feared them just as they taught the world to fear us. And what have we gained from it? All of us—any of us—on either side?” She stared at each Van Helsing in turn. “Death. Loss. Fear. Censure. Mockery. You can stop it.”

She looked at Desmond, because he was obviously the future leader of this ugly clan. And the most reasonable one, though that wasn’t saying much.

“
You
can stop this.”

“You mean a new truce?” he asked, spitting blood onto the carpet with disdain.

“No,” she corrected with a shake of her head. “A truce implies a war on hiatus. I mean, stop it. Forever. End this.”

He laughed, and she winced at how ugly it was.

“I take that as a refusal.” She shrugged. “Very well, then we will end it.”

Desmond had dropped the
Book of the Dead
during his struggle with Alec and now she stooped to take it. “
I
end it. The war is over.”

“What do you mean, ‘the war is over’?” the oldest Van Helsing barked from his wheelchair. He nearly ran over Drake’s foot to come closer. “
You
can’t end the war!”

“I can.” She shook her head. “I did. We’re not fighting anymore.”

“I don’t understand,” Lydia snapped, her ugly voice shrill and sharp. “You surrender?”

Natalie looked at the other monsters. “If you want to call it that, sure. But don’t come looking to us for concessions. We refuse to grant any. And we refuse to fight you. Or play your games anymore.”

“You can’t just quit fighting,” Lydia insisted. “It doesn’t work like that. There will be consequences.”

Natalie motioned to her friends and they all began to gather beside her, near the doorway to the hall.

“No. There won’t. Not anymore.”

She motioned the rest of them into the hallway, including the Creature Cain. It was rather enjoyable to see that the Van Helsings were so injured and/or confused that none of them even tried to follow. They couldn’t stop her now.

Once everyone was out behind her, she reached forward to shut the door and nodded at the Van Helsings in her final acknowledgment of them, of their family, of their threats and lies and accusations.

“Good-bye,” she said, and closed the door quietly.

The sewers weren’t a great place to transition from a werewolf to a human, but Alec didn’t exactly have a choice. He clung to the walls, sliding along behind their group as his clouded mind cleared and he felt his fangs and claws retract. The fur did the same, but as always, he felt itchy and uncomfortable.

Natalie had been supporting him and he stopped, panting as he straightened up.

“I—I’m okay now,” he promised her. “I’m me again.”

She stared at him, tears in her eyes. He could see how defeated she was. Despite everything.

“It didn’t work,” she murmured as they rushed forward to get back with the main group. “You werewolfed out. It’s not the full moon. So the surgery didn’t work. And I’m going to fucking kill Linda for triggering you. It had to be her, and that bitch is going to be sorry.”

Alec reached out and grabbed her hand, dragging her closer. “Natalie,” he said. “It wasn’t Linda who triggered me.”

She wrinkled her brow. “What? What do you mean? It certainly wasn’t the mummies.”

He shook his head. He could scarcely believe what he was going to tell her, either.

“No one triggered me. Natalie, I turned myself.
I
had control of the change this time. And once I was in werewolf form, I also had control over what I was doing. Didn’t you notice I stopped when you said to do so? That I changed back?”

Natalie hesitated. “Yes, but I figured someone just turned off your remote.”

“At exactly the right time, like a coincidence?” he asked with a chuckle. “Don’t you watch movies? No such thing. No,
I
did it.”

“Are you saying you’re in control of your powers now?” Igor asked.

Alec jumped. He hadn’t realized the entire group had come to a skidding halt in the middle of the stinky sewer tunnel and were now staring at him.

“Yeah . . . At least for now that seems to be true,” he breathed.

Natalie covered her mouth, shocked, but he could also see she was overjoyed. “Are you telling me you might have even
better
superpowers?”

He thought about it. “Um, yeah. Yeah, I just might.”

“Is that going to make you insufferable?” Natalie asked, but she was grinning from ear to ear.

“I sure hope so.”

Cain stepped forward before Alec could kiss her. He was shaking his head. “Okay, seriously, someone needs to explain a lot to me. Who are all you people? Like, you’re all different monsters, so how does that work? How did you find me? Where am I? How—”

Natalie touched his arm. “Come on. Let’s get back to the mummies and the Swamp Dweller. Then we’ll tell you everything.”

Drake cleared his throat as they started walking again. “Will you also explain to everyone how exactly you just surrendered to the Van Helsings? And how that’s going to help us?”

Natalie reached back and grabbed Alec’s hand as they entered Pat’s secret hideaway. She smiled up at him, a knowing, devious expression he loved that he couldn’t trust.