“It’s in the handbook!” Natalie stared at him and he glared back at her. “And I know. I know you’re right.” Her gaze slipped past him to Kai and Pat. “I should have said something right away, but . . . you saw him. You saw what he was.”
Kai’s eyes went wide. “Because he was a Frankenstein’s monster you want to protect him?”
“No!” Natalie protested, but deep in her eyes Alec saw there was some little nugget of truth to that. Something that connected her to a monster more like her than any of them. And he had to admit, he didn’t much like that.
“Do you know this person’s identity?” Pat asked, and his deep voice was filled with as much accusation as anyone else’s, albeit calmer.
“No,” Natalie said, lifting her hands as a plea for understanding. “I swear to you I don’t know him. I’ve been trying to contact someone who might know more. My father’s old assistant.”
“That human? How could he still be alive?” Kai asked, her arms folded so tightly against her chest that she had to be cutting off some of her air.
“My father altered him,” Natalie admitted softly. “That’s how he started, by altering the living. It gave Igor some longevity.”
“So he’s a monster,” Rehu said. “And you’ve never mentioned him before.”
“I don’t hang out with him!” she insisted. “I try to pretend he doesn’t exist at all. And he’s not from around here!”
“Well, it sounds like you have some secrets, Natalie,” Rehu growled. “Lying little bitch.”
Rage filled Alec and he shoved Rehu as hard as he could. The mummy flew backward into the chairs in the circle. He was back on his feet in an instant and it was only the fact that Kai grabbed his arm that kept him from coming back at Alec full force.
“Fuck you guys!” Alec snapped, forcing some control. “You sit here and accuse Natalie of wrongdoing just because the monster in question could be a Frankenstein’s monster? You do that when you know her? When she saved all our asses not six months ago? You would turn on your own kind so fast? You’re as bad as humans.”
Kai actually flinched at that accusation, though Rehu looked less than moved. Pat was harder to read, with his tentacles covering his face, but his eyes looked a little . . . sad at the comparison.
“I appreciate you coming to my defense, Alec,” Natalie said, her voice a broken whisper. “But everyone deserves their anger. I should have said something earlier about Igor. I should have texted everyone about the video as soon as we saw it. I didn’t because I was a coward. I was afraid to face the idea of another Creature running around doing terrible things. But I owed you all more. Forgive me.”
Alec stared at her, all submissive and broken down. He had never seen Natalie like that and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. But before he could address the issue, before anyone could say anything, the door to the meeting room flew open and Drake staggered in.
With a wooden stake jabbed straight into his shoulder.
4
Natalie stifled a girlish, and not very monstrous, scream as Drake collapsed onto the floor, half in the meeting room, half out. Black, brackish blood flowed from the wound in his shoulder and he lifted his head to speak, but no words came from his pale, dry lips.
Kai dropped to her knees beside him and touched his cold face. Out of some kind of reflex, Drake hissed and weakly snapped his teeth at her like an injured animal.
“Natalie, close the door,” she said, her tone calm and clipped. “Rehu, Patrick, help me.”
Natalie blinked, but then reality set in and she pulled Drake’s legs into the room and slammed the door shut. The little window at the top was a risk—anyone who wanted to peek in could—so she took off her sweater and shoved it over the opening.
“The Breakup Broads will be here in twenty minutes,” she reminded everyone as she leaned against the barrier. Monster strength might just come in handy today.
“I know,” Kai murmured. “Patrick and Rehu, hold his arms. He’s going to struggle.”
Rehu’s eyes widened as Kai reached for the stake. “You’re going to pull it out?”
She nodded. “Until I do, his healing abilities won’t be able to help him. Alec, hold his head steady.”
Rehu didn’t argue further and the two men grabbed Drake under the armpits while Alec covered his forehead with a hand in a surprisingly gentle way. They all held tight as Kai gripped the wooden stake with both hands and tugged straight back.
Drake roared in agony as the wood slipped from his muscle, bone, and flesh. When the stake was free, Natalie stared at it. It had once been the handle of some kind of tool, a shovel or hoe perhaps, sharpened to a wicked point through whittling rather than by a machine, given the crudeness of the cuts.
Rehu shifted and began applying pressure to the wound with both hands. Drake thrashed, but Patrick and Alec were able to hold him still using their combined monster strength against his.
“Steady, Drake,” Alec soothed. “Let your body help you, don’t fight it.”
Natalie cringed. Most of them had some kind of healing ability. They had to in order to maintain their longevity, in order to survive the multiple attacks on their lives. Hers was a little different. If she was injured she could attach a new body part. Not healing in the strictest sense of the word, but it kept her going.
Still, recovery was utter agony for them all. She’d never met a monster who didn’t suffer cruelly when injured.
“We need to clean up,” she said, trying to take her mind off of what Drake must be feeling. “We don’t have much time.”
Kai nodded and looked around for something to put the bloody stake in. Meanwhile, Natalie ducked into the hallway so she could run to the bathroom for paper towels.
Just as she reached the ladies’ room door, the priest appeared at the top of the stairs. He was dressed like he was about to conduct a service, even though Natalie was pretty sure there weren’t any more on the schedule that night.
“Hello, sir,” she said, feigning as much brightness as possible.
“Good evening,” he said, peering down the hallway toward where Drake’s muffled moans and groans still echoed. “I heard a cry. Is everything all right with your group?”
Natalie swallowed. Huh—how to proceed here? It wasn’t as if she could say, Nothing much, just ye ole stake in a vampire, please carry on.
“Miss?” the priest encouraged when she didn’t respond.
“Ah, yes, I’m so sorry. We’re trying a new therapy this week,” she said, stalling. “Um . . . screaming therapy. Sorry, we should have mentioned it to you so you wouldn’t be alarmed.”
The older man furrowed his brow, staring into her face like he was trying to read her soul (even though she doubted she had one by his definition). She got ready for him to call bullshit and was scrambling to think of another excuse, but before she could, he nodded.
“Ah, yes, I’ve heard about such things at counseling retreats I’ve attended for the church.”
Natalie blinked. So that was a real thing? Cool.
“Does it work?” he asked.
She swallowed. “Does what work?” she squeaked.
He stared at her. “The screaming therapy.”
“Oh yes, of course.” She faked a hollow laugh. “Sorry, just tired. The screaming therapy. Yes, we’ve seen it have . . . mixed results.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward the room. Drake was still moaning back there. She wasn’t sure if that was helping her case or not.
“It’s an interesting theory . . .” the priest said, sounding like he was going to expound at length on the ins and outs of modern counseling.
“Great, y-yes, interesting. Very,” she stammered. He didn’t move. Apparently he still wanted to chat. “Well, I need to take care of, um, business here.” She motioned to the bathroom and the man blushed. “We’ll, er, try to keep it down.”
He hesitated, searching her face as if looking for a reason to disbelieve her, but after a tense few seconds he nodd
ed. “Very good. But don’t forget, our next group will be here shortly.”
“Absolutely, I have not forgotten,” she said as she pushed into the bathroom.
She yanked the entire metal box filled with paper towels from the wall without meaning to and stared at it, then back at the empty space on the wall.
“Crap.”
But honestly, it was not the worst thing to have happened in the basement that night. And she would put it back as best she could later.
She opened the bathroom door with the offending paper towel box behind her back and peeked out to see if the priest was still there. He wasn’t; she breathed a sigh of relief and ran back to the meeting room.
When she pushed against the door, she found it stuck.
“It’s me!” she said, hoping whoever was blocking it would let her in before anyone else showed up with probing questions and “concern.”
The door swung open and Kai yanked her inside. The mummy glared at her with a look of contempt thousands of years of existence had perfected.
“Where were you?”
“Sorry, the priest heard the screaming,” Natalie explained as she started wiping at the bloodstains on the floor.
Luckily, Drake’s blood was fairly thin and it came up without the stickiness of the human variety. It left a little bit of staining, but the old linoleum was so stained, it was hardly noticeable.
“What do you mean, ‘the priest heard’?” Patrick hissed. He was still holding Drake, but he and Rehu didn’t seem to be working so hard at it anymore. The old vampire was calming as he healed.
“Don’t stress, I told him it was screaming therapy,” Natalie said as she bundled up the paper towels and tossed them in a tall trash can by the door. “And apparently that’s a real thing, so we’re in the clear.”
Alec arched a brow as he looked up at her. “Screaming therapy? Really?”
She shrugged. “That’s what he told me.”
“Humans are . . . weird,” Alec muttered as he looked down at the pale vampire on the floor. “Drake. Drake, can you hear me?”
There was a moment’s pause as Drake opened his eyes and stared around at the circle of people tending to him. Natalie breathed a sigh of relief. If he was awake, he would recover.
“What happened? Can you tell us what happened?” she asked.
Drake’s eyes went wide and wild and he grabbed for Alec, twisting his T-shirt in his curled, vampire hands and lifting himself closer.
“Van Hel-sing,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “Van Helsing!”
Drake’s apartment was on the east side of Gramercy Park in a building that had huge suits of armor guarding each side of the front door. It also had the requisite Manhattan doorman, which was a problem. So it had been decided that Natalie and Alec would take him home, so as not to arouse suspicion by having him stumble in with five of his closest, weirdest friends in tow.
Now Drake leaned heavily on Alec as they approached the doorman.
“Just keep me upright,” he murmured, his voice still strained from pain. “I’ll do the talking.”
Alec nodded as the doorman eyed their odd group. He was totally willing to let Drake do the talking.
“Good evening, Mr. Drake,” the doorman said with a concerned glance at Alec and Natalie. “Welcome home. Is—is everything all right?”
Drake nodded. “Oh yes, Richards, everything is fine. I hate to admit it, but I had a few too many drinks and twisted my ankle. My fine friends here are helping me home.”
The doorman hesitated as he stared at Alec for a long moment. Alec could almost smell him judging his shaggy hair, ripped T-shirt, and jeans. He could almost hear him thinking that Alec and Drake would not be friends.
Great, he probably thought Drake was being hijacked by two young schemers and was somehow attempting to send messages with the weird way he lifted his brows.
“There’s no need to worry,” Drake said slowly, and stared intently at the doorman.
From the corner of his mind, Alec felt an itchy comfortableness and realized that Drake was using his vampire mind control on the young man.
“Of course, sir,” Richards said in a slightly more monotone voice tinged by the spell he was under. “Have a good night.”
Opening the door, he let them pass without so much as a second glance in their direction. When they got into the elevator and the doors slid shut, Natalie let out her breath in a whoosh.
“That thing you do does come in handy, doesn’t it?”
Drake pressed the button for his floor and groaned as he leaned against the metal interior of the elevator. “It can. There are disadvantages, too.”
“Like what?” Alec asked as the elevator dinged and revealed a hallway. “Floor six, right? Apartment six-sixty-six?”
“Obviously,” Drake said before he wrapped an arm around Alec’s shoulder for support, though Alec noticed that the vampire seemed to be holding his own weight more with each step. “And the disadvantage being that when I was young, when I first was turned, I accidentally killed people with that power.”
Natalie swallowed, but took the key Drake held out and unlocked the door. As it swung open, she took a breath, and when she moved aside, Alec could see why.
Everyone knew Drake had money. After hundreds of years on this earth, there was no way he couldn’t have, but the way he dressed and acted was anything but snobbish. It was easy to forget he could afford an exclusive, marble-halled palace like this one. It was a mini-palace, snuggled into the heart of Manhattan.
“My bedroom is down the hall, through the living space on the left,” Drake explained. When no one moved, he shook his head. “Don’t be too impressed. I once lived in a castle.”
“This is a castle in real estate terms,” Alec muttered, but he stopped staring and helped Drake through the apartment.
Natalie and Alec held him up as they made their way through the hallways. Natalie bumped light switches with her shoulder as they went, revealing more and more of the posh digs.
“Do you clean this place yourself?” Natalie asked.
They moved into the master suite. Along the back wall was a huge coffin, straight out of the monster movies. The black velvet shades were already drawn tight.
“I have a maid,” Drake explained. “She comes during the daylight hours.”
“How does she not notice the huge coffin in your bedroom?” Alec asked as he opened said device. It was lined in red satin with a soft pillow.
Drake removed his bloody cape with one hand and motioned for Natalie to help him with his boots. As each piece of his elaborate “costume” was peeled away, he began to look more and more like a harmless old man. Looks were certainly deceiving.
“She does not come in here,” he explained. “I lock it and she believes it is off-limits. I think she believes I’m into . . .” He hesitated with a sigh. “S and M. At least that’s what she mutters in Portuguese as she paces around outside my door.”
“Ew,” Natalie said. “There’s a picture I’ll never forget.”
“Yes, well, we let them believe what they will if it protects us, don’t we?” he said. “I will heal faster if I have blood in my system. There is some in the refrigerator, in a container marked tomato juice. Will you fetch me a mug, warmed in the microwave?”
Natalie’s mouth turned down in a mask of disgust, but she said nothing as she slipped from the room toward the kitchen. Alec helped the now-shirtless Drake, his wound pink and healing around the edges of the shirt that had been tied as a bandage for him earlier. (Rehu’s shirt, and he had just loooooved stripping down for the ladies in the room. He’d even “accidentally” torn the bandages he wore beneath to stay moist. Stupid abs . . . )
Lowered into the coffin, the old vampire settled back against the satin with a sigh of contentment.
“How do you know the attack tonight was Van Helsing?” Alec asked, sitting on the edge of the coffin gingerly.
Drake sighed, his eyes fluttering shut almost against their w
ill, as if he had a Pavlovian response to the coffin.
“I have fought them for hundreds of years, Wolf,” he said. “I know them when I feel them creeping up behind me. I know their smell.”
Alec stared at the old man, eyes closed in the coffin, looking for all the world like a corpse. Part of him accepted Drake’s words, that he did know his old enemy when he sensed them. But another part was more cynical. There were too many other options to conclude it was Van Helsing without further proof.
But this wasn’t the time to discuss that with Drake. With Natalie, absolutely.
She came back into the room with a steaming mug in her hands. Her mouth was pursed tightly and her skin was pale as she handed it over to Drake.
“You get that from the blood bank, right?” she asked as he took a gulp and let out a satisfied sigh.
He glanced at her. “For the most part, yes.”
Natalie shot him a look and then shook her head. “Do you need anything else?”
He shook his head. “No. But I do ask that you lock my chamber and front door when you leave. I have a spare set of keys in my bottom drawer—will you take them? You may return them at the next meeting.”
Alec pulled out a drawer in the armoire across the room. It was filled with black socks. Hundreds of pairs of black socks. He pushed them around until he found a key ring with two keys on it and a keychain that was a black triangle with a swirling pattern pressed into the metal.
“Got it.” He stared at the keychain and held it up. “Seriously?”
Drake glared at him without answering.
“Fine. Text us tomorrow and let us know how you’re feeling,” Alec said.
Drake nodded, took a last swig of blood, and then reached up and drew the coffin lid down. Alec and Natalie stared at the closed box for a moment, then looked at each other.
The Monsters in Your Neighborhood Page 3