He nodded. “I don’t think it, I know it.”
“What day do you think it is?” she asked.
“Friday,” he said. “It’s Friday, January eleventh.”
She swallowed, and some of the anger bled from her stare and was replaced by something fearful and frozen. She removed her phone from her pocket and turned it on. Setting it in front of him, she pointed to the screen.
He looked down and blinked. It read Sunday, January 13, 8:14 a.m.
“What?” He yanked his own phone from his pocket and turned it on, but it said the exact same thing.
“But . . . but it’s Friday,” he said, his voice weak as he staggered to the couch and sat down. His phone slipped from his fingers onto the area rug. “It’s Friday,” he repeated.
She shook her head and took a place on the other side of the couch, not touching him, not near him. She stared.
“I don’t know whether you’re full of shit, or really don’t know what’s going on,” she whispered.
He looked at her. “So you really think I’ve been out for a day and a half, fucking around on you?”
That fact hurt him, confused him almost as much as his lost weekend did. Almost.
She sighed. “I don’t know what to believe. But why don’t you tell me what you remember and we’ll figure out where the truth diverges.”
He rubbed his eyes and tried to think. His mind was . . . cloudy, actually. It was hard to remember what had happened and when it had happened. What was the last thing he recalled before standing at their apartment door, keys in hand?
“We got home from Drake’s this morning and you and Kai decided to go see Van Helsing,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “And then we went to pick up Igor.”
Natalie stared. “Is that the last thing you remember?”
He searched his mind, trying to filter through events and memories that seemed very muddy. “You left?”
She nodded, but didn’t elaborate or help him along.
“Then I went to Drake’s and—” He stopped talking because a harsh, heavy pain shot through his head. He covered his temples and growled in agony.
Natalie slid over and touched his hand. “Are you okay?”
He flinched away from the warmth of her fingers and barely contained the urge to snap at her, literally.
“Migraine,” he barked.
She frowned. “That’s a pretty sudden migraine.”
“Oh, you’re the expert now?” he said, turning toward her.
His tongue brushed his teeth and he was shocked to discover that his canines were . . . growing. But that wasn’t possible. It was two weeks until a full moon.
She stood up and backed away. “I’m not an expert on anything. All I know is that I left and you guys went to Drake’s. Once you got there, Rehu says you got a phone call, started acting all weird, and left. That was thirty-six hours ago. You haven’t answered your phone, you haven’t been seen, and no one knows where you went.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” he groaned, clutching his aching head.
“I agree. We searched for you the entire first night until finally everyone went home. Me so I could wait around for you to show up, and I guess everyone else so they could wait for the call that you were dead or ran out on me. So excuse me if I’m a little concerned.”
Tears sparkled in her eyes and his teeth retracted with such suddenness that it made him a little nauseous.
“I—I’m sorry,” he finally stammered. “I’m sorry you were worried and looking for me. But I really don’t know what happened. One minute I was heading for Drake’s with Rehu and Igor, the next I was here. I swear to you, that’s all I know, Natalie.”
She worried her bottom lip for a moment and shook her head. “But how can that be possible? How could you just lose some huge chunk of time?”
“I don’t know,” he grunted, and he felt the all-too-familiar agitation building in his chest. “I don’t fucking know.”
She folded her arms. “You’re acting moon-sick. Snappy, fangy, kind of all-around bitchy.”
He shook his head. “It’s not possible. The full moon isn’t for two full weeks. I shouldn’t start getting symptoms for at least a week, maybe ten days.”
“Yeah,” Natalie said with a shake of her head. “But you also shouldn’t be losing chunks of time. So maybe it isn’t your ‘time of the month,’ but something is going on. I’m going to call a meeting. We need to figure this out. Until then, just sit.”
He glared at her. “Will you bring me a biscuit?”
“Only if you’re a good dog,” she said as she pulled her phone from her pocket and walked into the kitchen. And he realized it was so that he couldn’t hear her talk.
His heart sank even further.
They’d decided to meet at Drake’s apartment, since it was daylight and he couldn’t leave or risk . . . exploding or sparkling or whatever happened to him when sunlight hit his skin.
Natalie had actually been shocked at how quickly everyone had agreed to meet. It was now only noon, not long after she’d started making calls, and Linda, Igor (who had eventually wandered home and insisted on joining them), Pat, Rehu, and Drake were already assembled in the Gothic living room, staring at Alec, staring at her . . .
She expelled her breath in a huff and pretended to look at the bookshelf across the room. Unfortunately, she couldn’t block out everything around her in the way she’d like to.
She could hear Rehu and Alec talking as they waited for Kai to arrive. She wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but she had monster hearing, so what could she do?
“Just tell me, what were you doing?” Rehu asked. “Did you hook up with some girl or—”
Alec’s voice rumbled like it sometimes did when he was close to wolfing out. “I don’t know how to fucking say it so that everyone understands. I wasn’t hooking up. I don’t know where the hell I was. Okay?”
Natalie stared at the coffee cup in her hand. He kept saying it and she was starting to believe him. She was probably an idiot. Even pathetic Linda was looking at her like she had been screwed over, so she had to be an idiot.
She moved her blank, angry stare from the books to some of the art Drake had on his walls. Weird, old stuff probably worth a fortune since it was so . . . eccentric.
The door to the apartment opened and Kai swept into the room without even bothering to knock.
“Hey,” she called out as she moved into the living room. She looked around at the faces of the monsters assembled. “Wow, what a somber group we are.”
Pat shrugged. “I think under the circumstances it is understandable.”
Kai looked at the Cthulhu with an arched brow. “How did you get here without being seen anyway?”
He sighed. “I went through the sewer system, accessed an alleyway nearby, and then I took the back servants’ elevator.”
“There are still servants’ elevators?” Natalie asked weakly, glad enough for the distraction.
“Of course,” Drake said with a look that indicated she was an idiot. “There are still servants, why wouldn’t there be?”
Pat shrugged. “When I pull my hood up, no one really notices me unless I interact with them. I try not to do such very often, but it is still New York, you know. They look but do not see. It is our greatest asset, really.”
Kai pursed her lips. “Hope that stays true. No offense, but if you’re seen, especially in daylight, it’s going to cause us even more trouble than we’re already in.”
Pat’s tentacles around his face fluttered, like he was letting air out in frustration. Natalie stepped forward. There was no avoiding this.
“I’m sure Pat was very careful.” She rubbed her eyes. “Look, can we just sit down? I think we have bigger things to discuss.”
Kai rolled her eyes, but her face softened as she took a seat next to Rehu on the couch. Natalie all but glared at them. She could admit it, she used to have who’s-the-better-couple matches in her head between her and Alec and Rehu and Kai. She and
Alec always won. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“So you lost thirty-six hours of time . . . supposedly,” Rehu said, with another knowing smile for Alec.
“There’s nothing supposed about it,” Alec growled. “It happened, goddamn it.”
Natalie could feel the tension coming off of him, the wolfish anger he couldn’t control when the moon was waxing. Except right now it wasn’t.
“Can we assume for the moment that Alec really did lose time?” she said softly.
Kai shook her head and her expression said she felt sorry for Natalie. Natalie tensed, her teeth clenched so hard she worried her jaw would shatter.
“That’s the worst-case scenario, isn’t it?” she continued to explain. “That Alec isn’t full of shit and something happened to him? If so, that’s what we have to deal with.”
Drake paced the room slowly. “Natalie is correct. Especially when the murder in the park and my injuries are taken into account, the fact that Alec claims to have lost a good chunk of time is not a good thing for any of us. It all reeks of Van Helsing.”
Natalie could have kissed the old man, but she didn’t. She just smiled at him slightly and kept up her refusal to look at Alec.
“How could it have happened if it did truly happen?” Pat asked.
Alec shrugged. “Sometimes I lose time during my moon cycles.”
Linda snorted out a laugh and Natalie glared at her. “Is something funny here, Fish Sticks?”
Her smile fell at the derogatory nickname and she folded her arms. “Aside from the fact that your boyfriend sounds like an ad for ‘that time of the month,’ no. But you could pick up some Pamprin, Wolfie, maybe that will help?”
Normally Alec would have shot back a sarcastic, pointed reply to Linda and shut her up. But to Natalie’s surprise, he growled at the Swamp Dweller. Not a cute growl, not even a slightly warning growl. No, the sound that escaped his lips was utterly terrifying, utterly threatening, and absolutely out of character.
She moved toward him without thinking about it. This was Alec, her Alec. Part of their “thing” was that she could calm him, or at least control him, if he lost it thanks to the moon . . . or whatever.
“Alec,” she said.
His bright and golden eyes were focused on Linda and his pupils were dilated. She recognized the look, she recognized all of it. Carefully, she reached out a hand and pressed it to his forearm. He flinched and his gaze jerked toward her in pure rage.
But as he looked at her, recognized her, that rage faded. The wolf faded and Alec returned.
“It’s okay,” she soothed softly.
“It’s not okay,” Linda whined.
Alec looked past Natalie toward Linda. “I—I’m sorry,” he said. “I—I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know why any of this is happening.”
Natalie sat down on the couch next to him. Everyone was watching her, but she didn’t care. Something was wrong with him and she wanted to fix it.
“I believe you that you lost time,” she said, touching his stubbly cheek with the flat of her palm. “I believe you that something happened that you can’t remember. And Drake is right, the only explanation that makes sense in all of this is that it has to do with our war with the Van Helsings.”
Alec’s face softened with relief that she believed him. That anyone believed him. And honestly, the more she saw his behavior, the more she did believe him. He wasn’t acting guilty, he was acting scared. And crazy. There was something wrong with him, and it wasn’t that he’d gone off to sleep around on her.
“I’m beginning to agree,” Rehu said, rising to tilt his head and examine Alec more closely. “I’ve seen you as a wolf before and there is no reason for it to come out early, as it appears to be doing now.”
“What if I’m just losing control?” Alec asked, looking from Natalie to Rehu and back again. “What if I won’t be able to control my wolf form anymore?”
Kai sniffed as she got to her feet. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve never seen a Wolf Man in any story or true monster record who lost his moon sickness and had it replaced by a complete loss of control. If it’s not in the records for the last several hundred years, then it doesn’t happen.”
Kai’s tone was dismissive and snotty, but Natalie could have hugged her, because relief washed over Alec’s scruffy face.
“I guess you’re right,” he said.
“Someone’s fucking with you. Plain and simple.” Kai shrugged one shoulder.
“With us,” Pat corrected quietly. “If they fuck with one of us, then they fuck with all of us, is that not correct?”
Natalie smiled. “That’s the truth.” She squeezed Alec’s arm gently. “So let’s go over the events.”
“There’s the attack on the man in the park and the subsequent video,” Kai said, ticking it off on one manicured finger.
Natalie nodded. “And we know the Van Helsings are behind its posting and spread, because they admitted it.”
Alec jerked his face toward her. “They admitted it?”
She nodded. “It happened while you were missing. It’s a new world, baby, and a new war.”
“I guess.” Alec shivered.
“And then there was the attack on me,” Drake added to the list. “The person who attacked me was aiming for the heart. I can’t believe my old enemy would miss.”
“But Van Helsing has all these new family members working for him,” Natalie pointed out. “Some of them were accountants and whatever before. They weren’t killers; your attack could have been a shoddy first attempt at a monster war party.”
“Seriously, you lose thirty-six hours with this group and it’s like you wake up in Wonderland,” Alec said, rubbing his temples. “Is there an alien as president, too?”
“Nope, just a bunch of new Van Helsings not in the record,” Kai said. “I’m sure Natalie can fill you in on their smarmy awesomeness on the way home, since you two are talking again.”
“And then there is Alec losing time,” Pat said with a sigh. “To add to our list of terror.”
“Three events, all of which affect monsters, but in different ways.” Rehu stroked his chin. “Could there be multiple culprits?”
Drake looked toward Linda, who was still curled up on his couch, and stared at her for a moment. “You’ve been awfully quiet, for a person who normally is the first to panic and jump to the worst of conclusions.”
Natalie wrinkled her brow. Linda was awfully calm under the circumstances. She wasn’t even crying. Just staring at them.
“Are you accusing me of something?” she asked, her tone calm and cold. She pushed to her feet. “Because I can go if you want to be rude.”
“Is there something to accuse you of?” Drake asked.
Linda shook her head. “You are all so smug. You treat me like a doormat, you don’t listen to me, you shove me around all these years and bitch about the way I react to situations, then the minute I keep it together, you accuse me of something. You know what? I’m done. I quit the group. You can figure out your war and your issues on your own.”
She pivoted on her heel (high heels, which shocked the hell out of Natalie) and stalked from the room. They heard the door slam hard enough that a couple of pictures reverberated. For a moment, everyone was quiet.
“Has she ever walked away from drama before?” Natalie asked.
Pat cleared his throat. “I have only known the young woman for a short time, but it seems you find her behavior out of the ordinary. Could it be that she is just finally accepting herself? It does take some longer than others.”
Alec got up and walked to the window. He didn’t lift the shade, not wanting to kill Drake and all, but he stared like he could see through it to the city outside.
“I don’t know what to think anymore. A couple of months ago, I would have figured Linda was the least dangerous of us all. But with everything that has happened in the past few days, now any change makes me . . . nervous.”
“Are we saying Linda, a mon
ster, would turn on her own kind and actually have something to do with this bullshit?” Rehu asked.
“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds ludicrous,” Natalie admitted. “And we’re falling into the Van Helsing trap.”
“What do you mean?” Kai asked.
“They create this chaos. A physical attack here, an attack on our anonymity there. They want us to panic, to turn on each other. To fear everything and anything around us that we don’t know. To herd us toward whatever end they have in mind. I doubt they thought Linda was the way to freak us out—”
“I doubt they think of Linda at all,” Alec added.
“Who does?” Kai muttered. “Unless they have to.”
Natalie nodded. “But if we start to fear each other, we’re screwed.”
“Natalie has a point,” Pat said. “I have seen monsters turn on each other in fear. Reveal another just to protect themselves. If we begin that . . . it is a dirty road to travel and the destination is never pleasant.”
“Then what do we do?” Rehu asked.
“I want someone to check out Alec,” Natalie said. He flinched, but she shook her head so he’d know there was no way she was backing down on this one. “Dude, something happened to you.”
“But who?” Kai asked. “Jekyll was the only doctor we could trust, and he’s dead.”
“Hyde,” Rehu offered. “He shared a psyche with Jekyll, he has the other man’s thoughts and knowledge inside his head. And he’s not dead.”
“That we know of,” Natalie added. “He’s been gone for six months, doing God knows what. We’ve searched for him everywhere.”
Igor, who had just been watching the entire process with great interest, perked up. “You say Hyde is missing?”
Natalie stared at him. “Um . . . yeah. What about it?”
“I know where he is,” Igor said with a shrug.
“What?” Alec asked, eyes going wide. “Why didn’t you tell us this?”
“You never said you were looking for him.” Igor looked at Natalie. “You know Jekyll, Hyde, and your father were friends once upon a two or three hundred years ago. After your father’s death, Jekyll sometimes spoke to me. Or maybe it was Hyde. Or . . . whoever. They have . . . or I suppose he has, since Jekyll is dead and there’s no ‘they’ anymore . . . a summer place upstate. I can call him if you’d like. I’m sure he’d be willing to come down if asked properly.”
The Monsters in Your Neighborhood Page 7