Gone with the Monster: Monsters in Hollywood, Book 3 Read online

  The movie started, and Runako turned the volume up.

  “Blond is a color?” he asked as code names were given out.

  “It is, though it usually refers to hair color. It basically means yellow.”

  When the first big shoot ’em up scene started Runako curled his lip and said, “Humans and their guns.”

  “Not a fan of guns?”

  “They are effective weapons, but humans have become cowards with them. They hide behind their guns. If you are going to take a life there should be more to it than snapping a gun.”

  “Shooting a gun,” Margo corrected absently.

  “Shooting, yes. Humans have become… They are like a swarm of evil bees.”

  Margo almost laughed, the analogy was ridiculous, but she couldn’t. Runako’s voice was shaking with conviction. She didn’t like to think of humans as some sort of plague, but she could see it from his point of view.

  She didn’t agree with him about guns. She owned a handgun, a Kel-Tec .380 pistol. It was actually a point of contention between her and her friends. She’d grown up in Highland Park. It wasn’t the worst neighborhood in L.A., but it wasn’t the nicest one either. There’d been just enough trouble that her father and uncles had made sure that she knew how to handle the guns they kept in the house.

  “I have a gun,” she said, surprising herself. Runako narrowed his eyes at her, and she could feel his opinion changing.

  “Why?”

  “We had a gun in the house when I was growing up, so I learned to shoot it. My father gave me a gun for my eighteenth birthday, and then I bought myself the one I have now a few years ago.”

  “What did your father want you to do with the gun? Did he expect you to become a fighter?”

  “No. It was for defense. The place I grew up was not great. It wasn’t the barrio—I mean it wasn’t a terrible place—but there were reasons to have protection. Actually, this movie was filmed there. One time, when I had just started college and was home for Friday night dinner, we heard someone trying to break in. It was after dinner, and we were watching a movie. It wasn’t that late, but it was dark out. Someone was at the back window, yelling, then we heard the glass break. The lights were on in the house. He had to know we were there. Either he was so high on something that he didn’t notice or care, or he wanted us to be there, and wasn’t planning on robbing the place.

  “We yelled. I remember my aunt telling my cousin to go call the cops, saying it loud enough that the person at the back could hear, but he kept coming. I went for the gun. I didn’t have my gun with me, I don’t carry it concealed, but I knew where Papa’s was. I grabbed the gun and ran to the back room. I stood in the door, and there he was, in a black sweatshirt.

  “I pointed the gun at him and told him to get out. I screamed and cussed at him in English and Spanish. He stared at me, I couldn’t see his face but I knew he was staring at me. He just stood there staring, then he climbed back out the window. If he’d stayed a second longer I would have shot him.”

  Runako slid his hand from beneath the blanket, and covered her fists with his large dark hand. Margo hadn’t even realized how tense telling the story had made her. She left out the end of that story which was that the second he was gone she’d sunk to the floor, sobbing in terror, and when the police arrived she hadn’t been able to give them a useful description, and the breakin was forever filed with other unsolved cases.

  “You defended your family. Could you have fought him without the gun?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Could you have beat the masked man in a fight, with your hands?”

  “No. No way. He probably had a weapon. He probably had a gun.”

  “Then you did what you had to to defend your family, and the gun was a necessary tool.”

  “Are you saying that you would only fight someone if they attacked you first?” she asked, more than a little miffed that he seemed to be casting judgment of whether or not she was right to use a gun. “If I remember correctly you attached Lena, a defenseless human who hadn’t done anything to you. You almost killed her.”

  “I never meant to kill her, only to scare her, to stop her from helping Luke.”

  “But still, you attacked her. You’re acting high and mighty like humans shouldn’t have guns, like we should fight fair, when us having a gun is leveling the playing field. There is no way that a human could take on a Monster in a fight, unless they had a weapon like a gun.” Margo sat up, holding the blanket in place over her breasts.

  “Maybe, but—” Runako pushed her legs away and stood. He put his hands on his head and muttered in a language she didn’t recognize. It was guttural and deep. He took a deep breath, released it. His shoulders sagged. “Humans with guns killed my sister.”

  She’d heard some of this story from Luke and the others. They’d told her a bit of Runako’s history to help explain why he’d come to L.A., determined to stop them from exposing the Monsters.

  “She was your twin right?”

  “We were born together, on a night with no moon. Twins are not common for us. Females are rare also. My sister… She came across some human warriors, soldiers. She tried to back away, to leave but they shot her, in the leg. We knew of human guns, but she had never encountered one. After they shot her once they surrounded her, hunted her. She tried to get away, but when they brandished the guns she was afraid. They brought her to a vehicle. She was afraid of the guns, so she got in the van.”

  Margo’s heart lurched. She knew already that his sister had died, but even if she hadn’t known that before, she would have now. There was no way for this to have a happy ending.

  “What was your sister’s name?”

  “Kalona.”

  “It’s a beautiful name.”

  “She was beautiful. I…I miss her.”

  “You were close?” Margo asked. She was almost jealous of his dead sister. She must have been someone really special.

  “We were. We were twins. I could hear her thoughts—”

  “Ha!”

  “What?”

  “Er, nothing. I knew there were going to be psychic powers at some point.”

  “Strange human woman,” he said, but he was smiling.

  Margo returned his smile, but when his face fell into lines of sadness once more she cleared her throat. “Will you tell me what happened to her?”

  “The men took her away, in their truck. It wasn’t until she was in the truck that her fear rose, and she reached out to me.”

  “You mean psychically.”

  “Yes. As we grew we learned to keep our minds separate, but could reach out to one another. She called out to me, and she was so afraid that it was as if she were there beside me. I felt her fear and reached out to her, and it allowed me to see through her eyes. What they did to her…”

  Runako began pacing the cave. His shoulders were tight, and he radiated tension. As he turned, the tattoo on his arm glowed.

  Wait, what?

  That couldn’t be right. Margo peered at his arm and decided that it was a trick of the light.

  “Her fear had connected us, but when we realized they intended to keep her prisoner I tried to understand where she was, so I could go to her. By that time she was in such pain…they used the threat of guns to get her from the truck into a building. Once she was there they shot her with hooks attached to chains. The hooks stuck in her skin and then they pulled the chains tight, holding her in place. She did her best to fight them off, took several down with her barbs, but they had her immobilized. They tore off her wings. Ripped her wings from her body with huge noisy saws.”

  Margo turned her head to the side, placing her hand over her mouth. The visual he raised was horrific. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was, to apologize on behalf of all humans, but she couldn’t push the words past the lump of horror in her throat.

  “It was too late by then. The pain and fear controlled her mind. I begged her to look around so that I might reason where she was
, to remember where she had been when they first shot her. But there was nothing. Her mind was so broken that she could no longer focus enough to understand their words, and because she did not understand them I did not either.

  “I lived through her death, as if it were my own. My Clan held me down, to keep me from flying madly across the country. I was so enraged, so afraid, I would have killed the first humans I saw. I watched her die. Watched the men in black shirts with wolves on their breasts cut her open while she was still alive, and there was nothing I could do to save her.”

  Runako dropped into the armchair that flanked the couch. Light from the muted TV flickered along the stark lines of his face. Margo watched the climactic scene of Reservoir Dogs, watched the men shoot each other in a hail of bullets and pointless violence. She grabbed the remote and shut the TV off.

  No words could heal the hurt that had been done to him, no speech make up for his loss. She reached out her hand, and after a long moment he took it. Runako laced his fingers with hers and squeezed. Margo held tight.

  They sat that way for what felt like an hour but was probably only ten minutes. Margo made lists in her head, sang the song from It’s a Small World, mocked up sample film budgets—anything to keep herself from thinking about what had been done to his sister.

  Try as she might to distract herself she kept coming back to it. She imagined what it would be like to have a loved one murdered before your eyes, to know they were still alive but would not be for long, and not have the clues to find them, save them. Maybe if Runako had been able to understand her, or see some marks on the outside of the building, anything other than men in black uniforms with wolf logos…

  Margo sat up straight, brain whirling. They were somewhere in the Rockies. He’d said soldiers, not police or scientists. They were men with guns and a facility that could hold and trap a Monster.

  She knew who had killed his twin.

  Chapter Ten

  What should she do?

  Should she tell him? It was just a guess. If she were right it would mean bringing brutal killers to justice. If she were wrong she would set Runako on the wrong path, and she had a funny feeling that he’d be willing to do away with some humans, just in case.

  “Did you find them? The people who took your sister.”

  “No, never. Once she was dead I could not feel her anymore. I searched, but I did not know where she’d been. She might have been at the foot of our mountain. She might have been on the other side of the world. We do not have her body, we cannot bury her.”

  “You said we’re in the Rockies, is this where your home is? Or is this just the place you bring uppity females?”

  He smiled at her comment. “I suppose there is no harm in telling you that these mountains are where we make our homes. We once had mountains in other places, all over the world, but my Clan, the largest of the Clans that remains, lives here.”

  “What do you mean by Clan, are they like your family?”

  “At one time Clan meant family, but as our numbers dropped different families banded together. My Clan, the same that Luke, Michael and Henry belong to, is made up of many families, from all over the world.”

  “And so you think that maybe your sister was taken somewhere near here?”

  “No. I know much of these mountains, and I searched for her. I never found anything. She might have been on the far side of the world. We can travel great distances in only a few hours, and I had not seen her in several days.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. All she had was a hunch, no point starting a blood bath until she knew what was going on.

  Runako nodded, and unlaced his fingers from hers.

  “I’m hungry,” he said, standing.

  “Me too. You know what would be good right now? An extra large cheese and olive pizza. But oh no, we can’t have that, because someone kidnapped me to a remote corner of the Rockies.”

  “I have pizza,” he said. He popped open a huge white ice chest and pulled out two small frozen pizzas.

  “I’m impressed so far, but unless you have a kitchen somewhere…”

  “We have a microwave, better than an oven.” Sure enough, near the back of the cave, where the bathroom was, sat a gleaming silver microwave.

  He popped in the microwaveable pizza and set the timer. Five minutes later he brought over piping hot cheese and dough.

  “I was teasing about the pizza,” she said. “I shouldn’t have this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because pizza is the devil’s food. All this bread with sugary tomato sauce and fatty cheese? It’s a diet nightmare.”

  “Diet? Is this about your misconceptions about your body?”

  “I don’t have misconceptions about my body. Scales and measuring tapes don’t lie.”

  “I like pizza,” he said, taking a gooey bite. “It’s good.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t good,” Margo said, giving up and taking a bite. “It’s just bad for you.”

  Runako shrugged, finished off his pizza and went to the ice chest for more.

  “What do you normally eat?” she asked. “Whole deer, raw?”

  Runako snorted. “No. We cook both plants and animals, as humans do. There is much similarity between our cooking methods and practices, though our ovens are made of clay, and burn wood. Everything tastes better that way.”

  “But, do you have pizza?”

  “Actually we do, though we put better meat on top than this,” he said, plucking off a little sausage ball.

  “You eat pizza, have wall to wall carpeting in caves and have indoor plumbing. I’m impressed.”

  He grunted and dug into the bowl of mac and cheese he’d warmed up.

  When her pizza was gone Margo snuggled down into the couch. She realized she had no idea what time in was. The cave was a land of perpetual twilight. A huge yawn cracked her jaw, and Margo closed her eyes. She was warm, well fed and had orgasmed, there was no way she was staying awake any longer.

  “I’m going to take a little nap,” she murmured, already more asleep than awake.

  “I will be here when you wake,” he said.

  That sounded just fine to Margo.

  Runako waited until she was asleep before slipping out of the cave. He changed and took to the skies, the cold air stinging his eyes and pinching his exposed flesh. He pushed himself, flying fast and high. Ice formed on his wings, weighing him down, but he pushed on.

  Talking about his sister had been hard for him. His grief for her was no longer his constant companion, though it was a part of him, and always would be. But talking about it had brought his anger and hatred to full boil. He’d failed her when he failed to find her killers. His sister had yet to know a proper burial, and had yet to be at peace.

  The humans who’d taken her were cowards, low men who deserved death for what they’d done. He hated their guns, hated them because it was the fear of them that had led Kalona to her death, but after Margo’s story he could understand why it was the humans had used guns.

  They were not physically powerful. In comparison to Monsters they were weaklings, but even when compared to other predators—bears, big cats, sea creatures—they were physically weak. They’d learned to make themselves powerful with guns, and though he hated them for it he understood the need.

  He returned to the cave, hoping she hadn’t woken while he was gone. Margo was still asleep. She looked delectable with her lips slightly parted and her face relaxed in slumber. Dark hair spread from her head, a few locks falling over her bare shoulders and dipping in towards her breasts.

  He slid into his human form, and woke her with a kiss.

  Margo woke to the feel of Runako’s lips on hers. She sighed and smiled, twining her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. He murmured his approval and pushed the blanket off her breasts.

  His hand cupped her breast, and Margo’s eyes popped open. “Cold, cold fingers!”

  “Sorry,” he whispered
, recovering her breast and stroking it through the shield of the blanket. He rubbed the chenille across her breast, then back and forth across her nipple.

  His lips moved to her neck, licking and kissing there. He cupped and lifted her breast, then bit the nipple through the blanket. Margo could feel the heat of his breath as his teeth pinched down on the sensitive tip.

  Margo slid her hand over his shoulder and down his chest, feeling the ridges of muscles. His abs tensed as her fingers stroked them.

  She wrapped her fist around his cock, remembering what it had been like to take him in her mouth. Margo rubbed the tip of his cock with her palm, swirling the silken tip back and forth. His cock was wet, already dripping for her.

  How could he want her so much? Why? He was so extraordinary, and she so ordinary.

  She slid her fingers along his cock, tracing the sensitive vein on the underside. He jerked his head from her breast and hissed out a breath.

  “Do you like that?”

  “Yes.”

  She repeated the caress, but this time with her nails. Runako grunted and lurched up. Margo pulled her hand back, thinking she’d hurt him. Runako shifted her legs off the couch, sat, and then urged her onto his lap.

  With a grin Margo threw off the blanket and swung across his lap. His cock was sandwiched between their bellies. Margo took advantage of its entrapment to play with the tip and tug the foreskin. While she was busy with his cock he lifted her breasts to his lips to lick and bite before sucking the nipples into his mouth.

  The wet pull of his lips and tongue at her nipples sent darts of pleasure into her sex. She rocked her hips forward, massaging his cock with her belly. Once she started moving she couldn’t stop, the need he created in her driving her body to simulate sex.

  Her legs were spread wide, her pussy open yet empty. Runako slid one hand down her back, across her ass and between her legs. He plunged two fingers into her sex. The angle meant that his fingers touched her in places that were normally neglected, and the feeling of being full after the aching emptiness was exquisite. Margo threw her head back and moaned.

  “Enough of this,” Runako growled. He pulled his fingers from her, grabbed and lifted her. With a tilt of his hips his cock was in place, and he eased her down. Margo took over, shifting so that he entered her at the perfect angle. She lowered herself an inch at a time, lifting and lowering so that he slowly eased into her.