Kill Monsters, Get Rich Chapter 1

The bar was small, dank, and dark. At any given time, at least one of the windows was broken and boarded up, and I’d never known the jukebox to work, no matter how many quarters hopeful newcomers might shove into the coin slot.

But the drinks were cheap, and Carmen and I had been coming here since we’d been old enough to buy those drinks. If I was honest, we’d been coming here a little before then, too.

Carmen had insisted she buy the first round, and as she slid into the booth next to me, she passed me a beer of whatever was on tap. I didn’t ask what it was as I took it because there was no point, really. I’d never been very picky when it came to alcohol. Never had the time or the funds to become picky.

“To coming home safe,” Carmen said as she cheerfully tapped her beer against mine.

“To not getting shot at,” I replied, and we both took a drink.

“Is it weird?” she then asked me as she wiped foam off her top lip. “I think it feels a little weird.”

“Is what weird?” I looked at her over the rim of my glass.

“You. This. I’m not used to seeing you without Facetime pixels anymore.” She gestured between us and cocked a grin. “I think the pixels were doing you a favor.”

“You can’t make that joke, we have the same face,” I scoffed.

“Yeah, but on me, it works,” she said and laughed when I punched her shoulder.

Truthfully, it was a little weird. This was the first time in almost an entire year that I’d been in the same room, hell, the same country, as my twin sister. I couldn’t decide if it felt strange because we’d changed, or because we hadn’t.

I think I’d expected some big shift when I stepped off the plane yesterday morning and spotted Roy waiting for me in the arrivals lounge. I’d expected some kind of disconnect, like the things he talked about wouldn’t make sense to me, like everyone I’d left behind now spoke a totally different language. But they hadn’t. Roy was still wry, still wanted to be a pediatrician, still my friend. Carmen was still a cheeky little brat, still a genius with a car, still my twin sister. It was almost weird for how not-weird it was. Like my life had just been paused whilst I’d been gone, like it had sat there and waited for me until I came back.

“How’s Roy?” Carmen asked as if she’d read my mind.

When we’d been little, we’d tried that. Identical twins were supposed to have some kind of psychic mind-link or power, right? But for all our attempts at telepathic communication, all we’d gotten were headaches.

“He’s doing good,” I replied with a grin. “Surgery went really well, said he’ll be ready for beach volleyball by summer.”

I made the same gesture now as Roy had when he’d told me. I raised my arms not-quite to shoulder level, and then flicked my hands as if spiking an invisible ball.

“Really?” Carmen’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s so good! I should get him a congratulations card or something.”

“Do they have cards for that?” I asked as I raised an eyebrow.

“Surgery’s a surgery, you don’t have to get specific about it.” She shrugged and then tipped her beer towards me. “That reminds me, Theo got his kidney transplant a couple months ago. Last I heard, he was doing pretty good.”

“Aw, that’s a relief,” I said. My voice had a slightly-bland quality, the combination of the fact that I was genuinely pleased to hear good news, but I’d also never been particularly invested in the whole situation. “So you’ve heard from him and Maria recently?”

“Not really.” Carmen’s mouth twisted in the way that I knew meant ‘I don’t wanna talk about it,’ and she shrugged, the gesture exaggerated, like she was sloughing off some huge, invisible weight. “Aside from the kidney thing. Card for our birthday. Card for Christmas.”

“Well, it’s nice they remembered,” I said mildly, but the truth was we’d never been very close to our foster parents.

They hadn’t done anything wrong exactly. They’d kept us clean and fed and clothed. They’d helped us with difficult homework problems. They’d taken care of us when we got sick. All in all, they’d been model guardians and still made something of an effort to keep in touch, even though we were both twenty-five and their legal obligations had long-since ended. But for all of that, neither Carmen nor I had really felt like they were our family. We just hadn’t… clicked. With them, or with any of the other kids they’d fostered.

We didn’t even talk to our foster siblings. Again, not out of malice, we just hadn’t kept in touch. But we hadn’t really felt the need to. I had Carmen, and she had me. When you had a twin, when you’d shared your entire life with someone, including the deaths of your parents in a house fire, you didn’t really need anyone else. Carmen was my family, and I was hers. Which was one of the many reasons why I was glad to be back home. This past year had been the longest we’d ever been separated from one another, by a huge margin.

It had been strange, and not in a good way, being separated from my sister. Being twins, we’d of course spent our whole lives by each other’s sides, and being told we looked just alike. We knew. That was what ‘twins’ meant. There were some differences, obviously, like the fact I was male and she was female. But we both shared the tawny skin and dark brown wavy hair of our parents. We’d also inherited our father’s dark eyes instead of our mother’s hazel, as well as his stocky, athletic build.

“Yeah,” she said vaguely and drew me back to the present. “I guess.”

A few moments of silence passed between us while we sipped our beers.

“Anyway,” my sister went on as she prodded me. “You’re back in the land of the free and all that. What’s your plan?”

“I… not sure, really,” I admitted as I blinked down at my beer. “Rest. That’s top of the list. After that… job, I guess. See if there’s anything at the VA that can help.”

There would no doubt be a certifiable mountain of paperwork.

“S’always a thrill-ride with you, Leo,” Carmen drawled as she took another sip, but I nudged her with my elbow at just the right time so it sloshed down her front a little, and she scowled at me. “Bastard!”

“If I am, then you are, too,” I pointed out with a laugh.

“No,” she said, and she pulled the sleeve of her shirt over her wrist to try and dab some of the beer off. “You’re a spiritual bastard. You have achieved bastard-ness. Like the Buddha of being an asshole.”

“I see my tenure abroad did wonders for your wit.” I took a drink and smirked.

“Fuck you.”

“You’re not helping your case,” I told her. “Come on, something with a little edge to it. No one gets insulted by ‘fuck you’ these days.”

“You’d think, but every time I said it to Marco he turned, like, bright red.” She cocked her head.

“Yeah, well, Marco’s a dick,” I said flatly. I then noticed I’d made the mistake of resting my arm against the flat of the table, and I pulled it back with a grimace. My sleeve slowly unpeeled itself from the sticky wood, which was a combination of varnish and spilled drinks that had accumulated over the years.

“Marco’s a dick with a job,” Carmen replied, and I could tell she was trying not to sound bitter, but it didn’t work.

“Nepotism’s a bitch,” I said as I patted her shoulder in commiseration. “But don’t worry. Two months from now, you’ll be making bank at a way cooler place, they’ll be falling apart without you. They’ll be begging for you to come back, and you can tell them to go fuck themselves.”

“You always say spite is the best motivator,” she chuckled.

“And I’m always right.” I grinned and nodded.

Carmen stuck her tongue out at me, and as I rolled my eyes at her, I noticed someone else had just walked into the bar. A woman, about my and Carmen’s age, with blonde curls that grazed her jaw and elegant cheekbones.

And she was fucking hot. Maybe one of the prettiest women I’d actually seen in the flesh versus on-line or gracing the cover of a fashion magazine.

What was she doing in a dump like this?

I heard something vague off to the side and turned to look at Carmen again. “Sorry, what?”

“I said you should go talk to her.” She smirked at me, not even annoyed that I hadn’t been listening, and nodded toward the blonde. “It’s been over a year since you had a proper date, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I conceded. “But I didn’t come here to flirt with women.”

Even if she was really, really pretty. Like insanely hot.

I found my eyes lingered on her a moment before I turned back to Carmen, and I steeled my resolve. It was sister and bro time.

“I came here to catch up with my brat sister and get Marco’s license-plate so I can key the stupid truck he wouldn’t shut up about,” I continued.

“Oh, no need for that-- he fucked the engine. Didn’t I tell you?” Carmen laughed.

“You did not!” I snorted, and a vindictive smile tugged at my mouth as I imagined how that self-important ass could have destroyed his own vehicle. He’d had it out for Carmen ever since she’d first been hired. She was younger and smaller and a woman, but she’d still been twice the mechanic he was from day one. “How does a mechanic fuck up his own truck?”

“By being a terrible mechanic,” Carmen replied, still with a smirk on her lips. “He wanted to improve its performance, so he fucked around with the compression ratio. I told him if he put 93 RON instead of 98 it would kill the engine, but he didn’t listen.”

Admittedly, I had no idea what ‘RON’ meant, but I understood enough to get that her expertise had been shoved aside because Marco was a chauvinist and an asshole.

“Please tell me you were there when it blew up in his face,” I laughed. “Please tell me it literally blew up in his face.”

“I will tell you all that and more, brother mine,” Carmen said as she smiled indulgently at me. “If you go up and talk to that smoking hot blonde you were eye fucking.”

“Carmen--” I sighed.

“Leo,” she mimicked my cadence, a trick that had never once been funny, but that never stopped her from continuing to do it. “Just go. She was looking at you, too, y’know.”

“She was?” I couldn’t help but perk up a little, but I was too intrigued to even be pissed off when Carmen grinned at me. She knew she’d won.

“Yup.” Carmen popped the ‘p’ and took another sip of her beer. “Go talk to her, loverboy. And if you’re so worried about leaving me all alone, see if she has a hot single brother.”

“No,” I said as my eyes slid over to the woman at the bar again, then more forcefully, “No. Tonight’s about you and me.”

“Fine, your round,” Carmen said as she leveled her gaze at me, even though she still held a mostly-full beer in her hand. “Go get me another drink.”

“Fine,” I groaned. “But if I get laid, it’s all your fault!”

She just grinned at me, and I rolled my eyes and was halfway out of the booth when we both noticed the door open again. This time, it was three people who came in, all men, all very tall.

Something in me tensed. It was an automatic reaction, so quick it took a moment for my brain to catch up with my body.

Something about these guys was a threat.

I was just about to try and shove this aside, to try and push down what was no doubt some lingering reflex from my tour, when I realized what had sparked my apprehension in the first place. I slid back into the booth and crowded Carmen’s space, and I shielded her as much as I could without making it look like that was what I was doing.

“Leo, what’s wrong?” She glanced at me in confusion.

“Those guys,” I muttered, but I kept my focus on them as I spoke to her and took in every detail of how they stood, how they interacted with one another, the clothes they wore. They all wore the same black jacket with an armband either tied to or stitched on the right bicep. I was too far away to make out whatever logo they bore, but we were in a liberal enough area that I was at least confident it wasn’t some white supremacist bullshit. The bar staff had zero tolerance for that kind of stuff, and I’d seen them literally toss people out about it more than once.

Still, something about the way those guys crowded around the door, the way they seemed to have made some kind of pack-- not a group but a pack-- set me on edge.

“Something’s off,” I told Carmen. “They look ex-military.”

“So?” I saw her brow furrow out of the corner of my eye. “You’re ex-military.”

I shook my head. “Not like them.”

There was a pause that was just half a heartbeat too long. I knew Carmen had clearly been about to say something, maybe to suggest I should invite the guys over and trade combat stories, but something had evidently caught her attention.

What came out of her mouth instead was, “I think you have the same taste as them, though.”

I followed her gaze, which I now realized was the same direction the men were looking. The blonde woman at the bar had caught their attention as well as mine and Carmen’s, but there was an edge to the way those men looked at her.

Something was definitely off.

The woman clearly noticed the trio of men, too, because she stood from the bar, and I could tell she was attempting to look calm and collected, but there was an urgency in her movements. Curiously, despite the fact the men were all tall and intimidating, and the woman was about six different kinds of gorgeous, no one else in the bar paid them any attention. I cast a quick glance around, and it seemed no one besides Carmen and I had even noticed any of them.

I could feel myself getting more on-edge by the second.

I watched as the woman walked to the other side of the bar, where the other exit was, but instead of leading out into the street, like the door the men stood by, this exit led into an alleyway. Did the woman know that? Or was she just focused on the fact that it was an exit not being hounded by three huge guys?

Evidently, this didn’t matter, because the moment she walked out of the other exit, the three men began to follow her.

Something was very, very off.

The next thing I was aware of was Carmen’s hand on my arm, and I ripped my gaze away from the men to see she’d grabbed me because I was halfway standing in the booth. I hadn’t felt my legs move, didn’t remember making the decision to move, and my sister stared at me with concerned eyes.

“Something could be wrong,” I told her. It looked like those men had come here for the woman. And even if they hadn’t, they’d clearly decided to make her their target once they’d seen her.

“I know,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”

I knew better than to argue with Carmen about something like this. And, besides, if things did get physical, I’d rather not be outnumbered three-to-one. Not to mention the blonde woman would probably feel more at ease if it was a man and a woman that came to her rescue instead of just another clearly-ex-military guy.

We tried not to look suspicious as we both followed the three men out of the bar and into the alleyway. Carmen fell into step behind me without me needing to ask, but she knew how this worked. I was the bigger of the two of us and the better trained. She could bench her bodyweight and swing a wrench hard enough to crack a man’s skull, but I was the soldier. I could feel her standing behind me with her eyes on the door as she looked over my shoulder. The sensation of her being the one to watch my back was unusual for the fact that it had been a few years since I’d felt it last. But it was familiar, and the familiarity was a comfort as I pushed open the door.

A strange thing happened then.

It was like a bubble popped. The moment I put my hand on the door out to the alleyway, the moment I pushed it open, it was like some forcefield or containment had been breached, because suddenly, there was noise.

I knew the doors to the bar were not very soundproof. You could hear a car horn honk as clearly inside as if you stood on the sidewalk. But when I pushed through the door and came to stand in the alleyway, I wondered if perhaps the small, dank, dark bar had decided to moonlight as a recording studio whilst I’d been away.

When Carmen and I stepped out, the first thing I heard was a high-pitched shriek. Not one of pain, or of fear, but of anger. Like the person who’d shrieked was indignant.

A moment later-- and that was the second strange thing to happen, because it was like my brain had an image of the alleyway that was empty, and it took a moment for the image to update to the version with people in it-- I saw who had shrieked.

It was the blonde woman.

She was backing up toward the end of the alleyway, hands raised, teeth gritted, eyes wild. Two of the men were advancing upon her. The third man was unconscious on the floor, and the slight rise and fall of his chest was the only clue to his still being alive. A fourth man, with the same blond hair and elegant cheekbones as the woman, was slumped against the alleyway wall, and both hands were pressed to his side as blood seeped from between his fingers.

“Shit,” Carmen muttered, and I sensed her stiffen behind me.

‘Shit’ was right.

I took a step forward and let go of the door of the bar so it swung shut behind me, and I heard the ‘click’ of the latch as it slid back into place, like the hammer of a pistol preparing to fire, or a bomb about to go off.

The only question was who was the weapon, and who was the target.

“Hey,” I said loudly. Both the blond’s heads swiveled to stare at me, like they were shocked I was there, but I didn’t pay this any mind as I squared my shoulders and glared at the two obvious assailants. “Get the fuck away from her.”

One of the men turned fully to face me, and I saw he held a bloody knife clutched in one hand. If I had to guess, he was the reason the blond guy was bleeding on the ground.

“Eyes everywhere,” the asshole snarled to his companion as he looked me up and down with a disgusted face. “Fucking everywhere.”

“Kill them and be done with it.” The other man waved his hand impatiently as his attention remained on the woman, and that was all the warning I got before the guy with the knife charged me.

Automatically, Carmen leapt sideways to allow me space to move, and as the guy with the knife barreled into me, I saw her run straight for the third man and the woman. If the blonde had managed to take down one of the guys already, she and Carmen would be fine, which meant I could keep all my focus on this bastard.

He slashed wide with the knife, and it was obvious that even if he was ex-military or something similar, a blade wasn’t his weapon of choice. He moved quickly, really quickly, actually, and was light on his feet despite his size.

But it so happened I moved like that, too. I wasn’t quite so large as him, but I’d been in a sparring ring with Tommy only three days ago, and I’d laid him out flat and hardly broken a sweat.

And, as they said, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

I ducked under his arm, caught his wrist, and shoved it outwards. The next part of the move was to twist his arm and force him to drop the knife, but the guy must have expected that, because he grabbed my wrist and used our combined grips to turn the knife toward me. As he shoved forwards, clearly in an attempt to stab me in the head, I fell into a crouch, with my weight braced on his upper body, and he tipped forward and lost control of his momentum. The knife glanced harmlessly off the brick wall behind me, and as I shot upward, I headbutted him in the chin.

His head snapped back, and he groaned. Then he staggered backwards, and this time, when I grabbed his arm, I was able to twist his wrist, and the knife clattered to the floor.

I was just about to kick the blade away when a fist connected with my temple. Fractals of light scattered across my vision, and I tasted blood as I cut my cheek open on my own teeth. I took one step back, but that was it. Then I needed to move forward again.

The guy had used my disorientation to scoop the knife back up. He held it differently this time, so no doubt he expected me to try the wrist thing again and he was being pre-emptive.

I stalked forwards, and my movements were heavy and deliberate. There was no point in trying to be careful with this guy, he was the type of opponent you had to hit and keep hitting.

He charged me again, and the knife sailed through the air, but I blocked it with the flat of my hand into his elbow. Even though it was on the inside of his elbow, and I hadn’t struck the funny bone, I knew it would still feel weird, weird enough to buy me time to shove my fist into his solar plexus.

Which I did.

With a dry, choked gasp, the guy doubled over. His empty hand went to his stomach, and he took another unsteady step back. I adjusted my posture to go for a kick, but as I raised my foot, his hand shot out, grabbed my ankle, and tugged me forward. I shoved out my hands to correct my balance and hissed as I felt the clean, sharp slice of the knife’s blade across my right forearm.

“Fuck!” I yelped, more out of surprise than pain.

“Oh, hang on,” the guy muttered as he frowned at me. “You’re not one of them, are you?”

“One of who?” I snarled, part irritation, part sheer exertion as I forced myself to ignore the burn of pain across my skin. I wouldn’t let myself focus on it. The adrenaline of a fight and the knowledge that I wasn’t the only one at risk helped to narrow my focus, and I barely felt the pain.

Or at least, I told myself that as I forced my arms to stay outstretched.

My hands gripped the shoulders of the guy’s dark jacket, and I yanked him toward me. Then I shoved my knee up into his stomach, the same spot my fist had been only a moment earlier. He let out another strangled groan, and as he was distracted, I gripped his wrist again. This time, I didn’t twist it, but shoved it downwards and forced his arm, and him, to the floor.

I half-stood, half-crouched on top of him, and my foot came up to pin his wrist to the ground. There was the crunch of gravel as I ground my boot into his arm, and he let go of the knife with a cry.

This time I knew not to let up, and while still squatting over him, I wound back my right arm with my hand curled into a fist again. Then I brought it down once, hard and precise, across his left temple. There was the dull sound of an impact since there was only a thin layer of flesh over the bones of my knuckles and his skull. He groaned, the sound dazed, and my left hand fisted in the collar of his shirt. I pulled him off the ground just high enough that his head wasn’t on the pavement, and then I struck him across the temple again.

By the time I let go and he fell back onto the floor, he was out cold.

“Goddamn,” I panted, not so much because I was tired, more like I was worked up. Then I heard the sound of another impact and looked over to see Carmen and the blonde woman had teamed up against the third guy.

Carmen jumped on him from behind, and as he’d tried to fight or shake her off, the blonde woman shoved her knee first into his stomach, then his crotch. As the force of the blows and Carmen’s weight forced him to the ground, the woman raised her leg in a kick and caught him with the heel of her foot. His head snapped to the side, and he collapsed to the ground like a stone.

Then Carmen and the woman just watched the guy’s limp form for a moment, as if trapped in some kind of spell. I knew what that felt like, what it was to look at an opponent you’d beaten and be kind of captivated by the fact your body, you, had done something that… primal.

The blonde woman broke out of the spell first. For a moment, her gaze settled on me, and we made eye-contact for the first time. I noticed then that her eyes were very green. Ludicrously green, really. Maybe she was wearing color contacts.

Then there was a soft groan, and her curiously green eyes snapped away from mine to the blond man who was still slumped at the other end of the alley.

“Kegan!” she croaked in a strained voice, and she jumped over the body of the third guy and rushed toward the blond man.

His face was twisted with pain, which was a good thing because it meant he hadn’t lost so much blood as to become sluggish. His cognitive faculties would probably still be okay. He still definitely needed a hospital, though.

Carmen shuffled her way from between the unconscious men to come stand beside me. I saw her eyes zero in on my forearm, but I was the one to speak first.

“You okay, Monkey?”

Irritation flickered across her face at the old nickname, and I smiled. It was apt, as far as I was concerned. She’d loved climbing trees when we’d been kids, and even now she liked to do gymnastics and rock-climbing in her free time. The fact she’d decided to become a mechanic, a grease monkey, just made it even more appropriate.

Plus, it pissed her off. Which, as a nickname bestowed by her brother, was practically a requirement.

“I’m fine,” she told me and then looked at my forearm again. She reached out and lifted my right hand gently. “You?”

“It’s not deep.” I nodded and patted her hands with my left before I tipped my head toward the two blonds. “Besides, I think we have bigger issues.”

The woman was still kneeling beside the guy, who I supposed must be called Kegan. His fingers had become red and slick with blood, and despite her attempts to get him to move his hands so she could examine the wound, he shook his head and refused.

“That’s probably a good idea,” I said. “Until you’re in a place it can be properly treated, you should keep pressure on it.”

Both of their heads whipped up to stare at me, like they’d forgotten Carmen and I were still standing there.

A lifetime of being told by family, friends, and complete strangers that Carmen and I looked so alike meant I could tell at a glance that these two were twins, just like my sister and I. Kegan had the same blond curls, elegant cheekbones, and the same unusually green eyes.

Surely they weren’t both wearing color contacts?

“You need a hospital,” I stated the obvious.

“No… no hospitals,” Kegan muttered as he shook his head. Then he tipped his head back against the brick wall and gritted his teeth as he pressed down harder on the wound at his side.

There was only so long he could keep applying pressure. He needed to get it cleaned and sutured.

“But--” Carmen began, but he cut her off with narrowed eyes.

“Who are you?”

“Hey, don’t talk to her that way,” I said as I scowled at him.

Injured or not, he didn’t have the right to be an ass to my sister. She’d just helped save him, for one thing.

“No, I mean, who are you?” Kegan fixed his green eyes on me.

I frowned. “Leo Rivera. She’s my sister, Carmen.”

Whatever answer he’d expected, that hadn’t been it.

“I don’t know those names,” he said before he glanced at his sister, who shook her head.

“Of course you don’t,” I said. “They’re our names, and we’ve never met. Now, you need to get yourself to a hospital, dude.”

Maybe I’d been wrong about the blood loss. The way he was talking, he already sounded kind of loopy.

“No hospitals,” Kegan repeated and shook his head again.

He was getting agitated now, and I moved in front of Carmen slightly on instinct. He was injured, sure, but he was a stranger, and I was understanding less and less about this situation by the second. The noise that had been contained until we’d left the bar, the way I hadn’t immediately seen the fight even though I’d been trained to notice that kind of thing automatically, those men’s armbands, these blonds’ impossibly green eyes, none of it was adding up to anything that made sense.

The woman saw me move in front of Carmen and did the same thing with Kegan. She was shorter than me, shorter than Carmen, too, but there was a ferocity in her eyes I could respect.

Admire, even.

“Leo Rivera,” she said, like she was tasting the sound of my name in her mouth. “How are you able to see me?”