by Declan Finn
Kalsey winced. “Yes, Madam President, I was.”
“And did you join forces with him?”
Kalsey swallowed, and Amanda kept from smiling. He was probably thinking about the holy water poisoning. When Amanda saw the Vatican ninja poison Kalsey, the ninja explained that the holy water was encapsulated in nanocapsules that required a secondary agent to unlock them, and flood Kalsey’s system with holy water—something that would be done if Amanda or the ninjas had heard about any alliance between him and Mikhail.
Kalsey, probably thinking about all of that, said, “No.”
Though if he is telling the truth, Amanda thought, who can tell?
“Was this due to the threat of retaliation by Amanda and her human?” the President asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The President looked at him for a long moment, as if wondering if she should believe him. “In that case, I think that Amanda’s human has merely adapted himself well to the long-term planning that we vampires take for granted. Now, if there is no other discussion on the topic, I suggest a fifteen-minute recess. Do I have a second?”
Amanda raised her hand. Jennifer Bosley nodded at her. “Motion carried.” She looked to Amanda. “Miss Colt, before you leave… ”
She reached down, grabbed a pen, and quickly scribbled down a note. She folded it neatly, then ran a letter opener through it.
Then she threw the letter opener at Amanda’s head.
Chapter 3: Sitting Targets
New York City, April 26th (4:00 am)
“Of course, vampires can dodge throwing knives, and it was made of metal, so it could not hurt me,” Amanda explained in the rectory sitting room.
The sitting room was getting crowded. Rodgers sat at the table between Marco and Amanda, while several of the ninjas stood at the other side, drinking from Starbucks mugs bigger than their fists.
Marco Catalano winced at the whole letter opener idea. He knew that she could have, and did, dodge it. But still… “Nice to know she’s so confident of your abilities,” he drawled. He leaned back in the wooden chair, and wondered why they couldn’t have this meeting in his family’s brownstone only a few miles away.
Answer: because the Vatican Ninjas in the sitting room would probably not go over well.
Marco tried not to sigh. He was blond, well built, and moved like a dancer, but social graces were not where his instincts were located. No, that’s more like gutting people.
Marco tried to get back on track, and looked to the priest. Father Rodgers, a black priest who was God-knew how old, was the local contact on all things anti-vampire. “Did she get away clean?”
The priest smiled. “Of course,” he said in a booming voice that was trained before churches had microphones. “Hendershot and his men had her covered in the hall, and on the way back. If anyone tried to hurt Amanda, we would be ready for them.”
Marco nodded. Hendershot of the Swiss Guard was a humorless Vatican Ninja—the Roman Catholic anti-vampire squad that had been around for longer than Marco wanted to think about. Rodgers was the local contact, and presumably in charge, though Marco had never asked for the exact arrangement of the hierarchy. He looked back to Amanda, “So, the letter?”
Amanda handed it to him. The note read:
Miss Colt,
Obviously, you do not know what depths of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, you and your human—if you did, you would never have taken on Mikhail in the first place.
Do not think that this verdict has actually gotten you off. Kalsey is a pig. Lynch steered you both in the right direction. And do not think that we don’t know about the other two bars Marco destroyed that evening. We do. However, those bar owners are so deep in the mire that they wouldn’t dare protest openly. You were lucky there. You are equally fortunate that you acquitted yourself well in the hall. Otherwise, we would have been forced to hang you, whether we wanted to or not. And that was not metaphorical; we would have hung you from a meat hook on a bell tower and waited for morning.
You may or may not have surmised from the reaction amongst the crowd that Mikhail was not alone. He was the low man on the food chain, and we’re too worried about what’s at the top of the pole to go against them directly. However, now that they have lost their primary recruiter, you can rest assured that the others will come and find you.
Good luck.
Lady Jennifer Bosley
President, NYC Vampires Association
“Well, we had theorized that Mikhail had been part of a bigger organization,” Marco said, handing it to the priest, “but that clinches it.”
“Da,” Amanda agreed, “but if Mikhail was head of their human resources and recruitment, what does rest of command structure contain?”
Marco smiled at the dropped “the”s in Amanda’s speech. Despite being a vampire for over 80 years, she still occasionally reverted to the traditional Russian sentence structure, which had no articles, making her sometimes sound like a villain in Rocky and Bullwinkle.
“Not to mention,” Rodgers added, “who needs that many vampires?” He finished reading the letter and put it down. “Mikhail was around for centuries, making nests upon nests.”
“Sounds like an army,” Marco said. “And let’s face it, as time goes on, I’m sure that Mikhail’s recruiting would have gotten more vigorous, if only because of modern technology.”
Amanda nodded. “Da. Not every vampire can regulate their heartbeat, respiration, and pulse. Many do not even try, making them all, effectively, room temperature. Any thermal scope could spot them instantly.”
“Not to mention incendiary rounds,” Marco added. “And automatic arrow-shooters. And if someone else pulls our trick with the forty-gallon drum of holy water and the fire hose, a war of evil vampires versus people would be very, very short.”
Rodgers laughed. “True. It would be hard for an army of good vampires to wage full-scale war on the land of the living. That would undermine the ’good’ in their description.”
Marco nodded. As much as he thought the phrase “good vampire” was as strange and as oxymoronic as “good lawyer,” Marco had figured out how it worked. As a type of “post-resurrection,” vampirism closely intertwined the soul of the vampire with the body; the more actions, good or bad, the more fully formed the soul, and the body, would become. A sinful life, filled with vice and just plain evil, would mar the vampire’s body, as well as the soul. While the vampire would travel further and further along the scale of power, it would do the same along the scale of evil. The vampire would gain power, but become more restricted in the ability to move—crosses, churches, and the lack of an invitation into a private domicile would be off limits.
Amanda, on the other hand, went to church weekly, sometimes daily, and went through the rosary routinely.
It was one of the many things he loved about her.
Amanda looked to Rodgers and asked, “Have you ever heard of the Council?”
Rodgers blinked behind his coke-bottle glasses. “Rumors, mostly.”
Marco raised a finger. “Council? Any Council in particular?”
Amanda and the priest exchanged a glance. Rodgers spoke first. “You haven’t run into a master vampire yet, have you?”
“He hasn’t,” Amanda answered for him.
Marco’s amused little smile flickered. “If Mikhail the Bear wasn’t a master vampire, then what the hell is one?”
“Think the original Dracula,” Rodgers answered. “Only Mister Stoker made it look easier than it really is.”
Marco winced. “Ouch.”
Amanda nodded. “The council is supposed to be something that even master vampires answer to. Something like that could intimidate the local Vampires Association, and could be something Mikhail could work for.” She frowned. “If there were any evidence to prove that it ever existed.”
Marco shrugged. “True. Anyway, one thing at a time. Your meeting at least gets us off the hook for laying waste to Kalsey’s place. I’m not sure if we
’re going to be safe from his retribution, but if he could have taken us out on his own, he would have, but I don’t think he’d want to mess with the Vatican Ninjas.”
“He also does not know our forces,” Amanda said. “Not to mention that Mikhail was killed on your doorstep. No one knows what level of force we brought to bear, nor do they know how he died.”
Marco nodded. “I listened to the recording the ninjas made of the meeting. I noticed that you didn’t mention how he was taken out. Good idea.”
Amanda gave him a smile that made his heart melt. “I thought it would be prudent to let them think that we killed him ourselves.”
Marco sighed, mostly to himself. He didn’t want to think about what had happened last week, when Mikhail beat him half to death at his own front door. That wasn’t the bad part.
The bad part was that Mikhail had been assassinated—and not by anyone allied to Marco and Amanda. Mikhail himself had been beaten—his arm had been cut off, a stake rammed into his spine. Mikhail had been crippled, helpless, and totally at their mercy. If Marco had his way, Mikhail would have spent what little remained of his short life suffering through water torture; in this case, it meant holy water being injected into Mikhail’s veins a few units at a time.
Not only would Mikhail have suffered, he would have talked. Eventually. Marco would have taken his time, and he would have made the vampire tell him everything. Then someone had killed him to prevent that. Amanda had given chase, but the creature who killed Mikhail had gotten away, only after throwing Amanda off a roof.
That was also something Marco didn’t want to think about too much.
“I do not think there is any more that we can do,” Amanda said. “We have solved one immediate problem, and unless we can find a way to solve the root of it, we would merely be floundering in the dark.”
Marco grunted. “True. I hate it, but it’s true. Even if it does make us a stationary target.”
“You could make it harder on them,” Rodgers suggested.
Amanda and Marco looked right at him. “How so?” Marco asked.
“Da. Please explain,” Amanda concurred.
“Didn’t you have an offer lately to go out to San Francisco?” the priest asked.
“That’s true,” Marco told him. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“If the two of you are in two different places, that might encourage them to wait until you’re both together again,” the priest said. “If one of you falls, the other will be put on notice, and considering what happened the last time, the last thing they’d want to do is face you while you are both prepared.”
The two of them went quiet, and the priest waited only a beat before he stood. “I’m going to make some more tea. I think you two need some time to discuss this.”
Rodgers left, and the two of them barely noticed.
When Amanda and Marco had faced down Mikhail the Bear’s New York army of vampires, they had brought in a new element: Merle Kraft, government expert on “the strange.” However, while he had been helpful, he had also figured on there being a problem in his near future: the problem of vampires entering into his neighborhood. When Kraft had first come to New York, he had been investigating the murder of an FBI agent, and he wanted to look deeper into the matter.
He had found vampires, Amanda, and Marco.
Merle had made Marco an offer to go to San Francisco, and organize a local anti-vampire squad so Merle could go off and do his “real job,” however one could define “real.” Merle Kraft had even offered Marco an all-expense paid trip to the University of San Francisco, so Marco could finish his Physician Assistant agree.
“You said you wanted to go,” Amanda told Marco.
Marco’s smile flickered. “I was beaten half to death at the time. You shouldn’t take anything I say at face value.”
“That is no denial,” Amanda told him.
Marco’s smile flickered again. He had no idea what to say to Amanda. He couldn’t tell her what he was thinking, and what he was feeling…that was utterly and completely off-limits. He had secrets of his own…one, really.
Marco blinked. Going to California, this time last year, would have meant nothing to him. And on what was essentially a government grant? Hell yes. It wasn’t like people would miss him. The gangs he ran? They were more afraid of him than anything else. His father always wanted him to get out more. There was nothing in the entire world that would keep him from going to California. Not one damn thing…
Then there was Amanda.
Amanda who he couldn’t figure out. Who he couldn’t decide what to do with. Who he couldn’t even think about without his brain becoming jammed up. He didn’t know what he wanted from her, and even worse, she could have wanted something from him, something he couldn’t give …
“By the way, Amanda, I like killing people. That’s not a problem for you, is it? Even though you drink blood to survive and don’t kill anyone, while I’d happily slaughter some people just to improve the gene pool.”
Marco knew what was in his head. He was a predator. At the very end, that was what had driven Mikhail the vampire out of his head and saved his life. It was a part of him he was comfortable with, that he enjoyed, and didn’t know if he could change.
“Yeah,” he said. Actually telling her the truth? That was out of the question. “It’s not a denial. Let’s face it, New York is relatively secure. Merle needs all the help he can get, and these guys are willing to get me away from the schmucks at NYScrew.”
Marco smiled, and tried to be as genuine as possible, before she picked up on any signs of deceit. “But, don’t worry,” he said, his smile becoming pained. “We’ll still be friends.”
His words were killing him before he even said them.
* * * *
Marco’s words were killing Amanda, even though she was already dead.
Then again, they had been killing her since she first discovered she was in love with him. One of their first conversations had Marco happily agreeing to being “just friends.” Marco had even said she was beautiful, and lovely, and he found her attractive… and of course, they would just be friends. It had been a pattern he was familiar with all his life, apparently. He had skipped the heartbreak and went straight for the friendship, never expecting or trying for more. And that was before he knew she was a vampire.
Now what could she do?
“Yes,” she said, “we will always be friends. I am not going anywhere.”
Marco gave her one of his easy shrugs. “Yes, but I may be.” He reached out and took her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “But no matter where I am, you give me a call, I will come running. And I will kill anyone who gets in my way. ”
Amanda gave him a little smile, and returned the hand squeeze. She cherished the contact, and resisted the urge to pull him closer and embrace him. His hands were surprisingly soft for all the fighting he did, and even a few degrees warmer than her own hand.
Amanda stroked her thumb along the back of his hand. “That’s sweet. I think. Do you want to go?” she asked, hoping to God that he said no.
Marco gave another little shrug, and leaned back, not releasing her yet. “He seems to think I’m needed there. Though I don’t know if I’m the one he’s gonna need. It’ll be up to him. I guess I should make preparations just in case.” He chuckled. “Don’t worry, darling, you won’t get rid of me quite that easily. Not yet, anyhow. The short version is—I have no idea.”
Amanda furrowed her brows. “How can you say so? Merle has offered you an all-expenses-paid scholarship for the rest of your days in college. You can get a Master’s in Physician Assistant without spending a dime. Why would you give up all that?”
Marco maintained his grip, and stroked her fingers with his thumb… like she had been doing with his hand. “I’m used to New York. It has everything I’ve ever loved.”
Amanda’s heart stopped. Literally. She could usually set it to automatically beat, and keep all of her vital or
gans still viable. But, sometimes, there were little moments that could make her forget… and those events lately all seem to be around Marco.
“After all,” Marco continued, “it’s not like they’re going to have sidewalk hotdog vendors in San Francisco.”
Amanda had to laugh at that one. “Marco, of all the things to say, really?”
Marco’s little smile flickered. She couldn’t tell if it flickered up or down, really. “Well, it was one of the first things that came to mind. Ah well. Whatever do you think Merle Kraft would do without us?”
Chapter 4: Welcome to San Francisco
San Francisco, April 27th
If anyone were to know the number of government operations that were actually taken from television, Merle Kraft was fairly certain that most of the general populous would be worried.
Take, for example, the USS Enterprise, a space shuttle named after the Enterprise of Star Trek fame in the 1960s. The first nuclear submarine was named after the Nautilus, from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
As for Merle’s subsection of government work, there wasn’t much of a name. In fact, the name kept changing every few years.
At the moment, Merle’s code name was Initiative, named after a government project on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
Sometimes, I hate government work, he thought.
Merle sighed. Generally, he worked with anyone with a problem. He’d hung around Special Forces, the FBI, and Homeland Security, which wasn’t bad for a 5’5” Eurasian with midnight blue eyes.
However, as he got back to his place in San Francisco, Merle came to the conclusion that he needed a slightly bigger budget …
Not to mention a flamethrower, multiple squirt guns, and enough medieval weaponry to launch a crusade.
Of course, his handlers were no help. Everybody above him in the chain of command were dead silent on the problem. From the moment he learned that vampires were real until he got off the plane in San Francisco, every last text and email he had fired off into the government ethernet had been met with silence.
