Honor at Stake (Love at First Bite Book 1)

by Declan Finn

  “I promise, you can work on your tan in the morning.”

  He held up his hands, palms towards him. “Like I ever tanned well in the first place.”

  “This is true. But you have an option there.”

  Marco stood, dusted himself off, and stuck his hands in his pockets. He studied Amanda for a long moment, and frowned thoughtfully. “You have any thoughts on getting us the hell down from here?”

  Amanda nodded, stepped forward, and then hugged him. He was about to comment when he saw the world blur, and felt himself falling, as though from one landing to the floor a few steps below him. It took a split second, but they were back on the street.

  Marco blinked. “You should be grateful that this area has yet to catch up to a video camera on every corner.”

  “They do not catch me,” she said into his chest. “I am too fast for them.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She nodded, again while hugging him. She could feel his warmth, his solid body. He was so very real. So much alive. She could feel his heart beat against her cheek, the nice, steady rhythm.

  His amused smile turned wry. “Either we should each take a step back, or we should start making out. I'm up for either.”

  Amanda not only released him, but she burst back so fast, she was nearly two meters away in an eye blink. She would have blushed if she didn't have such tight control over her own circulatory system.

  He glanced at her for a long moment, and then he sighed. His amused smile turned tired. “May I make a suggestion? I'm going to go home, and get some sleep. I don't think you're going to want to have this conversation right now with me half cranky, and late getting home. If I'm too much later, my parents will suspect that we're actually dating. I wouldn't want them to get the wrong idea. Neither would you, trust me.”

  She nodded slowly. “We will talk tomorrow then.”

  “Do I have to wait for the evening, or are you up in the morning?”

  She allowed herself a smile. “Do not sleep too late. You may want to have breakfast first. Be careful about patting, hitting, or slapping anyone on the back. You might jar something.”

  He raised a brow. “Really? This should be interesting.”

  “Da. It should.”

  Marco was about to turn, but paused, keeping an eye on her. “By the way—you didn't let me win in all those fencing matches, did you?”

  “That is what you are worried about? I am a vampire, who has bitten you, yet you worry about whether I let you win?”

  “I worry about little,” Marco answered. “We would need to refight every duel we ever had.”

  She shook her head, a smile tugging at her lips. “I don't let anyone win. Ever. We had draws. You are good.”

  Marco's eyes flashed wildly, and he gave her a broad, almost manic grin. “Oh, Miss Amanda Colt, I am very good.”

  * * * *

  As Marco Catalano drove home, he replayed the last conversation with Amanda in his head. It felt all wrong.

  When he had stared into her eyes, he had noted faint streaks of mascara down her cheeks. The tracks were only visible because she hugged him so close after jumping off the roof. She apparently spent some time cleaning it off, but she hadn't gotten all of it.

  The odd thing, in retrospect, was she was quite warm for a vampire. He had been acutely aware of several sensations: her feel, her scent, all of which were comfortably close—though in that situation, enjoying her proximity would have been a really, bad, idea.

  Then when he suggested she should make out or step away…

  Damn, I've never seen anyone step away so fast at the hint of a romantic suggestion. Maybe that's why she didn't want to eat me. I even repel vampires. Great. How else could I depress myself this evening?

  Yet, he still smiled.

  Marco pulled up to a stop light, and internally winced. Hey, Marco, getting depressed is easy. I could ask how I feel about Amanda. Did I leap to “let's be friends” so I could protect her from me, or that I could protect myself from the same heartbreak Lily gave me?

  He closed his eyes tightly, and tried not to think about that evening eight months ago. The true horror of it had not come with the grimy knife, or with the blood, or the gore. Those had only lasted minutes. The weeks after, however; that was a true horror show. Those were weeks he would give nearly anything to forget.

  There was a honk behind him. Marco needed to start moving. The light was green.

  Marco made it home, to the brownstone where his family resided, and moved inside. He was surprised at the light on in the living room.

  Doctor Robert Catalano was slender, stopping a few pounds before “thin” could settle in. His short hair had once been a solid black, but was now heavily salted. His features were sharp, and the only hint of the Italian in him was his generally dark coloring—coloring which had skipped Marco entirely. “It's not yet midnight, you sure you're not early?”

  “You'd be surprised,” Marco answered his father.

  The doctor closed his book and patiently waited for his son to elaborate on the evening.

  Marco stood there and shrugged. “It went well.” Marco couldn't think of anything else to add to that really, except one phrase that would encapsulate the evening. “But we're just friends.”

  “Oh, that phrase,” the doctor sighed. “Okay. Sorry. High school and no dating I can understand. College, though?”

  Marco grimaced. “Dad, I did date, remember? Walesia? Lily? Raquel?”

  Robert leveled a gaze at him filled with unleashed sarcasm. “One dumped you when you wouldn't sleep with her. Another tried to slip you something so that you would. Then that thing with Lily…”

  Marco shook his head, trying not to think about it. “She couldn't handle it, Dad, that's all. Making her put up with it would have been—”

  “At least a courtesy,” his father interrupted. “I'm assuming it wasn't a walk in the park for you either.”

  Marco sighed. “It's over, I've moved on. Now, may I ask a question?”

  “Sure, ask away.”

  Wow, this is going to be such a jump in conversation, it's not even going to be funny. “You have any thoughts on vampires?”

  Doctor Catalano didn't even blink. “Rabies.”

  “Rabies?”

  “Think about it,” the doctor said, slipping into lecture mode. “The symptoms: hydrophobia, fear of water, holy or otherwise. The dislike of bright lights, which would include the sun and the reflected glare of a mirror. They also tend to bite, and I think strong odors, like garlic, hit them hard.”

  Marco nodded. That at least all made a certain kind of sense. “And the crosses? The stakes?”

  “Religious artifacts have been dragged into superstition forever. Stakes were supposed to pin them in their graves, but, really, if you ram something through anybody's heart, they'll stay dead. The ability to transform, their advanced speed and strength get thrown in as part of any other fairy tale. Why the curiosity? You usually dislike vampire tales because of how poorly they stay coherent.”

  Marco shrugged. “It just came up tonight, that's all.”

  Robert Catalano smiled broadly. “So, no biting was involved?”

  Marco did his best to blush. He thought it worked. “There may have been.”

  “Just friends, huh?”

  “Believe it or not, yes.”

  “Well, why don't you bring this 'just friend' around sometime?”

  “Be happy to,” Marco said with a straight face. As long as she doesn't eat me in the morning.

  * * * *

  Amanda Colt walked into her apartment and sighed.

  Why him? Decades of being alone without much in the way of any company, all of the people in her path over the years, she got someone who, well, someone who was not normal, whatever normal was supposed to be. No matter how she fed, she was still a predator. He still smelled like food. As he noted, he was a genius, he would have some sense of that.

  Hell, he saw Amanda eating her
attacker.

  A sociopath, he said. Normally, a human predator. Somehow, he didn't seem the type. A hunter? A stalker of people? No, that was her job.

  Amanda thought of Marco and wondered, What will morning bring; his friendship or his enmity? Which would be worse?

  If he saw her as his enemy, he seemed the type to hold a grudge. He knew where she lived. He knew where she went with her evenings. He knew enough to be deadly. If he turned his single mindedness to her destruction, she would need a backup plan. She had one for years, but maybe a new one would be required to deal with Marco Catalano.

  Chapter Five: Vampires and Philosophy

  November 5th

  At ten the next morning, Marco stood at the bottom step leading into Amanda's apartment building. She was on the east side of Manhattan, in the mid-70s. She was so far east that the next stop was York Avenue, and right after that was the East River.

  Marco smoothed down his shirt, feeling the cross from the rosary around his neck, and gliding his fingers along the butt of a knife handle—a wooden knife he had quickly modified that morning after breakfast. It had originally been a simple letter opener, a bit of sharpening did wonders.

  He stood there, pondering what he should do next. Suggest they have this talk inside of a church? Nah, that would be tacky, and since she didn't eat him last night, or anytime before then, it would be a serious overreaction.

  Then again, it's not like we were dealing honestly before. If this doesn't go well, I will need a backup plan.

  The door to the apartment building opened. Amanda Colt stood there, her red-gold hair in a ponytail. “Hello.”

  He gave her a little finger wave. “Hi.”

  “Would you like to come in?”

  “I'm good here,” Marco said, “in the daylight.”

  She smiled slightly. “Sunlight” was such a flexible term in the city – especially since her street was narrow enough that parked cars turned it into a one-way road, and the buildings across from her apartment made it a valley of shadow. “You are so certain you would be safe?”

  “I rarely see you before sundown on sunny days,” Marco stated in a manner that reminded her of Sherlock Holmes, “and usually under moderate cloud cover. That may or may not include shade from buildings. I would have thought of it sooner if I thought that 'vampire' was an option.”

  “For a time, I thought that of you as well. I mean that you were a vampire.”

  “Really? You can't tell the difference?”

  “There is always the possibility that you are older than you look, and could camouflage it. It is not impossible. And you felt so much older. It is difficult when I smell you as possible food, but it feels like I should know you as one of my own.”

  “Well, I guess being borderline medieval has some advantages. But, where are my manners?” He offered her his hand to shake, she took it.

  She looked down, and saw that Marco had palmed a crucifix, and now their hands both covered it. She looked back at his face, and his only reaction was to arch a brow. He withdrew his hand, tucked the cross away, and stepped across the apartment building threshold.

  “Now, I think,” Marco stated, “we should have a serious talk.”

  * * * *

  Marco entered the apartment first this time, not hesitating, and went straight to the wall of her “family heirlooms” behind the television. The entire apartment seemed like a new entity, now that he knew just a little more about her background. Viewing the room with new eyes drew him to those first.

  He stood next to that part of the wall like a showgirl on a game show and waved at the collection. “Let me guess, family heirlooms that you yourself collected?”

  Amanda nodded, only mildly apprehensive over where this was going.

  He motioned around the apartment itself. “You 'have money.' Investments are good, obviously, when you're investing for a long haul of at least a few decades. What did you do? Get in on the ground floor of IBM? Apple? Microsoft?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “AT&T as well, before it was broken up.”

  That means she had stock in the ground floor of most national phone companies. Yeesh. “You have no family remaining because the rest weren't vampires, I assume. That makes sense. You are not affected by crosses, so I'm concluding that there's a loophole in there somewhere.”

  “Are you done?” she asked.

  Marco frowned looked around, thought a moment, then nodded.

  “Then sit.”

  Marco took up a position on the couch, with Amanda taking the armchair. “You know St. Thomas Aquinas? Of course you do. You’ve referenced him before.”

  “Narrow that down a little, would you? He's only written about a dozen feet of shelf space worth of books, and that's with the small-print edition.”

  “His thoughts on Christ after He died?”

  Marco took a moment to think it over. “Oh, you mean Aquinas on the effects of resurrection on the body of Jesus?” he asked, as though he had recollected a famous sports game, or a popular black-and-white film. “I know of it. Aquinas had a theory that Adam and Eve would have had total control over their physical form. Aquinas even patterned what Jesus must have been like post-resurrection. Essentially, after Jesus” —he bowed his head slightly at the name— “Himself came back from the dead, He could rearrange the molecules of His body and walk through the spaces between molecules of a wall, disappear into thin air…”

  He drifted off slightly, pondering the ramifications of such abilities in relation to Amanda's living impairment.

  “If they could do that, maybe they would be able to turn into mist or a bat, a dog perhaps?”

  “You understand. After resurrection, souls are linked with bodies, so there is such tight control, at least in theory. With us, with vampires, it is similar. Imagine vampires as an imperfect after-death living.” She paused and chuckled, shaking her head. “We did not quite die, but we are not quite alive. We have elements of resurrection. We have certain abilities. A vampire begins first as a blank slate, and we choose how we act from then on. Think of it like the dark side. Our actions become part of us. Literally.”

  Marco thought through the implications. “No matter how badly you screw up, the body and soul will stay united. So, actions which affect your soul impacts your body as well.”

  She nodded. “Sin affects us vampires on a physical level.”

  “It affects normal people too. Gluttony makes us fat, wrath does things to blood pressure, lust–”

  Amanda held up a hand to stop him. “Let me rephrase. Our bodies are the picture of Dorian Gray—only the stains of all our sins appear on our bodies, as well as our souls. God purges sin. For those who have committed large, egregious, unrepentant sins…let’s just say it does not go together well with religious artifacts. With venial sins, however, mixed with contrition, religious artifacts do not have an effect on us that we can feel.”

  Marco put up his hands in a T formation, for a time out. “Okay, hold on, let me process this. The more actions you commit, good or bad, the more you are formed as a vampire. These actions dictate the kind of vampire you are, both in terms of looks, power, abilities, and whether or not you can get fried by a crucifix. The better or worse you become–the more you are formed–the closer your souls become linked to your bodies. The more good or ill you commit, the more powerful you become, one way or another.”

  She nodded. “If I were evil, and ate someone on purpose, your rosary against my skin would not be pretty, but I would still be stronger than when I first became a vampire. Press it on the skin of some vampires for three seconds, there’s scarring. Press it on them for nine seconds, they scar all over. Twelve seconds, you are facing a pile of ash.”

  “Just crosses?”

  A smile flickered across her face. “He uses anything, and I mean anything—wafers, crosses, Torahs. He made the world, sustains it and sets rules, and meddles. Not a lot, just enough.”

  Marco frowned, trying to connect the puzzle pieces about
the more secular rules. The sunlight was still effective, apparently, for holding back vampires. If they were an “imperfect resurrection,” though, what would kill them?

  “So, I’m guessing everything I know about vampires is wrong?”

  Amanda shook her head. “No, everything you know about evil vampires is right, for the more demonic vampires, shall we say? They react to all the same things that Dracula the novel character reacts to. God apparently set rules to nature, and vampires, though unnatural, have similar rules. The more evil a vampire commits, the more mobility he sacrifices for the power. An evil vampire needs to be invited in, cannot be around religious artifacts, and becomes more physically deformed the deeper they go into sin.”

  “Huh,” Marco muttered. “Evil vampire. Always thought that was redundant, like ‘evil lawyer.’ So, the ‘good’ vampires are therefore immortal?”

  “Not quite. We can be killed by starvation, decapitation, dismemberment, fire, as well as sunlight and wooden stakes to the heart.” She shrugged slightly. “As I said, we are imperfect resurrections. Though, technically, you could say that it is imperfect death. For blood, however, all we need is a pint a day, sometimes less, and blood banks are public spaces, after all.”

  “If all you need is a pint a day…?” Marco deliberately trailed off, hoping she would fill in the blanks of questions he didn't want to try asking.

  “Power goes to some heads, and some have seen too many vampire flicks and they go a little crazy,” she answered, pronouncing the word “cray-zee.” She crossed her legs and stretched out like a cat, arching her back and thrusting her chest out a bit before relaxing. “Think serial killers: they are formed by their actions, and choices. Da, some were abused as children, but they choose to deal with it by killing. True with vampires, but more so. Those who were afraid to kill in life because of the consequences no longer fear them. Some choose morality, and some choose Lord of the Flies, where society and morality do not apply.”

  “Of course,” Marco said with enough sarcasm to melt glass. “I should probably ask, and now is a little late to be asking: What about mind control and such? Telepathy?”