Honor at Stake (Love at First Bite Book 1)

by Declan Finn

  Marco moved to assist, his eyes locked on the other vampires. As he passed the hunched-over Nissin, Marco casually stabbed down into his back, aiming for the spinal cord.

  You might be all sorts of things, but try moving without a nervous system, he thought as he kept moving.

  Another female vampire, still knocked on the floor after Amanda's second whirl around the car, spotted Marco. Her eyes dropped to his squirt gun. She pushed to her feet, and lunged.

  Marco saw the move, and didn't even hesitate as he sidestepped, bringing his right arm up in a clothesline as the vampire leapt for him.

  The vampire only noted Marco's move when she had already committed to the leap. Her confusion about trying to clothesline a vampire was brief – instead of a spear-hand ending the straight arm, it was a fist wrapped around the stake. The vampire only noticed it when she slammed herself upon it.

  Marco chuckled at the brief look of shock on her face before she turned to dust.

  Amanda pulled two stakes out from holsters in her coat. She twisted to stab out with the right, across her body, then twisted the other way, stabbing with her left, each stab an instant kill. A third enemy leapt for her as she finished her second stab. Amanda countered with a kick to the knee, bringing him low, before slashing his jugular, then his carotid, and finally stabbing him in the heart through the back.

  Amanda turned to the leader, whose eyes had been corroded by the holy water. “We should interrogate him.”

  “This should be fun.”

  The vampire chuckled, reached into his pocket, and pulled out what looked like a pocket watch. Marco‘s eyes widened, and he leapt forward.

  The leader of the group had swallowed the contents of the “watch,” and was already choking when Marco slammed into him.

  Marco grimaced and pushed off of the vampire. “Ignore him, he's already dead.”

  Amanda leaned over and picked up the “watch.”

  “Ug. It‘s actually a pyx.”

  Marco took it from her hand as she offered it to him to see. “A container for carrying communion wafers? He used communion as a suicide pill?”

  Marco dropped the pyx and grabbed Nissin by the collar with one hand, and held the squirt gun in his ear with the other. He pulled Nissin up off the floor, the damage to his spine causing him to scream. Marco jammed the squirt gun in so Nissin would pay attention. “Want to tell me what you've been doing with your afterlife, Nissin? Or would you just like me to leave you on the tracks for the next train to come by?”

  Nissin laughed; a rasping, gurgling thing that Marco couldn't decipher. “You're all going to die. Every last one of you.”

  Marco frowned. He didn't even need the threat to be spelled out. Nissin had last been seen–alive–threatening revenge on, well, almost everybody in Marco's immediate sphere of influence. He glanced at Amanda. “I think I know who suggested that the vampires start eating my gang members.”

  Nissin gurgled again. “They know everything about you. They know who you are. Where you live. Who…you…love…ha!”

  Marco stared at him with empty eyes, and then snarled. With a roar, he slammed Nissin to the ground, stood, and stomped on the damaged spine. Marco kept stomping, and Nissin kept screaming. The stake twisted in his spine, and in his guts, every time Marco hit him. After twenty seconds of this, Marco dropped to one knee, pulled out another bottle of holy water and snarled.

  “You want to hurt me, sucker? Try this.” Marco twisted the cap off, then stuck the bottleneck into Nissin's mouth, and poured the holy water down his throat.

  When Nissin disintegrated, Marco rose. He looked to Amanda and said, “We're on the wrong train.”

  “Why?”

  “Nissin was with the lizards about five minutes before they threw his sorry ass out of the group. He can say that he told the vampires whatever he likes, but he knows damn little about me. In fact, there's only one thing he could have told about me that these vampires wouldn't be able to find out themselves.”

  Amanda had a bad feeling. “What would that be?”

  Marco merely stared at Amanda for a long moment. “The person he thinks I love. There's only one person he ever knew about. They're going to kill Lily.”

  Chapter Twelve: Meeting the Ex

  “Why Lily?”

  “To start with, Nissin was an idiot, and being a vampire didn't up his IQ any. Back when he was with the gangs, he saw Lily around me all the time. He hasn't seen me since. Therefore, she's the only candidate he could possibly know of.”

  Amanda studied Marco closely. “Are there any others?”

  “Of course,” he said in a complete deadpan, “because I only hang out with the most beautiful women in the entire city.”

  Amanda paused, uncertain if that was a compliment. In her experience, she was the only person he was friends with, as well as the only woman.

  “You're going to have to bite me,” he told her.

  Amanda Colt looked away from the train door. She had been posed in front of it like a runner about to go into a sprint. She was so intently focused on the doors, she hadn't heard Marco's statement, despite her advanced hearing.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  “I said that you're going to have to bite me. I've done the math, but I can't predict how many people they'll send to get her. I can't run fast enough to match your speed, and if they slow you down enough, this train ride is for nothing.”

  “This assumes they have sent anyone yet.”

  “Oh, Nissin was already bragging about it. If they're already bragging, they've probably already started their evil plan. I would at least send two people if it's a simple assassination, but there could be five of them in a standard meal formation.”

  “Meal formation?”

  “Given the way they've been attacking, do you have a better way to phrase it?”

  Amanda opened her mouth, ready to come up with an entire list of better ways to phrase it, but simply sighed, and shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed, more tired than anything else. “The annoying thing is, I don't even like her. But knowing me shouldn't be a capital offense.”

  Amanda straightened up, and strode over to him. She still made it look like a sashay even though she was being as straightforward as possible about it. “I would not like you to suffer too much blood loss, Marco, so I will not drink. Da?”

  “Sure.”

  Marco stepped forward, and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. Had anyone asked him, he would have said that it was so Amanda could easily stabilize and steady him while she bit him. She wrapped her arms around him, and she would have said something similar.

  Marco cocked his head to one side, exposing his neck to her.

  Amanda's lips first touched his neck, like a light kiss. Then her fangs came out, and quickly penetrated his skin, driving directly into the carotid artery. The first time she did this, she rushed, and she was in a near frenzy. Now, with only a few drops of his blood, his warmth filled her. He was good and solid against her; she enjoyed that feeling, a sensation that she had been without for decades, until him. He wouldn't run from her, wouldn't try to kill her. He was there, and he was hers, for as long as they could stand each other. His scent was all around her, the scent of a friend, or of something more. The smell of home.

  Marco felt a pinch at his neck, like someone sticking a needle into him at the blood bank. Like at the blood bank, the pain faded quickly; the only sensation he was really aware of was Amanda's lips against his skin, sending electrical currents up and down his body. Every few seconds, the tip of Amanda's tongue went along his neck; the rational part of Marco's brain told him she was merely providing more saliva, and thus more of the vampire virus. There was a part of him, somewhere mid-thorax, that didn't care, but pulled at him to look at it as something more. The feel of her body against his…was more than he could think about right now.

  Then the vampire virus hit him. What little pain there now faded completely into the b
ackground, and he could feel her strength flow into him. He could even more acutely feel her body against his.

  They both stayed there for a long time, neither one wanting to break apart. When Amanda finally pulled away, she gave his neck a final lick…to seal the wounds closed, of course. Still in the grip of the afterglow, they stared at each other.

  Then they noticed that the train was slowing.

  Amanda Colt didn't wait for the doors to open before she left the train–the moment the train platform was in sight, she pried the door open with her fingers and was out the door. The train hadn't even slowed to a stop yet.

  * * * *

  Marco had given her Lily's Astoria address, and told her to go ahead without him. Even with the vampire strain giving him strength, he couldn't move as fast as she could.

  The house was one in a standard row of brown-brick buildings in Queens. The homes were all interlinked for blocks at a time, looking more like apartment buildings than one-family homes. The front stairs were shared by every two front doors, creating a top landing that was almost a small patio.

  Within a minute of coming up from the subway, Amanda was at the front door of Lily's house. She rang the doorbell, then sat on the low wall beside the door, keeping one eye on the street and one eye on the door.

  The door opened slightly, then all way. The bouncy cheerleader looked at Amanda and said, “What do you want?”

  “Marco has made some enemies.”

  “I'm, like, so shocked.”

  Amanda's eyes narrowed at the dripping sarcasm. How could Marco have ever had anything to do with this fickle little fool?

  “He believes they might be coming to do you harm.”

  Lily let out a little gasp and glanced out the door into the street, as though expecting someone to be right behind Amanda. “Who has he pissed off now?”

  “Do you know Nissin?

  Lily blinked. “That fool? Yeah. I met him once, and that was enough, thanks. Why?”

  “He has his own gang, and he seems to not like Marco.”

  “That's nothing new. Marco has that effect on people. I'm surprised you haven't done anything to him yet.”

  Amanda gave Lily a small smile, calculated to be just visible to a perceptive person, easily confused with an unconscious micro-expression. “What makes you think I have not?”

  Lily's eyes flared, and Amanda kept her expression as passive as possible. This woman had rejected Marco, but was obviously struck at the prospect that another woman may already have taken him. “You wouldn't—”

  “I called the guys!”

  Lily turned her gaze down the block, towards the sound of Marco's voice. Amanda merely glanced his way, and then scoping out the street again. With a light jog, Marco made it to the stairs, his backpack over one shoulder, briefcase in hand.

  Amanda noticed that both of them were unzipped.

  “Now that we know Nissin has his own little gang of thugs,” he said, coming up the steps, “I'm going to have some of the lizards and pussy cats come in, and have this place protected, sundown to sunup.”

  Lily scoffed. “Yeah, because no one would do anything in broad daylight in New York.”

  Marco and Amanda exchanged a knowing, amused look. He said, “I figure we can spare a couple of guys for a few hours a day. The worst that can happen is they get bored.”

  Amanda nodded. She glanced at Lily, whose expression had softened. She quickly flipped her hair and deliberately, and obviously–to Amanda, anyway–sashayed towards Marco. Even he raised an eyebrow at her approach, as much surprised as Amanda was not.

  The screech of tires on the street caught their attention. Marco and Amanda turned as one towards the sound.

  A van had stopped dead, parked half-on, half-off the sidewalk, as though they were going to use a driveway to leap the curb, and gave up halfway through.

  Four men stepped out of the van, and they started moving towards the trio in a brisk, military formation.

  The vampires had arrived.

  Unlike the incident in the train, Marco wasted no time putting his plan in action. He tossed Amanda his backpack, and said, “Lily, get inside.”

  Amanda caught the backpack easily, while Lily stood there a moment, confused. One moment she was on her way to seducing Marco in front of Amanda Colt, and the next she was told to go inside and hide. She was smart, but not quick enough to adapt to the sudden atmosphere shift.

  Marco had already turned towards the oncoming vampires. A van and a five-vampire team—four on the street, one behind the wheel—meant that they had intended to kidnap Lily, and either torture her somewhere else, or use her to get to Marco or his father.

  They really were pissed off that dad sent samples to the CDC, weren't they?

  “You guys want to go home now.”

  The largest vampire, the one in front of the vampiric v-formation, grinned broadly. “We'll simply take all of you back with us.”

  Marco rolled his eyes. “To what purpose? Hold me, you get my father's attention, sure, but he's already sent samples to the CDC. What would be the point?”

  “Nissin told us you were the threat. That if anyone would have caught on to us, it would have been you.”

  He frowned. Well, that would explain why they were waiting for me on the subway. Did Nissin know that I was going to Hudson U? If so, then that means he definitely would have known the train I'd be on. I wonder if they arranged it so that they could isolate Amanda and me. It's the only reason I can think of for having that subway car all to ourselves. But do they know of Amanda? I can't see how they could; no vampire we've encountered has left alive. “You folks really want to start something in public?”

  The big one was almost at the top step. “At our speeds, who will notice? Who would believe?”

  “Well, if you're going to be like that about it –”

  He reached into his briefcase and came out with a frappuccino bottle full of holy water, and tossed it into the leader's face. It shattered, and the vampire's face sizzled and steamed like he'd been splashed with acid.

  Marco took two steps forward, and kicked the larger vampire right in the groin, doubling him over. He then dropped an elbow to the back of his head, followed it up with a knee to the face, and then shoved him down the stairs into one of his compatriots.

  Before Marco even had time to take his next step, Amanda was already in motion. She pulled a matching bottle from the backpack he tossed her, and leapt for the vampire nearest her. A hammerfist to his forehead knocked his head back, and she simply rammed the bottle down his throat, making him ingest all of the holy water within.

  Marco leapt from the top step, drawing his stakes as he did so. He landed knees first into the vampire he attacked, pinning both him and the female vampire beneath him. A stab into the first vampire disintegrated his body, and Marco dropped down onto the woman, and stabbed her without even a thought.

  Amanda was leaping past the vampire she just “drowned” in holy water. She threw both of her stakes. One of them lodged in the tire of the van, the other in the chest of the last vampire standing.

  Marco and Amanda closed on the van, each going for a door – Amanda for the driver's side, Marco for the passenger's. The driver decided that the human would be the easier fight than the vampire, and he leapt out, heading for Marco.

  Marco predicted he would.

  Marco dropped to one knee, letting the assailant fly right over him. He turned, pleased to see the vampire landed where he should have.

  The vampire rolled over onto his back, revealing what he had landed on…Marco's briefcase, which he had tossed aside at the start of the confrontation.

  Marco had made certain to leave the half-sharpened chair leg point-side up, at the mouth of the case. The vampire gave out a gasp as he disintegrated.

  Marco looked around. All of the attackers had been dusted, and it had only been a matter of seconds. No one was rushing out to see what had happened, so no one was going to call the police.

 
Amanda appeared at his side. “It seems she listened to you.”

  He stared at Amanda for a few seconds, trying to think of what she meant. Marco looked for Lily, and discovered that the door was now closed and locked.

  “Well, that was fun. I guess we should wait for some of our guys to show up from Brooklyn.” Marco looked off into the distance. He continued speaking, as though talking to himself, thinking through the reason. “At the very least, they can serve as an early warning system. I know a few of the guys can handle guns. If some of these fangs come in and knock on the door, a crossbow from across the street will do just as well as a stake to the heart. It's not like these vampires have shown a lot of counter-surveillance techniques thus far. Also, they hired Nissin, so they'll take anybody.”

  Amanda nodded, then looked at him strangely. “Why? We are keeping a permanent guard here?”

  “Why not? Seriously, we can afford two guys, and I'd rather not have anyone get killed because they're tangentially connected to me, even if it is her.”

  The door opened, and Lily came out. She looked around, and didn't see anyone but the two of them. Had it been brighter out, she might have seen that there were sets of clothes on the street without people in them, only large, people-shaped piles of dust. “What happened?”

  “They ran,” Marco explained. He took the steps up in two strides, stopping at the landing. “I don't think we'll have to worry about them anymore, but just in case, we've got two of the guys coming by.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding almost disappointed. “Are you sure you can't stay?”

  His smile was a little tight this time. “Nah, I have to get Amanda home before she turns into a pumpkin.”

  Lily's smile turned into a forced grin. “She could stay, too.”

  Marco looked over his shoulder at Amanda, and arched his brows, his expression clearly asking, What the hell?

  Amanda shrugged. She didn't know either. He looked back, and said, “Funny, I didn't think you'd want me anywhere near your house on purpose.”

  Lily reached out and touched his arm. “Well, since we broke up, I think…well, I think I was wrong. It's always useful for…um…”