Honor at Stake (Love at First Bite Book 1)

by Declan Finn

  Merle shifted positions to make certain that the cop didn't notice anything distinguishing about him. It wasn't usually a worry; most people don’t notice him, since he was a 5’6” Eurasian, but those who did only remembered the oddity of dark midnight blue eyes in a face that should belong to a samurai.

  “Well, you know what they say, Merle,” another voice added, “it's good to the last drop.”

  Merle didn’t even look over at the FBI agent who thought she was Joe Friday: Stetson fedora, raincoat, dressed in grays, offsetting her silver locks. Only her quick hazel eyes showed signs of life.

  “Odd, Agent Demers,” he answered, “that I got on the plane from San Francisco thinking I’d left all of those jokes behind me. I would have thought this wasn’t something you’d joke about.”

  “How do you think we keep sane?”

  The cop raised a brow. “Are we?”

  Merle smiled and looked up at him. “Thanks, Officer Nolan, I can take this from here.”

  He nodded and walked off. Merle stood, hands in the pockets of his blue windbreaker. “So, you drag me to New York City, commandeer a crime scene and isolate it for over twelve hours so I can see the body in situ in the middle of a Brooklyn street?”

  “It’s more of a back alley, actually.” Demers stepped forward, stopping so that the distance between them barely left enough room for the corpse. There was no blood pool for her to avoid stepping in. “Merle, I’m not going to kid you. He wasn’t my best man. In fact, my best man disappeared following leads on the same case.”

  “What do you think it is? Al-Qaeda in New York?” he asked, half-joking. At that point, everyone in the know “knew” that Al-Qaeda was a joke. Osama bin Laden was dead and gone, their forces were tied up in Afghanistan taking potshots at US troops, and they didn't kill individual people.

  “No, it's not Al-Qaeda,” Demers answered. “Not that we can tell. It’s something…else.”

  “So you didn’t call me because of the manner of the murder. You called because you have a bad feeling about all of this and you want the expert in the ‘exceedingly strange’ to stake the bogeyman.”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Sort of like that. I know you’ve been busy looking into those Goths in San Francisco, and I’m sorry to pull you off of them, but—”

  “Spare me. You think you’re the only person to yank me off a personal project? For a guy who’s only supposed to be known by only a dozen guys in the District, I’m very wanted.”

  A small grin from her. “Dead or alive, I would presume.”

  “Well, if it’s dead, then I double my fee.” Merle looked down at the body. “So, I’m guessing he was stripped of all ID?”

  Demers’ hazel eyes flickered to the corpse’s pockets. “Not all. He has the standard issue implant under his skin with his medical history and a contact number.”

  “Ah. Basically an ‘If found, please return to the FBI’ label.”

  “You could say that. Should I leave you with the body, Merle?”

  “Unless you’ve got something else to add.”

  “Nothing PERT couldn’t come up with. If you find anything…”

  “I’ll let you know. Count on it.”

  This is going to be a nightmare. The FBI Physical Evidence Retrieval Team is pretty good. If they couldn’t find anything relevant, what do they expect me to do, divine something?

  She turned and started to walk away. Halfway down the alley, she turned back. “I know you like working alone, but still…”

  He waved her off. “Don’t worry, I’m in no rush. Besides, if you really need my help, then you won’t be able to assist. I’ll tell the morgue to pick up the body when I’m done.”

  Merle Kraft watched her turn the corner. He muttered to the air, “Dalf, what are you up to now?”

  A deep chuckle came from the darkness. “Why do you always blame these things on me, Merlin?”

  “Well, it helps that you usually are the problem.”

  Merle didn’t even bother looking towards the darkness behind him. He knew exactly what he’d find. His half-brother, Dalf Kraft. He was eternally in his mid-twenties with midnight blue eyes and a pale, though charming, face. He wore a black cape around his shoulders that terminated above his ankles, a black shirt like a Catholic priest and a deep, blood red tie. His raven black hair parted deftly on the right and he smiled like a wolf about to dine. His cheekbones hinted of Slav-Celtic ancestry, but neither confirmed nor denied. As always, he carried a cane with a silver wolf’s head handle. “So, Dalf, how quickly do you travel? I was brought here on a super-sonic jet. If you weren’t responsible, how did you get here so fast from Boston?”

  Dalf’s melodic voice floated from the darkness. “I travel at the speed of shadows.”

  “Sure, Dalf.” He turned to face his half-brother.

  The only visible part of Dalf was his midnight blue eyes that glittered with an unseen light illuminating nothing but the irises. The color made it hard for even those to be seen against the dark. It was the only thing that hinted at their relationship to each other. When one mother is descended from samurai, and the other is a Boston Irish something, the eyes are the only thing they had in common, physically.

  “So, you want to tell me what did this, brother of mine?”

  The form in the darkness gasped in mock injury. “You wound me, brother. Whatever did I do to you to make you think I would have any knowledge of such an event?”

  Merle raised a brow. “That’s rhetorical, yes?”

  The Boston Kraft laughed through his mouth. It was a soft laugh, static-like, with the texture of a serpent’s hiss. “Of course it is. Do you truly think I would answer you?”

  “Never know if I don’t try. It may make my life easier. You’re always referring to your employer as someone who pays well.”

  “Oh yes. Besides, I’d rather take the other side’s money, Merlin. My Master pays much better than a government salary.”

  Usually, Merle would worry when his brother talked about who he worked for, but at this point, the San Francisco Kraft brother was too cranky to give a damn. “Any advice?”

  The silver-tipper magician’s cane rose to point at Merle's throat like a rapier. “Go home, hide under your bed, and pray that your God prevents you from being swallowed into Hell.”

  “Well, aren’t you the over-dramatic one?”

  Dalf’s teeth now showed in the darkness, though there was no glimmer of a light source for his Cheshire smile. “There is nothing of this Earth to prepare you for the hell you’ll have to contend with. Even if you survive the coming storm, it will be nothing compared with the rest of the hurricane. You will merely bear the brunt of a cold front.”

  Merle frowned. He’s more cryptic than usual. “So…what, I’m about to face a conspiracy out of an old Anne Rice novel?”

  “No, my brother, I will not give you the game. But I have played fair. I warned you.”

  “Whatever. You want to help, I welcome it. If not, go back to Hell, or Boston, or wherever you keep your coffin.”

  Dalf clucked his tongue. “Do not waste your breath becoming irritated at me. I am simply an enforcer for the Army of Darkness, Merle. I can only do so much before I’m…fired…for mutiny.”

  Merle ignored him and crouched down to further investigate the wounds on the body. “Yeah, well, I still remember one of my last targets being reduced to a pile of ash. Where were you during that fracas, anyway?”

  “Eating.”

  Merle glanced up to confirm his suspicions. Dalf had disappeared. Like the Cheshire cat, he was probably gone before he spoke his last word.

  We have this down to a science, Merle thought, although this is the first time he’s deliberately told me to run and hide.

  Merle rolled his eyes. The relationship between them was always odd. At best, each tried not to acknowledge the other existed. Thankfully, their respective locations made it easy to avoid one another. He keeps to Boston, for all I know nostalgic for the good old days of Sal
em, Massachusetts. I stay in San Francisco, the width of the continent just barely far enough for my taste. Unfortunately, my job deals with what the government calls strange, and Dalf should have his own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary under that heading.

  Merle sighed, moving around the body once more, trying to figure out what the heck went on there. The arterial spray on the wall meant he was killed here—Mental note, make sure it is his blood—but if that were the case, what was used to catch the blood after the initial slash? Where were the tool marks to show what had torn his whole throat out?

  At this point, I would even accept evidence of teeth marks as a help.

  Meaning? Meaning I need some sleep.

  * * * *

  Overhead, Amanda watched the short newcomer examine the body. She was slightly confused when he started talking to the shadows. Then again, this was New York; things were different here. He had been thrown by the arterial spray. That was obvious. That would pass, in time.

  At the moment, she just had to make absolutely certain what he learned as he went.

  Depending on how he reacted, according to everything the Vatican ninjas told her, to kill him or spare him would be a choice she could make later.

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Saturday Bite in Brooklyn

  April 5th, 8:00 PM

  Amanda Colt noticed Merle Kraft, government agent for the strange, didn't seem to care why anyone took the blood of the dead FBI Agent. However, Amanda didn't wonder about his lack of curiosity at all. After all, she had been to San Francisco. And she remembered the sixties. Even though the comedian Robin Williams once joked that if someone could remember the sixties, that person hadn't lived them, in Amanda's case, the rule had still held. She had been dead for a few decades by then.

  San Francisco was where the Church of Satan was founded in 1966, before groups resembling the Manson Family were somewhat suspicious. The motto of their founder was basically, “If we’re sinners, then let’s be the best sinners that we can be.” They believed the seven deadly sins were meant to be lived, the ten commandments were meant to be broken, and God and the Devil don’t exist. Satan as they used it is the “adversary,” the Opposer found in the Book of Job, the Prosecutor from Hell.

  Amanda never asked anyone back then, “If there’s no God, what’s Satan opposing?” Her nights were strange enough without getting into philosophical discussions with a bunch of crazies.

  The “church” believed in vengeance, magic rituals, and voodoo dolls. There were sexual rites as well, but Amanda hadn’t kept up on the Satanist scenes. She would probably get around to it only if people start being burned alive in a Wicker Man.

  Amanda knew, however, the moment anyone suggested a theory of vampires, superiors within the government would write the murder off as a nutcase killing a random human being who just happened to be an FBI agent.

  As Merle Kraft walked out of the alley, Special Agent in Charge Alice Demers was still there, waiting for him, hands in her coat pockets. “As you can imagine, the moment news of this gets out, you’ll be gone and we’ll be told to wrap it up.”

  “I know, Al. I'm sure that the Attorney General doesn’t like such things.”

  Alice Demers’ smile reached her hazel eyes. “You really think that an Attorney General would give this any thought? I mean, the corpse’s blood is missing. What’s the first thing you think of?”

  “You’re reading my mind.”

  “Large print,” she replied dryly.

  “With any luck, it’ll take them a while to get their act together on this, which buys us time. Though, you're right, I don't think anyone that high up is going to care about a murder in the back end of…what is this neighborhood called again?”

  ”Greenpoint,” she answered. “Merle, look west.”

  Merle smiled. Not six blocks away from where he stood was Turtle Bay, and on the other side of the bay was the Isle of Manhattan. More importantly, there stood the esteemed institution of the United Nations. “Greenpoint. I should be able to wrap this up soon enough. Now my question is, why’d you call me?”

  “What makes you think anything more than what I said? This is strange, therefore you.”

  “If I were you, I’d say this was some nut playing Wes Craven’s Dracula in his head. The typical loser psycho.”

  She nodded. “But you’re not me, what’s this telling you?”

  He blinked in surprise. “It’s that obvious something’s very wrong here?”

  “More than usual, anyway. Last time I heard from my guy, he said he was on to something big.”

  “Such as?”

  “He didn’t say. He just said that he was close to…” She looked at her watch. “Come with me to my office, I want to show you something.”

  Amanda followed after them, leaping from one rooftop to the other. She didn’t have to worry about being spotted, it was dark and no one ever looked up in this town…or in any other, actually, unless they were tourists.

  The joys of living in the city, she thought. You can act like Batman, and no one notices. You can even dress like Batman and walk through Grand Central Station, and no one would notice…Didn’t I do that once?

  She looked on, noting that the shorter man and the FBI agent, Demers, were heading for a car. That was all right, she had her own transportation.

  * * * *

  April 5th, 8:30 PM

  Marco Catalano turned his family's sitting room into his own personal study, and he was doing something he hadn't done in years.

  He was studying.

  It wasn't that he had any individual test to study for, or a difficult subject to overcome. He knew all of the material. He knew more than some of the professors. He observed more surgical operations than medical students.

  Marco was studying because he didn't have anything else to do.

  He couldn't follow Merle Kraft around like Amanda could. If the assessment of the Vatican Ninjas was worth anything, Marco's presence was only going to give the game away. Marco hated that he couldn't help her.

  If Merle were really good, could he notice Amanda? Could he kill her?

  Marco frowned, and shook his head. Nah, that's impossible, he told himself, more to push down any sense of worry than because he was certain.

  He flipped through a book. Then again, I could take her in fencing. But I'm a freaking computer! I'm really freakish, which gives me the advantage.

  Marco slammed the book closed, and hurled it aside. But so's this guy!

  “So, what about Amanda?”

  Marco's head snapped towards his father. “What?”

  “You're throwing things. I haven't seen you that pissed off in a while.” While Marco had taken the couch, and spread his work over the coffee table and the cushions, Robert took the arm chair at right angles.

  “What's up? Lovers’ quarrel?”

  Marco grimaced. “I’m not going to even justify that comment with a response. The government agent who specializes in weird stuff has arrived, and Amanda is tracking him.”

  “And you’re pouting because you’re stuck at home while she’s having all the fun?”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “You don't think Amanda can take him?”

  He gave out a light growl. “I don't know. Bram and the other ninjas talked him up a bit last night. These guys kill vampires for a living, so when they say that he's good, I assume that means vampire-killing good. So, yeah, I admit I'm a little worried.”

  “You love her?”

  Marco blinked. “I'm sorry, what?”

  “I'm tired of having conversations like this with you. It's getting wearisome.”

  “Then don’t ask.”

  “Look, you hang out with this woman more than you do with your classmates. More even than Zheng and Vega. Seems to me, she’s the only person you hang out with at all. If you're going to tell me again that you two are 'just friends,' at least try to be convincing, and without the pyrotechnics of a combustible stake.”

  Marco stared
at his father for a long moment, the tension evident on his face, and all through his body. He took a long moment, trying to decide if he’d open up at last, or if he’d keep up the façade. Finally he relaxed, letting out a slow breath. “I don't know. I try not to think about it.”

  “You're going to go with that? Truly? You can’t stop thinking about a million things, but this rather important issue you can turn off?”

  Marco looked down at the textbooks, and shifted through them as though looking for something. “I haven't given it any thought. I mean, I have. None of the conclusions are satisfactory though, so I push the question aside. You know what I'm like, Dad. Would you truly wish for someone to fall in love with me?”

  “Marco, I know your previous dating attempts have been–”

  “Disastrous?”

  “–but that doesn't mean every relationship will be like that.”

  Marco let out a sigh of frustration. “You don't seem to get it. I'm not worried about something going wrong with Amanda, I'm worried there’s something wrong with me. Let's face it, on a good day, I'm not normal. On bad days, I'm not safe to be around.”

  “So when you say you haven't thought about being in love with Amanda…”

  “It isn’t a matter of if I love her. It doesn’t matter how I feel. I cannot even consider it. It's safer for everyone that way.”

  “Have you ever considered how she feels about it?”

  Marco paused, confused. “Of course I have. That’s why I don't say anything. If she came out and confessed that she loved me tomorrow, that would be interesting.”

  Robert gave his head a little shake, incredulous. “Interesting? That's it? Just interesting?”

  Marco's smile slipped. “The day she tells me she loves me is the day I have to tell her everything about me. And that's the day I fear worse than vampires. That's the day she stops talking to me once and for all.”

  * * * *

  Merle Kraft settled into the chair in FBI Special Agent Alice Demers' office.

  “So, what am I looking at?”