Honor at Stake (Love at First Bite Book 1)

by Declan Finn

  Merle tapped his foot against the sidewalk, and said, “This is tag team night, right? When it is my turn?”

  The vamp grinned, looking forward to besting the mere human. “I have longed to taste of your flesh, Dalf Kraft. I will not let you interfere in my affairs. I have this assignment on the highest authority. Meddle, and I will see you punished by our master.”

  Merle cocked his head. It’s so nice that my dear brother managed to get a name for himself as Satan’s knee breaker. But this guy’s just a lackey? He has authority from “on high?” If that is the case, I can only hope that this creature’s master is somewhere else, and wouldn’t come to personally greet me.

  “Wrong Kraft brother. I’m Merle, nice to meet you. I always wanted to meet one of my brother’s associates. Which section head are you under?”

  Amanda blinked. “What section head?”

  “How should I know?” Merle muttered. “I'm making this it up as I go along.”

  I have no idea how my brother’s end of the universe runs, and I'm in no hurry to find out. But, odds are, if Mikhail had authority from someone else, someone above him, then odds were, the legions of Hell are organized to some degree.

  He tried not to say that his main concern was about whatever human contacts Mikhail had at the United Nations. One thing at a time.

  “Not Dalf?” Mikhail rumbled. “Pity. I was at least hoping for Tal Kraft. But you’ll do.”

  Nuts. When this is over I’ll have to tell Brother Taliesin he has acquired a fan club outside of his New Orleans nest.

  He leapt for Merle, and executed five distinct punch-kick combinations, and seemed frustrated that Kraft kept leaping back each time. Finally, he growled and lunged, and Merle met him in midair, grabbing his shoulders, and flipped over Mikhail's head. On his way down, Merle wrapped a rosary around the vampire's right shoulder and his legs around Mikhail's waist so he could hang on. Mikhail roared in pain as the rosary tightened around his shoulder, which instantly smoked the moment they came in contact. Merle pulled the loop of the rosary right, like a garrote, and literally cut Mikhail's arm off.

  The vampire roared in pain and threw himself flat on his back, crushing Merle beneath him.

  Okay, so maybe this wasn’t the brightest move I’d ever made.

  The vampire rolled off the government agent, and they both came to their feet. He snarled. “No more Mister Nice Guy.”

  He stepped forward, Merle braced for impact. Suddenly, Mikhail fell to the ground.

  Amanda Colt stood behind him, a piece of wood in her hand. She shrugged. “I broke the tip of my stake in his C4 vertebrae. He shouldn’t be giving you any more trouble.”

  Merle blinked, and turned to Marco. “You’re nuts, you know that?”

  He gasped, and smiled a little. “Your point?”

  Merle grabbed the broom handle off the ground. “Right here.”

  “Point taken, at least by fang face over there.”

  Amanda ran over and crouched at Marco's side. “Idiot. What were you thinking?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Right.” Kraft dusted off his pants, then stuck his hands inside his windbreaker. He trotted over to the prone vampire, and kicked Mikhail over onto his back. “Now, tell me what the hell you’ve been up to, my fangy friend.”

  Marco, deciding he was bad cop, said, “Otherwise, we’re going to chain you up, let your spine heal, and then cut off pieces of you one at a time.”

  A burst of air cut between them, and Mikhail gasped. An arrow stuck out of his heart.

  When Mikhail the Bear looked down at his heart, his look of surprise was almost comical. It was amusing right up to the moment where he turned to dust.

  Damnit, Merle cursed, I wanted him alive so I could question him. I wanted him for my investigation.

  Merle turned, dropping to one knee, and pulled his Firestar .45 out of reflex, even though he couldn’t even hit the building the shot had come from.

  Amanda Colt, however, was already in motion.

  She disappeared completely.

  Unfortunately, she came back quickly.

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Unresolved Issues

  April 16th, 2:15AM. Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY

  Amanda felt something amiss, even as the gangs, the Vatican Ninjas, the mafia, and the police finished off the last of the vampires. She whirled, ignoring Merle, and leapt for the apartment building across the street, grabbed a window sill, then leaped up to the roof.

  A mop of long red hair framed the face of the most hideous vampire she’d ever seen, and the two viper’s eyes glowed green. The creature was at least six-feet tall, and she looked mean. It stood on the edge of the roof, crossbow aimed toward the street, and Amanda’s first instinct was to launch herself at this new creature.

  Its first move was to take a swipe at Amanda’s stake hand. The strike made the arm go numb and the stake fly over the edge of the roof. She then ducked in time for the backhand to soar over her head and punched for its stomach, and into the vampire’s waiting hand.

  Wow, this one’s fast, was her last thought before the other vampire twisted and sent her sailing onto the street, landing on the sidewalk with a sickening impact.

  Marco Catalano, despite having had his left leg and his right arm broken by Mikhail the Bear in single combat, tried to move towards her fallen form. After a brief effort, he growled deep in his throat. “Damnit. Merle, check her pulse.”

  The government agent still had his weapon up, but whatever it was had vanished. “Pulse?”

  Amanda bounced off the ground, her face a mask of rage and fangs, shouting in rage at the rooftop. “The suki tossed me! That…I’ll get you for this!”

  Merle raised a brow and holstered his gun. “She’s too far to hear you.”

  “I can hear gun fire from the Bronx. Trust me, she hears.” She turned to Marco, and carefully rolled him over onto his back. She cradled his head in her lap, though Marco was too out of it to notice. “I think we can heal this, but I'll need to set the bone, okay?”

  Marco gave it a moment's thought. “Sure, why not?”

  The door to the brownstone opened, and Doctor Robert Catalano came out, with Ibrahim Javaherian at his side.

  “I'll do the setting,” Marco's father said, “if you don’t mind.”

  Merle sighed. “Whatever. Well, it looks like my lead is dead, in more ways than one. Marco, why did you want me to check Amanda for a pulse? Habit?”

  Amanda smiled brightly. “Nyet. I have a pulse. I also have a fully-working metabolism. My body doesn’t need to pump blood, but I have it do so, mainly to keep everything working. I may want to have children someday.”

  Merle wondered if Marco knew that the vampire of the dark, red-gold hair wanted to have children with him. “You need food?”

  “At least blood. I don’t know why, but we need it. I tried going without, it’s not a pretty sight.”

  Marco nodded, completely ignoring his father examining his broken leg. “I think it’s a version of porphyria, mixed with a touch of inverse progeria.”

  “In English?”

  “Progeria is a disease that makes someone age at four times the normal rate of speed; ten-year-olds looking like they’re forty, and physically, they are.”

  With a quick pull from Doctor Catalano, Marco screamed briefly. It was almost more of a surprise than anything else.

  Marco gritted his teeth and continued, focusing on the information rather than the pain. “Porphyria is what King George III had, driving him insane—a cure for that is the ingestion of human blood, which is where part of the myth of vampirism comes from. We figure that the microbial symbiotes that are responsible for vampirism somehow feed off of fresh, living blood, like porphyria.”

  Merle nodded. Since he lived in San Francisco, he knew something of what he was talking about, he had just never heard the medical terms for them.

  “However, there’s her ability to elongate her teeth,” Marco added. “It re
ally irritates me, because she always has an unfair advantage at bobbing for apples.”

  The vampire brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. “I do not know what you’re talking about. I would never use them for such a thing.”

  “Then how come you always need to floss out your canines for the next week afterwards?” he objected. His father had his arm and–Marco screamed again.

  “I suck out the filling from some of the chocolates,” Amanda continued, as though Marco had just had his back cracked by a masseuse, not his leg set. “It is either that, or I eat diabetics for dessert, and you remember what happened to old Tiberius when he drank from too many.”

  “Yeah, his teeth rotted out. He should’ve known better than to drink people with too high a blood sugar without brushing.” Doctor Catalano gave a quick pull at Marco's arm, setting the break. Marco grimaced and grit his teeth this time, despite the pain. “Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he can forgo the basics.”

  Merle snickered at the surrealism of it all. “So, Amanda, since you are who you eat, whom do you generally eat?”

  Marco and Amanda looked at each other for a moment. “I sometimes give donations,” he explained. “The rest of the time…you can answer it.”

  “I go to Mass.”

  “And?”

  “Since I mentioned that our physical character is related to our spiritual character, I go frequently. I think I may qualify as a mystic, but I’m not sure, I haven’t asked my confessor about this. Technically, that makes me stronger, so I can go without real blood for a week or two.”

  What was she hiding? “And?”

  “I get most of my blood from the Sacred Blood in the chalice at mass. I’m usually the last one up, so I finish the cup.”

  I guess that answers the debate between Catholics and Protestants as to if the bread and wine literally becomes body and blood, or if they are symbolic.

  Merle looked out over at the gang members, the mafia, the cops, and the Vatican ninjas, who all seemed interested in making certain no one had been eaten during the fracas. “What about them? I can assume they didn’t know about your girlfriend before now, did they?”

  “I’ll talk to them,” Marco said, eyes cold. “If any of them decide to do something unwise, I will know, and they will answer to me.”

  Merle studied Marco a moment. Despite being beaten, bruised, and broken, he still had the distinct impression that he would, indeed, hunt down anyone who took an action against Amanda. He would protect her, anywhere, anytime, no matter his condition.

  “Fair enough.” He glanced at the ground where Mikhail used to be. “I guess this is all over then.”

  Marco let out a sharp, sudden laugh. “You're kidding right?”

  Merle motioned to the street littered with empty clothes and dusted vampires. “You call this…what?”

  Marco tried to sit up, but Amanda pressed down on his shoulders to hold him in place. “Do not move.”

  Marco sighed, then looked at Merle. “I call this a retaliatory strike. This isn't over. Obviously, Mikhail didn't like us messing up his most ambitious nesting plans, slowing him down and cutting into his personnel. He went after the FBI, and when we made a move on him, he struck back.”

  “Yes, but if he was being slowed down, that means that he was building up to something.”

  Marco smiled. “Give the man a cigar. Whatever they were doing at the United Nations, whatever you were looking into, Mikhail was in charge of manpower.”

  “What?”

  Amanda cut in. “We just killed the head of human resources. We have no idea who that redhead was that killed Mikhail just when he was about to talk.”

  Merle's mouth twitched. “Aw hell. You’re saying this is just starting.”

  “You're not the one in pieces on the ground,” Marco muttered. “You don't get to complain. Now, if you don't mind, I think Amanda and I can use some alone time.”

  Merle arched a brow. So did Doctor Catalano, and so did Ibrahim Javaherian.

  Marco frowned and looked at all of them. “Get your minds out of the gutter. If she bites me, I get a hit of her virus. The first time she bit me, I could throw manhole covers. We can see if this will fix me up.”

  Amanda carefully moved, then picked up Marco as though he weighed about twenty pounds. “Do not worry. I will be happy to bite you.”

  Marco smiled at the words, considering how they probably sounded to everyone else within earshot. He settled on his right leg, and wrapped his good arm around her shoulders. She supported nearly all of his weight. They exchanged a glance, and Marco felt his heart skip a beat.

  “You know what?” Merle finally said. “I could use a guy on my coast to organize a team in case I have problems in San Francisco. You seem pretty settled here, but how about we bring you out to my neck of the woods and see what you can do out there? It would be on me. Well, the federal government, anyway. I mean your college education, room, board, expense account, stipend, everything.”

  Marco blinked back his surprise. Going to California, this time last year, would have meant nothing to him. But on what was essentially a government grant? Hell yes. It wasn't like people would miss him. The gangs? Hector and Zeng? 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…except 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 getting jammed up. He didn't know what he wanted from her. Even worse, he didn't know if she wanted something from him, something he couldn't give.

  Marco's deepest, darkest secret was something that he could never tell Amanda. She had known his incident with the mugger–the violent mugging that had driven a wedge in between him and Lily Sparks, the wedge that would eventually lead to Lily's death–but Amanda didn't know the whole truth. Marco's “secret” was in that mugging. When that mugger had pulled a knife on Lily and Marco, Marco had taken the knife away from him. And then Marco hurt him. And then kept on hurting him. He kept cutting with the knife until there was nothing left of the mugger but a pale corpse rapidly approaching room temperature. That part, Amanda knew.

  But Marco enjoyed it. He had enjoyed taking a man who wanted to harm someone he loved, and then hurting him. He enjoyed being alive when the mugger was good and dead. He enjoyed the man's screams of anguish as Marco made him pay for the mistake of mugging him and someone he cared for.

  Marco knew what was in his head. He was someone who enjoyed killing. He was a monster. A predator. Yes, even though Marco had a deep faith, and a deeper prayer life, both served to keep the creature within him in check. In the end, one of two things drove Mikhail from his mind. One was his prayer life and his faith. But Marco believed, deep in his heart, that his dark side had driven Mikhail out of his head and saved his life. It was a part of him he was comfortable with, that he enjoyed, and that he didn't want to give up.

  It was something that he couldn't tell anyone about. It was why he couldn't be with Amanda. She killed human beings for food. He did it for fun.

  As he had his arm around her, he felt her warmth right next to him. Enjoying the feel of her body, the feel of her strength, Marco couldn't help thinking the worst possible thing.

  The predator had thoughts on Amanda. I love her. And I want … her. All of her. And I don't think I can hide it too much longer. I won't be able to hide it at all if she moves the wrong way on my body right now.

  He looked at Merle and said, “I'll think about it.”

  * * * *

  Amanda felt like someone was slowly ripping out her heart. When Merle Kraft first asked about San Francisco, she was about to laugh…until she realized that Marco had said nothing for a long moment. Then he said he'd think about it.

  When they both made it into the sitting room, Amanda helped lay him out on the couch. “You aren't serious, are you?” she asked.

 
Marco didn't say anything for a moment. “He could be right,” he said absently. “He could need help.”

  She blinked back tears. “You mean that?”

  “Oh, maybe. I don't know.” He met her eyes. “It's a thought. One thing at a time, though. We don't even know if he has a vampire problem in San Francisco.”

  Marco cocked his head to one side, and she nodded. She leaned forward and kissed his neck. She gave a light lick where the bite would go. It was strange. She even liked the way his skin tasted. How odd was that?

  Amanda kissed his neck a second time, and then a third. Marco shifted a little, as though suddenly uncomfortable. Then she realized that she was doing more kissing than biting. If she kept going like this, she would be exchanging more bodily fluids with Marco than just some blood and saliva.

  What am I doing? He's broken on the couch, and all I can think of is taking advantage of him. Amanda's fangs came out, and she bit him quickly, hoping to distract him from the kisses.

  This time, she was far too distracted by her own thoughts to dwell on the sensation of biting Marco. Her feelings were obviously starting to bubble towards the surface at some truly inappropriate moments. What that would mean, she didn't want to think about. Coming clean to Marco about her feelings was possibly the worst idea she could come up with. Truly, why would he want to be associated with her after that? Should she do that to him, all she could see were potential problems.

  By the time she had withdrawn her fangs, she had come to a conclusion.

  She loved him too much to keep him here.

  “Maybe you should go to San Francisco.”

  “Maybe.” He looked deep into her eyes and said, “But for now, I'm quite happy to be here with you.”

  About the Author:

  Declan Finn lives in a part of New York City unreachable by bus or subway. Who’s Who has no record of him, his family, or his education. He has been trained in hand to hand combat and weapons at the most elite schools in Long Island, and figured out nine ways to kill with a pen when he was only fifteen. He escaped a free man from Fordham University’s PhD program, and has been on the run ever since. There was a brief incident where he was branded a terrorist, but only a court order can unseal those records, and really, why would you want to know?