by Declan Finn
But Jennifer Bosley herself was surprisingly relaxed. She came in wearing dark green jogging pants and top, as though she had just come in from a run. Her basic attitude was such that she knew she was rich, and she didn’t need to prove it to anyone. Her form was curvy, and she moved with effortless grace. Her blonde hair terminated at the base of her neck, with her hair at the sides tucked behind her ears. Her full lips were unadorned, and her brown eyes seemed to just cut through whatever she saw.
“Don’t worry about the paintings,” she said in her London accent. “I ate the ones who stole them, and their original owners weren’t alive to file any complaints.”
“Understood.”
Amanda Colt stood before President Bosley in a simple but good-looking sweater and jeans. Marco, and every other person who had ever talked about her appearance, would be the first to say that it would be hard for anyone who met her to say that she didn’t look good in everything she wore.
Though Marco had suggested testing the theory by dressing her in a burlap bag and see how many people stop and stare at her down the street. Amanda had laughed it off, but Marco’s little smile didn’t move, and his eyes hadn’t twitched from her gaze… she didn’t feel like testing his hypothesis.
“Now,” Bosley continued as she sat behind her 19th-century oak desk, “what’s the purpose of today’s visit, Miss Colt? You haven’t been letting Marco off his leash again, have you? I haven’t heard of any reports of massive property damage, but the night is young, after all.”
Amanda took a deep breath—more out of habit than necessity. “Lady Bosley—”
The President waved a hand, cutting Amanda off. “Oh, please, call me Jen. It’s not like I care for all of that formality. And I suspect that you won’t abuse the privilege.”
Amanda smiled a little bit. “I sent Marco away.”
Bosley blinked. It was obvious that she hadn’t been expecting that. “Really? Where, exactly? Siberia?”
“San Francisco.”
Bosley arched a brow, and grinned broadly, letting out a short laugh. “Really? Oh, Miss Colt, I suspect you and I think alike. You’re going to be fun.” She leaned back in the chair and shook her head, letting out an amused sigh. “There’s a new band of hunters in San Francisco, who only recently got ambushed by a small horde of vampires—Mikhail the Bear’s vampires. Not long after, you ’send Marco away.’ Simple genius. Though I must ask, who suggested coming to me with this cheerful news of your seeming capitulation?”
Amanda cocked her head. She didn’t think it would be quite that easy for Jennifer Bosley to have figured it out. “Marco.”
Her grin got even broader, showing most of her teeth, and a hint of fang. “I see why you like him. He’s good for you, isn’t he?” She let out a pleased sigh, and casually asked, “Are you doing him?”
Amanda flinched, taken aback. “Nyet, of course not.”
Bosley chuckled, as though Amanda’s shock and indignation pleased her. “That’s all right. I completely believe you. Do you love him?”
Amanda’s mouth fell open. “What?”
Bosley shrugged. “It happens with our pets. We get attached, we forget our place.”
Amanda laughed at that. “Trust me, Marco is not a pet. Try to throw him in a cage sometime, I suspect he would work his way out with a toothpick and garrote whatever guards are put on him with a shoelace.”
Bosley laughed. A great belly laugh. “Ah. Well, I’ll certainly be sure to remember that should we ever need to throw him in a cage. Keep in mind, I could probably tear your head off without a problem right here and now.”
Amanda tried not to smile. The last time Marco had looked deeply into her eyes—which was a vampire’s way into the human brain—he had used it to hack into her brain. I wonder what would happen if Lady Bosley tried it.
“I dun’na, that’s a good question,” President Bosley answered, her London accent slipping into the conversation as she relaxed more.
“Did I say that out loud?”
She grinned, baring her bright white teeth. “No. Do you know how I’m as powerful as I am? Not by being very good or very evil, but purely pragmatic. And I am very pragmatic.”
“I thought that virtues or vices contributed to that.”
Bosley stared at her a moment. “I keep forgetting that you’re young. I can only presume that your mentor was one of those who just sort of bit and ran, inn’it he?”
Amanda gave the President a smile of her own. “I bit him back.”
“Good for you. You’d be surprised how many people we ’ave in the association who were made that way. Virtues and vices only effect whether or not religious artifacts will kill me. Though you’d be surprised how much following a path to power leads to the dark side. At the end of the day, the path to power is much like the path to sainthood—you have to find your path and take it. However, I find that being practical, while it mightn’t lead me to virtue, it’ll at least land me on God’s good side.”
Amanda raised a brow. “Would I be surprised how much being pragmatic is being good?”
Bosley nodded. “If you look at things in the long view. And I am very, very good at that.”
Amanda said nothing for a moment. If she plans as much as she says, how much is she trying to tell me without telling me anything? “You said in the letter that Mikhail the Bear was the low man on a totem pole. Who would be on top of it?”
Bosley shook her head. “Now, now. You should know better.” Better came out as beh’er.
Amanda nodded. She made eye contact with Bosely and thought intently: What about a tall, redheaded female vampire who has no difficulty assassinating one of their own within Mikhail’s organization?
Bosley nodded with approval. “Well, that’s better, inn’it? The answer is… we have no idea. There’ve been some rumors, but aside from that.” She gave a little shrug. “So…if you’re not sleeping with Marco, are you becoming attached to him?”
Amanda balked. “Why do you have these questions?”
Bosley gave another little wave of her hand. “Oh, please. These things happen. A lot. I’ve been ’round the block a few times, I’ve seen ’em.” She smiled wryly. “A good human is ’ard to find, Amanda. And yours sounds like he’ll come in ’andy one day.”
Chapter 10: War
September 6th San Francisco
The first weeks of classes went by, and Marco found them easy enough. San Francisco, as far as he was concerned, seemed quieter the longer he stayed. The color also came back into Yana’s cheeks by the second week of September, and Tara had had no color in her cheeks to begin with.
That Thursday, Marco had locked himself in his single-person dorm room, and heard screams out the window. Being from New York, his first reaction should have been to ignore it, but he figured that it was yet another opportunity to piss someone off. Ever since he arrived, he’d been charming, polite, courteous, and anything but annoying.
It was time for a change.
He looked out the window to see what looked like a couple “necking” in the courtyard below. However, the creature pulled back and decided to terrorize his midnight snack, by showing off his vampire face, a design practically stolen from the old silent film Nosferatu.
Marco casually picked up a heavy wooden paperweight, calculated that a six-story drop would at least honk the vampire off, and simply dropped it on its skull before it could move in again. The vampire stood there for a moment, dazed, then crumpled. The woman he’d been attacking ran for the hills. The vampire took a moment before he slowly rose to its feet and looked up at Marco.
The human gave a smile meant to annoy a saint. “If you’re so annoyed, why don’t you come and get me?”
The vampire rammed his fingers between the bricks and started climbing. Marco pulled his head back into the room and waited for it to come to the window. He reached the window and tried to climb through, stuck at the frame.
“Poor baby,” he taunted. “Can’t tell the difference between
being mocked and being invited in?” Marco grabbed the lapels of his jacket, dragging the jacket past the window, slamming the vampire’s face against the invisible barrier that kept it outside. He snarled and tried to lash out, but failed.
Someone knocked on the door. “Yes?”
“Hey, Marco, it’s me, Yana. Can I come in a moment?” she asked, even though it was unlocked.
So polite, these people… eh, I need an extra set of hands anyway. “Sure, why not?”
The vampire’s eyes went wild, and he tried to slip out of his jacket, but Marco pulled the lapels one over the other, trapping him in the high-quality leather duster.
What is it with vampires and dusters? Can’t they just stay with a damn cape and be done with it? And, really, leather? Wouldn’t you want something easy to break out of? I blame Joss Whedon. At least he doesn’t sparkle. Well, unless I set him on fire.
Yana came in and her very pretty eyes widened at the thing he held. Marco slammed the vampire against the barrier several more times. “Do you think you can take over for a moment? I need to get something…or you do want to stake it?”
The thing snarled again, and he slammed him a little more. “Shut up, will you? Can’t you see I’m talking with the lady? I thought vampires were only rude in New York. Can’t you people read Dracula or something? Learn some manners?” He looked back to Yana. “Don’t worry, he won’t bite… as long as you stay on this side.”
She blinked, a little unsure about Marco, not the vampire. “What are you doing?”
He smiled politely. “I’m either going to hold onto this guy until he’s staked, or until about sunrise, whichever comes first. So would you please hand me a stake or do it yourself?”
She handed him a stake. He raised it, then noticed it didn’t reek of turpentine.
Good girl, you carry your own. You really are one of Merle’s band of merry vampire slayers. He dusted the vampire, and then sat back on the bed. He looked at Yana, noting cute little bunny slippers and button-down pajamas. “I hope I didn’t ruin your sleep.”
“No, I was about to get up… in about six hours or so.”
“Okay. Thanks. I thought I wouldn’t need to carry stakes up my sleeve while in my own room, but apparently I was wrong…and if you knew me, you’d know that’s a heck of an admission.”
“How did you… did you…?”
“Know it was a vampire?” Marco asked. “There aren’t too many creatures of the night that drink blood, although I may be wrong on that.”
She opened her mouth, as though ready to go into all those creatures that drank blood, then became terribly shy again.
“By the way,” Marco explained, “I do know about vampires, you apparently know about them, and deal with them regularly. Any other questions?”
She blinked a few more times, then said, “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh… And we should both be getting to bed about now, we have class in the morning. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
“Um… Could we start again?”
“Sure. My name is Marco Catalano, nice to meet you.”
“No, about the—”
“Vampire?” He shrugged. “Oh, we had a few problems with them in Brooklyn. No big deal, more like a nasty infestation of cockroaches. In fact, we have nastier roaches. Heck, I even have a bottle of holy water I had my friend the priest bless for me—water from the Gowanus Canal, the worst EPA site in America, so if the holiness doesn’t kill a vampire, the chemicals probably will. My preferred weapon of choice, however, is a stake doused in turpentine, which is—”
“Is the most flammable substance!” Yana cheered.
“Bingo.” What is the likelihood that she’s part of a different pack of vampire hunters? “Might you be a friend of Merle Kraft’s?”
“How did you know?”
Marco gave another small shrug. “Lucky guess.”
She smiled shyly, then tottered off.
I wonder how things are in New York.
* * * *
New York City
Underneath New York City is an estimated nine hundred miles of subway tunnels. There are more beneath that. Hundreds of miles of track that had been lost to time. Personal train stations of millionaires who didn’t want to ride with the common people, but didn’t want to drive, either. A veritable maze of subway tunnels formed a labyrinth that would have confounded any balls of twine, and could certainly hide a whole herd of minotaurs.
Of course, a minotaur wasn’t the only thing it could hide. Hundreds of New York’s homeless had taken up residence below the city. Some were crazy, some just poor, others declared it “freedom,” but they all needed shelter, and a few hundred feet beneath the sidewalks of New York was a good place to start.
However, it was also a gathering place for people who were “non-persons,” who had fallen off the grid, with no firm ties to anyone or anything.
Or, in the vampire Wikipedia(vykipedia.vmp), “a buffet.”
The horde descended en masse. Three dozen vampires who were out on the hunt, but weren’t picky enough to choose their prey in the wilds of Central Park or singles’ bars. They preferred a land of eternal dark, where they had all the advantages.
Normally, vampires didn’t tend to frequent the homeless. The pungent body odor that was irritating to humans nearly acted like tear gas to heightened vampiric olfactory nerves. These vampires weren’t all that picky.
The area that they chose for their ambush was routine. It was a deep, dark, secluded portion of the subway system, over 150 feet below the street, out of the way even by the standards of the homeless who lived there. And it was a reusable trap, since no one caught inside it once ever made it out again to warn the next unsuspecting visitors.
They burst into the darkened tunnel at three in the morning, charging through the battery of odors left behind by visitors past. They simply turned off their sense of smell, refusing to enjoy the nasal assault.
They surrounded the center of the room, where they had left enough pizzas to signal the entire homeless population of New York. There were rolls of sleeping bags and a fire burning to provide warmth in the cavernous concrete womb.
The vampires tore into the sleeping bags, slashing, biting, and diving down, expecting fountains of blood to follow…
And they stopped, almost as one, noticing the vile, harsh taste overwhelming their senses.
Kerosene.
“With night vision,” came a light, pleasant voice, tinged slightly with a Russian accent, “couldn’t you be more observant?”
A Bic lighter hit the floor, and a sea of fire flowed from one end of the room and spread across it like a flood.
Amanda Colt smiled in the white-hot glow of burning vampires. Being vampires, they burnt like flash paper - hot and bright and over in a moment. The temperature in the room flared, and Amanda was hit with a wave of heat like stepping out of an over-air-air conditioned mall into a humid August F train. Each vampire turned into a burst of white fire, and were gone shortly thereafter.
Hector Vega stepped out of the shadows just behind her. The leader of the local Hispanic gang smiled and looked at the ashes of their adversaries. “Nice cookout, babe. Why’d you even bring us along?”
Amanda shrugged. “It’s sometimes nice to have the company.”
He sauntered up next to her and pressed against her side. “I’m always good for that.”
The vampire looked at him, and then to the rest of the team who ringed the room. She had brought both gangs with her, and made certain to mix and match persons and personalities and specialties. And for some reason, she could practically smell the pheromones.
She sighed. “Don’t make me eat you.”
Miguel smiled. “No, you’ll want to before long.”
Amanda turned her gaze on him, and made her eyes glow red, and deliberately extended her teeth. Now he took a step back. While he had been fighting vampires for a while, and he was relatively certain that she wouldn’t eat him, he had seen enou
gh of what she was capable of that he didn’t feel like testing the hypothesis.
Amanda was about to follow it up with a suitably witty threat that would have made James Bond proud, but before she could, she heard something rustle in the dark. For a fraction of a nanosecond, she thought it might have been a rat pack…
And then concluded that rats didn’t tend to wear size-twelve Nikes.
She thought a curse in Russian and pivoted towards the one entrance to the room. There was only one way out, and the gang members she’d brought with her were only going to hamper her progress. “I also bring you along because it’s good to have the backup when things go to Hell. Combat positions. We have company!”
The first vampires that burst through ran straight into Amanda as they would a wall. Her arms were spread out, and her feet braced in a classic fencing stance for balance. The vampires had charged in recklessly, and her counterattack looked like one lineman holding back the entire offensive line.
One vampire tried biting her, and recoiled as though he had swallowed acid. The organisms that allowed for vampirism didn’t react well to each other. They had become so used to their hosts’ DNA that they would attack any similar microbe, almost as though the microbe were afraid that another microbe would take over. That vampire had effectively bitten off more than he could chew.
The others were too packed in for normal attacks. None of them had enough room to swing a punch, and barely enough room to knee her.
The vampires in front did knee her, however, and the two closest to her head-butted her viciously. They were all obviously lower on the evil scale than she was on the good. These were basic petty thugs on the scale of vice, probably using their powers for nothing more than the basic biker gang rowdiness, and the occasional human snack. Individually, none of them were a match for her, but collectively, the hits crashed against her body continuously, taking their toll.