by Declan Finn
Misha jabbed at Amanda. She lifted the rail to intercept it, and the fist struck it like a gong going off, leaving knuckle imprints in the bar. Amanda spun, slamming the blunt end of the rail into Misha’s face. Misha barely blinked, instead grabbing the bar and ripping it out of her grasp. He turned back to her and lashed out with a fist. Instead of dodging, Amanda closed inside the swing and braced for the impact—she swore it broke something when it landed. She unleashed an uppercut into his nose that would have driven it out the back of a normal person’s head. Misha’s nose didn’t crack, but his head snapped back. Amanda followed with a headbutt and a hammer blow into his ribs.
Misha grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground. He smiled. “You at least have style.”
The entire battle was over in an eye blink.
Marco threw the contents of the flask at Misha.
The vampire only realized he was in trouble when he barely had enough time to lean back. The water splashed on his chest.
The left side of Misha’s chest burst into flames.
Misha screamed in agony, the roar coming through like an avalanche of pain as his body went up in a blaze. He reached behind with his right hand and pulled out a knife that looked like a short sword. He jammed the edge of the blade down into his collarbone and down to his hip.
He literally cut off the areas splashed with holy water. They fell to the ground, going up in flames.
Misha staggered back, dissolving into mist.
By the time he had reformed into a whole person, Marco and Amanda were gone.
“And that’s why I carry holy water in a flask,” Marco said with a smile as he settled back into the seat on the subway car.
Amanda gave him a slight smile as she cuddled against him.
“Did you hear me? I think we should call Merle.”
The redhead nodded slowly, thoughtfully, looking out the window of the train as the lights in the subway raced past. Amanda sighed deeply, so much so that she emptied all the air in her lungs and forgot to refill them.
Marco raised a brow, then put an arm around her shoulders, hugging her against him. “There a problem?”
Amanda looked at him with tired eyes. “Yes. There is. I do not think… not now, Marco.”
He nodded slowly, wary about what his love was capable of. He had also noticed the bite mark on the vampire’s cheek, remembering something that Amanda had once mentioned to him. The only scar a vampire ever took on from a non-holy object was the wound they had used to turn a human being into a vampire.
Amanda became a vampire by biting the one who’d tried to kill her.
They had just come face to face with the vampire who had made Amanda what she was.
Amanda’s eyes went dead as she looked out of the windows. Her hands clenched and unclenched slowly. Each time she squeezed them so hard, her knuckles turned dead white.
Marco watched the fingers flex on his shirt, and arched his brows. He had noted similar behavior right before he was ready to go ballistic on people.
He stroked her hair and went over the subway map in his head. “Can you wait a few stops,” he whispered. “We’ll stop off at a place in Brooklyn that should have some targets.”
Amanda pressed her hand flat against his chest and whispered harshly, “I haven’t felt like this in so long. I’m just so … angry.”
Marco gave a short laugh. “I know, love. I know. I feel that way all the time. I’m sure we can find something dreadful and…”
Marco’s voice petered out as the train came to a stop. The doors slid open, and a group of nine men came onto the otherwise empty train car, spotting both Marco and Amanda. The one on front smiled, revealing fang.
“Oh look,” Marco drawled, “something dreadful.”
“Look at what we have here,” said a Brooklynite turned vampire. “You twoz need some help getting home? Cuz if youse knew— Wha da fuck?”
Amanda turned on them and growled. Marco looked over at her and grinned. She leaped at them, slicing off one of their heads with one hand and hurling some holy water with another. The vial she threw down a vamp’s throat. A spin kick slapped the second vamp’s head off its body, and an underhanded stake throw took out a third.
Amanda went through them like a buzzsaw.
She elbowed the last one in the eyes, driving him against one side of the car. “Bu—bu—chu’re just a kid.”
Amanda’s eye twitched. “You think I wanted this? Wanted to be a monster who drinks blood? You know how long I had to hunt down criminal scum so I could feed on them?” She grabbed his head in both hands and proceeded to bash his skull in against the window of the moving train. “You think I want to be hunted my entire fucking life, you sukynsyn? Mudak!”
Marco watched as Amanda pounded the vamp’s skull into the window until it cracked, and then his head went through the window. A passing metal girder caught his skull, ripping his head off.
As the body disintegrated, Amanda braced herself against the window frame, nearly falling against it.
Marco’s gentle touch against her arm almost made her flinch. He lightly pulled at her arm, coaxing her away from the window. She slid into his embrace, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tight against her. Burying her face into his chest, she cried. He held onto her and said nothing.
He merely braced himself against the rocking of the train and kept her close.
Chapter 13
Call to Arms
The Church of Saint Anthony—Saint Alphonsus was a Catholic church in the midst of Greenpoint. Built in the 1850’s, it looked like it could be the pinnacle of construction back then. It had a tall, 240-foot spire as black as iron that shot straight up to the sky, with a red brick face trimmed in white limestone. The inside was cavernous and Gothic, like the architect attempted to construct a small Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in a space not half as large.
The pastor of this particular church was a slightly pudgy, older black man. His hair had not yet started to gray, but he was already mildly wrinkled. He had thick plastic frames for his glasses, even though the lenses were thin.
Monsignor Bill Rodgers sat back in his chair in the rectory, smoking a cheap cigar as he listened carefully to the Vatican Ninja across from him. The ninja was Captain Robert Hendershot, a generally colorless man, obviously Germanic in background. He talked with a light German-like accent; he was Swiss, and one of the Guards. Blond and blue-eyed, he kept his expression so neutral that Marco often muttered that Hendershot might as well have been a block of cheese. He also had quick muscle, not gym muscle… though he usually had enough heavy weapons on him that it must have added a hundred pounds to his frame.
“We are,” Rodgers said in his booming voice, “of course expecting something else to come after Marco and Amanda, aren’t we?”
Hendershot nodded. “We’ve transferred all of our people here. And as much equipment as we can. We’ve been building it up since we vanquished Nuala and Marco told us that we were going to be finishing this fight in New York.”
“So, is he finally growing on you?”
Hendershot rolled his pale blue eyes, and drank deeply of his coffee mug. “I do not like him. Or dislike him. He is useful. Bram likes him.”
Ibrahim “Bram” Javaherian was the sniper for the Vatican Ninjas, and possibly the only one that Marco had ever gotten along with. Amanda got along well with most of them.
Hendershot set down the coffee and continued. “We have the silver ball hollow-points, the wooden bullets some use for practice rounds, the flamethrower, a few barrels of holy water. We’ve been in talks with Merlin Kraft’s own SpecOps team about getting a few other toys.”
Rodgers nodded. “Good. I want to be prepared for anything to go wrong. We’ve been lucky so far.”
Hendershot scoffed. “We were prepared.”
Rodgers shook his head. “No. We won solely through the grace of God. And luck. If the demon had been a little smarter in September, the angel wouldn’t have come in, and we would never have su
rvived.”
Hendershot grunted, but said nothing, preferring to drink from his coffee mug. The demon who had called itself “Mister Day,” really Asmodeus, had been forced out of its human host—by destroying the host—and manifesting as a physical being. Once the demon had tried to kill Marco, demon-to-person, Marco’s guardian angel could step in, and he had trashed the demon like Superman punching a Thanksgiving parade balloon. Rodgers was right: had it thought a little more, it would have jumped hosts, and continued the battle until it was exorcised. Or had it not been so arrogant as to punch a tank filled with liquid nitrogen and destroying the host.
“But at least we were prepared for Nuala,” the Captain replied.
Rodgers scoffed down. “Really, Captain? Nuala escaped our trap. Had Marco not expected her to show up in his hospital room, he’d be dead, and she’d be in the wind by now.”
Hendershot grimaced. The assassin Nuala had been problematic. But she’d been in a house sprayed down with holy water, riddled with wood, blown up, and staked in the heart, and somehow managed to survive by draining the life out of all of her minions.
That was cheating.
Hendershot and Rodgers heard their phones vibrate. It was a new text message, from Marco.
New bad guy followed me home. Can we kill him?
Keep your heads on a swivel. The fun’s about to start.
New York City’s One Police Plaza looked like an office building, even though it was home to the Police Commissioner of the NYPD.
On the top floor of 1PP, Police Commissioner Ray Wilson sat behind his desk. He sipped his diet Pepsi, careful not to drench his bushy black mustache as he glanced at paperwork. A large, tall fellow, with a full head of dark hair, he was in his sixties, but he looked more mid-fifties. The average New Yorker took it for granted—from the vague hints in the bio on the NYPD website—that his conditioning probably had something to do with being Naval Intelligence in Vietnam.
Which most people read as: “I used to be a SEAL.”
“Hello, Raymond,” came an eloquent, silken-voiced woman from the door.
Wilson smiled and looked up from his desk. “Hi, Jen.”
Jennifer Bosley primly walked into his office and took a seat.
Wilson actually grinned, despite his staff claiming he could not do so. The two of them had met during a murder investigation in the ’70s. That was after he had returned from Vietnam, and had already had his own run-ins with the supernatural. As a police officer, there had been more than a few murder cases deliberately lost in a drawer because the killer had been reliably dealt with, off the books, by Jennifer.
He had taken it as a compliment when she compared him to a young, taller Teddy Roosevelt.
“Can I get you anything to drink? Or eat?”
Bosley shook her head. “Maybe later. I’m good for right now.”
Wilson’s smile grew broader and tighter. It was still genuine, as it reached his eyes. “Jen, how long have we known each other?”
She smiled “Forty years. Why?”
“Why do you insist on putting on the high-class accent? Or did you not think I’d noticed by now?”
Bosley gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “Because I like impressing you, love,” she told him, letting her London accent slip through a little.
Wilson looked at her a moment, considering, thinking, and gave a little shrug. “I understand.”
She smiled sadly. “No. I don’t believe you do.”
Commissioner Wilson rose from behind the desk, walked around, and turned the second desk chair facing her. He sat, and took her delicate little hand in his massive paw. He looked her in the eye. “Yes. I do.”
Bosley’s usual mask slipped, and her face became a landscape of conflicting emotions. A grin, a grimace, tears, laughter, joy, and frustration. She settled on passive and looked to the hand that held hers. It was his right hand. She glanced to the left. The silver band that was still on his ring finger. “You’re still wearing her ring. It’s been ten years.”
Wilson nodded slowly. “I know. Habit.”
Without looking away from her, or taking his hand from hers, he used his thumb to slide his wedding ring off his finger. He slipped it into his jacket pocket. It was the first time Bosley had ever seen him without it on.
Bosley leaned forward for Wilson…
Her cell phone buzzed at the same time his did.
Bosley growled. Wilson sighed.
“Our jobs are both like that,” he said.
“Yes. Only I don’t like having to wait any longer than I have to.” She pulled her phone out as he did the same.
Wilson frowned at his phone. “There’s trouble in Central Park.”
Bosley actually laughed. “And I know the cause.”
Merle Kraft was leaning back in his recliner when his cell phone buzzed. With one hand, he kept reading his PC Gamer magazine, and with the other he absently pulled out his phone. His midnight blue eyes flicked to the text header: Marco.
Aw crap.
Merle sat up, and the recliner helped him up. He unlocked his phone and read the message.
Any spare forces you may have would be appreciated. I think the vampire followed me home.
Merle frowned. He started dialing immediately.
“Yell-low.”
“Marco, Kraft speaking.”
Merle could almost hear the eye-roll from Marco. “You sound so formal, Merle. Why so serious?”
“Marco. What. Is. Happening?”
Marco sighed. “I think that the creature who was hunting me in San Francisco has already caught up to me. I guess he might have been on the next plane after mine.”
There was a resounding discordance in the background, as well as what bore a great resemblance to an explosion.
Merle furrowed his brow. There had been no shout of pain or discomfort from Marco, so he had not been injured. If he was not the target but was having a discussion with Merle, then who was the source of the noise? “What’s going on over there?”
“Oh,” Marco said casually, “nothing of any import. Just a local problem. Listen, this vampire really doesn’t seem to like us. He definitely doesn’t like Amanda. If you have any assets on hand, locally, that would be nice. Is there any problem with that?”
Merle frowned and rose from the recliner, walking over to the window of the apartment. He stood behind George Berkeley, who kneeled on a pad with a set of binoculars. “I suppose not. Listen, Marco, about what we’ve come up with—” Merle broke off at the sound of a crash. “What the—”
“Oh, just a usual night in Brooklyn. Pay it no mind. How soon can you be here?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Merle hesitated. Marco had been a great help since the whole mess had begun. He had probably wiped out 90% of the vampires in San Francisco over the course of a few months, allowing Merle to continue in his role as “government agent for the strange.” There hadn’t been that many to start with, but the depopulation had been thorough, cutting off an impending boom at the knees.
Merle sighed. “Listen, Marco, there’s a problem. Events are coming to a head. If this guy is related to our mutual problem, then it’s possible he may act without warning.”
“They usually don’t send a memo in advance. Quite rude, I know, but what can you do with vampires?”
Merle frowned as he heard more screaming in the background. “Are you watching a horror movie back there?”
“No, my idea of horror is watching medical students on thirty-six-hour shift, realizing that they take three times as long as I do to do the same job. Are you making any arrangements as far as our mutual problem?”
Merle smiled. He knew that they were discussing the United Nations. “They’re being put into place as we speak. I’ll be certain to send some your way, all right?”
“Excellent. Now that that is attended to, Merlin, I must go. I shall see either you or your representative shortly. Night.”
Merle Kraft turned off his cell phone. H
e stared out the window of the top floor of Tudor City apartments, directly across the street from the United Nations.
If I took a private jet to come out here, and Marco flew commercial, what did the vampire take? Magic carpet? Flew? Maybe he took whatever Dalf uses for transportation? “The Speed of shadows,” indeed.
But what was happening back there?
When they got off the train, Marco had first placed a call to Jennifer Bosley, explaining the circumstances of the attack. Then he asked for any nearby problem spots of evil vampires that could be cleared out for the general good of humans and the New York City Vampires Association.
Bosley had one on hand.
To save the very long details, imagine a graveyard. Any graveyard, really. Then imagine a straight path of destruction. A literal straight line where crypt doors were ripped off hinges, then used to decapitate vampires. Headstones were used as projectile weapons, crosses had been pulled off graves and thrust into a vampire’s chest. After nailing him to the ground, holy water had been poured into his open wound. Trees were felled so they could be used as clubs. Vampires still wailed in pain as they had all been impaled on the same gigantic cross. They slowly disintegrate while large portions of fence were ripped out and used pin six or seven vampires to the cement.
Or, to make this a shorter tale, Amanda had started killing at 10 pm, EST. Marco had simply sat back on a headstone, slipped a book from his back pocket, occasionally looking up to check on her progress.
Around 1 am, Marco was on his second book.
At about two in the morning, Amanda ran out of vampires and started to flail at headstones, infuriated and angry.
Marco slipped in a bookmark, closed the book, and came to her. He wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her to him. In the end, sooty, rumpled, blood smeared and slightly singed, she collapsed, crying in his arms.
Marco held her close, being as gentle as possible. “Come on. Let’s get you home, shall we?”
“Damn it,” she muttered. “I look like an idiot.” She wiped her hands on her spattered white shirt. It was a good thing he really didn’t mind the smell of blood.