by Declan Finn
He held onto her a little longer, and brushed some of her long, dark red golden hair into place “No, you look really sexy when you go all homicidal.” He smiled, then kissed her temple. “What’s wrong, darling?”
She looked at him, staring deep into his eyes. “I knew him.”
Marco was about to joke and ask which vampire, but he knew, the vampire from central park. “Where from?” He suspected the answer, but even Marco thought that impressing her with his logic would not be wise right now.
“You know him, too.”
He blinked. He had figured that there was a connection to the creature in San Francisco, but that one was ugly as Hell. “I do? I can’t say that we’ve met. He looked pretty darned normal to me. And for vampires of that power level, I’d have expected him to be as ugly as sin. That was a male model on acid.”
She smiled sadly. “Marco, remember how vampires become closer to their souls after death?”
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s why evil vampires look so damn ugly. It’s the Dorian Gray effect, only the stains on the soul appear on the body. So?”
“It also allows better control over physical appearance.” Amanda paused, looking over the area, just to be sure. “He is so powerful that he has that control. He can look however he wants.”
Twenty seconds of silence. “The one who said he was Mikhail’s brother. The guy I turned into a pincushion back in San Francisco. It’s the same guy.”
“Da, but he is also something else…he is the one who created me.”
Marco nodded slowly. He had figured that much from the bite on his face. Marco kissed her on the head, then on both cheeks, then lightly on the lips. “God made you—quite well, I might add—and you made yourself into an agent in the army of God. All this idiot did was pick a fight he couldn’t win. He supplied you with the blood that let you mold yourself into the woman that I love.” He dipped her back and kissed her again.
“I guess I should thank him…otherwise, I would never have met you.” He smiled weakly, then gave her waist a squeeze. “Just for that, I’ll be certain to kill him as quickly as possible.”
They boarded the train and sat together. Marco had one hand on Amanda’s waist, the other on his book. As Marco read, he felt something on his side. Amanda leaned over, letting her breast rest on Marco’s arm as she pressed her lips against his cheek, then on the lips, and held for what seemed like an extraordinary amount of time. After pulling away, she rested her head on his shoulder and fell asleep.
He looked at the sleeping vampire and finally took the time to examine her features in detail. Her face was relaxed in her state of deep sleep, her whiskey-dark eyes hidden behind her eyelids and red lashes. Her dark golden hair playfully swayed to and fro about her face in time with the motions of the train.
He allowed his searching gaze to fall on her lips, two pieces of pinkish-red silk sitting on her naturally pale skin. With her eyes hidden from view, her lips were easily her most becoming feature. She seemed too young, but he wasn’t about to say she looked too innocent. After seeing what she was capable of, “innocent” did not come to mind. No matter how angelic she looked while she slept…or when she was awake.
But then again, it wasn’t like he cared about the ripped sleeve, or the blood stains. Marco loved her, and he hadn’t joked about how cute she looked while completely homicidal.
They had never had an in-depth, detailed conversation about her being a vampire. Not about what was it like, or if she even enjoyed her afterlife as it was. He had never before suspected that she was unhappy with her undead status since she had done so much with her time on Earth. She smiled constantly, laughed like the lightest of Mozart’s music, went to the movies with him. Amanda was the liveliest woman he had ever met and didn’t know anyone who loved life more.
Basically, as far as he knew she was always happy and optimistic for as long as he had known her…
…For as long as he had known her…
…or as long as she had known him.
Marco blinked. How long has she been in love with me?
Chapter 14
Thou Shalt Not Pass
January 5th
Marco and Amanda walked onto his street, his good left arm hooked in her right elbow.
As they turned the corner onto the street, something large and fast fell off a roof and dropped right on to Marco, slamming him to the concrete. Marco’s arm went up defensively. Sharp jaws, like a vise with sharp teeth, bit into his forearm. The creature pulled back on his arm, tearing into the skin and meat of his arm. Vlaws raked his chest and stomach.
Marco thrust down his arm so he could get a better look at what attacked him.
A wolf clamped its jaws over his arm. Bits of his skin and jacket fluff were trapped between its teeth. Marco winced. The thing’s breath bothered him more than the carnage. Strangely detached, it felt like watching a monster movie focused on his left arm.
He blinked.
Amanda was on the wolf in that instant. She grabbing its snout in one hand and the lower jaw in the other. It took more than a few seconds to pry the jaws open—ripping it off of Marco would have ruined his already savaged arm.
When Amanda got a good grip, she pulled the wolf’s jaws open with a crack, hyperextending and dislocating the lower jaw so its mouth hung open like a ruptured mail box. She hauled it up off Marco and twisted its neck hard and fast. It wasn’t a simple break, but a full Exorcist twist, shattering the spine. She lifted it up by the jaws, and whipped it around, slamming it, lengthwise, onto an iron fence, topped with iron spikes, deliberately puncturing the spine at several points.
“Bad dog,” she said. “Stay.”
The wolf continued to thrash and buck and growl, even though it should have been dead three times over already.
Amanda reached down, took Marco by the arm, and lifted him to his feet.
And he was a mess. The front of his heavy, winter jacket had been ripped into a mass of bloody shredded nylon and cotton batting. Through the jagged remains of the jacket, she could see claw marks down his chest and stomach.
She gingerly grabbed an undamaged section of his hand on the injured arm and lifted it, peeling off the sleeve of the winter jacket. “Let me see.”
The sleeve lay in tatters, and the forearm was a bloody mess, covered in blood from fingertip to elbow. Tufts of lint from the jacket stuck to the gore.
“Inside, now.”
Marco nodded and said nothing. He stumbled as Amanda pulled him along. Looking back at the still thrashing wolf, impaled on the spikes of the fence, and said, “Well, that’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Vampires can command animals to do virtually anything,” Amanda muttered as she led him up the front steps to his door. “Even Stoker knew this. I’m surprised no one has tried it sooner.”
Marco’s omnipresent smile flickered back to life through the daze. “Probably because wolves can’t carry machine guns. Though I’m surprised Igor only sent one wolf.”
Amanda reached into Marco’s pocket for the front door key. She got the door open, led him through the front door, and up the stairs straight to his room. The front hall light was on, but if anyone else was there, Amanda couldn’t tell right now. All of her focus was on Marco.
She looked around the spartan accommodations of his room. Book cases lined the walls, each one jammed so tightly with books that the shelves had warped. Marco was big on function, as were his parents.
She took him by the shoulders and put his back to the bed. Carefully sliding the coat off of him, she made sure he didn’t drip any blood on the floor. She ripped the ruined sleeve off and tossed it in the garbage can at the foot of his bed. Then she folded the relatively clean part, blood-side in. She tore off his shirt—which was a bright orange shirt that had read “I have to think to myself: It’s not worth the jail time”—and threw that away as well. The only thing covering Marco’s upper body was a chain with a gold cross and a Miraculous Medal.
Amanda t
ook a step back and gasped as she saw the full extent of Marco’s chest wounds. She could see muscle in some spots, bone in others, and others were just lines of blood.
There was an awkward silence as she looked at his bloody body. It was surprisingly more toned than she remembered. His muscles were so well defined, the rivulets of blood had flowed down and dried in the lines between them.
“Have you been working out?” she asked.
Marco looked at her and nearly laughed. “Nice timing. No. Not any more than usual. I’ve spent the last few weeks in a hospital bed, remember?”
“Lay back,” she ordered. “I will wrap your wounds, and we can work on the rest later.”
Marco nodded and didn’t say anything for a moment. He merely looked at his arm and his chest, covered in blood. “Well, this isn’t great.”
“I know. It is bad. I am sorry, I should have gotten to it faster.”
Marco shook his head. He reached for his nightstand, grabbing an old, partially empty water bottle. “That’s not the problem. My arms feel fine. Both arms. It’s almost as if…”
With both hands, he carefully opened the water bottle, then moved to the garbage can. He poured the water on his forearm, making sure it ran into the can.
He raised his arm and displayed it so she could see. The bite marks were no longer bleeding, but clotted. They both stayed there, watching, over the next five minutes, as they scabbed over, then scarred over, then faded.
Marco winced, as though he was only now in pain, and reached for the chain around his neck with both hands, carefully moving it from around his neck, and dropped it on the bed. The silver chain with the miraculous medal on it had left a burn mark all the way around his neck, down to his chest.
He looked down at his check, then at the points on his fingers where he touched the silver chain. His blinked slowly, sadly.
“I’m allergic to silver,” he flatly stated. “My muscle tone has improved since I put the shirt on this morning. I heal supernaturally fast. And I was just bitten by a wolf not more than ten minutes ago.”
He looked at Amanda and met her eye. “But I don’t want to be a furry.”
Amanda rushed to his side and took him by the shoulders. She stared into his eyes and shook him a little, keeping his focus on her. “It does not need to be a bad thing. George Berkeley is a lycanthrope. He does not turn into a monster.”
Marco raised one eyebrow, and his smile became wry. “Really? Lycanthropes don’t turn into the thing that bit them; they turn into the predator that best reflects their dark side, right?”
Her hopeful expression fell. “Yes.”
“And George Berkeley … the big, laid-back fellow who never gets angry … He turns into an Irish wolfhound.” He nodded slowly. “Do either one of us want to guess what I’m going to turn into when the moon rises?”
Amanda flinched, thinking over the moments when Marco had let her see the darker sides of his nature. The side of his nature which was sadistic and homicidal. “Oh. Yes. That… No. No, not really.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” He sighed slowly and shook his head. He clapped her on the bicep. “Oh, well. Step one, we find out how bad this can get. Step two, we consider a cure. Although that should probably be step two and three, right after finding the current vampire and offing the son of a bitch.”
Marco slid his arms around Amanda, and hugged her close, ignoring the water and drying blood covering his chest and arm. As he buried his nose in her hair, breathing her in, he muttered, “Well, one good thing: We know that you’ve grown more powerful in multiple ways. At the cemetery, you were faster than almost every vampire we’ve met. I guess loving me might actually make you better.”
Amanda lingered in Marco’s embrace for another minute and then pulled back just enough to look at him. She studied him a moment, her eyes flicking back and forth in his gaze as though trying to find something. “Merle came to meet me a while ago.”
He furrowed his brow, confused. “Oh?”
“He said something similar to what you did.” She gave a short laugh. “I also think he wanted someone to talk vampyres with while not blowing up their hangouts.”
Marco rolled his eyes. He scrunched up his face in thought and scanned the room, looking around Amanda.
Amanda tried to follow his gaze and figure out what he was doing. “What is it?”
“Hmm.” He ran his fingers through her hair, and gently placed her cheek against his chest. “Marriage is basically consecrated love,” he began, half to himself. “JPII made a point out of canonizing married couples. After all, marriage is on par with Holy Orders as a sacrament. Right?”
Amanda didn’t bother to correct him. With her arms around his naked, supernaturally toned chest, and with the threat of him turning into a furry, four-legged killing machine the next time the moon was full, she wasn’t up for a theological discussion. Terror, concern, love and passion burned in her, conflicting with one another.
Marco kept looking, and stepped around her, barely letting go of her until he stepped past her. He went to the nightstand, pulling out the drawers and sliding them back almost immediately.
She stared at his naked back as though he was insane. Which wouldn’t be new for her. “What are you doing?”
“I do my Christmas shopping all year round,” he told her, still searching. “And last year, before I knew I was leaving for San Francisco, I bought something that will do some double duty. I purchased it in the name of friendship, but it’ll do.”
Marco pulled out something in his fist and walked towards her. He stood ramrod straight, as though on the parade ground. But he moved in flowing, almost dance-like movements. “I wasn’t joking earlier about your powers being connected to how close you are to someone. And, I wasn’t joking last month either, in the hospital bed.”
Amanda wrinkled her nose in a manner that Marco found adorable. “I do not recall you making many jokes. You were also under heavy sedation.”
“Let me remind you of this one then.” Marco dropped to one knee, and in one smooth motion, flipped over a ring box. He presented her with a Claddagh ring, gold with a green marble heart… made from Irish marble, just like his rosary.
Amanda took a step back, as though she’d been struck. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped, and her hands came up in a “slow down” gesture.
Marco merely continued, “Alina Savinkova … do I need to even fill in the blanks on this one? The knee and the ring should give it away, I’d think.”
Amanda squeezed her eyes shut, and shook her head forcefully. “No—what? No. Marriage? Why? How can you ask that? We haven’t yet—we should start—we should consider—”
Marco let her ramble on for another minute before he held up his empty hand. “Amanda, love, stop. You’ve been speaking in Russian since I got down on one knee. Do you want me to make it official? In which case, Alina Savinkova, will you—”
“Stop,” she said clearly, in English this time. She stepped forward and grabbed both of Marco’s hands. Closing them around the ring box, she pulled him to his feet. “Marco, we’ve only just started … us, and you want to propose?”
Marco chuckled. “Actually, I was going to wait so we settled in and no longer had all the impulse control of rabbits in heat. Igor’s threat only encouraged me to move up my timetable.”
Amanda stared at him, incredulous. His deep blue eyes were calm and clear, and strangely sane. “Are you hoping this is a power upgrade, like a video game?”
Marco blinked. “Um. No. I’m saying that I want to get the proposal in before we’re under mortal danger yet again.” He frowned and looked down at the remaining blood stains on his healed body. “Also, I’d like to propose sometime before I become really hairy.”
Amanda followed his eyes down to his naked chest, and swallowed. She blushed. “I am going to throw some water on my face. I believe I am covered in vampire remains.”
He shrugged. “Gotcha,” he said absentmindedly. “I should probably check the load-out
. I had some of the ninjas assemble a package for me.”
She closed the door behind her.
Marco shrugged, and went to work, his laser-like focus turned to the room. He took his gym bag out of the closet, removing wooden throwing knives, sheaths, and his dress sword from the Xavier High School Junior ROTC. He double-checked the tape on his stakes, to make sure the firecrackers were still attached. Carefully, he strapped sheaths to his forearms, calves, ankles, and assembled the full body sheath. It had slots for knives at the neck and shoulders.
He looped the neck piece over his head and slipped on a fresh shirt on over it so he could attend to the shoulders. He removed a large Snapple bottle of holy water, checked the load on the squirt guns, and slipped them into the small of his back. Then he removed a box, carefully padded on the inside, and checked his load of nitroglycerin in vials.
Marco moved through his weapon assortment thoughtfully, thoroughly, efficiently, and elegantly.
A female voice spoke from the ether, heavy with a Russian accent. “So you do this every day?” Yana’s voiced asked.
Marco rolled his eyes and didn’t even turn around this time. He started loading the next weapon. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re annoying, Igor?”
The projected image of Yana, the vampire Misha, leaped onto his bed as though sitting on the edge. “One, you know that is not my name. Two, no, I never cared enough.”
Marco frowned. “But you care about me?” he inquired, loading some more.
“The thing is, I’m not sure what you are. Trust me. I’ve known everything, seen everything, but not you.”
He chuckled. “You’ve got to get out more. They call me a man.”
Misha / Yana leaned forward. “Don’t you want to know why I tried so hard to kill you? Why we’ve all been trying so hard to kill you?”
Marco didn’t visibly react, but that had been nagging on him for some time. The amount of disproportionate force sent after him in San Francisco had been staggering. “You’re part of the Council. Come to think of it, you’re probably all that’s left of the Council. Though I’m certain that revenge is part of it.”