by Declan Finn
“Hello,” she said in a proper British accent. “How are you this evening?”
Misha glared down at her. “In the middle of something, thank you,” he growled. “Who are you? A telemarketer?”
She shook her head gently. “No. We’re from the New York City Vampires Association, and we’d like to register a complaint.”
Misha’s eyes narrowed. Bosley! He raised his right hand, his fingers shifting into claws…
And it finally registered that these three were not the only ones in this horde that were dressed in green.
Jennifer Bosley, bartender Patrick Lynch, and Kalsey punched him as one. The triple impact lifted Misha off his feet and sent him flying back into his own men. Kalsey whipped out the sword from his cane and severed the head off three vampires around him. Patrick Lynch pulled out a pump-action, magazine-fed shotgun, and blew off the faces of the two nearest vampires. Bosley grabbed the nearest vampire and ripped his head clean off his shoulders.
That was the signal for the entire New York City Vampires Association to attack.
Vampires in green set upon vampires in black, and the screaming commenced in earnest. Even the vampires near Marco and Amanda turned to engage the latest threat. And that was a mistake. As Marco and Amanda ripped into them from behind. Merle pulled out his stakes and also went to work.
The ranks of black were cut through in short order. They had been matched in manpower, and NYC-VA had caught them by surprise, turning Misha’s easy victory into a rout.
And then the top of the hill exploded into a great big ball of black Soul Fire. Misha emerged from the center. It had grown bigger, and his skin changed to black, taking on a sheen like armor. His eyes glowed green, and his hands looked more like claws.
Marco had a bad feeling he knew where this was going.
“Everyone, fall back,” he whispered.
Amanda didn’t hesitate. “Phase two,” she called.
The wave of green vampires moved as one, up the hill, moving deeper into the cemetery, moving parallel to the streets, away from the houses.
Misha jumped forward, landing in front of Marco and the others in a single bound. “Marco. Come. Embrace your death!”
Marco unzipped his jacket, and his smile grew sharper. He threw off his coat, and his eyes took on a sheen of gold.
Amanda put her hand on his arm. “Marco, now is not the time.”
“Get them back,” he said calmly. His voice didn’t sound like Marco’s usual deep voice, but something from the barrel of a drum. It was the voice that belonged to a Disney villain … or a monster.
Marco’s grin grew feral, his teeth elongating, and his eyes bright with excitement. “I’ve got something inside me that’s wanted to play for two days.”
Marco darted right for Misha. He was only halfway there when he leaped for him.
The two crashed in midair. Marco slammed the vampire to the ground and rolled off of him. Marco came to his feet, but no longer looked human. Red fur sprouted all over his skin. He grew larger, his shirt ripping to briefly expose a surprising amount of muscle before his chest, too, was covered in fur. The rosaries and the cross stayed on, even though they grew taut over his body at the wrists and neck.
Marco’s final form was about the size of a horse. It was big and red, and vaguely wolf-like, with a narrower face, and ears like a coyote. He reared back on his hind legs, and then came down with a crash. His golden eyes locked onto Misha, finding his prey.
“Red wolf,” Merle muttered. “Figures.”
As the vampire she hated most in the world clashed with the love of her afterlife, Amanda flinched and looked at Merle briefly. “What?”
Merle shrugged. “It’s part wolf, part coyote. He’s a bit of a pack leader, and like coyote, the trickster, he cheats.”
Marco leaped on Misha, digging his forepaws into Misha’s chest, and the rear ones into his stomach while biting down on his beck.
Misha whirled, hurling Marco through an intact mausoleum, pulverizing it entirely.
The vampire roared with laughter. “I am fueled with the power of a demon. What did you think you were going to do, dog? Huh? Hurt me?”
A streak of red shot out from the marble wreckage, running straight for the vampire’s ankles. The red wolf’s jaws clamped down over the joint and the tendon. Yanking back with his powerful jaws, he ripped Misha off of the ground and hurled him across the graveyard. Misha crashed through a tree a hundred feet away.
The vampire bounced back and returned as a blur. When Misha stopped again, he had the wolf by the neck, lifting it up over his head.
The wolf thrashed for a moment, paws kicking at the air.
Amanda bull-rushed Misha, slamming into his side so hard, she knocked all three of them against a massive cross. Misha howled in pain. He used Marco as a club to swat Amanda away.
“Hey, schmuck,” came a sardonic voice, “put down the puppy.”
Misha barely had time to catch a glimpse of dark blue windbreaker before the government spy emptied two magazines into his head.
Misha shook it off and laughed. “You think that will stop me? Bullets? Ask your precious Vatican ninjas.”
“I did. I’m just a distraction.”
Misha grunted, then looked around. The red wolf shifted from a purely animal quadruped into a bipedal form. The forepaws turned into massive, furry hands with long, razor-sharp claws.
Marco’s wereform was anthropomorphic enough to have the same sardonic smile he always wore. His golden eyes gleamed evilly, and with a feral snarl, he grabbed Misha’s arm with both hands. The rosaries on his wrists burned the vampire and kept him from healing. Marco extended his claws and ripped Misha’s arm right off at the elbow.
Misha growled as though it was all an annoyance. With his one hand he grabbed Marco by the pelt. Misha pivoted his upper body, throwing him at Merle, but the spy had already disappeared.
Marco went flying and crashed through three mausoleums this time – smashing through six solid marble walls without slowing down, pulverizing each wall into a fine powder cloud. He only stopped when he hit the incline of the hill in the middle of the cemetery, leaving an impact crater that knocked over two dozen headstones all around him.
“Strike!” Misha crowed.
Amanda dashed over to Marco’s landing point. His body was twisted, obviously broken. Any human being would have been dead in a dozen different ways, and it wasn’t looking too good for Marco as a werewolf either. His body twisted, and his mouth opened in a silent scream as he shifted back into a human being.
He looked up at Amanda, his eyes returning to blue, and gave her a weak smile. “I think I screwed that one up.”
Misha stomped on the ground as he took his next step. Black fire poured out of his open wound and solidified. It reformed his arm in a matter of seconds.
Another step made the ground shake. His head became more reptilian, his skin still armored and black. More of his vampires flooded in, squaring off against the NYC-VA.
Amanda started to think that Marco was right. They were in serious trouble. Some of the vampires in green still rallied, with little skirmishes breaking out with the incomingreplacement. She also didn’t like what form Misha was changing into. It looked too familiar.
At which point, an enormous, furry creature the size of a bear bowled into Misha, knocking him over. The two tumbled for a bit before the furball came to its feet, a straightforward wolf with gray eyes.
Within the blink of an eye, it had turned into a slightly graying human. “You killed my men!” Tully roared at the vampire.
Misha shrugged, the shifting of armor plate grating like metal on metal. “They attacked me.”
Tully pointed at Marco. “Because he beat me in combat. Had you just killed him, we would have bowed down at your feet, damn it!”
Misha rolled his head, as though rolling his eyes. “Begone, you.”
“Screw you. And your plans. And your army.” Tully growled, shifted, and charged.
> Misha caught Tully in the middle of his next leap and shook him like a rag doll. He opened his mouth, reared back his head, and breathed out pure black Soul Fire right into Tully’s face. The werewolf roared and screamed in pain. Thrashing, the fire literally burned off Tully’s face, and then his entire head.
Misha tossed the headless body to one side and turned to Amanda and Marco on the ground. Marco tried to get up. Misha laughed.
Amanda touched her earpiece, and said, “Send these bastards back to Hell.”
“Present arms!” bellowed a voice from atop of a roof. Misha looked behind him and his men.
Behind the fence were residential houses that ran the length of the cemetery. Every window opened up. Men came out of the homes with belt-fed machine-guns. There were teenagers and kids barely in their twenties, mostly Hispanic and Asian, with gang logos of tigers and dragons. There were men in NYPD windbreakers and body armor. There were men in jeans and sweaters, with slicked-back hair, who would take the terms “Guido” and “Goomba” as compliments. There were men in full tactical kit, wearing enough weapons for war. There were the dark green and royal blue stripes of the Vatican Ninjas.
The source of the voice came from the top of a roof in the middle of a row of houses. It was a shorter vampire, whose entire face crinkled with laugh and smile lines. His hair was an unearthly, chemical shade of red, and he spoke with a brogue as he said, “Fire!”
Misha’s eyes opened wide. Amanda’s vampires had the high ground on one side, and soldiers had flanked his him.
He and his men were caught in the middle.
Flaming crossbow bolts launched from the house behind the vampire army. Occasionally, they caught an overcharged minion, which exploded into great balls of white fire. Machine-guns fired wooden rounds sprayed with holy water, mowing down vampires by the lots. Other windows fired paintball guns with holy water in the splat balls. And finally, there was a new weapon, also wielded by Kraft’s military unit: variable kinetic rounds. VK rounds were typically small razor-discs that sliced through anything in their path. In this case, the VK rounds were small, razor-sharp Stars of David.
Some of Misha’s legions scattered. Only at the bottom of the hill, out at the street, a van pulled up, and the back opened, revealing a Vatican Ninja with a mini-gun. The gun opened up, blowing through vampires left and right, cutting some in half, setting others on fire.
There was only one way to avoid the jaws of the trap, and that was through Amanda, Marco, Merle, and the entire New York City Vampires Association.
Misha looked at the madness around him and felt himself undone. He summoned all his power and trained it on the houses, ready to level them at a thought.
A star bit into his chest, punching into his scaly black armor. He blinked and fell back, looking down at his chest as his body twisted and reshaped into his more human form. The armor fell away. He groaned and ripped out the ruined flesh with his bare hand, using the hunks to prevent direct contact with the star.
Misha threw away the hunks of flesh around the Star of David. Black fire leaked from the wound like blood. The fire surged, reforming the parts he had just thrown away.
Misha turned away from the kill zone towards the man who shot him. Merle Kraft kept firing, nonstop. Misha didn’t even bother dodging the rounds. He stared at the headstones between him and Kraft and mentally yanked them out of the ground. Using their momentum, he knocked the stars out of the air before they ever got him.
Amanda wondered how he could have survived a Star of David into the heart—even Asmodeus couldn’t heal a wound caused by a holy object.
Amanda recalled a rare medical condition where the organs of the human body were mirrored, opposite from the side of the chest they should actually be on…
Marco had stabbed him in the heart, where it should be, on the left, and it hadn’t slowed him down…
His heart was on the right side of this chest.
Amanda smiled.
Merle cursed and reloaded the gun. A torrent of rocks shot at him, forcing him to dodge. He needed to get through the bricks to get to Misha, but that would take too long.
Misha allowed the bricks do their work on Merle and lunged for the vampire he had sired. Amanda let him come. She twisted, turning into a spin-kick that snapped Misha’s head back with a resounding crack.
He blinked. He hadn’t been kicked that hard since he first trained with Nuala. “Let’s see how well you play against my skill.”
The vampire whirled, going for a left roundhouse backhand. Instead of blocking it, Amanda noted that he pivoted on the right foot, leaving the left foot in the air. If she blocked the backhand, the kick would be unchecked.
Amanda neatly stepped back two paces, and when he kicked out, she caught the ankle a good two feet in front of her. She pulled back, yanking him off his feet. She spun around, and threw him at one of the broken tree branches.
The branch came out his back, on his right side. Where his mirrored heart was.
Marco was dying, and he knew it. His body wouldn’t react to his commands. That was that. No more Marco. While the rest took on the vampire army, he would simply fade away into the night.
Well, after all, I’m not needed by anyone. Amanda’s faring well, everyone’s alive, except for me, and all will be well, except for the bother of a funeral.
Amanda had aimed just right.
Misha went flying, right into the business end of a broken tree branch. The limb staked Misha’s heart. Marco smiled, content to die in peace, knowing that his love had won.
Until he saw Misha pushing off of the tree and landing on the ground. He rose, unsteady on his feet, and glared at Amanda.
“No…” Marco groaned. Asmodeus can heal even a stake to the heart.
He coughed up some blood. Amanda could not win against something that would not die. He had faith in her ability to kill all the vampires in the world, but not if they couldn’t actually die. Eventually, Misha would kill her—she would become tired, make a slip, and that would be the end.
Marco forced his left arm to move, praying for the ability to turn himself over.
And that was the last of his strength. He couldn’t move again.
Darn, and what was it they were all worried about? “A saint in training…you don’t believe in your own limits, so they don’t apply. You make your own reality; only it’s a scary reality because you enforce it on the rest of us. You say that you are whatever you need to be, and you are.” Pul-leaze.
One thought occurred to him. He was always what he needed to be. He needed to be in control as a werewolf. He needed to be a thug to talk to thugs. He willed himself to be what he needed to be.
He needed to be alive.
Misha slowly moved for her, at first, and then lunged with a right uppercut. Amanda guessed that he would know that she could dodge any first blow, and so the payoff would be the second shot. She weaved to her left, around the fist, and dove, expecting him to sweep the right foot in anticipation of her ducking a kick.
Amanda leaped over the sweeping kick and rolled away. She twirled and launched a stake from her belt like a spear into his chest before he was even finished with his uppercut.
The stake went through him.
“Enough,” he snapped. Misha drew the sources of his powers together to himself. His body surged with energy, and his hands and feet burst into white-hot flames. “I can set myself on fire, and–!”
Suddenly, Misha froze, his body numb. In his peripheral vision, he saw something sticking out of his neck as he fell to his knees—it was a foot-long wooden throwing knife that had slipped between the cartilage of his spine and severed it at the C4 vertebrae, making him an instant quadriplegic. He concentrated his powers on moving his limbs independently of the central nervous system, but nothing happened.
His eyes flicked to Amanda, closing in on him, and he focused his power into a fireball from his eyes. A second later, a knife entered his occipital lobe—the part of the brain that processes visi
on—and his eyes went dark.
“No,” he croaked.
Marco Catalano, prone on the ground, sighed after the exertion of throwing the last two knives.
Misha growled as his body suddenly moved, floating away from Amanda. Both wooden blades flew in opposite directions out of his neck. Soul Fire created an aura around him while he healed himself. In the blink of an eye, he stood upright, both of his eyes solid black.
Misha spared Marco a passing glance. Amanda held Marco’s cavalry sword. He’d had enough of playing with these people.
A cannon-like weapon boomed, and his chest burst into flames. He turned, and saw Marco, still flat on his back, holding a fifty-caliber Desert Eagle.
Amanda felt for her belt. She knew she had forgotten something. Marco must have lifted it from her.
“Wooden bullets,” Marco explained. “You should have kept your telekinetic shield up.”
Two more bullets entered his chest before Misha could move. He growled. He had to withdraw his Soul Fire and only use it to keep himself alive. His body was reaching its limit, the strain of the Soul Fire wearing on him. The fire burned inside his chest, searing away the dead flesh and regrowing useful tissue.
Amanda advanced on him. He jumped back, away from both of them and scooped up a rock from the ground. Misha whirled, hurling the stone at Marco’s chest. The impact shattered several of his ribs and dropped him back.
Misha eyed Marco’s sword in Amanda’s hand. He spun, grabbing a lamp post and intending to beat her to death with it. Swinging the pole through the air, Amanda suddenly appeared directly in front of him. She was only inches away, and her sword sliced through the air. It cut his arm from his body.
Misha reached forward to break her neck, but Amanda swung the sword back around, slicing through his neck.