Honor at Stake (Love at First Bite Book 1)

by Declan Finn

  Marco laughed. “Actually, I don't care how it works. You know me, Father. I've been coming to your church for as long as I've been alive. I'm going to eradicate this vermin, with or without your help. Or your Vatican ninjas, or–”

  “We would want to send you for training,” the priest interrupted.

  “–the NYPD, or…” Marco's rant slowed to a stop. “I'm sorry, what did you say?”

  “They are offering you 'Vatican Ninja' training,” Amanda said with a smile.

  “Why me?”

  “You mean other than your belief in something others wouldn’t believe, your willingness to risk your life to fight this scourge, and your skill in combat?” Rodgers turned to Amanda. “How many has he killed in personal combat?”

  “Two or three last night on the train, another two in Astoria with some additional aid from me.”

  Marco nodded, and leaned back in the chair. His eyes focused on the crucifix on the wall, using it as most Catholics should: a focal point, something to concentrate on. After a long moment, he said, “No.”

  Even Amanda was surprised. “Really?”

  He frowned, thoughtfully, his eyes not wavering from the cross. “I still have an education to work on, and I'd like to get it. Fancy ninjas aside, you can't waive classes, and let me just take tests and labs. I don't think you're that tight with the government. Any government. How about I make you a deal: you give me tactical support when needed, and we can talk about me joining your little gang of rogues when I graduate in four years, or if I'm ever allowed any free time in the meanwhile. Better?”

  “If that is our only option, I suppose we have to take it. However, if you don't mind, we have another matter we'd like to discuss with you.” He picked up a bible from next to the chair, and opened it. One of the bookmarks was a photo of a well-dressed, clean-cut fellow. “Have you seen this man kicking around Greenpoint?”

  “Nope. Sorry. Why, should I have?”

  “He's dead right now,” the priest told him casually.

  “That would be why I haven't seen him.” Marco took the photo, and slid it over to Amanda. “You?”

  She studied it for a long moment. “Nyet. I don’t think so. But from this alone, What is the American Phrase? He smells like FBI?”

  Marco nodded, his smile amused. “Oh yes. He’s almost certainly a fed.”

  The vampire looked at the priest. “Should we know him?”

  “Not necessarily.” Rogers took the photograph back. “He was an FBI agent; you have that right. He's been in Greenpoint recently, and now he's disappeared.”

  “What makes you think that it has anything to do with us?”

  “It may not,” Rodgers said, “but be advised to not take any chances. This guy had years of training and now…? Anyway, who would have thought 'vampires' when the assaults first started in Brooklyn?”

  Marco nodded, standing up. “Okay, I'm going to want the number for your tactical team, and I'm going to need a copy of the photo of your dead fed so I can spread it around the neighborhood to see if anyone has any information.”

  Amanda rose with him. “We still have much to do. Educating the locals on vampiric self-defense, organizing them into patrol forces that follow schedules…”

  Rodgers nodded and pushed himself to his feet. “Understood.” He reached out his hand, and Marco took it. “Be careful out there, Marco. I hate holding funerals for people I baptized.”

  “Gotcha.” Marco was about to walk out, then stopped. “By the way, this is going to sound strange, but have you ever heard of a connection between the Enlightenment and vampires? I know it sounds stupid, but–”

  Father Rodgers eyes lit up, and he barked a laugh. “Ah! The origins of the great vampire uprising of the eighteenth century! I'm surprised you know about it, not many people do.”

  “I didn't. It was just a guess.”

  “Well, let's just say that there was a good reason that they used Lucifer as the symbol of the Enlightenment, and it wasn't just because he was a symbol of 'change' and 'light.' It's why the Illuminati and the Masons were banned.”

  Marco made a face. “I was at a lodge meeting once. They drank beer and had awful venison steaks. There are just some things that shouldn't be done to decent meat.”

  Amanda put her hand on his arm. “European Masons are not the same as American Masons. Trust me. They never were, really. In Europe, to be a Grand Mason, you had to experience one ceremony where they rammed a sword through a mockup of the Pope's miter.”

  “Goody,” Marco said, completely deadpan. “Now, what was the great vampire uprising?”

  “It was well disguised,” the priest told him, “but the demonic influences were evident in the public decapitations. Peasants would run in and catch freshly flowing blood with their bread, and eat it, in one of the most obvious perversions of the Eucharist ever witnessed.”

  Marco put his hands up in the classic “time out” signal. “Wait, public rituals of blood sacrifices? When the hell was this?”

  “Most people called it the French Revolution.”

  Chapter Fifteen: Things Can Get Worse

  March 13th, 8:00 a.m.

  Over two months after Marco and Amanda's run-in with the Vatican Ninjas of St. Anthony–St. Alphonsus Church, Doctor Robert Catalano finished tightening his tie and glanced down at the coffee table in the sitting room.

  The entire table was covered by a spread of wooden knives. Most of them were small knives, not even six inches long. He frowned, picked one up, and balanced it on his finger. The center of balance was in the middle of the knife, so they were for throwing.

  Then there was a large, machete-sized wooden knife, which also had perfect center of balance.

  He thinks he's going to throw this? He leaned towards the entrance to the sitting room. “Marco? What exactly are you working on now?”

  After listening to a small herd of elephants on the stairs as Marco sprinted down, he heard his son say, “Anything in particular?”

  Marco was on the stairs, both hands braced on the banister, his feet on two different steps, as though he was about to sprint back up at any moment. Robert nodded towards the weaponry on the table. “When did you join the Boy Scouts?”

  Marco rolled his eyes and let out a burst of air that sounded like psssht. “When Hell froze over. That's when. Remember that one summer camp you sent me to?”

  The doctor smiled. He remembered it very, very well. There was a bully at that summer camp. An ambulance was involved. Lawyers had been threatened…then there was something about waterboarding in the lake…

  “The camp we had to come exfiltrate you from? I remember. Why?”

  “I picked up whittling.” Marco flipped a mental coin, and decided that this conversation was going to take a while, so he came all the way down the stairs. “Obviously.”

  “Throwing knives, and a throwing Bowie knife?” Robert Catalano asked, still mildly incredulous. “Where do you even get the wood for this?”

  “You'd be surprised at the quality of materials thrown out. One support breaks in the back of a wooden chair, no one thinks of keeping it as, oh, a stool, even though it has four good chair legs. Probably because no one knows how to fix things anymore; they just buy new stuff.”

  Robert nodded, reached for his jacket, and paused. “You know, I believe there’s an old wooden broomstick that never made it to the curbside trash. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”

  “Waste not, want not.” He gave his father an easy shrug. “Look at it this way. Our environmentalist neighbors will take great comfort to know that we are responsibly reusing garbage to a good purpose.”

  “Please. If you were any more of a Republican, you'd be Attila the Hun.”

  “Really? He was a revolutionary, so that makes him more of a left-winger, doesn't it?”

  Marco's father looked at his watch, then waved his son to a couch. “We need to talk.”

  Marco moved from the hall into the sitting room. “Funny, you d
on't even look like a girlfriend.” He slid into the couch, leaned back.

  Robert took a moment and thought about whether or not he wanted to stand or sit for this, but standing wouldn't give him an advantage with Marco, so might as well be comfortable. Once seated, he began, “I'm a little worried about you. You've been training your gang folk to deal with vampires, and from what I've seen, you haven't been able to stop them. I'm still seeing the same amount of people coming into the ER, with the same wounds, and I'm trying to remember the last time you talked to me about something like, oh, I don't know, your classes. You are still going to them, aren't you?”

  “Of course. When I miss one, I just make sure to have someone record them. Trust me, I'm not missing anything.”

  “What about the turpentine you picked up lately?” Robert asked knowingly. “I don't think you've taken to painting.”

  “Turpentine is one of the world's most flammable substances, right?” He reached up one sleeve, and pulled out a stake.

  Robert looked at him askance.

  Marco explained, “I want to be cautious. The sheaths were easy to make out of old canvas bags.” He leaned forward, pointing to a round, clove-shaped piece of paper taped to the stake. “Now, this is a stake covered in turpentine. See this little thing on the side? It's one of those contact firecrackers, the kind that go off if you throw them on the sidewalk. In this case, when trying to stab through, oh, an entire ribcage is too much. You just line this up with the fleshy part of a vampire's body, and, well…” He looked over, saw one of his old textbooks on a table next to the couch, and stabbed it.

  The stake went up in flames so fast, Marco's hand barely had time to pull away, and he had let go the moment it penetrated. Marco reached over, behind the couch, and came back with a bucket of water. He merely slid the burning textbook into the bucket.

  “That was easy.”

  “You just happened to have a disposable textbook lying around to set on fire, as well as a bucket of water? Marco, no. Just…no.” He studied the book for a moment, and considered something. “You know, I think that book's been lying around for a few days. Possibly a week or two. I remember thinking that you had already taken that course last summer…”

  “Well, you know how I like to plan ahead.”

  “Fine. In which case, I want a full report of exactly what you've been doing.”

  “Me? Not much. I've coordinated the gangs into patrols, so that they're essentially within three blocks of potential screams at any one time. I've arranged for them to start taking up hobbies like archery, and, thankfully, we've got some guys who are former army and marines. Two were retired out, and by that I mean they got shot, or wounded, or just plain cycled stateside. They've been helpful. It's not like I'm running these guys with some training I got at Xavier.”

  “Yet, you still terrify them?”

  Marco shifted in the couch. “I do have a certain skill set in violent activities that makes me…a source of concern, should I flip out on them.”

  “That leads me to another question. These former military members of yours were good at their jobs, would you say? Then how did they get in with the Dragons and Tigers? How do you manage to not have a power struggle in a group of people who, I assume, are natural-born alpha males?”

  “Dad, you remember back when I took Krav Maga?”

  “Since you were, what, ten? Of course, I remember. Why?”

  “Let's say I kept my hand in.”

  Robert winced at the memory of Marco's time studying Krav Maga. The combat system of the Israeli Defense Force had only five levels before the system counted “expert” levels. Between ten and fifteen years of age, Marco had covered several levels, and Robert remembered having to work on black eyes and bruises that would cover entire limbs. Marco even learned a dislocated shoulder trick out of a Lethal Weapon movie.

  “How did you keep your hand in?” he asked cautiously.

  “I've been going over to a place in Long Island every other week. Honest, there have been no broken bones, massive bruises, sprains, strains, or anything of the sort.”

  “Uh huh. Should I ask what level you're up to now?”

  Marco considered a moment, then shook his head. “No, you shouldn't. Anyway, all that to say that my skills make me the clear leader of the group. Back to what we've been up to though. We’re working on the arrows, which are easy to carry around, since they're not technically a concealed weapon. Lord knows there are enough cosplay conventions going on in New York at any one time to not be that noticeable. That, and the NYPD around here are slowly becoming aware that the escalating problem requires escalation of force. We've even got a few guys who are going for tricks like breathing fire. In short, the reason there are people coming into the ER is that they aren't being brought into the morgue. The body count you recall, was starting to grow in December.”

  “They've stopped growing,” Robert realized. He nodded, thinking it over a moment. “But you realize that you haven't actually stopped the bleeding, you've just controlled it.”

  Marco nodded. “That's something I intend to do with Amanda tonight. Now that we have people to watch our backs, and we don't have to worry about the ER being flooded nightly, we're going to get some information about the source of this problem, and figure it out once and for all.”

  The doctor studied his son a moment, and the gorge between them, symbolized neatly by the table full of knives. “Tell me once more about alignment.”

  “What?”

  “Assume that I don't play video games. What should I expect from, say, someone who had gone to the dark side?”

  “Well, it's like the first Star Wars RPG, Knights of the Old Republic. The more choices you make, the more to the dark side you go, or the light. The more evil you do, the more sensitive a vampire is to holy objects. They're generally harder to kill, otherwise, and more powers come with that sort of vile behavior, but we've generally run into more of the Incontinents than anything else.”

  “Incontinent? It sounds more like a diagnosis of someone who doesn't eat enough fiber.”

  Marco rolled his eyes. “Aristotle's definition of 'incontinent'–those who know the good, want the good, but generally tend towards the bad. Outward signs trend more towards a pale, pasty appearance, like a drug user going through withdrawal.”

  “Why is that, anyway?” Robert asked. “Why are vampires the picture of Dorian Gray?”

  “Remember how I used to be able to tell a lot about people just by looking at them? I always thought something was off? You even saw it in Lily, though I was too star-struck to notice. Some people would call it profiling, no matter if it were two Caucasians looking at each other. Sure, a lot of people are deeper than they look, but how many more than that are shallow creatures with no depths to plumb? More than I can count, certainly.”

  “But physical changes?” Robert frowned. “I guess if you want to go with things like the hands of a carpenter, or the belly of a champion eater…”

  “More or less. Vampires are people, only their bodies are more tightly linked to their souls, so positive alignment is reflected positively. Therefore, the more evil ones look evil. Break out the crosses, and go to town.”

  “Okay, but what about Amanda?”

  Marco's entire body postured tensed, as though he was about to leap out of the chair. “What about her?”

  “You're working with her almost nightly. I'm sure you've already tested to see if she's affected by holy artifacts. What else are you doing with her?”

  “What? Nothing. We're friends, I told you that.”

  “You also told me that you had no reason for discussing vampires. Have you had a Defining the Relationship discussion that actually ended in 'Let's just be friends'?”

  “No,” Marco answered quickly. “I preempted it. There's no reason for us to be attracted to each other, no reason we should be more than friends, nor any reason that the two of us should stop working together. To even hint that there may be something more…No, I don't t
hink I could take it. That would change everything.”

  Marco rose, his entire face going neutral. “I have to go, get ready for the day.”

  Robert sighed. He knew Marco had shut down completely for this conversation. “Marco, what exactly will you and Amanda be doing tonight, anyway?”

  “Oh, just hitting some bars.”

  “Well, that's not too bad.”

  “Vampire bars.”

  * * * *

  March 13th, 5:00 p.m.

  Marco arrived at Amanda Colt's door earlier than she expected. The sun was still up, and she was about to feed when the door-bell rang.

  She buzzed Marco in and moved for her refrigerator. In addition to her own blood-creating organs, Amanda preferred taking the wine at Church. A healthy sip was usually enough to satisfy her for a week, but if the two of them got into trouble that evening, she would need the extra fluids to heal any damage she might take. On the one hand, she wanted to have faith in the Lord thy God. On the other, she wasn't about to test Him, either.

  Amanda took out a quart container of blood she had taken from the expired blood at the local hospitals. She took a healthy sip from the top, and grimaced. Part of the problem with expired blood was that it tasted like it had expired.

  She flipped open the cabinet above the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of imported Russian vodka to top off the blood.

  Yes, she was over a hundred years old and dead for most of that time, but, damn it, she was still Russian.

  Amanda sipped again, smiled at the proportions, and capped the bottle. She started to drink it like some humans would a protein shake.

  She turned, and headed towards the living room, wondering what took Marco so long to get to her door. She was surprised to find him standing by the collection of weapons against the wall.

  Amanda almost gagged on the blood. She had forgotten that she had given him a key shortly after their run-in with Officer Tolbert in January.

  It shocked her how handsome Marco looked. She had told him to dress up for the occasion in business casual, and he had. He wore a well-cut sports jacket, and a dark blue polo shirt, and his blond hair was immaculately brushed in place.