by Declan Finn
Jennifer held up a hand. “Who is this Marco?”
“The human in question. Marco Catalano, he called himself,” Lynch answered. “A pleasant enough fellow for an Italian, but he’s blond, so there must be some Celt, from back in the day when they owned Northern Italy. Anyway, he wanted some information. One of my customers challenged him directly, and tried to kill him.”
There was a scattered murmur through the hall. Pet humans were considered private property. A good, reliable human was difficult to come by. It would be like taking a sledgehammer to somebody’s Porsche. If there was a problem with someone’s human, his or her vampire was the party that should be addressed, and attacked, if need be. Directly going after someone’s human was Just Not Done.
“Without any enhancements at all,” Lynch said, “he dealt with the troublesome customer himself, with no aid from Mistress Colt. Not even with aid of her bite. He's no minion.”
Amanda almost nodded, but wanted to maintain an air of cool impassivity. A vampire’s bite transferred a slight bit of the metaphysical virus that gave vampires their unique post-resurrection-like status; it helped keep the food stock alive, and it granted the ones they bit temporary preternatural strength. It was something other vampires could sense. Marco had wanted to avoid having any augmentation at all when they went into the Blood Bank, for this very reason.
He was right again, she thought. I hate it when he’s right. If I tell him, he’ll be insufferable for days.
President Jennifer Bosley arched a brow. “Indeed?”
Lynch nodded. “So, I contend that Mistress Colt had no hand in the destruction of The Platelet, that Marco Catalano could have done it all by himself.”
“Bastard!” Kalsey barked. “What did you do, sic them both on me?”
Lynch merely smiled. “I simply mentioned a few establishments that I knew obtained their blood supply through a less than savory source—like, directly from people.”
Jennifer Bosley tapped the gavel twice to cut off another outburst. “Presume for the moment that Amanda Colt’s human, Marco Catalano, did indeed act independently in the destruction of The Platelet. What would be the purpose?” She looked at Amanda this time. “What prompted your human’s destructive rampage?”
Amanda blinked, and slowly straightened. “Several of his people—by extension, my people—had been murdered by Mikhail the Bear. An issue which I tried to raise before this body, and was ignored.”
She glared around the room, and everyone went completely and utterly still, as still as only vampires could be. “I sent emails. I made phone calls. I did everything but send smoke signals. No one considered stopping his expansion.”
After a moment, Jennifer Bosley cleared her throat. “Mikhail the Bear is an international authority, not bound to our local jurisdiction.”
“Da,” Amanda said courteously. “That is another way of saying that you were all too terrified to do anything about him when he was rampaging over all of our territories.”
Jennifer leaned forward, her dark brown eyes nearly black in the light. “Oh? And why are you using the past tense, young lady?”
Amanda cleared her throat. “Because last week, Mikhail the Bear was assassinated in Greenpoint, on the doorstep of Marco Catalano.”
The grave-like quality of the room exploded into a cacophony of ranting. There were expressions of disbelief, objections that Amanda was even still alive, and one thing above all that Amanda found most interesting…
There was an undercurrent of fear. Every vampire in that room was afraid. The President merely hid her fear the best.
“Mikhail was dangerous to all of us,” Amanda said, her voice rising above the din. She maintained eye contact with President Bosley. “He brought Vatican ninjas to our area. Where were you—all of you—when he was riding roughshod over Greenpoint? And Howard Beach? And Bensonhurst? And Maspeth, Queens? He killed FBI agents, MI-6 intelligence officers, and mafiosi, attracting attention that none of us want. Through all that time, this body did nothing.”
Jennifer Bosley rapped the gavel so hard, the crack sounded through the hall like a gunshot. “That aside, what does that have to do with the unwarranted attack on The Platelet?”
“Unwarranted?” Amanda asked. “Marco’s territory—my territory—had been invaded, and constantly under siege. Marco attacked any large gathering of less than savory vampires that might be in contact with Mikhail and his people.”
Lynch the bar owner stood. “I can vouch for that. That was the exact question I had been asked by her pet human.”
Kalsey glared from his seat. “And you gave him my bar?”
Lynch grinned at him. “Sure, lad, where else would I send him to find unsavory lowlifes?”
Kalsey smirked. “There are some places in the Village I could name.”
“Hey!” barked the male crossdresser from earlier. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jennifer Bosley rapped the gavel again. “One more outburst, and I am clearing the hall.” She looked to Amanda. “You claim that the human Catalano acted in self-defense.” She looked to Kalsey. “Were you approached by Mikhail the Bear at any time?”
Kalsey winced. “Yes, Madam President, I was.”
“And did you join forces with him?”
Kalsey swallowed, and Amanda kept from smiling. He was probably thinking about the holy water poisoning. When the Vatican ninja poisoned Kalsey, the ninja explained that the holy water was encapsulated in nanocapsules that required a secondary agent to unlock them, and flood Kalsey’s system with holy water—in case there had been any alliance between him and Mikhail.
Kalsey, probably thinking about all of that, said, “No.”
Though if he is telling the truth, Amanda thought, who can tell?
“Was this due to the threat of retaliation by Amanda and her human?” the President asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The President looked at him for a long moment, as if wondering if she should believe him. “In that case, I think that Amanda’s human has merely adapted himself well to the long-term planning that we vampires take for granted. Now, if there is no other discussion on the topic, I suggest a fifteen-minute recess. Do I have a second?”
Amanda raised her hand. Jennifer Bosley nodded at her. “Motion carried.” She looked to Amanda. “Miss Colt, before you leave… ”
She reached down, grabbed a pen, and quickly scribbled down a note. She folded it neatly, then ran a letter opener through it.
Then she threw the letter opener at Amanda’s head.
CHAPTER 3:
SITTING TARGETS
New York City, April 26th (4:00 am)
“Of course, vampires can dodge throwing knives, and it was made of metal, so it could not hurt me,” Amanda explained in the rectory sitting room.
The sitting room was getting crowded. Rodgers sat at the table between Marco and Amanda, while several of the ninjas stood at the other side, drinking from Starbucks mugs bigger than their fists.
Marco Catalano winced at the whole letter opener idea. He knew that she could have, and did, dodge it. But still… “Nice to know she’s so confident of your abilities,” he drawled. He leaned back in the wooden chair, and wondered why they couldn’t have this meeting in his family’s brownstone only a few miles away.
Answer: because the Vatican Ninjas in the sitting room would probably not go over well.
Marco tried not to sigh. He was blond, well built, and moved like a dancer, but social graces were not where his instincts were located. No, that’s more like gutting people.
Marco tried to get back on track, and looked to the priest. Father Rodgers, a black priest who was God-knew how old, was the local contact on all things anti-vampire. “Did she get away clean?”
The priest smiled. “Of course,” he said in a booming voice that was trained before churches had microphones. “Hendershot and his men had her covered in the hall, and on the way back. If anyone tried to hurt Amanda, we would be ready for them.
”
Marco nodded. Hendershot of the Swiss Guard was a humorless Vatican Ninja—the Roman Catholic anti-vampire squad that had been around for longer than Marco wanted to think about. Rodgers was the local contact, and presumably in charge, though Marco had never asked for the exact arrangement of the hierarchy. He looked back to Amanda, “So, the letter?”
Amanda handed it to him. The note read:
Miss Colt,
Obviously, you do not know what depths of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, you and your human—if you did, you would never have taken on Mikhail in the first place.
Do not think that this verdict has actually gotten you off. Kalsey is a pig. Lynch steered you both in the right direction. And do not think that we don’t know about the other two bars Marco destroyed that evening. We do. However, those bar owners are so deep in the mire that they wouldn’t dare protest openly. You were lucky there. You are equally fortunate that you acquitted yourself well in the hall. Otherwise, we would have been forced to hang you, whether we wanted to or not. And that was not metaphorical; we would have hung you from a meat hook on a bell tower and waited for morning.
You may or may not have surmised from the reaction amongst the crowd that Mikhail was not alone. He was the low man on the food chain, and we’re too worried about what’s at the top of the pole to go against them directly. However, now that they have lost their primary recruiter, you can rest assured that the others will come and find you.
Good luck.
Lady Jennifer Bosley
President, NYC Vampires Association
“Well, we had theorized that Mikhail had been part of a bigger organization,” Marco said, handing it to the priest, “but that clinches it.”
“Da,” Amanda agreed, “but if Mikhail was head of their human resources and recruitment, what does rest of command structure contain?”
Marco smiled at the dropped “the”s in Amanda’s speech. Despite being a vampire for over 80 years, she still occasionally reverted to the traditional Russian sentence structure, which had no articles, making her sometimes sound like a villain in Rocky and Bullwinkle.
“Not to mention,” Rodgers added, “who needs that many vampires?” He finished reading the letter and put it down. “Mikhail was around for centuries, making nests upon nests.”
“Sounds like an army,” Marco said. “And let’s face it, as time goes on, I’m sure that Mikhail’s recruiting would have gotten more vigorous, if only because of modern technology.”
Amanda nodded. “Da. Not every vampire can regulate their heartbeat, respiration, and pulse. Many do not even try, making them all, effectively, room temperature. Any thermal scope could spot them instantly.”
“Not to mention incendiary rounds,” Marco added. “And automatic arrow-shooters. And if someone else pulls our trick with the forty-gallon drum of holy water and the fire hose, a war of evil vampires versus people would be very, very short.”
Rodgers laughed. “True. It would be hard for an army of good vampires to wage full-scale war on the land of the living. That would undermine the 'good’ in their description.”
Marco nodded. As much as he thought the phrase “good vampire” was as strange and as oxymoronic as “good lawyer,” Marco had figured out how it worked. As a type of “post-resurrection,” vampirism closely intertwined the soul of the vampire with the body; the more actions, good or bad, the more fully formed the soul, and the body, would become. A sinful life, filled with vice and just plain evil, would mar the vampire’s body, as well as the soul. While the vampire would travel further and further along the scale of power, it would do the same along the scale of evil. The vampire would gain power, but become more restricted in the ability to move—crosses, churches, and the lack of an invitation into a private domicile would be off limits.
Amanda, on the other hand, went to church weekly, sometimes daily, and went through the rosary routinely.
It was one of the many things he loved about her.
Amanda looked to Rodgers and asked, “Have you ever heard of the Council?”
Rodgers blinked behind his coke-bottle glasses. “Rumors, mostly.”
Marco raised a finger. “Council? Any Council in particular?”
Amanda and the priest exchanged a glance. Rodgers spoke first. “You haven’t run into a master vampire yet, have you?”
“He hasn’t,” Amanda answered for him.
Marco’s amused little smile flickered. “If Mikhail the Bear wasn’t a master vampire, then what the hell is one?”
“Think the original Dracula,” Rodgers answered. “Only Mister Stoker made it look easier than it really is.”
Marco winced. “Ouch.”
Amanda nodded. “The council is supposed to be something that even master vampires answer to. Something like that could intimidate the local Vampires Association, and could be something Mikhail could work for.” She frowned. “If there were any evidence to prove that it ever existed.”
Marco shrugged. “True. Anyway, one thing at a time. Your meeting at least gets us off the hook for laying waste to Kalsey’s place. I’m not sure if we’re going to be safe from his retribution, but if he could have taken us out on his own, he would have, but I don’t think he’d want to mess with the Vatican Ninjas.”
“He also does not know our forces,” Amanda said. “Not to mention that Mikhail was killed on your doorstep. No one knows what level of force we brought to bear, nor do they know how he died.”
Marco nodded. “I listened to the recording the ninjas made of the meeting. I noticed that you didn’t mention how he was taken out. Good idea.”
Amanda gave him a smile. “I thought it would be prudent to let them think that we killed him ourselves.”
Marco sighed, mostly to himself. He didn’t want to think about what had happened last week, when Mikhail beat him half to death at his own front door. Though that had been annoying, it wasn’t a problem.
The problem was that Mikhail had been assassinated—and not by anyone allied to Marco and Amanda. Mikhail had been crippled, helpless, and totally at their mercy. If Marco had his way, Mikhail would have spent what little remained of his short life suffering through water torture— an IV of holy water int Mikhail’s veins a few units at a time. Mikhail would have talked. Eventually. Marco would have taken his time, and he would have made the vampire tell him everything. Someone had killed him to prevent that. Amanda had given chase, but the creature who killed Mikhail had gotten away, only after throwing Amanda off a roof.
That was also something Marco didn’t want to think about too much.
“I do not think there is any more that we can do,” Amanda said. “We have solved one immediate problem, and unless we can find a way to solve the root of it, we would merely be floundering in the dark.”
Marco grunted. “True. I hate it, but it’s true. Even if it does make us a stationary target.”
“You could make it harder on them,” Rodgers suggested.
Amanda and Marco looked right at him. “How so?” Marco asked.
“Da. Please explain,” Amanda concurred.
“Didn’t you have an offer lately to go out to San Francisco?” the priest asked.
“That’s true,” Marco told him. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“If the two of you are in two different places, that might encourage them to wait until you’re both together again,” the priest said. “If one of you falls, the other will be put on notice, and considering what happened the last time, the last thing they’d want is to face you while you are prepared.”
The two of them went quiet, and the priest waited only a beat before he stood. “I’m going to make some more tea. I think you two need some time to discuss this.”
Rodgers left, and the two of them barely noticed.
When Amanda and Marco had faced down Mikhail the Bear’s New York army of vampires, they had brought in a new element: Merle Kraft, government expert on “the strange.” However, while he had
been helpful, he had also figured on there being a problem in his near future: the problem of vampires entering into his neighborhood.
Merle had made Marco an offer to go to San Francisco, and organize a local anti-vampire squad so Merle could go off and do his “real job,” however one could define “real.” Merle Kraft had even offered Marco an all-expense paid trip to the University of San Francisco, so Marco could finish his Physician Assistant agree.
“You said it was a good idea,” Amanda told Marco.
Marco’s smile flickered. “I was beaten half to death at the time. You shouldn’t take anything I say at face value.”
“That is no denial,” Amanda told him.
Marco’s smile flickered again. He had no idea what to say. He couldn’t tell her what he was thinking, and what he was feeling…that was utterly and completely off-limits. He had secrets of his own…one, really. Going to California, this time last year, would have meant nothing to him. And on what was essentially a government grant? Hell yes. It wasn’t like people would miss him. The gangs he ran? They were more afraid of him than anything else. His father always wanted him to get out more. There was nothing in the entire world that would keep him from going to California. Not one damn thing…
Then there was Amanda.
Except for, you know, “By the way, Amanda, I like killing people. That’s not a problem for you, is it? Even though you drink blood to survive and don’t kill anyone, while I’d happily slaughter some people just to improve the gene pool.” That would end well.
“Yeah. It’s not a denial. Let’s face it, New York is relatively secure. Merle needs all the help he can get, and these guys are willing to get me away from the schmucks at NYScrew.”
Marco smiled, and tried to be as genuine as possible, before she picked up on any signs of deceit. “But, don’t worry,” he said, his smile becoming pained. “We’ll still be friends.”
His words were killing him before he even said them.