Honeymoon From Hell Book #1, The Neck Romancer

Chapter 3: Murphy

So, it’s been a while since I’ve treated the people who pay me.

Yes, almost the entire blog has been free so far, but those of you who pay me? You should get something for it.

And right now, I’m hoping you like my Love at First Bite series. Because if you don’t, you may not understand what’s happening.

I have a sequel series en route. Technically, it’s a continuation of the original, but that will be up to the publisher … especially now that I have a publisher for this series.

So, here… we… go.

Chapter 3: Murphy

Marco burst for the doors and took off running. Amanda easily kept pace with him, even though he ran flat out at full speed. He had always had a build more like a martial artist or a dancer—maybe an acrobat. But after they had cured his lycanthropy, he had maintained a perfect, Olympic-level physique. He ran the Boston Marathon at 78 minutes, but he broke off before the finish line so no one would look at him too closely.

Marco still wasn’t going to outrun a vampire.

Several flights of stairs later, they broke out onto the floor. The security door was smashed in. Two half-eaten bodies were left lying in the hallway.

Both of them charged the door. Sitting in front of a security desk, before a bank of security monitors, was a man in a doctor’s coat and scrubs. “He” turned his head to Marco and smiled broadly, rows of needle-like teeth rimming his mouth like a Venus fly trap.

The creature at the desk lunged for Marco. He bounded to the side. The creature burst through the door frame as its form expanded.

It was naked, but so emaciated that all external signs of gender were gone. It looked like a skeleton with a light draping of flesh around it. The skin was ashen gray, with eyes so far back in the head that the sockets almost looked empty. The antlers from its head were large enough to fit a moose but obviously meant for a deer or an antelope.

It reared back to strike Marco, but didn’t see Amanda until she grabbed its wrist and yanked on it. The wendigo staggered back. Marco shot in low, dropping to his knees in a slide across the floor. He stopped at the wendigo’s foot and slashed at its Achilles tendon with his scalpel. Before it could heal, Marco jammed the scalpel back into the tendon, and twisted the scalpel, breaking the blade off inside the creature.

Let’s see you heal when there’s a knife still in the wound, sucker.

* * * *

The wendigo roared as the leg failed. Marco pushed off the floor and the wall, bounding away as the wendigo hurled Amanda at him. He saw her incoming, and braced for impact, his arms open to catch her.

Amanda briefly turned to mist, mid-flight. When she reformed, the inertia had dissipated enough so Marco wasn’t crushed when he caught her.

The wendigo stomped its wounded foot against the floor, trying to shake the blade loose from its heel.

Marco took a step back and pulled the antibiotic burn cream from his pocket. He immediately applied dollops of it to his palms and his knuckles. He spread them out but didn’t rub them in.

His smile was back, and it was amused. His eyes had gone dark and cold. It was a side of him she hadn’t seen in months. This was the Marco who had been mugged at knife-point and enjoyed feeding the attacker his own blade.

This was the not-quite-psychopath who saw a wendigo as prey.

Marco launched himself at the wendigo without fear or worry.

The wendigo threw an obvious swipe with its right claw. Marco ducked beneath it and darted in, driving both fists into the wendigo’s clearly visible ribs. He flattened his hands against its skin and wiped the cream from his palms onto its skin.

The wendigo screamed as the antibiotic smoked and burned against it. It pushed away from Marco on its good leg and swiped at its ribs and the cream Marco left behind. It smeared the cream over more of its body, and its hands and arms.

Marco backed away as it thrashed around. Amanda shot in and drop-kicked both feet into the wendigo’s knees. It didn’t shatter the knees, but made the wendigo fall back further.

It glared at the both of them for a long moment, then turned and ran off. It smashed through the emergency door and into the staircase.

Amanda glanced at Marco. “What was in that cream?”

“Silver. A variant of silver sulfadiazine—a traditional burn treatment. The skin absorption for the wendigo is gonna be a bitch.”

Amanda smiled at him. “We can still catch up to it.”

Marco shook his head. “As much as I’d like to, you couldn’t track it before—and can you hear it stomping down the stairs?”

Amanda blinked in surprise. “I can’t. It shape shifted again?”

Marco nodded. He stepped forward and reached out to her, then withdrew, looking at the silver cream on his hands. “No. Silver hurts vampires too. I’ll wipe this off, and we can work on our next move.”

* * * *

Marco moved for the nearest restroom. Amanda stared for a moment at the two dead guards. But even calling it in to security wasn’t going to help. No one else in the building would be able to help—even the police in the know would need to keep everyone else safe.

She followed Marco into the men’s room. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing muscular forearms that had 1% body fat. He washed his hands like a surgeon getting ready for entering the operating theater. It made a certain level of sense. It was like washing off rat poison after handling, only it was for her benefit.

“So, you said that you also needed to talk?” she asked as he washed up.

Marco didn’t even look up from the sink. He glanced at where she should have been in the mirror, but only her clothes had a reflection. “Ladies first.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Bosley and I had a discussion. You came up.”

He arched a brow. “I presume that doesn’t happen often.”

Amanda hesitated for only a beat. The four-century-old vampire would occasionally tease Amanda about “taking care of her minion” if something ever happened to the younger vampire (Amanda was “only” over a century old).

“Not in this context, no.” She cleared her throat, clearly uncomfortable. “It was about when you were infected.”

Marco turned off the faucet with his elbow and grabbed paper towels. He scrubbed down and turned his full attention to her. “Okay. I wasn’t a furry for that long. Anything in particular?”

“We talked about marriage?”

Marco stopped mid-scrub. He sighed deeply. “Nuts. I hoped we wouldn’t have to talk about this for at least a little while longer.” He crumpled up the towel and threw it into the garbage. “We know that a large part of our problem is …” He bunched his mouth and frowned in thought, his eyes still drifting away so she didn’t read his thoughts. “We don’t have a lot of middle ground. Even being in the same room with you makes me want to jump you. I hug you when I want to make love to you. I kiss you when I want to see if we can wreck the bed. Moral implications of premarital sex aside, I figure it would make your weekly confession much more painful—and I love you too much for that. I’d rather cut off body parts than hurt you.” He paused, and shrugged. “Not necessarily my own. But still…”

Amanda’s heart sank into her hollow stomach. “Do you have a solution?”

Marco took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Yes. I do. But I’m not ready…”

Amanda forgot to breathe as Marco drifted off in the middle of his statement. He’s not ready for what? Marriage? Commitment? Dating? A love life? FINISH THE SENTENCE.

His gaze refocused on her. “Elise Baglio.”

Amanda resumed breathing. He merely jumped tracks to the current crisis. At least, this was something she was used to. She’d rather deal with a towering monstrosity than him cutting her out of his life. “The first victim?”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at her, as though she had just won a prize. “Exactly! Why? Why was she the first? Recovery is several floors up. If the wendigo entered the hospital through the front door, or had hibernated in (or under) the basement like some demonic bear, it passed half a dozen floors just to get to Baglio. It could have stopped in maternity and popped babies like Chiclets, or eaten the ICU patients in relative peace. Why her?”

Amanda didn’t have to think very hard to follow where he was going. “You think that Elise was murdered? The wendigo was just the weapon?”

Marco nodded. “Why not? Ever since I learned about supernatural creatures, I dispose of my hair and nail clippings lest something nasty gets its hands on them. Why couldn’t someone do something similar to a wendigo?”

Amanda frowned. Earlier, Marco had mentioned Elise was married with children. “Are you thinking the husband?”

Marco nodded. “Statistically likely. I’m no detective, but I’m told that’s the first place you look.” His eyes were bright. “He might still be in the building.”

Amanda nodded. “We’re going to need weapons first. Melee isn’t going to work.”

Marco nodded. She didn’t need to explain. Confronting the husband would be a death trap if he controlled the wendigo. Amanda could tactically turn to mist before it struck her, and while Marco may have been fast, a lucky hit would leave him out of the fight when seconds counted.

“On the first floor, we have the lockers. I have my usual equipment. Also, the pharmacy should have a silver spray version of the cream I used. We have mace for the wendigo.”

Amanda smiled. It was easy to make Marco happy—when in doubt, plot out a way to murder monstrosities.