Wyverns Never Die, Chapter #4
Honeymoon from Hell #3
Sorry I’ve been out of it a while. I’ve just been getting over a cold. Mostly it just means I’m dragging like I haven’t gotten any sleep.
However, Wyverns Never Die, Honeymoon from Hell #3, comes out on February 5th, so I have do SOMETHING that looks like promotion.
So, free chapter.
Chapter 4:
Murder on the Atlanta Express
Without another word, Marco twisted his body, putting all of his force behind throwing the cup at the waiter’s face. The waiter ducked and drove in, sweeping a steak knife from the table. He slashed at Marco’s right side. Marco leaned left, away from the blade. His right forearm swung down like a pendulum to meet the man’s wrist. Marco’s upper body twisted clockwise and drove his left fist into the side of the waiter’s face.
The waiter spun with the blow and slashed Amanda’s hand with the knife as she reached for him.
Amanda screamed in shock and genuine pain. Her skin sizzled along the wound track.
The silverware was made of genuine silver.
The waiter kept spinning. The knife arced overhead, coming for Marco’s face. Marco’s left arm came up, meeting him wrist-to-wrist. Marco drove in, slamming his right elbow into the waiter’s face. The waiter flinched and staggered back a step. Without breaking eye contact with Marco, he slapped his chest.
The waiter’s jacket lit up with embedded LEDs. He was suddenly bright and sparkly, like Liberace’s wardrobe had met an electrical parade.
Then Amanda really started screaming. Her shrieks of pain were accompanied by the sounds of sizzling flesh hitting a fry pan.
Marco only needed the blink of an eye to realize that the LED jackets broadcast ultraviolet light.
This “waiter” had come to kill a vampire.
Marco saw red. He charged the waiter. The knife stabbed up, coming for Marco’s guts. Marco’s left forearm met the wrist and deflected the strike to one side. The knife stabbed the air as Marco’s arm curled around the arm, locking it in place. Marco’s right shoulder slammed into the waiter and lifted him off his feet. They crashed into the hallway and slammed into the cart, tumbling together over it and slamming into the wall.
Marco reared back and drove his fist into the waiter’s nose, flattening it. Marco pulled back, ready to deck him again, when the waiter’s broken nose snapped back into place.
Marco growled and rammed his fist into the waiter’s throat, over and over again. Let’s see how he likes trying to breathe through a crushed trachea!
The waiter ignored the blows and roared. The arm Marco had trapped swung out. It lifted Marco off his feet and slammed him against the wall. The waiter’s grin split his face as he raised his arm to heft Marco around.
The waiter’s voice became low and serpent-like as he hissed, “Now, Mister Catalano, you see what happens to those who stand against the People’s Government!”
* * * *
Amanda felt like her face had been worked over with a blowtorch. She couldn’t touch it to check the damage, and a mirror was out of the question. She knew it was really bad when she couldn’t blink her right eye—the eyelid was gone. Amanda’s own enhanced senses didn’t help. She smelled her own charred flesh in intricate detail, as well as burned hair. The pain lingered on each individual nerve. Confession didn’t hurt this much. Steam didn’t hurt this much.
Amanda tried to focus on Marco. He was probably in danger, though without a good look, it could be the waiter who was in more trouble.
The waiter’s voice was low and serpent-like as he said, “Now, Mister Catalano, you see what happens to those who stand against the People’s Government!”
Amanda’s pain was forgotten in an instant. Her head whipped around to the hallway. The UV LEDs made it difficult to even look at the waiter. She couldn’t get near him unless she wanted to have more parts of her body burned off.
But she still had a steaming hot glass coffee pot, with eleven cups still in the pot.
Her eye narrowed as she ground her teeth.
* * * *
“Hey!” Amanda barked.
The waiter looked back into the room just in time to see the steaming glass coffee pot flying through the air. The pot crashed against his face, driving his head back, stabbing his face with shards, and spilling scalding coffee into his eyes. The waiter screamed and covered his face with his free hand. He forgot all about the knife and dropped it. At the same time, he flung Marco away, down the length of the train car.
The waiter grabbed his face, clearing the hot coffee from his eyes. When he blinked the last of it away, he faced away from where he’d thrown Marco.
He met the eyes of a very angry elf.
Galadren hit just as hard as Marco, forcing the waiter back a step. The waiter slipped into a combat stance and reached for the small of his back. Galadren didn’t wait. He leaped sideways, kicked off the wall, and dropped a spin-kick into the waiter’s face with so much momentum, his neck should have broken.
Instead, the waiter spun with the hit.
The waiter spun around to meet Marco’s flying punch. The impact spun him back to Galadren. The waiter pulled the knife from his belt sheath. One of Galadren’s knives came out, stabbing for the waiter’s face. They met flat-to-flat, and the waiter kicked Galadren away.
Marco boxed the waiter’s ears and slammed his head into the wall so hard he left a hole. The waiter mule-kicked, hitting Marco in the gut and lifting him off his feet. Galadren’s knife slashed for his face. The waiter leaned back, letting the knife go past. Galadren reversed and backhanded the blade, forcing the waiter to step back.
From behind, Marco’s hands shot forward and grabbed the waiter’s wrist. Marco pulled the knife hand up and over the waiter’s shoulder, forcing his body back. With graceful ease, Marco swung his left leg back in an arc, twisting the man’s arm around and dropping him to the floor. Before the man could roll with the throw and come up again, Marco slammed his foot down into the waiter’s ribs and jerked up on the arm, forcing it straight and dislocating the shoulder. Marco grabbed both sides of the hand and pressed it against his chest. He twisted his body, forcing the arm to rotate clockwise until it cracked in a spiral fracture. He reset his grip and twisted again, breaking the arm even further.
If a spiral break was painful, Marco was trying to turn the waiter’s arm to bone splinters.
The waiter screamed in pain as he flailed and kicked, trying to break the hold. Galadren stepped in and drove his heel down onto the waiter’s left wrist, pinning it to the floor.
Marco’s smile turned twisted and evil. His eyes were as cool as arctic skies. “You hurt my wife. It’s a good thing you heal fast. Because that means I get to make you my pet project as I vivisect you. Won’t that be fun, you commie bastard?”
The waiter growled and snarled. His eyes narrowed as he stopped thrashing.
Then he bit down on something in his mouth.
Marco blinked. “Nuts. He has a cyanide capsule.” Despite that, Marco held onto him, pinning him down as he thrashed and struggled against death. Marco figured that whatever enhancements the man had to make him so durable only made his death longer and more lingering. The thought warmed his heart.
When he finally stopped thrashing, Marco’s first words were, “Help me drag him back. And bring your knives. I don’t want him bouncing back from death. Also, I want to keep the jacket. It’ll be useful if I ever need to fight a vampire ever again.”
They laid the waiter’s body down on the edge of the train car. The head hung over the edge as the train pumped along. With one swipe, Galadren removed his head, letting it fall to the train tracks. They didn’t even hear the head crunch under the wheels. Marco held up a hand, waiting at least thirty seconds between dropping the head and dropping the body. He was taking no chances. If the waiter could recover from being poisoned and decapitated, then Marco was going to make sure he worked for it.
Good luck with that, Marco thought.
Once the fake waiter was good and gone, Marco raced back to their train car. He hadn’t noticed, but the door had been closed. He opened it without hesitation.
Amanda was in the corner of their room, curled into a ball on the bed. She whimpered into her pillow, sounding like a wounded animal.
Marco was immediately at her side. He touched her back and her arm. “It’s okay, love, he’s dead.” He stroked her arm gently. “It’s okay.”
Her gentle crying had not ceased. “You should leave,” she said quietly.
“Nah,” Marco whispered back. “It’ll be fine.”
“No,” she whimpered. “It won’t. Not for a while.”
“Come on,” he coaxed. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”
Amanda rolled over and sat up to show him the damage done by the ultraviolet LEDs.
Marco kept his face neutral.
Amanda was right.
It really was that bad.
The right side of Amanda’s face had been burned off. The effect looked like a blowtorch had been used on her. The epidermis had been burned away from the jawline to the center of her scalp. The right side was a mass of muscles and scar tissue. If the light had burned any deeper, it would have made it down to the bone. In fact, there was some burned bone tissue over the temporal lobe.
Marco’s face went neutral. His eyes narrowed in concentration. He took her by the chin and turned her head so only the burned and ruined side of her face presented itself. He gently moved some of her hair out of the way so it wouldn’t be in the wounds. Her teeth were bared in such a way he could use her to teach anatomy.
“Can vampires get infections?” Marco asked, looking over the wound.
Amanda blinked… with her healthy left eye. She didn’t have any lid on the right. “No.”
Marco nodded. “I’m guessing you’re going to heal up fairly quickly. Does it hurt?”
“Almost as bad as confession.”
He winced. “Can’t do anything for that. I think the only thing that could put a dent in your pain might be fentanyl, and I wouldn’t know where to get any on this train. Any idea how much blood you’d need to fix it?”
Amanda nodded slightly. “Eight pints. It will put a dent in my supply.”
Marco shrugged. “We’ll have Bosley send more. Big deal.”
Amanda said nothing for a long moment. She closes her left eye. Tears streamed from both of them. “You should go. I don’t … I don’t want you to see me like this.”
Marco frowned. “Why?”
Amanda looked at him squarely in the face. “Look at me, Marco!”
Marco scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Please. I’ve seen worse every other Saturday night. I’d see it twice a night if I were in the Bronx.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Let me go get the blood from the luggage.”
Amanda grabbed his arm and held him steady. “You can’t. We need to receive the extra blood before using the extra. We don’t want to run out before we get to Atlanta. What we have isn’t enough to fix me and arrive in Atlanta before I need to feed again.”
Marco did some math and concurred before looking back to her. She ducked her face to show him her healthy left side. Marco sighed. “What can I do to make this better for you?”
“Leave,” she whispered.
Marco shook his head. “Can’t do that. In sickness and in health and all that.” He frowned, then leaned over to push the door closed. If she didn’t want him to see how bad she was, that went double for Rory and Galadren. “How’s the hand?”
“Healing. Slowly. I did not see the silver knife coming.”
“Ditto.” He sighed and sat next to her on the couch. “At least we know why he came after us. My next question is what do we do about it? If the Chinese are going to be this much of a pain in the ass, then we might have to kill them all.”
Amanda sighed. “Don’t we always?”
Marco blinked. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. I meant China. We’ll have to kill all of China.”
Amanda smiled sadly. “Just for hurting me?”
Marco blinked. “Just? They made you cry. For that, I would walk into Hell and make Satan repent.”
Amanda smiled but said nothing.
After too many beats of silence, Marco said, “Hey, what’s the matter? You’ll be fine. And the bastard who did it died a very painful death.”
She laughed. “It’s sweet you think that makes this better.”
Marco shook his head. “It doesn’t make anything better. It makes me feel better, but I guess that’s it.” He blinked, then frowned. “If you think this will make me love you even slightly less, I’m going to have to insist you stop thinking that, or I’m going to have to arm-punch you.”
Amanda rolled her eyes and laughed. “As though that would hurt.”
“It’ll hurt one of us. Probably me.”
Amanda said nothing for a long moment. “What will I do at WyvernCon?” she asked quietly. “Unless the blood is waiting for us at the station, I won’t be able to hide this.”
Marco shrugged. “First, it’s WyvernCon. Second, I don’t see a problem. But, if you see a problem, then you have three options: bandages, a Phantom of the Opera mask, or we tell people you’re cosplaying as a gender-swapped Two-Face from Batman.”
Amanda frowned. “Phantom is probably best. We do not wish to scare the hotel’s front desk.”