Not Dead Yet

by Alice Bello

  Lucy could still hear that crunch of bone in her head... and well, her knees started to buckle.

  Just then Vivian twined her arm through Lucy’s, supporting her so casually that to a passerby it would have just seemed they were close, or having an intimate conversation.

  Lucy’s legs regained their strength, and within a few steps she no longer had to lean on her future mother-in-law... but she did.

  “Thank you,” she said, voice shaky.

  “Just make my son happy,” Vivian said breezily.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Oh, do better than that.” Vivian looked Lucy straight in the eye. “Or you’ll have me trying to kill you instead of these second rate amateurs.”

  Lucy froze for a moment, gulped, and then nodded.

  Vivian hit her with the warmest of smiles. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

  They started walking again, and maybe a block later Vivian swung her into a small yet posh bridal dress boutique. The front door opened with the sound of delicate little bells. And true to the sounds, the little shop looked like a heavenly fairy land. Pure white carpets as far as they eye could see. No clothes racks. Just some really beautiful gowns fitted perfectly to nearly life like mannequins. There were fresh flowers artfully arranged around the room, and even a rather lovely jewelry display case, with all sorts of glittering bangles.

  Lucy’s mother was talking in hushed tones to a woman in a beautiful cream and pink colored silk suit. The woman had tidy blonde hair and a charming, rather infectious smile. She gave Lucy’s mother a pat on the hand and came to Lucy and Vivian in a flourish of welcome. Her presence was dazzling, and her glittering sky blue eyes looked Lucy up and down with interest.

  “It’s so wonderful to finally meet you. Vivian has told me so much about you—” Lucy cringed. “—and your mother and I just had the most marvelous talk about what a great young woman you are.”

  “Thanks,” Lucy said lamely. But the woman just smiled and extended her hand to her.

  “I’m Stephenia.” She turned and looked over her shoulder to a red haired woman about twenty years her junior. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and she had glasses on. “This is my assistant, Aurelia. She’s a sorceress with a needle and thread. She does all my alterations and fittings.”

  Lucy nodded to the seemingly shy redhead.

  Stephenia gave Lucy another look over and bit her lip. “Well, let’s get started, shall we?”

  She put her arm around Lucy and ushered her into store proper. There was tea, coffee, and champagne on hand. Lucy was too rattled for coffee, and her stomach too queasy for the champagne, so she took a cup of tea. The three women sat on the couch as Stephenia had a circuit of nearly a dozen models parade before them, wearing one after another of the most exquisite bridal dresses Lucy had ever seen.

  But, sadly, Lucy couldn’t seem to see herself in any of them. Be it her jittery nerves, or the fact that she had always been extremely picky as to what clothing she wore; she just wasn’t feeling any of the wedding gowns.

  Stephenia was watching Lucy with appraising eyes. “You don’t like them, do you?”

  Lucy felt her cheeks burn in embarrassment. The woman didn’t miss a thing, did she?

  She cleared her throat and looked apologetically to the woman. “They’re just not... me.”

  Lila coughed, choking on a mouthful of champagne. “But all those dresses were divine!”

  “Yes,” Vivian said flatly, “but we are speaking of possibly the most important day of a new bride’s life. It can’t be rushed.”

  Lila seemed to take Vivian’s word as gospel.

  “Don’t worry,” Stephenia said, clasping her hands before her, “I have the most extensive collection of wedding gowns this side of New York. I will find the perfect match for you.”

  Her assistant cleared her throat and said, “If I can make a suggestion... ”

  The four women all turned to Aurelia.

  She abruptly looked very meek, and close to bolting like a spooked deer. But she took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “I believe the vintage Valentino you bought last month at auction would suit her quite well.”

  Stephenia blinked and pursed her lips. “But is it ready yet? I mean, it needed quite a bit of work.”

  “I’ve been toiling upon it in my free time. It is nearly done, and would be no trouble to finish by the time of the wedding.”

  Valentino... Lucy had loved the pieces she’d seen in magazines over the years. They were so elegant, and every one of them seemed as different from the other as possible. And vintage was a plus.

  “May I see it?” Lucy asked.

  Aurelia smiled. “I think it would be best if you saw it first on you. Then you wouldn’t have to do any imagining what it would look like on. You’d know immediately.”

  Lucy smiled. With everything that had happened that afternoon, a bit of shopping therapy would help—especially when she got to choose from designer duds that she had never had the chance to look through before.

  What a treat.

  Aurelia escorted her back to a fitting room, left, and then returned with the gown in a garment bag. Less than three minutes later she had Lucy zipped up and pulled out into the bridal boutique proper again, to show her mother and future mother-in-law.

  Vivian’s cool eyes warmed and she smiled with genuine feeling. “Now that is lovely.”

  Lila broke into choking sobs. “You look so beautiful!” Her mascara started to run immediately.

  Lucy turned and looked to the bank of mirrors on the opposite wall.

  She stopped breathing... her hands rose up to her face and she stifled a gasp of surprise. She looked stunningly beautiful: elegant... demure... perfect.

  Never had a dress ever changed her appearance so completely. It was unreal. Not that Lucy was a slouch in the looks department, and she’d had an impeccable fashion sense and reputation—except for about six months of forced poverty and sales rack Wal-Mart clothes. But never had she looked so very much like a princess.

  A real live princess…

  It was a pearl-white strapless satin gown, with no lace, no ruffles or bows, no sequins or glitter—just a few small embroidered flowers and a handful of creamy pearls as accents. It was the most beautiful wedding gown Lucy had ever seen.

  Stephenia moved up and looked Lucy up and down, her crystal clear blue eyes searching her from top to bottom.

  “The bodice still needs restoring... and I still see a slight shift in the line of the skirt.” She walked around Lucy and tapped her finger on her ruby red lips. “But I must agree: this dress was made for you.”

  She turned and smiled at Aurelia. “You’ve done excellent work here. If Miss Hart chooses this gown I will need you to fit it to her immediately and make it your top priority until it is perfectly restored. Are you certain you can have it finished in the four weeks left before their nuptials?”

  Aurelia smiled shyly and nodded her head. “I’ll have it done within a week.”

  Lucy spun around and watched as the silk and satin shimmered like fine pearls, the skirt swirled around her like petals on an exotic flower. She stopped and looked at her mother and Vivian. They were both looking at her as if she were lovely.

  Okay... that’s a little creepy... but about time!

  “I’ll take it!” Lucy all but squealed, spinning around one more time... and then again.

  When Lucy finally stopped spinning like a top, Aurelia moved in and pulled out a thin cloth measuring tape, and a container filled with pins. She seemed ready to fall to her knees and start fitting the hem of the skirt that very instant, but then she stopped and reached out and plucked a few of Lucy’s stray hairs from the opalescent fabric of the vintage gown.

  Lucy smiled at her, remarking that the shy woman’s nails were so very red, and that the brilliant sapphire on her finger was absolutely gorgeous.

  ~*~

  The rest of the day seemed to fly by. After their shopping
spree, Vivian took Lucy and her mother to lunch at a spectacular French restaurant that was simply one of the most elegant experiences Lucy had ever had. The restaurant’s lobster bisque and braised lamb was a culinary symphony in her mouth.

  Not to mention the white chocolate truffle mousse they ordered was worth all the extra exercise Lucy would have to put in to burn off the calories.

  Finally they all piled into Vivian’s limousine and headed back to where Lucy had parked her car. The moment she got a look at the patisserie where she’d so nearly been killed, and only a few hours beforehand, she felt her insides turn cold, and her stomach churn.

  She was afraid. Afraid that there might be yet another attacker waiting for her to return for her car, that there might already be a bomb attached somewhere on the saucy red Mustang’s body... or that there would be a sudden and utterly violent traffic accident at the first intersection she came to...

  Dear lord, Lucy breathed out harshly and put her hand to her forehead. Who knew that chocolate mousse could cause such paranoia?

  She bit her lip, trying not to sound whiny as she asked Vivian if she could have one of the guards driver her home... after they checked over her car. But when she opened her eyes and looked out the car window, she saw the most beautiful man in the world leaning like freaking Brad Pitt against the shiny door of the Mustang.

  Gabriel...

  Oh, how the last few months had been torture. So much of her time had been claimed by wedding plans. Even more of it had been hijacked by obligations to her future family. And a depressingly small amount of her time was spent with her actual fiancé.

  That had to change, and soon... or Lucy was going to explode. Not only had she been stretched to her breaking point by the irritation of not being able to spend any time with the man she loved... but the lust she felt in her heart, and in her body and soul, was just about at melt-down level.

  Vivian looked out the window at her handsome son and shrugged. “I thought after the afternoon you’ve had, you could use a little alone time with my son.”

  “Yes,” Lucy said as she gracelessly lunged for the car door. “Please and thank you.” And with desperate haste she threw open the limo door and raced into Gabriel’s open arms.

  He chuckled as Lucy jumped up into his embrace and kissed him with the passion and intensity of a Hollywood romance climax.

  Gabriel made a surprised noise, but then as his arms wrapped around Lucy with iron strength, he started to make a low growl in the back of his throat.

  The kiss deepened, and he fell back against Lucy’s car, his hands pulling her closer, hands planted on her derriere—which she knew wouldn’t make Vivian very happy. But when they finally parted from their passionate kiss, the limousine with Vivian and Lila was long gone.

  “What was that for?” Gabriel asked, his voice rough and breathless, his lips bruised and delicious looking.

  “Because I missed you.” She leaned in against him, breathing in his clean, oh-so-sexy scent, feeling the warm, hard muscle of his body beneath her touch.

  “Mom said you had a hard day.”

  Lucy tensed. He really wasn’t going to like this…

  “It was eventful.”

  Gabriel’s body tensed and he took a slow breath. Lucy would bet all her hair care products that he was smelling her, scenting her.

  “What happened?” His voice hardened, and Lucy leaned back away from him, avoiding eye contact.

  “There was a little problem when we went wedding cake tasting.”

  He sighed and almost smiled. “Didn’t like any of the cakes?”

  “Yes… well, no—I loved the citrus and the Italian wedding cake.”

  “But that’s not the trouble you’re talking about, is it?”

  She took a deep breath and told him about the kitty cat from hell. When Lucy was finished Gabriel’s dark eyes seemed like a near black storm cloud.

  “But everything’s okay. No one’s hurt—well, except for Paul, but I’m sure he’s almost healed by now. You werewolves and your accelerated healing rates.”

  “And look at me! I don’t have a scratch on me.”

  He pulled Lucy to him, holding her against his chest, hard. Hard enough it felt a tad bit crushing. “Breathing is about to become an issue,” Lucy gasped.

  Gabriel jerked and then let her loose, but not out of his grasp.

  “On the up side, we know now your mother likes me… well, she’ll kill a fiery hell beastie to keep me safe.”

  Gabriel’s eyes widened. He even looked kind of baffled.

  “Of course, she threatened to kill me herself if ever I break the heart of or hurt her little snickerdoodle.”

  Gabriel looked down at Lucy, one eyebrow raised in question.

  “Fine, she didn’t call you snickerdoodle… but that is a really good nick name for—”

  Gabriel leaned down and kissed er again, taking her breath away, and tasting so divinely sweet Lucy lost all track of time, where they were, and what she should be doing.

  Nothing mattered, as long as she was with him.

  ~*~

  Lucy relaxed on the sofa in front of her Gram’s dinky thirteen inch TV. Lucy may have been able to convince her grandmother that her life needed the love and lethally dangerous involvement of the preternaturally furry set. She may have been able to get her to endorse said insane notion for the sake of love. But Lucy couldn’t get her grandmother to budge on the topic of replacing her fifteen year old Magnavox color television with a newer, sleeker, less grainy pictured, larger set.

  Lucy took it in stride though.

  Her grandmother was addicted to The Weather Channel, The Nature Channel, and a few choice reality television programs Lucy would rather not envision her Gram sitting down to watch. (She’d probably claw her eyes out if she came home and found Gram watching The Jersey Shore.) So at least the dinky set boasted over two hundred channels of cable programming.

  Lucy had a bowl of popcorn on her lap, and a Diet Coke sitting on a coaster on the coffee table. She was watching a re-run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In it, Buffy’s little sister had glimpsed the supposed ghost of her departed mother, and was asking the entity that was knocking once for “yes,” and twice for “no,” if she was alone.

  Lucy knew the series by heart. She’d resisted watching it at first, but the reruns were on all hours of the day and night, so she’d slowly become addicted. It didn’t help that for having over two hundred channels, there really wasn’t anything good on.

  Buffy’s sister asked the question. There was a pregnant pause for effect, and then the two loud knocks, as if the entire cast of The Lord of the Rings was trying to bash in the gates of Mordor.

  Just then a loud crash came from outside the house. Like the sound of a huge stone shattering against pavement.

  Lucy sat up, left the popcorn on the coffee table and rushed to the tiny foyer by the front door. She picked up the baseball bat her grandmother always kept by the door in the umbrella stand, checking its heft, warming up her wrist just in case she needed to use it. It wasn’t her Gram’s enchanted baseball bat. No, that one was jammed into the back of her closet upstairs, and it was filled to the gills with what remained of Gram’s necromantic powers.

  Lucy wouldn’t have touched it for all the Clinique, Prada, or Ben & Jerry’s in the world.

  She tiptoed to the front door to take a peek out the glass window cut in the thick oak front door.

  She saw nothing.

  That alone made her heart thud in her chest… and then shoot up into her throat. Gabriel had assigned six werewolves to guard her house, day and night. He’d said that she had no choice in the matter—not that she was complaining. After all the attempts on her life of late, she was frazzled and wanted nothing more than to have a sextet of psychotic furry killers guarding her from whatever psychotic killers who-ever-it-was-trying-to-kill-her sent.

  Just thinking about it made her head hurt.

  And the werewolves hadn’t been a bit covert about i
t. They’d posted a sentry for each side of the house, and had two circling in a fifty yard circle. All armed for bear, all highly caffeinated—all ready to kill anything that came to do Lucy the slightest bit of harm.

  And the guard stationed at her front door was missing.

  She fought down the perfectly rational inclination toward blind panic, took a deep breath and pushed visions of ninja assassins bursting through her windows with throwing stars and samurai swords out of her mind. There was probably a perfectly good reason the front-door guard wasn’t at the front door.

  Of course! Lucy drew in a relieved breath. There had been the crash. No doubt the guard had gone to investigate. And since there were high winds, it was probably one of her Gram’s multiple potted plants that had fallen and made the offending ruckus.

  She stood there for a minute, waiting, watching, listening—and heard nothing but wind whipping through the leaves on the trees.

  It would be so stupid to go outside she told herself. But what if the werewolves needed help?

  Sure... the highly trained, supernaturally strong, fast and nimble werewolves would really need her help.

  But what if they did?

  In a massively stupid move Lucy reached out, unlatched the deadbolt, and turned the door knob. The wind helped push the door in on her, surprising her with how abruptly it opened. She walked slowly out onto the front porch—jumping with fright at the shrieking whine the porch swing made as the wind pushed it to and fro—and called out the name the front door guard had given her.

  Pam, the six foot three, broad shouldered and seriously muscled werewolf bodyguard didn’t answer back.

  Lucy called her name again, inching closer to the steps leading down into the front yard. And that was when she saw it. At first she didn’t realize what she was looking at. Just some scattered chunks of stone, the remains of a rather large statue? But then she saw werewolf Pam’s snarling face peering up at her from the rubble. A stone mask with shocked, scowling eyes and an upturned lip.

  Lucy gasped and turned, looking to her right, baseball bat clenched and ready to swing. She whirled about to check her other side. At the end of the porch stood a stone statue that looked amazingly like George, the werewolf charged with guarding the southern exposure of the house. He had a fierce expression on his stony face, and his gun was drawn and aimed straight in front of him.