by Harper Allen
Weak-kneed lust warred with sisterly concern in me. I credit Grammie’s steel-under-marshmallow upbringing with the fact that concern won, at least, temporarily. “I should go after them,” I sighed. “If she’s been holding out all this time only to let Kat goad her into it at this late date, she’s going to hate herself in the morning.”
“Sooner than that.” Dean’s voice was velvet. “Honey, let her and Todd play doctor while you and I occupy ourselves with our own game. Wanna start out on the sofa, maybe move to the floor when things start heating up?”
My mouth went dry and every other part of me felt hot and wet. “The floor?” I repeated huskily.
He held out his hand. “You’ll need room to go crazy while I lick every inch of you. You’ll need even more room to go out of your mind when I give you your big present, little girl.”
I ask you: who listens to a line like that with a straight face? Okay, all of us, at one time or another, but inside we’re doing a mental eye-rolling, if not actually gagging. But gazing adoringly at Dean, I bought into it unquestioningly.
“Big…present?” I extended my hand. His fingers folded over mine tightly enough that I winced, but somehow the pain was exciting. “So what are you waiting for? Come in and let’s start unwrapping it.” I felt the standing-on-a-cliff sensation shudder through me for the second time that evening, gave his hand a tug—
And felt my bones turn to ice as my sisters’ screams tore through the house.
I ripped my hand from Dean’s and yanked open the hall armoire’s doors. “Hit the alarm monitor beside you!” I shrieked, reaching to the back of the hat shelf. “Someone’s broken into the house! Tash and Todd must have walked in on someone upstairs and maybe Kat and Lance surprised someone else in the kitchen!”
Where I came up with the double-set-of-intruders scenario is still a mystery to me, but at the time my glamyr-fogged mind seized on it as the only possible explanation for my sisters’ screams. My fingers found the objects I was looking for at the back of the hat shelf—Popsie’s ancient revolver and the box of ammunition that went with it. A few summers ago he’d insisted all three of us receive qualified instruction on how to handle it, overriding Grammie’s objections with the argument that in the time it took for the police to arrive, knowing how to use a gun could save us from being raped, or worse. Bullets spilled to the floor as I loaded it. “I’ll take the kitchen, you go upstairs for Tash! The police should get—”
“You really are as dumb as I always thought you were, aren’t you?” Dean gave the armoire a careless push. It gouged its way across seven feet of Colonial heart-pine floorboards before coming to a halt in front of the alarm keypad on the wall by the open front door. The next moment he’d batted Popsie’s revolver halfway across the room. “Get the picture now, sweet thing?” he asked in the velvet voice that only minutes ago had been turning my knees to rubber.
I stared at him, my mind not processing the fact that he’d one-handedly shoved across the floor a piece of furniture that had taken four able-bodied men to move when Grammie’d had it delivered. “What’s the matter with you? We’ve got to help Kat and Tash!” Without waiting for his reply I ran to the living room, grabbed the gun from where it had landed on the sofa and began sprinting to the kitchen.
I hit the floor so hard that one of my shoes flew off. Pain pierced my left butt cheek as a heart-pine sliver inserted itself through my skirt into my tush. I looked up in shock.
I’d run full tilt into Dean’s washboard abs…which was impossible. He’d been standing a good fifteen feet away from me as I’d started my dash into the kitchen from the living room. He hadn’t run from the hall to intercept me or somehow leapt those fifteen feet, he’d simply been at the door one moment and in front of me the next. In the split second between those two positions he’d slid sideways…not across the floor but through the air, like a chess piece being moved by an invisible hand onto a more offensive square.
As he looked down at me, I saw space between his feet and the floor, but when he spoke, the fact that my fiancé was defying the laws of gravity fell to second place in the creepy sweepstakes.
“Forget your sisters, bitch! Help yourself!”
His voice was still velvet, but now it was dirt-stiffened velvet. It was velvet that had been used as a corpse-cloth and was stained with unidentifiable fluids. And if that sounds as though I was still feeling the effects of the appletinis, all I can say is that by then I was stone-cold sober and desperately wishing there was a stiff cocktail within reach to numb my senses. All five of them were telling me stuff I didn’t want to know, and my sixth sense had gone to Def-Con One with the alarm bells again.
“Uh-uh.” From my seat on the floor, I forced the words past my stiff lips. “You can’t be. They don’t exis—” Dean’s canines, razor-sharp and gleaming, lengthened past his bottom lip and I couldn’t deny the evidence any longer.
My fiancé was a vampire. And if he was, then it was perfectly possible that Lance and Todd were, too. Kat and Tashya were still screaming, but even as I decided to make it a triplet thing, Dean lunged.
He hadn’t been a vampire for very long, as I’ve since learned. Maybe his newbie status was the reason for his coordination being off just enough that I had the chance to roll out of his way. I cracked my kneecap a good one against the Sheraton table in front of the sofa, scrambled backwards on my splinter-stabbed butt, and suddenly realized I still clutched Popsie’s revolver. I cocked it and fired.
If any goth-types reading this are thinking, God, how stupid can this chick be not to know vampires can’t be killed with lead? I have two things to say to you. One: I hoped the books and movies were wrong on that; and two: a couple of black dresses are admittedly a good starting point for a wardrobe, but at a certain stage, why not consider adding a few pale neutrals?
The books and movies weren’t wrong on the lead bullet thing. Dean looked down at his six-pack torso where the entry wound was already closing up. “It’s all true.” His voice had gone back to sounding sexy, but it wasn’t working on me anymore. I glanced frantically at the Sheraton table, which in the past I’d dismissed as a fake antique Grammie had paid too much for, but which my newly-appreciative gaze now saw as a flat surface supported by four legs that might just work as stakes. “I’ve got a ripped body, a full head of hair and I can’t be killed. This is the best investment I ever made in my life!”
“Correction—you can’t be killed by an ordinary bullet.” I jumped to my feet, hoisting the Sheraton table and smashing it against the floor. The table leg I held broke free. “But from all I’ve heard, a stake’ll do the job just fine!”
Not the snappiest line, but the best I could manage under the circumstances. Dean’s expression was one of unholy glee, unholy being the operative word. His eyes no longer looked sapphire, but black, and the snarl erupting from him didn’t sound like anything human.
I plunged my makeshift stake into his heart.
That was the plan, anyway. The problem was that Grammie’s Sheraton table turned out to be the real deal and not a sturdy fake. Even as I drove the leg against his muscled chest it broke, leaving me with a stub of worm-eaten oak in my hand.
Dean snarled again and attacked.
I had one quick glimpse of his face, distorted by rage into something out of a nightmare, and then his right palm came blurring toward me. It connected with my cheekbone so solidly that my head whipped sideways and the rest of me followed. I fell onto the sofa, bounced once and tumbled to the floor.
“She said there was a price!” He yanked me up by my blouse. It ripped and he transferred his grip to my shoulder, his fingers digging into me like knives. “We’d get everything we’d ever dreamed of in exchange for killing you three and I’m not about to let you screw up my part of the—”
My knee came up instinctively. Here’s a tidbit of information you might thank me for one day: vamps react to a kick in the family jewels just the way any human creep would. Dean gave a high-pitched scream a
nd doubled over. I turned to run.
“You bitch!” He grabbed me by my hair. My feet flew out from under me, but as I fell I felt a tug at the back of my head and I was free. I saw Popsie’s revolver sticking out from underneath the sofa, and stupidly I reached for it again. It caught on something but I didn’t let that stop me.
“What the hell?” As I twisted around to face Dean I saw his rage-filled expression temporarily replaced by one of pure male bafflement. I took in the object he was holding and pure female irritation temporarily replaced my fear.
“It’s a hair extension,” I said coldly. “I had some woven in for the wedding.”
He let it drop, his brief flash of non-undeadness falling away with it. “Maybe they’ll bury it with you. Or maybe there won’t be enough of you to bury when I’m finished.”
He was on me before I had chance to do anything more than thumb back the hammer on the revolver, but as I felt my ribs start to give way under the pressure of his embrace when he pulled me to him and went for my neck, I knew it didn’t matter. Gun or no gun, from the moment I’d invited him into the house I hadn’t had a chance of getting out of this alive. From the absence of screams coming from the kitchen and the upstairs, Kat and Tashya hadn’t had a chance, either.
The thing that had once been Dean Hudson the Third crushed me to its chest, the tips of its teeth poised against the thudding pulse in my neck. I closed my eyes, prayed Grammie wouldn’t be the one to discover her granddaughters’ bodies, and felt my former fiancé go in for the kill.
Which is when Popsie’s old revolver went off.
The explosion was deafening, even muffled as it was by the fact that the gun was jammed between us. Dean jerked backwards, his gaze mocking. “You’re supposed to be the smart one, Megan, but you’re just as blond as your sisters, aren’t you? I already told you, I can’t be killed with a—”
Surprise crossed his chiseled features. He opened his eyes wide, looked down at the still-smoking hole in his pumped left pec, and then looked back at me. “Fuck!” he said in an aggrieved tone. “I only had eternal life for a couple of hours, damn—”
He didn’t finish his sentence because his mouth turned into dust. His mouth and every other part of him, to be exact. For a moment dust-Dean just stood there. Then the dust lost its shape and fell in a greasy heap to the floor by my hair extension.
The only reason I can give for what I did next is that I was in shock. Instead of fainting dead away or throwing up or forcing my rubbery legs to move, I bent down to look at the Dustbuster-fodder my ex-fiancé had turned into. The thought flickered briefly through me that I should feel something at Dean’s demise, since to quote my earlier words to Tash, I’d been planning to do the till-death-us-do-part thing with him.
Except death hadn’t parted us. Not even his undeath had, although his becoming a vamp had definitely widened the chasm. But if the events of this evening hadn’t happened and we’d spent our whole lives together, there would have been a big, empty gap where our marriage should have been. As Kat had admitted about her and Lance, we’d just been a means to an end for each other. As I peered closer at what was left of Dean, I realized all I felt was relief that I’d killed him before he’d killed me.
His remains were as yawn-inducing as he’d once been—just a greasy pile that looked like something Smokey the Bear would want you to kick sand over if you were on a camping trip, except for the misshapen silver blob capping the lead bullet in the middle of the ashes. The melted blob was attached to the one of the silver chains Tash and Kat and I had torn off our necks earlier this evening. They’d obviously ended up under the sofa when I’d grabbed the Sheraton table, and one of them had tangled around the barrel of Popsie’s revolver.
I was looking at a homemade silver bullet, I realized slowly, and somewhere under the sofa were the materials for two more. If Lance and Todd hadn’t sunk their fangs into my sisters’ necks yet, I might still save them.
Even as the wild hope ran through me, I dropped to my knees and began feeling under the sofa. I snagged one chain, scrabbled farther under the sofa to snag the other and leapt to my feet. The next moment I was racing to the kitchen, dropping the first chain and cross down the barrel of Popsie’s revolver as I ran.
“Nuh-uh.” The scornful tones of Tash came from halfway up the staircase. “Bullets don’t work. Neither does Mace, as I found out. You gotta use one of these, apparently.”
She held up a broken length of wood. From the pineapple carving that topped it, I recognized it as part of one of her canopy bed’s posts but I didn’t waste time with questions.
“Throw it here! I’ll use it to stake Lance—”
“Sorry, sweetie, I already took care of him.” Kat’s drawl sounded a little ragged around the edges and her Alexander McQueen bustier top was destined to join my ruined skirt in the garbage, but she mustered a weak smile as she brandished a broken wooden mixing spoon. “I thought you two might need backup, but it looks like all three of us did good on the vamp-slaying, no?” She made a little moue with her lips. “Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d ever say. I don’t know about you two, but I really need normal right now. Anyone up for a little drink—”
“Foolish!”
The thickly accented rumble came from the doorway. It says volumes for the Crosse triplets’ state of alertness that we simply stared at the figure who had delivered it instead of rushing at him with our weapons. Tash recovered first.
“We deny you entrance to our home’s threshold,” she said swiftly. She frowned. “And that means to our home, too, if you need it spelled out. Like, you can’t come in. You need our permission and we totally withhold it and deny it and—”
“Did you remove holy protections out of vanity? Did you think they were simple baubles?” As our unexpected visitor thundered across Tash’s babbling he stepped forward and entered the house. “I believed those who bore my blood would have more wisdom, but I was wrong. Your foolishness almost brought you death!”
Whoever he was, since he’d been able to enter without our permission, he wasn’t a vamp. He looked to be about Popsie’s age or maybe a little older, and his accent sounded Russian. A homespun cloak was flung over his shoulders and a heavy gold ring glinted on his left hand, but the most striking thing about him were his eyes. They were dark and piercing, and right now they were regarding us with less disapproval than when he’d entered.
“However, your courage and skill saved you, so I pray is still hope for you.” He swept off his cloak and inclined his head in an oddly formal gesture. “Forgive me, I have not properly presented myself. My name is Anton Dzarchertzyn…but if is easier, you may call me Grandfather Darkheart.”
Chapter 3
“And you can call me from hell when you get there, creep!”
“No, Tash! He’s not a vam—” Before I could finish my warning my youngest sister launched her pineapple post in an overhand throw. As I leaped toward the old man, hoping to push him out of the way, I saw the missile slice unerringly through the air at his chest.
Something huge and black blurred across my sight line. I heard a furious growl as the shape propelled itself upward, and then the hell beast was upon me, Tash’s post between its slavering jaws. I fell backward, my attention fully focused on the enormous dog standing over me, his teeth no longer clamped into part of Tash’s canopy bed but bared inches from my throat.
Wolflike golden eyes held mine. A wolflike silver-tipped ruff stood up around a snarling wolfish face and massively muscled wolflike front legs were planted on either side of me.
“Call off your damn wolf.” Kat’s voice was steady, but then, she wasn’t the one in danger of becoming a canine snack. “This gun might not be much use against vamps but I’m pretty sure it could blow White Fang there to kingdom come.”
“Mikhail, release!”
The man who was trying to pass himself off as our dead grandfather gave the command sharply. The animal—I really wished Kat hadn’t used the W-word—let
a low growl trickle from its throat. It slowly backed up until it was standing by its master and gave me a final burning glance before bounding out through the open front door into the night.
I got to my feet. I had a sliver in my butt, I’d ruined an outfit and I’d gotten way too up-close and personal with pointed white teeth in the past hour. Add in the fact that my fiancé had made a deal that included him getting turned into a vamp in return for killing me and you’ll understand why my party manners were a little the worse for wear as I turned to our visitor.
Doing a good impersonation of a marine drill instructor minus the flying spittle, I shoved my face close to his and pointed at the door. “Your scam’s not going to work. We happen to know that our Grandfather Darch…Grandfather Dzark…”
“He said we could call him Darkheart,” Tash supplied from the stairs.
I ignored her. “We know our mom’s father died years ago, so whoever you are and whatever you’re after, you screwed up! You’re lucky you happened to catch us in the middle of a situation that puts you near the bottom of our headache list for now, but if you and your highly illegal pet aren’t off this property in three seconds I’m calling the police!”
“And the dogcatcher,” Tash threatened. “Even if you can afford to bail Cujo out of the pound, they’re still going to make you pay for the snip-snip operation they give all strays. So if you don’t want—”
From the darkness outside came a growl. I cut Tash short. “One.” I folded my arms. “Two.” The old man stared steadily back at me and I felt my confidence begin to evaporate. He was obviously some kind of kook, dressed the way he was and with a semi-tame wolf as a sidekick. What if he refused to leave? I glanced sideways at Kat and saw from her frown that she was thinking along the same lines as I was.
The three of us had just whacked our fiancés. Granted, there weren’t any bodies lying around, but there was definite evidence something had happened here tonight. And although Dean’s no-show status at our wedding tomorrow might be chalked up to cold feet and Todd’s and Lance’s absence at the same function as solidarity with his sudden desire to stay a bachelor, eventually an investigation would be launched into their disappearances. Did I really want a report on file stating that the night before the ceremony, the home of the missing men’s future brides had resembled a war zone, with said brides looking suspiciously like the survivors of said zone?