by Harper Allen
Comrade Boris was who he’d said he was: Anton Dzarchertzyn, or as he’d told us to call him, Grandfather Darkheart. It was no use trying to persuade myself he was a fake anymore, not after the proof Cujo had somehow just made me watch. And if Boris was the real deal, then his assertion that we were hereditary vampire killers was probably—
I jerked my head up in alarm. Where was everybody? My panic subsided as I heard Tash’s and Kat’s voices mingling with Darkheart’s somber tones in the living room. It made sense. They’d gone into the trance before I had, so they’d come out sooner. Now they had questions and Boris—I mean, Grandfather—was apparently answering them.
Which left one member of our late-night get-together unaccounted for. Cujo. White Fang. Mikhail of the glowing golden eyes.
I heard a noise behind me. My gaze fell on the revolver, still lying where it had fallen earlier. I lunged for it and did a sitting whirl on my butt.
The man standing before me was gorgeous. Six-three, at least, and every one of those inches prime, buff male. He was wearing jeans, a ripped white T-shirt and a beat-up brown hide jacket that looked as if there hadn’t been too many steps between the cow wearing it and the man putting it on. His hair was shaggy enough to graze his dark eyebrows, but short enough not to do more than brush the collar of his jacket, and its mixture of midnight-black strands tipped with pewter was ultrasexy in a funky, right-out-there kind of way. But everything else took second place to his eyes. They were an amazing hazel shade—sparks of green swirling in a to-die-for golden brown, although even as I let myself fall into them I realized that they were staring at me with the same implacable enmity I’d seen in—
The blood in my veins went from pleasantly heated to chilled. My arms shot out stiffly, aiming the revolver I was clutching directly at the man looking down on me.
“But how…You’re the…” I filled my lungs with some much-needed air and tried to form a complete sentence. “Cujo?”
Granted, a one-word sentence, but he seemed to catch my drift. His glare hardened. “Mikhail Vostor-off. I’m an oboroten—a shape-shifter. But even when I’m in human form I’ve got a wolf’s reflexes, so I advise you to put the gun down before you get hurt.”
God, I hate it when gorgeous guys turn out to be world-class jerks. The shape-shifter thing didn’t bother me after everything else I’d experienced that night, but the fact that tall, dark and handsome Mikhail was an arrogant prick did.
Put the gun down before I got hurt? Could the man be more patronizing?
“Yawn,” I said sweetly. “My reflexes are pretty darn fast, too, Mikey-baby. Us Daughters of Lilith are well-known for the fast-reflex thing, in case you hadn’t heard.”
I caught the gleam of white teeth before his smile flat-lined. “You should have stayed to watch the whole show. You missed the part where Anton goes to the cribs and realizes your mother was wrong. See, by the time Angelica pulled the bitch-vampyr away, she’d already left her mark on one of you—only one wound, not two, but that’s enough to pass on vamp blood. Problem was, Anton couldn’t find it in him to harm any of his granddaughters…so he kept his vow to his daughter and got all three of her triplets to safety.”
“He’s telling the truth, Meg.” Kat came into the hall from the living room, Tash and Darkheart behind her. They grouped themselves beside Mikhail, and even in my stunned state I was alert enough to realize I was being centered out. “One of us is part vampire. That’s why Mikhail’s here.”
“Shape-shifters can totally sniff out vamps,” Tash said with the air of an instant expert. She gave me the same commiserating look she’d used when we were little and I was about to catch heck from Grammie while she escaped scot-free. “Mikhail says—”
“If Mikey-baby’s got something to say, how about letting him tell me himself?” I stood up, my stomach feeling like I’d left it down on the floor. “Well?” I demanded, facing him.
His teeth flashed white, but not in a smile. “Your sister’s wrong, I can’t always tell for sure,” he said softly. “But as soon as I laid eyes on you I felt my hackles rising. My money’s on you being the one who received the kiss of the queen vampyr.”
Chapter 4
“I still think my idea of having a flower girl strewing rose petals in front of you would have been totally romantic. It might even have made up for the fact that it’s pouring down buckets on your wedding day.” Tash leaned closer to the full-length mirror in the church’s waiting room and scrubbed a fleck of lipstick from a front tooth before composing her expression into a shyly virginal smile, complete with downcast lashes. “I do,” she said tremulously, looking up from her bridesmaid’s bouquet of star orchids and meeting her own eyes in the mirror. “With all my heart, I—”
“Can it, sweetie,” Kat snapped from her position at the window where she’d been staring out at the rain. “Even if the guests waiting in the church right now haven’t grasped that the leading man in this farce isn’t going to show up, you know this wedding isn’t just missing a groom, it’s missing the groom’s best man and his head usher, as well. Or had you forgotten that what was left of our fiancés last night didn’t even fill a vacuum bag when we did our little clean-up job?”
“Keep it down, Kat!” I hissed, squeezing the ribbon-wrapped stems of my bouquet—in my case, white lilac and baby’s-breath—so hard that the heads of the pins securing the ribbon pressed into the palms of my lace demi-gloves. I glanced worriedly at the door, outside of which I assumed Popsie was pacing and looking at his watch, as he had been since four o’clock had come and gone a half hour ago. “We’ve got to appear devastated when we learn we’ve apparently been dumped by the men we love.”
“Don’t keep saying that!” Tash protested. “Toddie didn’t dump me, I staked him. I wish there was some way I could let people know, instead of going through the humiliation of—”
Kat was off the couch and in front of Tash in three strides. “Are you out of your tiny mind?” she demanded furiously. “If one whisper gets out about what really went down last night, I’ll stake you!” Her frown deepened. “I don’t believe it. You’re wearing Grammie’s pearls, you little weasel. With everything else that’s happened, you borrowed them for a wedding you know isn’t going to take place. That’s pathetic, sweetie.”
“As pathetic as the flask tucked into your garter that you’ve been taking nips from whenever you think no one’s looking?” Tash shot back. “If any whispers get out, they’ll probably come from you after a few more slugs of whatever you’ve got sloshing around in your handy little booze-carrier!”
A weird feeling of déjà vu swept over me. Then I realized why the scene playing out in front of me seemed so familiar. I’d seen it before in any number of heist movies—you know, the kind where the criminals make a daring score and get away with the diamonds, only to fall out among themselves and shoot each other up afterwards. I stepped in.
“We won’t have to worry about whispers if the two of you keep shouting insults at each other. Tash, borrowing Grammie’s pearls was weaselly. Kat, what’s in the flask?”
“Vodka martinis.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “No tell-tale smell. Want a nip, sweetie?”
I waited while she lifted her lemon satin bridesmaid’s dress, revealing the matching pale yellow garter encircling her thigh and the slim silver flask secured there. She handed it to me. I uncapped it, took a healthy swig, and turned to the partially open window beside us.
It was screened with rain-drenched cedar bushes. I dropped Kat’s little pick-me-up into them and closed the window.
“Damn you, Megan, I needed that!” Her voice was jagged with anger. “This waiting around is getting on my nerves!”
“It’s getting on mine, too,” I said sharply. “But unless we want to end up in a holding cell, we have to go through with this charade. We all agreed on that last night, remember?”
“Was that before or after we learned you were a vampire, sweetie?” she retorted sharply.
“After,”
Tash butted in. “First Mikhail did his mind-thing with us, then he and Megan got into a big argument in the hall, then Grandfather Darkheart went all Carpathian on their asses and they shut up. Then we sat down and talked about how we were going to handle this whole situation.”
“Meg, I’m sorry.” Kat’s expression was stricken. “I don’t usually shoot off my mouth after a couple of drinks. You were right to toss the booze.”
“Especially since if she is a vamp, you don’t want to get her pissed at you,” Tash advised. “Just joking, sis,” she added over her shoulder to me as she turned back to the mirror.
“Don’t blame the martinis, Kat,” I said coldly. “I’ve seen you tipsy a time or two. I even recall holding your hair back when you got up-close and personal with a toilet at the country club the night of our engagement parties. Alcohol might loosen your tongue, but it’s never put words into your mouth you wouldn’t think of otherwise. You’ve bought into this whole stupid Kiss of the Vampire crap that our long-lost grandpa and his mangy sidekick shoveled at us last night. Has it occurred to you that it might be total fantasy?”
“Like I’ve said before, the Queen of Denial,” Tash mumbled at the mirror as she blotted the fresh lipstick she’d just applied. “So we’re back to the our-fiancés-didn’t-really-turn-into-vamps-it-was-just-the-appletinis thing again?”
“No,” I conceded, “I accept that they were vampires and we staked them.” I tossed my bouquet onto a small side table and sat down on the sofa. Folds of tulle rose up on either side of me like frothy surf and I beat them down, feeling overwhelmed. “I’m even willing to accept that Boris is our Grandfather Darkheart and our mother was a Daughter of Lilith or a vampire killer or whatever. What I can’t believe is that one of us is going to turn into—”
“Yoo-hoo, ladies, it’s show-time!”
Without warning, the door opened and Grammie Crosse burst in, her plump and powdered face beaming at the three of us. Even at such an inopportune moment, I felt my heart swell with affection for her, and I wished I could spare her the upset that my ruined wedding was going to cause her.
Unfortunately, my wish immediately came true with Grammie’s next excited words.
“I just got the word that a car with three tardy males in it has pulled up to the curb, darlings—such a relief! Not that I ever doubted they’d show, of course. Megan, dear, let me straighten your veil. Kat, shake out the creases in your sister’s dress. Your grandfather was all set to march outside and give Dean a piece of his mind for almost making us think he’d stood you up but I said, Edward Crosse, in a couple of months when all three of those young men are your sons-in-law, you can ream them out all you want. Megan, love, you look like an angel. You all do, darlings. Oh fudge, I promised myself I wouldn’t start crying before the ceremony!”
She was wearing a periwinkle-blue mother-of-the-bride dress with a chiffon overlay that floated around her as she flitted from one to the other of us. Abruptly, she stopped flitting and the chiffon stopped floating. “Oh, dear,” she said in a suddenly non-fluttery voice, looking at us.
I could understand why she was staring. Beside me, Kat looked the way she had the night at the country club seconds before I’d caught back her hair and she’d gripped the porcelain rim of the toilet. By the mirror, Tash had gone the same color as the pearls around her neck and I felt as if I’d just stepped into an empty elevator shaft.
“Toddie’s here?” croaked Tash. Her tone was thick with horror. “Wha-what does he look like?”
“Very handsome, I’m sure. I didn’t watch them get out of the car,” Grammie said, her gaze still encompassing us. “But those young men could be Robert Redford and Paul Newman all rolled into one, and I still wouldn’t expect any one of you to go through with her wedding if you were having second thoughts.”
I was so rattled that I almost reminded Grammie that Redford and Newman, as dishy as they’d been in her day, were Popsie’s age and definitely out of the running as suitors for her twenty-one-year-old granddaughters. Then I focused on the relevant part of her comment. “Second thoughts?” My voice was as hoarse as Tash’s.
Grammie took a breath. “It’s only money, darling, and your grandfather’s got oodles of it, so if you’re thinking about how much everything cost—the catering, the flowers, the cases of Cristal—then don’t. And as for Dean’s parents, it wouldn’t bother me in the least to tell them my granddaughter’s decided their son isn’t good enough for her. When they deigned to fly out from Philadelphia to meet us at the engagement dinner, they spent the whole evening making sure Edward and I knew their connection to every important Main Line family. I wanted to tell them that the only good thing I’d ever known to come out of Philadelphia was cheese steak—”
She was on a roll and I didn’t like interrupting her, but I knew if I was going to, sooner was better than later. “You think I’ve changed my mind about marrying Dean?” I asked in the cawing voice that seemed to be the Crosse triplets’ new and permanent method of communication.
She shook her head. “I’m simply saying that if you have, tell me. Nothing means more to me than the happiness of you three girls and I don’t intend to stand idly by and let any of you walk into something that might take away that happiness.”
That’s our Grammie Crosse—a slightly stout, cashmere-twinset-and-tweed-skirt-wearing lioness when she thinks her cubs are being threatened. In return, her cubs would do anything to protect her, as Kat immediately demonstrated.
“Meg hasn’t changed her mind, darling, and Tash and I intend to go through with our weddings later this summer, too.” Her desperate gaze strayed to the window I’d thrown her liquid courage out of, but then went back to Grammie. She gave a laugh that sounded like the noise a rusty cemetery gate might make if you pushed on it. “It’s relief you see on our faces, that’s all—shaky, enormous relief. We were a teensy bit worried that something might have happened to our hubbies-to-be, weren’t we, girls?”
“Yeah,” I agreed hollowly, “that’s it, Grammie. When they didn’t show up on time we began to think something terrible had happened. Like a car accident.”
“Or like an accident with a piece of wood.” Tash caught our glances. “Or a car, like Meg says,” she corrected swiftly. “I can see how a car accident would be more likely.”
“So now that we know they’re okay, we’re just…” Kat looked beseechingly at me.
“Relieved,” I ended unoriginally. I gave Grammie a smile that felt like a bad facelift and must have looked just as plastic. “So relieved that we’d like to take a second to say a prayer of thanks. Can you tell Popsie we’ll be out in a second?”
Grammie’s no fool. She knew there was something off-kilter about our reactions, and even if she hadn’t she definitely would have been alerted by my request for a moment of quiet communion with our Maker. I saw the questions in her eyes and didn’t know how I was going to answer them, but just as she opened her mouth to put them into words Tash saved our bacon.
“Oh, Lord, we most humbly thank Thee for what Thou has wrought,” she intoned, sinking to her knees in a cloud of yellow and closing her eyes. Kat and I hastily followed suit as she went on. “I mean with Todd and Dean and Lance. We were all like, omigod, maybe they’ve been in an accident, but then You were like, don’t worry, Natashya, your fiancé and those of your sisters, verily they hast—”
The door clicked softly closed behind Grammie. The three of us scrambled to our feet, Tash finishing off her impromptu prayer as she did. “Verily they hast been staked, right?” She looked from Kat to me. “Vamps can’t come back after you dust them, can they? And what about the whole daylight thing? Although I guess there isn’t much out there today,” she added with a worried glance through the window.
“Ask Grandfather Darkheart when we see him tonight,” I said shortly. “Correction: if we’re alive to see him tonight. But since we don’t have our resident expert here to answer those questions, we have to assume the worst. Help me find something to arm oursel
ves with—maybe a broomstick or—”
Kat pointed to the table beside the sofa. “Will that do?”
“It’ll have to,” I answered, moving to it and sweeping my bouquet to the floor. “Take a leg and pull, like at Thanksgiving with the wishbone.”
Thirty seconds later the three of us stepped into the vestibule of St. Barnabas, where a red-faced Popsie was waiting. Except for the red face, he looked dapper in a dove-gray morning suit, and when he saw us his expression softened.
“I’d like to horsewhip that young man of yours for not getting to his own wedding on time,” he said gruffly, crooking his right arm for me to grasp as Kat and Tash took their places. “Lucky for him your sisters’ fiancés slipped him in the side entrance without running into me. But I promised your grandmother I wouldn’t spoil your big day, so I’ll say no more about it. Are we ready?”
As if St. Barnabas’s organist had heard and taken Popsie’s query for a cue, the huge Hammond at the front of the church began booming out the opening bars of “The Wedding March.” I exchanged grim looks with Kat and Tash as two ushers opened the double oak doors leading from the vestibule into the church and Popsie began escorting me down the aisle.
Every female with an ounce of romance in her soul dreams of her wedding day. Even the most tomboyish little girl occasionally takes time out from picking scabs from her knees and beating up little boys to envision what she’ll wear and the kind of flowers she’ll carry. Now, as I solemnly step-paused, step-paused with Popsie down the velvety red carpet leading to the altar, I realized I was living the fantasy.
Sort of. Then again, sort of not.
Through the lace of my veil I could see packed pews on either side of me and Popsie. The fragrance of the gardenias festooning them was so heady it was like running the spritzer gauntlet in Macy’s perfume section. The florist had woven tiny crystals through the dark green leaves, and more crystals dripped in strands to brush the floor. Tash, Grammie’s pearls around her throat, the skirt of her yellow satin bridesmaid’s dress swinging like a bell and its short train falling from a flat bow positioned at the back of her waist, looked like a fairytale princess. Kat looked like a movie star, with her silver-blond hair worn down and the fishtail hem of her strapless silk organza swishing sexily behind her. I didn’t look like a movie star or a princess. In the Monique Lhuillier ball-gown-styled wedding dress I’d fallen in love with the moment I’d first set eyes on it, I looked exactly as I’d always dreamed of looking on my wedding day…elegant and beautiful.