My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding (30 page)

Just as Dahlia's eyes began to feel a little watery, Cedric appeared to give Taffy away. This was his right as sheriff, and Dahlia was proud that Cedric had stirred himself enough to be fitted for a traditional tuxedo. (He'd threatened to appear in an elaboration of his court costume from the time of Henry VIII.) The scene outside seemed to be boiling with activity, lots of the caterer's minions milling around. They needed to be more unobtrusive, Dahlia thought, and frowned.

The music changed, and Dahlia recognized the signal. She snapped her fingers.

The bridesmaids grew still, and Taffy stared around her, looking as though she was going to panic. Cedric was searching around in his pocket for a handkerchief, since he was prone to tears at weddings, he'd said. Though he was perhaps a foot shorter than Taffy, he looked quite dapper in his blackandwhite. His gleaming skin and dark Vandyke beard and mustache made him appear quite distinguished, and if it hadn't been for a few niggling worries, Dahlia would have been very satisfied with the showing the vampires were providing. Cedric might not be a ball of energy, but he was handsome and had a polished turn of phrase that would come in handy at the wedding banquet.

"What's happening out there?" Taffy asked. "Do I look all right?"

"Don has come to stand by his friend the minister," Dahlia reported. She had to stand on her tiptoes, even though she was at a slight elevation, to see what was happening. Don's friend, who'd been chosen over Harry the Druid, was a mailorder minister who happened to have a wonderfully solemn voice and an appropriate black robe. The marriage wouldn't exactly be legal anyway, so ap

pearance was more important than religious preference. "He's looking toward the house, waiting for you!" Dahlia tried her best to sound excited, and the other bridesmaids twittered obligingly.

"Here's Todd, coming for me," she said, making sure she sounded quite emotionless. This was the way they'd agreed to do it, each bridesmaid going down the aisle paired with a Were, echoing the bridal couple. "That sucks," Glenda had said frankly, but Dahlia had given the other bridesmaids her bigeyed gaze, and they'd buckled.

Dahlia held her bouquet in the correct grip, and as Fortunata opened the door, Dahlia stepped out to meet the approaching Todd, who offered his arm at the right moment. The assembled guests gasped and murmured in a gratifying way at Dahlia's beauty, but Dahlia wanted to record only one reaction. Todd's eyes flared wide in the response Dahlia had long recognized as signaling sure attraction.

Dahlia suppressed a grin and tried her best to look sweet and demure as she reached up to take Todd's brawny arm.

He bent down to tell her something confidential, and she waited with the faintest of smiles as they walked slowly down the red carpet.

"The caterers," he whispered. "There are too many of them."

"I wondered," she said, keeping her face arranged in a smile with some effort.

"How'd they get in?"

"The caterer's in on it. They all had ID cards."

"This may be more fun that we'd counted on," she said, looking up at him for the first time. He caught his breath. "Woman, you stir my blood," he said sincerely.

She put her own feelings into her eyes and felt his pulse quicken in response.

She murmured, "Armed?"

"Don't think we need to be," he said. "Tomorrow night's the full moon. We can change tonight, if we throw ourselves into it."

"When do you think it'll happen?"

"When the bride comes out," he said.

"Of course." The fanatics would want Taffy most of all. What a triumph for them if they could destroy the dead thing that wanted to marry a living man!

"If you change . . . there can't be any survivors," she observed, her soft voice audible only to his sharp ears.

He smiled down at her. "Not a problem."

They'd reached the front of the assemblage now. Dahlia was close enough to notice that the waiting groom was trembling with nerves, though Todd's arm under her hand felt rocksteady. They were due to split up here, Dahlia going to the bride's side and Todd to the groom's. "Don't separate," she said at the last minute, and they turned to face the guests together, but no longer arm in arm. The pair following in their wake, Fortunata and the stubby blond Were named Richie, were quick enough on the uptake to follow suit, as did the other two couples.

Now they formed a wall in front of the groom, and all Dahlia's hopes for her friend's safety depended on Taffy getting down the aisle and gaining safety behind the phalanx formed by the wedding party.

The men and women in white jacketswho'd been setting up tables and ferrying food from the kitchen and setting up the blood bar and the alcohol barwere now trying to subtly position themselves in a loose circle around the guests and the wedding party.

All Dahlia's suspicions were confirmed.

It didn't take the crowd long to smell something odd. A confused murmur had just begun to spread through the guests when an apparently unsuspecting Taffy stepped out of the French doors. Cedric followed right behind her, giving her room to emerge in her full bridal splendor.

The caterers drew their weapons from under their white jackets and opened fire.

Lots of the bullets were aimed at the bride.

But Taffy wasn't there. She had jumped five feet up in the air, and she was hurling her bridal bouquet at the nearest shooter hard enough to knock him down.

Her eyes were blazing. Her red hair came loose from its elaborate arrangement, and she looked magnificent, every inch a vampire: a vampire totally pissed off that her wedding plans were being ruined.

Dahlia was proud enough to burst. But there wasn't any time to revel in her pleasure, because just as Todd bent to the ground and began to turn furry, Richie's chest exploded in a spray of red and Fortunata gasped with pain as a shot penetrated her arm.

From her own bouquet Dahlia extracted the wicked dagger she'd gotten Fortunata to conceal in its center, and with a bloodcurdling battle yell, she laid into the nearest server, a piefaced young woman who hadn't mastered the art of close combat.

Dahlia and the other vamps mowed through the whitecoated gunslingers like scythes, and the huge bronze wolf by her side was just as effective.

Though they may have been heavily briefed on the evil and vicious nature of vampires, the attackers certainly hadn't counted on such an instantaneous and drastic counterattack. And they didn't know anything about Werewolves. The shock value of seeing many of the guests turn into animals rendered some of the gun toters simply paralytic with astonishment, during which moment the wolves rendered themwell, literally rendered them.

One fanatical young man faced Dahlia's approach and held open his arms to either side, proclaiming, "I am ready to die for my faith!"

"Good," Dahlia said, somewhat startled that he was being so obliging. She separated him from his head with a quick swipe of the knife.

When the fighting was over, Dahlia and Todd found themselves backtoback on a pile of rather objectionable corpses, looking around for any further opposition.

But the only live people around them were those of their own kind. Dahlia turned to her companion. "It appears there are no more objections to the marriage," she said.

From the expression on his muzzle Dahlia could tell that she'd never looked so beautiful to the big Wereeven covered in blood, her dress ruined. Todd changed from a wolf into an equally blooddappled man wearing no clothes at all. "Oh,"

Dahlia said, happily.
"Oh, bravo!"

Dahlia had paused to take some gulps of the real thing (to hell with the synthetic blood fountain) during the slaughter, and now she was rosy cheeked and feeling quite invigorated.

"The knives were your idea, weren't they?" Todd said admiringly.

Dahlia nodded, trying to look shy.

"It's a human tradition that the best man and the maid of honor have a fling at the wedding," Todd said.

"Is that right?" Dahlia looked up at him. "But you know, there hasn't been a wedding yet."

They looked around them as they made their way to the terrace. Cedric and Glenda were sipping from cups they'd filled with blood that wasn't synthetic at all.

Ever the gracious host, Cedric had uncorked some champagne and offered the bottle to Don. Taffy, hanging on to Don's bare arm, was laughing breathlessly. Her pearl coronet was still straight, but her dress was ripped in several places. She didn't seem to care.

Richie, the sole serious casualty on the supernatural side, was being tended ably by a little doctor who looked suspiciously like a hobbit.

"I now pronounce you man and wife!" called the Were friend who'd been the

"minister" at the ceremony. He was as naked as Todd. He had his arms wrapped around the Amazonian Were woman, who was equally bereft of clothing. They seemed quite happy, but not as happy as Don and Taffy as they kissed each other.

The wedding was pronounced a great success. In fact, though it had been termed scandalous before it occurred, Taffy and Don's wedding turned out to be
the
social event of the Rhodes summer season, in certain supernatural circles.

The disappearance of the Lucky Caterer's entire staff was a nineday wonder in Rhodes law enforcement circles. Luckily for the vampires and the Weres, owner Lucky Jones had kept the wedding off the books because she expected the humans would kill all the guests.

And it's true that, as Dahlia had told Glenda, going through a war together breeds comradeship; less than a year later, the same Were minister was officiating at Todd and Dahlia's nuptials.

The couple wisely opted to have a less formal weddingin fact, a potluck. Dahlia had decided that, contrary to all social indicators, caterers were simply tacky.

CHARLAINE HARRIS, who has been writing books for twentyfive years, is a native of Mississippi. She has written the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books and the much edgier Lily Bard series. Now she's working on a series about a lightningstruck young woman named Harper Connelly, and the Sookie Stackhouse books, which blend mystery, humor, romance, and the supernatural. The Sookie books are also being read in Japan, Spam, Greece, Great Britain, Germany, Thailand, Russia, and France.

In addition to her work as a writer, Harris is married and the mother of three.

A former weight lifter and karate student, she is an avid reader and cinemaphile.

Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League. She has served on the board of Sisters in Crime, and alternates with Joan Hess as president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance.

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A Hard Day's Night-Searcher

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Isn't it great?" Rafael Santiago wasn't a religious man in any sense of the word, but as he read the short story Jeff Brinks had published in the SF magazine in his hands, he felt a deep need to cross himself. . . .

Or at the very least, club the college student over the head until he lost all consciousness.

Keeping his expression carefully blank, Rafael slowly closed the magazine and met his Squire's eager look. At twentythree, Jeff was tall and lean, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. He'd only been a Squire to Rafael for the last couple of months, since Jeff's father had retired. An eager young man, Jeff had been good enough at remembering to pay bills on time, run Rafael's business, and help to protect his immortal status from the unknowing humans. But the one thing Jeff had wanted more than anything else was to publish one of the stories he was always scribbling on.

Now he had. . . .

Rafael tried to remember a time when he'd had dreams of grandeur, too. A time when he'd been human and had wanted to leave his mark on the world.

And just like him, Jeff's dreams were about to get the boy killed. "Have you shown this to anyone else?"

Damn, but Jeff reminded Rafael of a cocker spaniel puppy wanting someone to pet his head even though he'd just unknowingly pissed all over his owner's best shoes. "Not yet, why?"

"Oh, I don't know," Rafael said, stretching the words out and trying to mitigate some of the sarcasm in his tone. "I'm thinking the NightSearcher series you're starting might be a really bad idea."

Jeff's face fell instantly. "You didn't like the story?"

"Not a question of liking it really. More a question of getting your ass kicked for spilling our secrets."

Jeff furrowed his brow, and by his baffled look it was obvious the boy had
no
idea what Rafael was talking about. "How do you mean?"

This time there was no way to keep the venom out of his voice. "I know they say to write what you know, but damn, Jeff. . . Ralph St. James? NightSearchers?

You've written the whole DarkHunter/Apollite vampire legend, and I really resent your making me a Taye Diggs clone. Nothing against the man, but other than the occasional bald head, the color of our skin, and a diamond stud in the left ear, we have nothing in common."

Jeff took the magazine from Raphael's hands, flipped to his story, and skimmed a few lines. "I don't understand what you're talking about, Rafael. This isn't about you or the DarkHunters. The only thing they have in common is that the NightSearchers hunt down cursed vampires like the DarkHunters do. That's it."

Uhhuh. Rafael looked back at the story again, and even with the magazine upside down his eyes fell straight to the scene. "What about this, where the Taye Diggs lookalike DarkHunter is confronting a Daimon who's just stolen a human soul to elongate his life?"

Jeff made a sound of disgust. "That's a NightSearcher who found a vampire to kill. It has nothing to do with the DarkHunters."

Yeah, right. "A vampire who just happens to steal human souls to elongate his life as opposed to the normal Hollywood variety where they live forever on blood?"

"Well, that's just cliche. It's so much better to have vampires who have really short lives and are then compelled, against their wills, and by a hatred fired by envy, to lash out at the human race. Makes it so much more interesting, don't you think?"

Not really. Especially since he was one of the people caught up in that battle.