Last Call: A TempleVerse Anthology Book 1 (TempleVerse Anthologies)

by Shayne Silvers

  Alucard was a Master Vampire—recently upgraded to Daywalker status thanks to drinking some blood he probably shouldn’t have tried to sample. Luckily, it had only made him uniquely stronger instead of killing him outright. Our first encounter had been as enemies, but circumstances and a shared enemy had quickly convinced him to team up with me rather than fight against me. He’d moved to St. Louis and abandoned his vampire coven in New Orleans without batting an eye—a solid display of where his new loyalties rested.

  He was tall, dark, and handsome—as many would say—and he naturally spoke in a thick southern drawl but often tried to mask the accent since we gave him so much grief about it.

  All in all, my gang was comprised of enemies-turned-friends—a dysfunctional Band of Brothers. I also realized I was bringing the Triple-A team: Asterion, Achilles, and Alucard. I hoped that wasn’t a sign of how the night was going to turn out—injuries and a whole lot of disappointment at shattered prospects.

  If all went according to plan, we had an inside person—an accomplice—waiting for us at the camp. If they had failed to do their part of the job, things were about to get very messy.

  I took a deep breath, the smell of scented rubber sticking in my nose since the designer had attempted to make it fragrant rather than pungent, but they’d simply succeeded in making it so strong I felt like I was huffing a Febreze canister.

  We finally neared the edge of the camp and found two werewolves lounging in lawn chairs. One was a gorgeous, reddish-brown haired woman with her legs crossed on a log before her. She was sipping a beer and smirking directly at me. Ashley Belmont.

  The other figure was a great giant of a man with long, blonde hair and a bushy, golden beard. He wore a black eyepatch that he somehow managed to pull off with a roguish look. Gunnar Randulf, the Alpha werewolf of St. Louis, was snoring loudly. My mask had restricted the sounds of the woods around us, hiding the now obvious snoring. I cursed, standing from my crouch to glare at Ashley. Out of pride, I didn’t take off my mask.

  “Do you have any idea how much time we put into our plan? How carefully we snuck up on you?” I demanded, folding my arms.

  Asterion stood from his own crouch, cautiously walking up to Gunnar before poking him with a sausage-sized finger. Gunnar snorted louder but didn’t stir. Asterion tore off his mutilated unicorn mask and flung it on the ground, stomping on it as he snorted loudly, the thick ring in his massive nostrils swinging at the infuriated motion.

  Chapter 2

  Ashley chuckled at Asterion’s temper and then turned back to me, studying my face with a crooked grin. “Unicorns. Terrifying,” she finally said, glancing back at the Minotaur again.

  “You could have called to tell us we didn’t have to creep the last mile to your campsite,” I muttered.

  Alucard and Achilles finally walked into the clearing to stand beside the fire, talking to each other softly—which was all the more hilarious because they still wore their giant unicorn rubber masks. That was the best part of costumes—when the wearers forgot they were wearing them and began to do normal, everyday things.

  Like when you go to a cosplay event and see Darth Maul smoking a cigarette, Superman chugging a beer, or Deadpool at the urinal beside you.

  Ashley rolled her eyes at my complaint. “He smelled something and started to get suspicious. I had to drug him sooner than we planned. Maybe a little stronger than I intended. But I have this handy epinephrine stick you can use,” she said, brandishing the medical dagger colloquially known as an epi-pen. Many incorrectly knew it as an adrenaline shot.

  I blinked at her, then studied my best friend since childhood. He was drooling into his beard, now. “How much did you dope him with? And don’t you think it’s a horrible idea to give an Alpha werewolf an epinephrine shot after we kidnap him?” I asked. “You’re supposed to be the logical one in this situation,” I reminded her. “If he wakes up in a strange place surrounded by four unicorn men holding something stabbed into his thigh…he’ll have questions. Loud, violent, irrational questions like why did you stab me, where am I, where is my fiancée?”

  “It’s Stag Night,” Ashley said dismissively. “If you four scoundrels don’t know how to show him the wildest night of his life then maybe he needs to find some new friends,” she teased, ticking off her fingers as she continued. “The big bad wizard, the Minotaur, fucking Achilles, and a Master vampire can’t handle my little puppy?” she cooed in the voice one typically uses to talk to their pets. When none of us responded and she noticed me still staring at the epi-pen, she rolled her eyes. “He’s a werewolf. This is nothing compared to a shift. It barely even qualifies as an energy drink. Werewolves have very strong hearts.”

  I scowled at her and my unicorn gang mirrored me, ruining the seriousness of the situation. Seeing three fake unicorns glare at someone really makes it impossible to maintain anger.

  I attempted to rake my fingers through my hair and cursed when I knocked my mask askew again. I straightened it, muttering under my breath. She was probably right. He’d understand. He wouldn’t freak out.

  Yeah, right. Luckily, my mask concealed my unease from my gang. I would just make sure someone else stabbed Gunnar with the damned pen. Someone big and strong, able to take an alpha werewolf punch fueled by adrenaline.

  “You guys ready?” I asked my crew. The bastards actually neighed in response as they circled Gunnar.

  Ashley grinned, studying us. “What do gay horses eat?” she finally asked, biting her lip.

  “Hey!” I snapped. “We’re not—”

  “Heeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyy!” my gang sang out in an overly effeminate cheer. Ashley burst out laughing, clapping her hands delightedly as she nodded her head up and down upon hearing the correct answer. I sighed, overly ready for that first drink.

  “Return him in more or less one piece and call me if you need bail money, or accidentally start a war in New Orleans.”

  “Ashley, you’re the best kind of fiancée,” I told her honestly, my excitement budding now that we were officially starting the bachelor party shenanigans.

  She curtsied dramatically, then glanced down at the epi-pen in her hand. She looked up at me, a very devious grin on her face. “Mind if I do this part? That way he doesn’t think I’m in danger as soon as he wakes up.”

  I glanced at my crew and they nodded in relief. I noticed Asterion hadn’t picked his mask up so I pointed at it eagerly. “Put your mask back on, man! Otherwise he’ll recognize us.” He hurriedly scooped it up off the ground, struggling to line it up properly on his head.

  Achilles cleared his throat. “I bet he only needs one guess with you,” he offered helpfully, pointing at the Minotaur and his horns.

  I ignored the bickering and turned to Ashley, rubbing my hands together excitedly. Alucard, Asterion, and Achilles loomed over Gunnar’s chair, forming a circle with me at the front. I finally gave her a thumbs up, knowing she would never do anything that would actually put Gunnar in any real danger so she must have been very confident on the potential side-effects of using an epi-pen on an unconscious werewolf.

  Ashley chuckled, popped the top off the pen, stabbed her fiancée in the thigh, and slammed down the plunger. Gunnar woke with a roar, his lone eye—he’d lost the other in a fight with the Brothers Grimm—shooting wide open to find his wife leaning over him.

  “Have fun tonight, sweetie,” she said, snapping him out of his chemically-induced sleep, before planting a wet kiss on his lips.

  He blinked back at her, then noticed the four unicorns surrounding him. His lone eye narrowed, his chest still panting rapidly from the epinephrine. “What…” he began, jerking his head first one way and then another.

  “Hold your breath,” I told him, turning to open a Gateway—a nifty way for wizards to travel great distances in a single step—in the air before us. “It’s Stag Night!” The Gateway was essentially an open doorway to another place—in this case a shimmering pool full of naked women in New Orleans.

  Mermaids.<
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  Ashley began to cackle uproariously as Gunnar struggled to get out of his chair, but my three companions pinned his arms down and then hoisted the entire chair high up into the air.

  “Let there be BOOBS!” Ashley roared. The naked mermaids on the other end of the Gateway erupted with cheers and laughter.

  Gunnar spun his head around, torn between horror, anxiety, and excitement—his emotions likely even more out of whack as he struggled to process the drugs coursing through his veins.

  Without hesitation, my unicorns hurled him and the chair through the open Gateway and straight into the pool of topless women who were bouncing up and down in excitement. They’d been waiting on us for about thirty minutes now since we’d had to tailor Asterion’s unicorn mask to fit him.

  Gunnar bellowed before splashing into the pool.

  I gave Ashley a high-five and she pulled me in for a hug. “Take care of the hairy lummox for me, but make sure he has a truly unforgettable time. It’s his last chance to cut loose.”

  I chuckled and squeezed her back before leaning away to meet her eyes. “You really are the coolest fiancée ever,” I told her, pointing my thumb back at the pool full of mermaids.

  She grunted. “Just keep him away from any werewolf bitches and you can have at it.”

  I chuckled and locked eyes with my crew. “Let’s ride, uni-squad.” I threw the extra unicorn mask intended for Gunnar ahead of me as we leapt through the Gateway and into the pool.

  Although it was night, the air was warm and muggy, so the pool felt refreshing. Also, with as many breastacular women as were swimming around us, I’m not sure any of us would have noticed the water temperature if it had been in the Arctic Circle.

  We didn’t last more than thirty seconds before our clothes were forcefully removed from our bodies by the school of mermaids giggling and laughing as they tossed them out of the pool for another nude mer-person to hang to dry.

  Because this was a ritzy hotel with an optional nude swimming pool. And it was only our first stop. We waved one last time at Ashley with all the excitement of kids waving goodbye to their mother on the first day of school. Then I released the Gateway.

  Chapter 3

  Gunnar was sputtering, shouting, and laughing as he tried to stop the mermaids from unclothing him; realizing everyone else was naked, he gave up on being prudish. Achilles and Alucard were hooting with laughter as they were stripped to their skins by the mermaidens, but Asterion looked extremely uncomfortable with that many strange hands on him at one time. This party was all about breaking boundaries, though, so he would be a new bull by the end of the night.

  Gunnar spun to shoot me a mock scowl, shaking his head in wonder. “What’s up with the unicorn masks?” he asked in bewilderment, glancing down at his hands where he held the mask I had thrown in for him.

  I grunted as I glanced down at the floating rubber mask beside me. I’d almost drowned to death after jumping in the pool when the damned thing had filled with water. Luckily, an overzealous white-haired, caramel-skinned mermaid had saved me with excessive concerned touching and patting on the back. It didn’t stop her from stripping me as efficiently as one cleaned a fish.

  “We thought we were going to have to kidnap you and wanted disguises to surprise you.” I admitted, shrugging. “And I’m sure we’ll find plenty more opportunities to use them as the night unfolds.”

  He slowly shook his head, grinning from ear-to-ear. I pointed at the epi-pen still dangling from his leg and he grunted. Freaking werewolves and their pain factor let alone their ability to re-heal. Such a small wound healed up almost the instant he yanked it out.

  He stared down at the pen in his hand. “I can’t believe Ashley was in on it. Wait…” he said slowly, thinking. “She… drugged me?”

  “Better than a stripper doing it later, right?”

  “Stripper? I don’t need any strippers.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but tonight isn’t only about you. Stag Nights are group events. You’re the focus, sure, but you’re not the only one looking to have a good time.”

  Gunnar scowled at me. “I think it is supposed to be about me.”

  “Ashley said we could get strippers. We’re getting strippers,” I said in a final tone. The mermaids cheered their agreement with Achilles and Alucard—still in their unicorn masks—splashing water at a few of them playfully. Asterion just stood there uncomfortably, trying to avert his eyes. Finally, he slapped his own mask on to hide his embarrassment.

  He was quiet for a moment. “She did say let there be boobs…” he said, trailing off thoughtfully.

  I nodded. “No werewolf boobs, though. Pretty generous of her, really.”

  Abruptly, I realized we were being surrounded by a half-dozen of the topless mermaids, and they were grinning at us with their razor-sharp teeth—which kind of killed the sexy factor—but they didn’t look like they wanted to murder us or anything. It wasn’t like they could help how they looked.

  “You boys ready to play?” a red-headed mermaid said, looking as if she had seaweed dreadlocks woven into her thick tresses. “You’ve got a long night ahead of you.”

  Alucard finally ceased his splash fight and waded closer with Achilles and Asterion—who still looked positively mortified. Maybe that was because he was taller, and his nudity was more revealing unless he crouched down a bit in the pool.

  “The Alcochemist is ready whenever we finish up here,” Alucard said mysteriously.

  “Oh, nice choice,” a mermaid with blonde cornrows said, licking her lips. “We better get started. I call the big one.”

  Achilles stepped forward proudly. “Hop on up, my fair mermaiden—”

  “I said the big one,” she interrupted with emphasis on the word. Then she locked eyes with Asterion. He stiffened like a board and I could almost see his blush through the mask. He was doing everything he could to not stare at the assorted breasts around us, even though I’d warned him that it was totally natural for mermaids to be nude and that if we wanted their help in our planned activities, we needed to give them something in return. They rarely got to play with others the way they wanted, and bachelor parties were a mysterious, exciting rite of passage that people, and mermaids, generally wanted to participate in when they saw one shambling down a street.

  Every girl wanted to become a vague, half-formed memory in some poor guy’s mind on his ‘last hoorah’ journey before marriage. Even if it was just to be part of the soirée, hidden back in the crowd. Like a public hanging back in the old days, one was compelled to attend. Something about bachelor and bachelorette parties simply required everyone to lower their inhibitions as if they were behind some cosmic curtain where no one could see what truly happened and you could cut loose for a few hours.

  Asterion hadn’t believed everything we’d told him about our plans, but if he was balking at our first stop…

  “Asterion…” I warned in a low tone, speaking for only him to hear. “You’re coming across as disrespectful, even though you don’t mean to be. And…” I held out my arms invitingly, turning back to our hosts to openly appreciate the naked display before us, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

  The mermaids tittered—pun intended—demurely, but Gunnar rolled his eye at me. “Gander puns? Really?”

  “Don’t be a tit, Gunnar,” Alucard grinned.

  “I’m plenty big,” Achilles muttered, still hung up on the earlier dismissal.

  “Oh, I want to ride those shoulders, don’t worry.” Another voluptuous, red-headed mermaid with alabaster skin, minus the seaweed dreads, promptly climbed onto his shoulders, nipping at his ears on her way up, her human legs hanging free over his chest. He gripped them to support her balance, grinning as she readjusted the unicorn mask on his head. “You’re plenty big, my Greek stallion,” she cooed, stroking his horn suggestively. “My name is Atlantia.” He patted her rump with a chuckle and she beamed.

  Alucard burst out laughing as a lithe, copper-skinned
brunette climbed onto his shoulders. “This will be fun. Alucard, right?” she purred. He nodded his stupid horse head. “Good. My name is Isla. Instead of Chicken, we will play Seahorse! Your masks will make this much more fun!” She had a good point, and I found myself grinning at the mental image of our drunk, visually-impaired bachelor party playing chicken—seahorse—with mermaids.

  With a resigned sigh, Asterion lowered his great big horns so the blonde mermaid could climb up his back. She straddled his shoulders with one leg on either side of his massive neck and promptly used his horns like handlebars. “Tactical advantage,” she giggled. “My name is Chloe.”

  Gunnar stared at me, dumbfounded. “We’re playing… chicke—” he cut off, remembering Isla had changed the name of the game, “Seahorse? For what reason, exactly?” he asked, not sounding upset, but baffled.

  Alucard chimed in, gripping Isla’s pale legs. “You don’t get to ask questions tonight, Gunnar,” he said, turning his unicorn mask towards the bachelor, his voice echoing slightly. “Your job is to simply comply.”

  I met Gunnar’s eye and nodded. Then I pointed past his shoulder at a ridiculously well-developed, blonde-haired mermaid who was eyeing him from behind like he was a piece of sushi all wrapped up and ready to gobble down. “There’s your handler,” I indicated.

  He spun to stare at her with a crooked grin. The sides of her head were shaved, but she had a mohawk with seashells woven into the hair on the top of her head. She also wore fat coral earrings that pulled at her earlobes. “My name is Manta, and you are mine,” she told him with a dark grin.

  My own rider climbed atop my shoulders, her warm flesh pressed against the back of my neck and shoulders. It was the white-haired, caramel-skinned mermaid who had saved me from drowning and stripped me to my skins. Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure that we had each wound up with the one who had gotten us party ready—like it had been them staking their claim. She giggled, and I patted her shins to let her know I had her. “Call me Echo,” she purred in a smoky voice, squeezing my neck in introduction.