“There’s really only one thing to do about a booty like that…” Achilles said in a serious tone. “Marry it.”
“No,” I warned him, shaking my head adamantly. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t—”
But he was already striding past me.
That’s when he noticed that Julian had a pale hand on Herja’s shoulder, laughing as the vampire spoke to her in low tones. Achilles’ face darkened, and he lost his balance, bumping into a table. It fell over, spilling drinks to the floor and causing Julian and Herja to look over at him.
Achilles more-or-less composed himself, fixed a territorial glare upon Julian, and then abruptly began shadow boxing the air in what he obviously presumed to be an intimidating display of power, but to me it merely looked like a middle schooler showing off for a gaggle of cheerleaders. Julian and Herja frowned in confusion, cocking their heads. Achilles—none the wiser—began panting with exertion as he continued to box, his eyes closed now as if he was envisioning the ass-whooping in his mind.
“What is he doing?” Julian asked, risking a glance at me.
I watched Tae-bo Achilles go at it—beating the living hell out of the air. “How the hell should I know?” I finally said.
Julian nodded slowly. “Right. I think we’ll just wait for you guys outside. Don’t dawdle.”
He and his vampires left the bar, eyeing Achilles out of the corner of their eyes, as if he was a rabid dog. Achilles finally spent the last of his reserves because he stopped boxing and opened his eyes. Seeing Julian had left, he grunted in triumph and strode right into Herja’s personal space.
“Marry me,” he told her in a low growl, more of a command than a request. I groaned, ignoring Asterion’s rumbling chuckle behind me.
For an immortal, Achilles sure hadn’t learned much about women over the years, because I was fairly confident that was not how one proposed. She blinked back at him.
Once.
Twice.
Then she side-stepped in a rapid blur and uppercut him in the jaw, knocking him clear off his feet so hard that he went horizontal. She grabbed onto him on his way back down and broke his fall with a raised knee beneath his spine in the infamous back-breaker move. Luckily, Achilles was immortal, or the bachelor party would have officially ended right there.
He slid off her knee to flop to the ground with a wheezing grunt, staring up at her with dazed eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but looked suddenly queasy.
Herja came to the same conclusion—that Achilles was about to hurl—and promptly picked him up by the belt buckle to throw him through the floor-to-ceiling window at the front of the bar, sending him out into the street amidst a shower of shattered glass. Nicolas sighed in weary resignation. Had Herja killed him?
My jaw was hanging open as I stared through the broken window in disbelief, wondering if someone should call a paramedic or something.
The bar grew very quiet—the air as tense as a bank robbery in progress.
Gunnar turned to the rest of the bachelor party and promptly lifted his fingers to his head like Viking horns.
Alucard and I managed to begin rowing a heartbeat before Asterion, forcing the Minotaur to pound another Beerlympian that Nicolas handed him from a tray, somehow having slipped out from behind the bar like a specter with no respect for the rules of time and space.
But since I was rowing, I followed Gunnar out the front door of the bar, hoping I was sober enough for a quick jog around the block. How bad could it be?
Chapter 10
Achilles stood on the sidewalk, palms on his knees as he puked the contents of his stomach onto the pavement. So much for Flamel’s wonder brew, I thought to myself. His vomit smoked just like the Beerlympians we’d been pounding back, and he blinked down at the puddle several times as if contemplating whether it was really smoking or if he had reached some secret, heightened level of drunk and was about to transcend into some Dionysian-level of godly inebriation.
Generally, if your vomit smoked, you probably needed to get checked into a hospital.
But not Achilles.
He wiped his mouth and let out a chuckle. “I think I’m ready to party now.”
But the weirdest thing was that he was entirely naked. Well, except for a utility belt around his waist that contained six beer cans—a utili-beer belt. He finally seemed to notice his state of undress and burst out laughing. Turning to us, his eyes widened further, and he began laughing even harder. “Looks like we’re all ready to party now,” he hooted. I glanced down to see that I was also naked with only a fully-stocked utili-beer belt around my hips.
We all were.
Nicolas stood in the doorway, curling the points of his mustache between two fingers as he grinned at us. “I’d start running if I were you,” he warned. “I tailored my spell so that the moment you exited my bar your clothes would disappear, and they won’t reappear until you finish the race, your beers, and then return with Gunnar’s voodoo bride intact. Remember, it’s only one lap.”
The Valkyries were sitting on stools at the bar, watching us through the broken window. They looked overly pleased with themselves—especially Olrun, who tapped her belt and winked at me, subtly indicating that the belts had been her idea.
Julian and his pals, Renaldo and Javier, were leaning against the wall, struggling not to openly laugh at us. “Streaking is both celebrated and frowned upon, here,” Julian said, grinning with his fangs.
That’s when I heard the clicking of many cameras. I spun to see a bachelorette party cheering and snapping pictures a few doors down from us. They cat-called Asterion specifically but didn’t seem to notice he was a Minotaur, so Nicolas’ home brew must have been working as well as he’d claimed.
Or they’d have been running and screaming.
My anxiety grew as I found that the streets were surprisingly full of drunken revelers and wandering tourists all clutching neon yard-length tubes of green alcohol—probably hurricanes, a local favorite.
“Drink your beer quickly,” Julian advised. “We will count to one minute and then chase you down to steal the hand of your lady wife.” Julian spoke loud enough for us all to hear over the leering crowd. “Circle the block with your beers finished and bride safely underhand,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “and you’ll get your clothes back.”
Unsurprisingly, Achilles seemed the most comfortable with his nudity.
He had his hands on his hips and was proudly posing for Herja through the broken window. Then he popped a tab on one of his beers and pounded it in one pull before tossing the can into a nearby trashcan. Herja was studying Achilles with a hint of a smile, so maybe his pimp game was stronger than it had looked.
True love survived such petty things as shattered windows and broken spines.
Gunnar was grinning competitively. He pounded a beer and then crushed the empty can with one fist. The rest of us followed suit and tossed our empties at the trashcan. None of us made it into the receptacle.
Gunnar let out a loud belch. “I can easily outrun you three,” he said, sneering at Julian.
The vampire’s grin split wider. “I’m sure you could… which is why the rest of my friends are hidden on the path ahead of you. You’ll never know which bystander is a…” his gaze considered the crowd and he changed what he had been about to say, “a gang-fanger intent upon ravaging your bride. Consider it a trust exercise, but with no real harm involved. A husband must protect his wife above all else…”
I frowned thoughtfully at Julian, surprised by the unexpected romantic advice he had just dished out. Especially since the sentimental moment hit us as we stood ass-naked on the sidewalk with the bachelorette party hooting and hollering at us to save the girl—having apparently picked up on the general highlights of our game.
Gunnar grunted, let out another belch, and then tucked his bride under his arm like a football. I opened a second beer and began hauling ass. Only after a dozen steps did I hear my friends catching up. That’s when I also realiz
ed that running with several full cans of beer strapped to your hips only managed to turn them into alcohol bombs—the constant jostling only managing to shake them up. I wondered if anyone was even watching to make sure we finished our beers or if we could simply toss them to the side. Figuring the hidden vampires would be watching us, I decided not to risk throwing them away. The punishment would likely be worse than our current game.
This bachelor party was going to be the death of me.
As we ran—flopping around in all our glory—we began to draw a lot of attention. Especially when the vampires screamed behind us, “Ready or not, here we cooooooome!”
“Are we allowed to kill them by accident?” Alucard snarled as he ran, beginning to outpace me as he tried to chug his beer while running at vampire speed.
Gunnar was already on his third beer, dumping it into his mouth and all over his face, still clutching his bride under his other arm, her arms, head, and legs flapping in the wind as he ran. Achilles was running in what he thought was a straight line—but clearly wasn’t—with a very determined look on his face. Asterion was snorting and bellowing as he ran, threatening to stop traffic with his above average display of man-meat.
Then again, I wasn’t sure how the non-magical folk saw him, so maybe it was just the fact that five guys were streaking through the streets of the Big Sleazy, pounding beers and carrying a life-sized plushy bride in lingerie.
I wondered what all the pointing, picture-taking, cat-calling onlookers thought of our bizarre procession. I also wondered which ones might actually be thieving vampires in disguise, waiting for their chance to abscond with Gunnar’s voodoo bride.
The first stretch of our four-street race went by in a blur.
Then we rounded our first corner and stumbled directly into a huddle of policemen.
It was a strange collection of officers because one policeman was sitting in his car talking to the other three—one on a patrol horse, one on a bicycle, and another on a Segway.
We knocked them all over except for the one in the car, and the mounted horse began kicking and rearing angrily at the sudden mayhem. A vampire dove out of the nearby crowd, attempting to snatch Gunnar’s bride in the confusion, but Gunnar instinctively tossed her at Alucard. The vampire struck Gunnar in the chest, sending him slamming into the policeman who had flung open his door in a desperate attempt to arrest one, or all, of the naked invaders.
Gunnar flew through the open driver’s side door and knocked the cop into the passenger seat where his head struck the window, knocking him out cold. The vampire had careened off Gunnar and broken through the rear window of the police car with his face so that his upper body was inside the vehicle while his legs remained hanging outside of the car.
He began struggling to escape but Achilles lifted a booted foot in a dramatic pose. “This. Is. N’awlins!” he roared, kicking the vampire squarely in the rear to send him fully into the back of the patrol car.
Gunnar blinked, stared at the unconscious policeman next to him, then the steering wheel in front of him. The vampire raged in the backseat like a non-cooperative perpetrator.
Without further hesitation, Gunnar grinned, flipped the sirens on, and slammed the pedal to the floor. He hung his head out the window, cackling madly as the cop car peeled out with screeching tires. “Get my bride to the rendezvous!” he howled.
The policemen on the ground were climbing back to their feet, hands reaching for their service pistols as they decided enough was enough. Asterion immediately dogpiled on top of them, batting the guns away and shouting for the rest of us to run.
I saw Julian and one of his pals gaining on us as they rounded the corner. Achilles hopped onto the policeman’s horse without hesitation, and slapped its flank, “Giddy’up!”
Except Alucard was directly behind the horse, and the horse didn’t appreciate the slap or his new rider very much. Sensing his impending doom, Alucard had already lifted the plush bride before him as a defensive shield. I opened my mouth to shout a warning, but I couldn’t quite recall what I wanted to warn Alucard about. The inbound horse hooves were obvious. No, it was something about the voodoo bride…
The horse bucked and kicked its back hooves in response to Achilles’ sharp slap. The hooves struck the voodoo doll in the face before connecting with Alucard behind her. The force knocked the doll free from his hands and sent Alucard cartwheeling back into Julian and either Rinaldo or Javier, tossing them out into the street.
I heard a loud crash in the opposite direction and glanced up to see Achilles galloping down the street, screaming at the top of his lungs like a lunatic. Then I saw the crashed cop car wedged into the booth of a street vendor who had been selling Mardi Gras beads. The strobing lights from the car turned the surviving beads into mini disco balls.
Gunnar, looking dazed, was crawling out of the car. He was also chugging one of his beers and tossing strings of beads around his neck, the trooper.
Asterion had climbed off the pile of policemen and I heard them groaning as they tried to recover, but it didn’t sound like they’d be vertical anytime soon. Watching Gunnar scoop up his beads and drink his beer in alternating hands, I finally remembered what I had been wanting to warn Alucard about.
“I tried to warn Alucard,” I told Asterion. “It’s a voodoo doll bride, right? Horse hoof to doll equals horse hoof to werewolf.” I pointed an unsteady finger at Gunnar as proof. He had several cuts over his forearms and face, but I knew they would heal fast since he was a shifter with incredible healing abilities.
Asterion snorted, shaking his head. Instead of talking, he popped the tab of a beer from his belt and began chugging. I did the same—down to three beers now. Sensing the policemen were getting back up, my eyes settled on the lonely Segway and I smiled.
Chapter 11
Alucard was wrestling the two vampires back the way we had come, looking ridiculous as he tried to finish his beer in the process. I righted the bicycle and rolled it in his direction. “Alucard! Get on the bike and drink, bitch!”
The third vampire from the bar suddenly dove out from the crowd that surrounded Asterion and I, trying to scoop up the doll in the confusion. I snagged her leg and yanked her out of the way just in time, letting the vampire tumble into the other side of the crowd. The people went down like dominos with phones, drinks, and purses flying up into the air. The bridal veil landed around my neck as I hopped onto the Segway and leaned the handlebar forward to get moving, draping the doll over the front like she was the prow of my pirate vessel. “Tally hoooo!” I roared, pointing my finger in the air like one of the great pirate captains of history. I wished I could have been wearing Gunnar’s eyepatch to really get into character.
Asterion easily matched my stride, and we beelined for Gunnar who was still crawling away from the car, the physical abuse both he and the doll had been through turning him into a drunken, naked, hot-mess of a man. Asterion scooped him up—along with a fistful of beaded necklaces—and draped the collection over the back of his wide neck.
“Don’t forget to drink!” I screamed, trying to keep the Segway steady since its steering was apparently faulty.
Gunnar was wheezing as he tried to crawl up onto Asterion’s shoulders like he wanted one of those shoulder-rides dads give to their toddlers. Then he ruined that image by popping a beer and downing it as Asterion did the same. Even better, Gunnar lifted his fingers to his temples, and since Asterion was already swinging his arms as he ran, it really did look like the Minotaur was rowing his Viking king down the streets of New Orleans.
I very purposely made sure not to ride right behind them because the visual image of a hairy Minotaur ass and a hairy Viking king straddling his shoulders was something I never would have been able to burn from my memory, even with a back-alley lobotomy.
But Asterion was drunk, and weaving as he ran, making our low-speed chase very difficult indeed—me trying to keep them in sight while not getting too close of a look at the horrifying view. Add to that, Gu
nnar was howling at the top of his lungs as if to encourage himself onward and spur on his Minotaur mount.
Achilles was far ahead of us and had found his own beads at some point. He was prancing around in circles in the middle of the street, hurling beads at onlookers. Since he was naked, they were hurling just as many beads right back at him, pelting him in the face more often than not.
Which meant he didn’t notice the vampire suddenly launch up at him, tackling him from the horse and into the crowd of onlookers. Achilles was roaring with laughter as he jumped to his feet, crushing his last beer as he bolted onward, not giving one shit about the rest of the bachelor party or the vampire still tangled up in the pile of drunken onlookers.
I had been paying too much attention to Achilles and abruptly lost control of my Segway, overcorrecting too violently and sending me flying off into Asterion and Gunnar, knocking us down into a terrible game of naked-man Twister.
“My wife!” Gunnar roared in a muffled shout.
“I got her!” A new voice cried out, and we all managed to disentangle ourselves fast enough to see Alucard pedaling past us like Lance Armstrong on the finishing stretch of the Tour De France, reaching out to grab the voodoo bride. He succeeded, but she instantly got tangled up in the wheel and Gunnar let out a sudden yelp of pain, crashing to his knees and rolling on the ground, clutching his goods.
Alucard skidded to a stop, wincing as he looked from Gunnar to the plush doll that was firmly wedged between the bicycle wheel and frame. He tried backing up, but Gunnar only began to howl louder until Asterion let out a loud belch, tossing his last empty can down on the ground and scooping up the bike with one hand.
“Follow me if you want to live!” he roared, tearing off down the street with the bicycle and bride in one hand.
Last Call: A TempleVerse Anthology Book 1 (TempleVerse Anthologies) Page 20
