My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

by L. A. Banks

  A fairy or two mingled with the crowd, carefully staying over on the groom's side. Fairies were notoriously delicious to vampires, and though everyone was sure to be on his or her best behavior, not every vamp had the same threshold of self-control. Dahlia recog­nized a goblin or two that Cedric did business with and assorted shape-shifters, including one dark exotic who changed into a cobra. (That had been a memorable sight on a memorable night. Dahlia smiled reminiscently)

  Just then, a chorus of howls outside announced the arrival of the groomsmen, all decked out in their tuxes. Dahlia could distinguish Todd even at a distance. His burnished head was shining in the torches that had been set at intervals up and down the lawn. His glasses glinted. Dahlia sighed.

  The music, provided by a Were rock band that was a favorite of the groom's, was surprisingly pleasant. The lead singer had a won­derfully tender voice that wrapped itself around love songs in an af­fecting way. He began to sing a number that she knew was called simply "The Wedding Song," because Taffy had dragged her along when she picked out the music.

  Of course, the words weren't altogether pertinent since the sub­jects getting married weren't human. Don wasn't going to leave his mother, and Taffy wasn't going to leave her home. Taffy's home had slid into the ocean a couple of centuries before, and Don's mother was now pregnant by another member of the pack. But the senti­ment, that the two would cleave together, was timely.

  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 black-and-white. 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 mail-order minister who happened to have a wonderfully solemn voice and an appropriate black robe. The marriage wouldn't exactly be legal anyway, so ap­pearance 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 big-eyed 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 rock-steady. 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 jackets—who'd been setting up tables and ferrying food from the kitchen and setting up the blood bar and the alcohol bar—were 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 pie-faced young woman who hadn't mastered the art of close combat.

  Dahlia and the other vamps mowed through the white-coated 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 them—well, 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 back-to-back 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 Were—even covered in blood, her dress ruined. Todd changed from a wolf into an equally blood-dappled 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 nine-day 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 wedding—in fact, a potluck. Dahlia had decided that, contrary to all social indicators, caterers were simply tacky.

  * * *

  Charlaine HARRIS, who has been writing books for twenty-five 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 lightning-struck 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.

  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 twenty-three, 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 Night-Searcher 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? Night-Searchers? You've written the whole Dark-Hunter/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 Dark-Hunters. The only thing they have in common is that the Night-Searchers hunt down cursed vampires like the Dark-Hunters do. That's it."

  Uh-huh. 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 look-alike Dark-Hunter is con­fronting a Daimon who's just stolen a human soul to elongate his life?"

  Jeff made a sound of disgust. "That's a Night-Searcher who found a vampire to kill. It has nothing to do with the Dark-Hunters."

  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. "That is also the reality we live in, Jeff. What you just de­scribed is a Daimon, not a vampire."

  "Well maybe I borrowed from the Daimons a little, but the rest is all mine."

  Rafael flipped to the next page. "Let's see. What about the cursed Tyber race that pissed off the Norse god Odin and is now damned to live only twenty-seven years unless they turn vampire and steal hu­man souls. Substitute 'Apollite' for 'Tyber' and 'Apollo' for 'Odin' and again you have the story of the Apollite race who turn Dai­mon."

  Sighing, Jeff crossed his arms over his chest. He shook his head in denial.

  "And what about this part here where the Night-Searchers sell their souls to the Norse goddess Freya, who is a vibrant redheaded femme fatale dressed all in white, to get revenge on whoever caused them to die?"

  "No one is g
oing to figure out that Artemis is Freya."

  Rafael growled at him. "For the record, unlike Artemis, Freya happens to be a strawberry blonde. But you were right about one thing. She is gorgeous and highly seductive. Definitely hard to say no to her."

  "Oh." Deepening his scowl, Jeff looked up. "How do you know all that?"

  Rafael grew quiet as he remembered the night he'd met the Norse goddess and she had tempted him well. That had definitely been one hell of a day. . . . "Freya's the goddess who hand selects warriors for Valhalla. Or in the case of myself, she wanted to take me off with her to her own hall and add me to her harem."

  Jeff gaped. "And you chose to fight for Artemis instead, what kind of stupid are you?"

  There were times when the kid could be eerily astute. "Yeah, well, in retrospect it was a bad bargain on my part. But at the time Artemis was offering me vengeance on my enemies it seemed so much more appealing than being Freya's love slave . . . which gets back to Freya being Artemis in your story."

  "But you just said she's not Artemis and she comes after warriors, too. So it could happen. She could make a bargain like the one I wrote about in my story."

  And icicles could grow on the sun. Freya collected warriors, she didn't send them back to the mortal plane to fight Daimons/vam­pires. Artemis did that. But not willing to argue the point anymore when it was obvious Jeff didn't see it, Rafael moved on to the next similarity. "And what about this? Ralph—Jesus, boy, couldn't you come up with something better than a bodily function to name me—was a Caribbean pirate, son of an Ethiopian slave and Brazilian merchant. . . ." He glanced down to read the description: "At six six, Ralph was one to intimidate anyone who saw him. With his shaved head that was tattooed with African tribal symbols given to him by a Shaman he'd met in his travels, he walked the earth as if he owned it. But more than that, the black tattoos blended at times with his dark brown flesh, making the two of them seem indistinguishable from each other as if he bore some kind of alien skin."