by Bryan Fields
I looked around backstage, trying to find a quiet spot. Out on the stage, Aerin and Sandy created animals made of colored smoke and sent them chasing each other around the auditorium. Backstage, Nadia was introducing Eric to Angus. Toni was Human again, talking to a small group of young children over in the wings. The 50 DKP Minus crew had finished putting the band’s stage together and was moving it into position, ready to roll out for the show.
I went to the loading dock door. The night air was hot, thick with dust and the smoke of nearby fires. It still seemed sweet and clean after being inside the theatre. The volcanic ash covering the parking lot had broken down into powdery, talc-like dust. Much of it had already blown away in the wind, along with whatever remained of the Sanguine Vanguard corpses.
What didn’t make sense was that the bodies of the people killed by the Vanguard were still where they’d fallen. Thanks to Tony’s spit, I could see their spirits just standing around, looking lost and scared. I still had the spear tip, and the blood on it was still fresh and wet.
Risenue’s blood was acidic. This blood wasn’t. It belonged to someone else—someone who’d died on a hill outside Jerusalem. I took a deep breath and whispered, “I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing in for them. They didn’t deserve to die this way. I just want to make that right.” I took another deep breath, heart hammering in my chest and touched my little finger to the blood.
It didn’t kill me. In fact, I felt…fine. I even felt approval. I kneeled down and brushed it on the lips of the nearest dead guard. “Rise and walk,” I whispered.
His eyes opened.
I jumped back, sprawling on my ass. His wounds had vanished outright. No scar, not even any blood to mark where the wounds had been.I got to my feet and dealt with the others as fast as I could.
Once I finished and all the recently-dead folks were coming around, I felt the spear tip move in my hand. It had never demonstrated any degree of willful intent before, so I stopped and opened my hand to look at it.
It shot straight up into the night sky, along with the broken sections of the shaft out of Granfer Vic’s car. I waited, but after a few minutes they still hadn’t come back down. Fair enough. Back under lock and key. I saluted the night sky and headed back inside.
Angus was waiting for me. Even without his disguise on, he was easy to recognize. His face and features were almost the same, other than his onyx skin, violet eyes, and bone-white hair. That aside, the scar was a dead giveaway. “So, you found the Spear of Longinus. Where is it?”
I pointed up. “Safe. I don’t think it’s going to get out much.”
He nodded. “Better that way.” He clasped my wrist and said, “Well fought, friend.”
“And you.” I wasn’t sure what to say, so I added, “Well fought as well.” Hopefully, it didn’t sound…noobish.
He accepted it with a nod and clapped me on the shoulder. “So, care to explain how one night schtupping you was enough to drive my daughter into marrying a gender-conflicted Dragon?”
Caught off guard, I couldn’t think of anything for several long seconds. Finally, I shrugged and wagged my thumb out the loading dock doors. “Vegas, man.”
Angus roared with laughter and we went off to find our ladies.
Chapter Twenty-Two
White Weddings
“There’s Antonia and Valkrys, of course, and Giselle. She’s…seventeen now, and quite a good student with conjuration and charm magic. She’d be delightful as a flower girl.” Aerin scribbled more notes, still talking. “Mandy can do the ceremony, but she might not be available without a lot of advance warning. We should plan on having Gaar do it. Alissa will have to come, of course, which means we have to find a place to keep Shadow while she’s here. Disguise spell is out. We don’t want a saber-toothed tiger wandering around disguised as a pony or whatever.”
“Mother, stop.”
“I’ll have to invite Nikolai, of course, but the last thing I want is for your father to get into a pissing contest with Angus over who gets to give you away.”
Nadia yelled, “Crom’s balls, Mother! Stop!”
Aerin’s pen stopped in mid-skritch, her eyes wide. “What? Did I forget someone? Please don’t make me start over again.”
Nadia took a deep breath. “Mother, Eric and I are running down to the marriage license office and doing our paperwork before they close. Then we’re going to find a little chapel, get some flowers, and have Elvis do the ceremony. Not Gaar. Not Mandy. Elvis.”
“Elvis? Oh, really?” Aerin crossed her arms. “If you think I’m digging his ass up and doing a Raise Dead just for your wedding ceremony…”
“Not the real Elvis,” Nadia howled. “Oh, god, mother! An Elvis impersonator! He doesn’t even have to be a good one!”
Aerin pursed her lips. “Well, fine. You should have been more specific.”
“All right, then, I’ll be specific. It’s just…we don’t want a big production, or a nice respectable ceremony. We want our wedding to be pure Las Vegas.” Nadia caught the look in Aerin’s eyes and sighed. “We can have a big, formal wedding later. I won’t argue against it and you’ll have time to get everyone together. But I want this wedding tonight, and I want it cheesier than a Dragon’s fondue pot.”
Aerin threw her hands in the air. “Fine. You can do that. But Daria and Natasha need to be here. It’s your wedding, so you need to call and invite them. I’ll call Alexander and your father can wake up Matthew.”
“Fine.” Nadia took her phone out and started dialing. “You can pick them up while we’re getting the license.”
Out on the patio, I shook my head in sympathy for Nadia’s situation and snagged two more sausages onto my plate. Aerin’s version of the old loaves-and-fishes routine was a hero’s feast stacked with joints of mutton, whole roast boar, racks of beef ribs, venison kabobs on skewers as long as rapiers, and huge ribeye steaks cut from a Columbian mammoth. Those things were caveman cuts, three inches thick and larger than a vinyl record album. Rose was working on her third one already.
For the record, medium-rare Columbian mammoth with rosemary au jus is freaking tasty. It was enough to make me wonder what a serious pit master could do with a rack of mammoth ribs and a truck bed full of hickory chunks.
In between bites of steak, Rose pulled another gold envelope out of the gift bag Gordon had cobbled together for her. On top of the shopping gift cards and the gameplay time vouchers, he’d tossed in several handfuls of Questgiver reward satchels. Much to Rose’s disappointment, a kid from Nebraska had already won the grand prize. Not that she was in any danger of running out of her own gold coins anytime soon; it was just the typical more-is-always-better attitude Dragons have.
Rose licked her lips and tore the satchel open, naked avarice gleaming in her eyes. It seemed her desires were rewarded; the satchel contained a gold-foil game card with an embossed hologram image. She cocked her head to the side and said, “David, what is a citadel?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Supposedly it’s the general term for Warblade’s new housing system. They haven’t made any details about it public yet.”
“But it’s land?”
“Of some kind, yeah. Did you win one?”
Rose nodded. “Yes. My choice of any Legendary-level citadel site, and automatic completion of an Epic-level personal house. This is going to be worth a fortune.” She tucked it away and picked up the last satchel.
“Guys? We’re about to head out to get the marriage license.” Nadia was just about bouncing in place. “Did you want to come with us?”
“Of course,” Rose said. “Just let me see what’s in this one and hit the bathroom.” As she spoke, she tore open the satchel and had a look at the card. She smirked and tossed the card down on the table.
It was a code for an in-game wedding dress. Normally, players had to buy them from the in-game store for real money. This one was the top of the line, selling for fifty bucks in the store.
Rose stood up and stuffed her goodi
e bag into Fibber McDragon’s dimensional closet. “I guess that’s a hint,” she said. “Our plans have been on hold long enough.”
I took Rose’s hand. “Not tonight,” I said. “Your family and mine will expect to be there when we do this.”
“Of course they will,” she said. “I don’t plan on doing it tonight, but we’ve had it on hold long enough.” She and Nadia took off for the restroom while I finished the last bit of sausage and washed up.
Our taxi driver took great delight in pointing out there was almost no sign of the chaos and bloodshed Risenue caused. “A hundred thousand abandoned homes in North Vegas get trashed to hell, no one cares. Dumbass UFO cult goes nuts in the middle of town, the city shits out construction dollars like you hit a royal flush. Broken windows boarded up already. Some of them are even being replaced before morning. Crashed cars all towed out of the streets. Even the bloodstains washed away. Can’t let the tourists see that.”
“We were at the convention,” I said. “Was it very bad out here?”
“Very bad, no. Only a doomsday cult doing a mass suicide. They were satisfied just taking themselves out, thank God, so that was only kinda bad.” He snorted and waved out his window. “Anywhere else, the news people would be stroking themselves over this story for weeks. Here, it gets one or two follow-ups and then it’s forgotten. So which of you is getting married?”
Nadia patted Eric on the shoulder. “We are. Not that my mother wants to go along with it.”
“Ah. She pissed about the Vegas wedding thing?”
“Yes.”
“Ah. You the first kid to get married?”
“No. That’s the problem.” Nadia sighed and rubbed her forehead. “My sister Danya got married to Willow just after midnight the day Hawaii legalized gay marriage, but they never told anyone they were doing it. Mother found out when she saw the two of them on the news. She had been trying to reach them at home to ask if they had plans, but there they were on the nightly news, holding up their certificate. They rushed through everything to be in the first group so they could show the news cameras how happy they were with their piece of paper.”
Eric pulled her close, patting her hand. Nadia gripped his tight in return. “As soon as I said we were engaged, Mother was taking over the wedding planning. And getting married tonight was absolutely not acceptable. So, we argued. I won, but I still feel like I lost.”
“Moms do that,” the cabbie said. “What about your family, big guy? They want you to do a traditional wedding?”
Eric smiled. “I’m sure they do. They should be used to disappointment by now.”
“Tell her what a traditional wedding is,” I said.
Nadia raised her eyebrow. Eric said, “Well, back home, a pair would gain as much altitude as possible, then mate in freefall until they had to pull out of the dive while their family and friends cheered them on.”
“Skydiving naked and having sex in freefall while our parents watch?” Nadia shook her head. “I couldn’t even suggest that to Mother, even as a joke. Well, maybe as a joke…”She pulled out her phone and described the Dragon wedding to Aerin. A few moments later, she said, “Well, okay then…bye…” and hung up.
“Well?” Eric asked.
“She agreed to polymorph me into a Dragoness for the ceremony. It was preferable to digging up Elvis.” She sat back in the seat and started laughing.
Eric shook his head. “She’ll have to transform you into a drake. I have to fly in my true form, and…there are enough differences between male and female to make same-sex flights impossible.”
“I can live with that,” Nadia said. “Mother will just have to make sure I’m packing…whatever it is male Dragons pack.”
Eric and Rose looked at each other and chuckled, but didn’t comment.
The line for marriage licenses was mercifully short. Four mounted police hovered around the area, keeping order and sorting those who were too drunk to make good decisions into taxis back to their hotels.
The people in line were almost outnumbered by the chapel rats hawking the glories of the various wedding mills in the area. Nadia waved several over and asked, “Who’s got the best Elvis working tonight?” Three rats started heaping the praises on their guys; the fourth rat pulled out his phone and played Nadia a video of his guy singing “Love Me Tender” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love”.
Just like that, we had a winner.
Nadia called the place to make sure they had a slot open and the right Elvis on duty. They did and he was, so Nadia signed her order form and waved down the next taxi. Nadia waited until we were halfway to the chapel to call Aerin with the details, but the entire family still beat us there. Even a Vegas taxi driver can’t outrun a teleport spell.
Nadia’s twin sister Natasha scooped her out of the taxi and into a changing room loaded with dresses, some of which she’d bought that morning in Monaco. Geneva slipped in to referee and pulled the door shut behind her.
Angus handed Eric a designer tuxedo and said, “Bathroom is over here. Make it fit.” He and Nadia’s brothers blocked access to the door to give Eric a few moments of privacy. Alexander appeared to be a few years older than Matthew, with a dark, Mediterranean look normally found on romance novel covers. He had two girls from Gilead with him, one on either arm. They looked amazed and a little scared. I got the feeling they had never been outside of Gilead in their lives.
Angus had to give Eric a hand with the suit, since Eric had never seen one before. The sizing was dead on, and Eric looked quite striking when he emerged. Then Nadia came out of her dressing room, and everyone forgot about Eric.
Her dress was a one-off original Gothic gown by a major-name designer. Natasha had snagged it off the runway during Fashion Week in Milan. It looked like black velvet, but when the light hit just right, sheens of amethyst and midnight blue cascaded through the fabric. The underdress and sleeve linings were scarlet silk, with gold roses blooming on a Celtic knotwork pattern of gold vines. Her shamrock-green mane had been tamed and recolored to a golden rose, held in place by a gold and ruby headdress. As eager as Nadia had been for this, she looked about to faint. Angus patted her hand and kept her steady.
The chapel’s sound guy started an orchestral version of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—the “Ode to Joy”—as the wedding march. Natasha slipped in front of our Elvis and launched into the choral portion. Despite having the same waifish build as Nadia did, Natasha sang in a gorgeous, opera-trained soprano. I had to wonder why she hadn’t joined Daria in performing on Broadway; that voice was a monster.
As Nadia passed us, I saw her fighting back tears and losing. I guess she didn’t know her sister as well as she thought she did.
With everyone in place, Reverend Elvis took the stage with a “Y’all be seated now.” He nodded to Natasha and added, “I dunno where you hid those pipes, miss, but that was sum’em else. Thank you, miss, thank you verra much. Ladies and genamen, it’s so good to see all of you here for this joyous occasion, especially on such short notice. Eric and Nadia met yesterday, folks. Yesterday, and that time was enough to tell them they were meant to be together. People often say they and their beloved are from two different worlds, but for Eric and Nadia, it’s just the simple truth. Sometimes two people are just meant to be together, despite what…wise men say….”
And off he went into “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You”. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the time he finished.
Just as Nadia had asked, the ceremony was pure, undiluted, hunka-hunka burning Vegas cheese. They promised to set their blue suede shoes by the door, to rockin’ all the time without being a hound dog, to love each other tender and so all their dreams fulfill.
In the end, they kissed, waved to the crowd, and Eric carried Nadia down a red carpet while Reverend Elvis sang “Viva Las Vegas”. Out in the parking lot, Rose and everyone with a trace of magical talent started throwing fireworks spells into the air. Young Elvis was waiting behind the wheel o
f an early-fifties Chevy convertible with the top down. The lovebirds waved to us as Young Elvis swept them out of the parking lot and into the Vegas night.
The fireworks attracted some attention, but all the wedding guests were back in Aerin’s suite well before any police showed up. Those who needed to do so changed into less formal attire, and we headed down to the Second Watch for the reception.
Rose and I wound up sitting next to Gordon and Lorena. The skin on Lorena’s new legs was as delicate as a newborn’s, so she’d opted for well-worn denim jeans instead of the skirt she wanted to wear. Gordon looked far less deer-in-the-headlights than he had earlier, but he still watched everyone with a great deal of interest, studying the people around us for any sign of non-human traits.
“So, my fight coordinator is an Elf, you’re dating a Dragon, and a goddamn demon just trashed my hotel,” Gordon muttered to me. “I’ve been reading, watching, and living fantasy as long as I can remember. I’ve been playing and making fantasy games my entire life. How is it that I only find out about this stuff now?”
I chuckled. “The Elves I just found out about myself. The Dragons have been coming here for a while, but they know how to keep quiet. The Bloodmaiden…I think she just got greedy. I’m not sure on the details, but we know she tried to poach power and followers from the Virgin Mary. It’s safe to assume she wound up pissing off the wrong people.”
“The Virgin Mary.” Gordon rubbed his eyes. “I’m Jewish, so, I got nothing to say there. I wouldn’t believe any of this if…” He gently traced his fingertip across Lorena’s leg. “I’m sitting next to a miracle. Why doesn’t God do things like this? Give people a reason to believe again.”
“Apparently the rules consider miracle cures to be bribery,” I said. “Since the Bloodmaiden personally attacked Lorena, the rules allowed her to be healed. I’d just smile, nod, and go with it.”
