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 gun-slingers 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