LITMIR.BIZ

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I’d forced my little astral projection jaunt or whatever it had been to end far too abruptly.

      Tash had been right, our mother had died trying to save us. So had our father, but his violent death hadn’t been tainted with the fear that those he was fighting had turned him into one of them. I remembered my grandfather’s fingers checking for tell-tale puncture wounds on my father’s neck, and his relief when he’d found they weren’t there.

      Comrade Boris was who he’d said he was: Anton Dzarchertzyn, or as he’d told us to call him, Grandfather Darkheart. It was no use trying to persuade myself he was a fake anymore, not after the proof Cujo had somehow just made me watch. And if Boris was the real deal, then his assertion that we were hereditary vampire killers was probably—

      I jerked my head up in alarm. Where was everybody? My panic subsided as I heard Tash’s and Kat’s voices mingling with Darkheart’s somber tones in the living room. It made sense. They’d gone into the trance before I had, so they’d come out sooner. Now they had questions and Boris—I mean, Grandfather—was apparently answering them.

      Which left one member of our late-night get-together unaccounted for. Cujo. White Fang. Mikhail of the glowing golden eyes.

      I heard a noise behind me. My gaze fell on the revolver, still lying where it had fallen earlier. I lunged for it and did a sitting whirl on my butt.

      The man standing before me was gorgeous. Six-three, at least, and every one of those inches prime, buff male. He was wearing jeans, a ripped white T-shirt and a beat-up brown hide jacket that looked as if there hadn’t been too many steps between the cow wearing it and the man putting it on. His hair was shaggy enough to graze his dark eyebrows, but short enough not to do more than brush the collar of his jacket, and its mixture of midnight-black strands tipped with pewter was ultrasexy in a funky, right-out-there kind of way. But everything else took second place to his eyes. They were an amazing hazel shade—sparks of green swirling in a to-die-for golden brown, although even as I let myself fall into them I realized that they were staring at me with the same implacable enmity I’d seen in—

      The blood in my veins went from pleasantly heated to chilled. My arms shot out stiffly, aiming the revolver I was clutching directly at the man looking down on me.

      “But how…You’re the…” I filled my lungs with some much-needed air and tried to form a complete sentence. “Cujo?”

      Granted, a one-word sentence, but he seemed to catch my drift. His glare hardened. “Mikhail Vostor-off. I’m an oboroten—a shape-shifter. But even when I’m in human form I’ve got a wolf’s reflexes, so I advise you to put the gun down before you get hurt.”

      God, I hate it when gorgeous guys turn out to be world-class jerks. The shape-shifter thing didn’t bother me after everything else I’d experienced that night, but the fact that tall, dark and handsome Mikhail was an arrogant prick did.

      Put the gun down before I got hurt? Could the man be more patronizing?

      “Yawn,” I said sweetly. “My reflexes are pretty darn fast, too, Mikey-baby. Us Daughters of Lilith are well-known for the fast-reflex thing, in case you hadn’t heard.”

      I caught the gleam of white teeth before his smile flat-lined. “You should have stayed to watch the whole show. You missed the part where Anton goes to the cribs and realizes your mother was wrong. See, by the time Angelica pulled the bitch-vampyr away, she’d already left her mark on one of you—only one wound, not two, but that’s enough to pass on vamp blood. Problem was, Anton couldn’t find it in him to harm any of his granddaughters…so he kept his vow to his daughter and got all three of her triplets to safety.”

      “He’s telling the truth, Meg.” Kat came into the hall from the living room, Tash and Darkheart behind her. They grouped themselves beside Mikhail, and even in my stunned state I was alert enough to realize I was being centered out. “One of us is part vampire. That’s why Mikhail’s here.”

      “Shape-shifters can totally sniff out vamps,” Tash said with the air of an instant expert. She gave me the same commiserating look she’d used when we were little and I was about to catch heck from Grammie while she escaped scot-free. “Mikhail says—”

      “If Mikey-baby’s got something to say, how about letting him tell me himself?” I stood up, my stomach feeling like I’d left it down on the floor. “Well?” I demanded, facing him.

      His teeth flashed white, but not in a smile. “Your sister’s wrong, I can’t always tell for sure,” he said softly. “But as soon as I laid eyes on you I felt my hackles rising. My money’s on you being the one who received the kiss of the queen vampyr.”

       Chapter 4

      “I still think my idea of having a flower girl strewing rose petals in front of you would have been totally romantic. It might even have made up for the fact that it’s pouring down buckets on your wedding day.” Tash leaned closer to the full-length mirror in the church’s waiting room and scrubbed a fleck of lipstick from a front tooth before composing her expression into a shyly virginal smile, complete with downcast lashes. “I do,” she said tremulously, looking up from her bridesmaid’s bouquet of star orchids and meeting her own eyes in the mirror. “With all my heart, I—”

      “Can it, sweetie,” Kat snapped from her position at the window where she’d been staring out at the rain. “Even if the guests waiting in the church right now haven’t grasped that the leading man in this farce isn’t going to show up, you know this wedding isn’t just missing a groom, it’s missing the groom’s best man and his head usher, as well. Or had you forgotten that what was left of our fiancés last night didn’t even fill a vacuum bag when we did our little clean-up job?”

      “Keep it down, Kat!” I hissed, squeezing the ribbon-wrapped stems of my bouquet—in my case, white lilac and baby’s-breath—so hard that the heads of the pins securing the ribbon pressed into the palms of my lace demi-gloves. I glanced worriedly at the door, outside of which I assumed Popsie was pacing and looking at his watch, as he had been since four o’clock had come and gone a half hour ago. “We’ve got to appear devastated when we learn we’ve apparently been dumped by the men we love.”

      “Don’t keep saying that!” Tash protested. “Toddie didn’t dump me, I staked him. I wish there was some way I could let people know, instead of going through the humiliation of—”

      Kat was off the couch and in front of Tash in three strides. “Are you out of your tiny mind?” she demanded furiously. “If one whisper gets out about what really went down last night, I’ll stake you!” Her frown deepened. “I don’t believe it. You’re wearing Grammie’s pearls, you little weasel. With everything else that’s happened, you borrowed them for a wedding you know isn’t going to take place. That’s pathetic, sweetie.”

      “As pathetic as the flask tucked into your garter that you’ve been taking nips from whenever you think no one’s looking?” Tash shot back. “If any whispers get out, they’ll probably come from you after a few more slugs of whatever you’ve got sloshing around in your handy little booze-carrier!”

      A weird feeling of déjà vu swept over me. Then I realized why the scene playing out in front of me seemed so familiar. I’d seen it before in any number of heist movies—you know, the kind where the criminals make a daring score and get away with the diamonds, only to fall out among themselves and shoot each other up afterwards. I stepped in.

      “We won’t have to worry about whispers if the two of you keep shouting insults at each other. Tash, borrowing Grammie’s pearls was weaselly. Kat, what’s in the flask?”

      “Vodka martinis.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “No tell-tale smell. Want a nip, sweetie?”

      I waited while she lifted her lemon satin bridesmaid’s dress, revealing the matching pale yellow garter encircling her thigh and the slim silver flask secured there. She handed it to me. I uncapped it, took a healthy swig, and turned to

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