Heather Graham - Keeper of the Dawn

As he stood there, Father Lars came to the door. “It’s time,” he told Mark. “You need to take your places.”

“The women are here?” Brodie asked, adjusting his collar.

“They are,” Father Lars told him.

“I need to find Sailor,” Brodie said, then looked at Mark and straightened his vest. “Good luck, buddy.”

He left, and Mark followed Father Lars to take their places before the massive altar.

The organist began to play the theme from Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. Declan and Rhiannon walked down the aisle together, since their significant others were best man and maid of honor. Barrie and Mick followed them and then next came Brodie and Sailor, who took their positions up front. Finally Hugh Drummond, the Keeper of the Laurel Canyon werewolves, appeared with Alessande on his arm.

She took Mark’s breath away.

She looked like an angel, her hair a shimmering gold so pale it glowed like a crown beneath her veil. Her gown highlighted her figure and fell in classic folds. She moved with such grace that she almost appeared to be floating.

Everyone stood as she walked down the aisle. Mark had a feeling that if evil was there in the room with them, it was as smitten with the bride as everyone else appeared to be.

“Who giveth this woman?” Father Lars said, beginning the ceremony.

Hugh responded, then lifted Alessande’s veil and kissed her on the cheek. And, at last, she was standing next to Mark. For a moment, as their eyes touched, all danger and dark shadows were gone. This is real, he thought. This moment is the most real of my entire life.

As the ceremony continued, Mark wasn’t even sure that he heard the words. But as Father Lars spoke, he felt that he was in a bubble of crystalline beauty. When they were pronounced husband and wife, he kissed the bride, humbled and trembling. He realized he had been kissing his bride just a little too long when he heard Father Lars clear his throat.

Everything had gone off without a hitch. And he was a married man.

They looked at one another and took a minute just to smile. But he knew that Alessande’s smile was as careful as his.

This wasn’t over yet.

They walked down the aisle, pausing to shake a hand here and there, or receive hugs and kisses on the cheek. When they stepped out of the church, their guests pouring out behind them, not only were they pelted with rice but Jerry, a magician from way back who owned the House of Illusion, had arranged for a flight of doves to soar into the heavens in their wake.

A second white stretch limo waited to take them to the House of the Rising Sun, where the reception was to take place. But as they greeted friends and the photographer ran around, trying to gather them all up for pictures, Mark felt a sense that something had changed.

He looked toward the western sky.

The sun hadn’t quite fallen beneath the horizon yet. It was a low-lying fireball, sending streaks of orange and gold against the mountains and hills behind the church.

And as he watched, the church seemed to grow dark against that splendid explosion of color.

He realized that shadows were creeping around the church. Something dark had arisen, and it was coming toward them with slow menace.

* * *

“Alessande!”

She’d been lost in such euphoria that she’d nearly forgotten the danger of the dream—that they’d seen this day and it had been filled with darkness and blood.

But as Mark called her name in warning, she immediately remembered.

The danger promised by her dream had never been destined to arrive in the church. The church was consecrated.

As she turned, she realized that the wind had picked up with a sudden ferocity, as if a dust storm had risen from the graveyard. It burst over them with such force that she immediately heard screaming and shouting as people ran about madly trying to reach their cars and escape the whirlwind.

White and stricken, Charlaine Hildegard went rushing by. Alessande caught her arm. “Charlaine, where’s Brigitte?”

Charlaine looked like a woman in shock. She stared blankly at Alessande.

“Charlaine! Where is she?”

The woman blinked in fear. “The wind... The wind carried her away. I have to go. I have to go. Don’t you see? He’s back. Sebastian is back! Oh, my God, when he finds me... And Alan. I’ve lost Alan.”

“Charlaine, get into the church!” Alessande said.

But it was no good; the woman was in a panic and raced away toward the parked cars.

A hand gripped hers. “Alessande, get into the church!” It was Mark, and she drank in his handsome face, his burning golden eyes, and felt his love, his concern—and his determination. “Go, please. You’ll be safe in there.”

“I have to fight, too.”

“Not now, because it’s you they’re after. Please!”

He drew her to him, kissed her lips passionately but briefly. “Please, go. For me.”

She winced and knew that he was right; this was one time when she would be a distraction and a danger rather than an asset.

But she couldn’t reach the church.

So many people were running toward her that she was nearly trampled. She lost sight of Mark in the inky darkness surrounding them, swirling as if a twister had suddenly sprung to life. Despite her strength, she felt herself being carried by the wall of people running toward the parking lot.

Finally she fought free and forced her way through the crowd toward the steps. She could hear Mark shouting to everyone to get into the church, but no one was listening.

At last she reached the door. But when she tried to open it, she realized that it had been bolted shut.

Someone had slid the massive bolt that locked the front door.

She pressed herself against the building and tried to make her way around to the side door, but she knew in her heart that every entrance had been bolted just as the front door had been.

So be it.

She was forced away from the building by the crowd, and once again she was nearly trampled. People were screaming and shouting in raw panic.

“Zombies!” someone cried.

Zombies? It wasn’t that they didn’t exist—but they weren’t the same as werewolves, Elven, vampires, shifters, gnomes and the rest of the Other races. They were reanimated; they had no minds. They were the dead brought back by magicians and illusionists, or those poisoned into a kind of limbo by voodoo priests and priestesses. They had no real life. They lumbered through the world with only one goal: to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the living.

They had to be stopped, and the vicious puppeteer pulling their strings had to be stopped, as well.

Someone fell in front of her; she bent down, helping the woman to rise. It was one of the hostesses from the Snake Pit.

“Help me!” she screamed.

Alessande took her by the arm and led her through the crowd, guiding the woman into her car.

She was suddenly buffeted against another vehicle. The door was open, and someone was rummaging inside. “Hugh!” she cried, recognizing the werewolf Keeper.

“Here!” He tossed something to her. She caught it quickly, without thinking, and realized it was a sword.

“Cut the heads off,” he told her. “Nothing—no creature out there—can live without a head.”

Before she knew it, he’d turned and was racing into the darkness. Half the cars were headed downhill but, judging by the crashing sounds she heard, they were plowing into each other rather than actually escaping.

Alone, she tossed away the remnants of her veil and fought against the wind to reach the rear of the church. As she came around the corner of the building, she paused, amazed by the sight before her, just visible in the darkness and swirling dust.