Dressed To Slay

“I told you what I planned to do if I ever turned vampire. It’s time to put that plan into effect.”

I raised my hand to touch Van’s cheek. “When I looked at my sisters, it took all my control not to attack them…and I don’t know how long my control can last. Just say goodbye and let me walk away from you, please.”

“Not this risk-taker, honey.” He gave me a tight smile. “I told you two nights ago how I felt about you, Megan. Nothing’s changed for me.” He tipped my chin up so that my gaze couldn’t avoid his.

I tried to smile, but the tears that had been brimming in my eyes splashed over. “I didn’t plan to tell you like this, but I think I’m falling – ”

Kill him now while he’s vulnerable!

The terrible thought tore through my mind with such cold intensity that I reeled backwards. I could tell from his alarmed gaze that my horror was mirrored in my eyes.

Harper Allen, her husband and their menagerie of cats and dogs divide their time between a home in the country and a house in town. She grew up reading Stephen King, John D MacDonald and John Steinbeck, among others, and has them to blame for her lifelong passion for reading and writing.

Dressed to Slay

By

Harper Allen

MILLS & BOON^®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To the members of the Syracuse,

New york, chapter of RWA

Dear Reader,

Sisters.

They fight with each other, dis each other and know each other’s most secret weaknesses. But when the chips are down, they’re there for each other. That’s usually the case…but what happens when your sister is under the power of an ancient curse that might turn her into a vampire? And what if you might be the sister who’s about to turn vamp?

Personally, those are questions I’ve never had to face with my sis, but it’s one that’s suddenly disrupted the lives of the fabulous Crosse triplets…and changed their pampered existence of shoe-shopping, dating and partying into a fight against the dark side with their lives and souls on the line. Enter Megan, Kat and Tashya’s world of Manolos and cocktails, stakes and vampires…and learn for yourself just how binding the bonds of sisterhood can be.

Harper Allen

Prologue

It’s one of those questions that yank me back from the edge of sleep: was there any way things could have turned out differently? If Angelica Crosse had lived long enough to pass on to her daughters some of the knowledge that had been drummed into her from birth, would it have helped? Or if she hadn’t wanted so badly to give the three of us the ordinary life she’d been robbed of that she’d left instructions in her will for Grammie and Popsie to have custody of us, would that have changed anything?

Problem is, once you start playing this game, there’s no good place to stop, leaving a girl slathering on way too much Bobbi Brown concealer to hide the bags under her eyes when her alarm goes off in the morning. Or in my case, simply resigning myself to the possibility of needing my first mini-facelift before I hit the ripe old age of twenty-two. If Katherine and Natashya and I hadn’t been triplets. If we hadn’t gotten engaged when we did. If Grammie and Popsie hadn’t raised us to be indulged, shop-till-we-drop princesses, if—

As I say, no good place to stop; and on those nights, when all this is going through my head and making it impossible for me to get back to sleep, I get the sinking feeling that everything that did happen probably would have happened anyway. Lance and Todd and Dean still would have gone to Dean’s stag party, the stripper who called herself Zena still would have shown up, and our cheating jerks of fiancés still would have said yes to getting down-and-dirty lap dances from her.

Which all added up to Kat and Tash and yours truly, Megan, being totally unprepared when the men we were supposed to walk down the aisle with turned into undead creeps and tried to kill us.

As Tash says, don’t you just hate when that happens?

Chapter 1

“My point is, these days girls are supposed to get a wild and crazy send-off the night before their wedding, like guys do.” With a drama-queen toss of her curls as she entered the house, my sister Natashya flounced through the foyer into the living room and plopped herself onto a sofa. “Yet here we are, home before midnight like a bunch of nuns or something, while Dean’s stag is probably just getting to the smoking cigars and watching X-rated DVDs stage. If I were you, I’d be totally pissed, Megan.”

My other sister Katherine didn’t pause in the entrance hall, either. “The brat’s right for once, sweetie. As bachelorette parties go, yours blew bigtime,” she drawled over her shoulder as she headed toward the kitchen, leaving me to punch in the Crosse mansion’s security code. I don’t know if it’s because I’m technically the eldest of the three of us, beating Kat in the getting-born race by ten minutes and Tash by half an hour, but that task always falls to me.

“Somehow I don’t think breaking out the Monte Cristos and popping Dick Does Dallas into the DVD player is Mandy Broyhill’s idea of appropriate entertainment.” I turned from the security keypad and shrugged at Tash. “Or Lance and Todd’s idea of entertainment, to be honest. It’s more likely that they took my darling hubby-to-be to a strip club.”

“They wouldn’t. The only one around is the Hot Box, that sleazy dive on the outskirts of town, and Toddie knows I’d kill him if he ever set foot in there,” Tash said dismissively. She frowned. “Besides, there’s been some weird stories going ’round about that place lately. I know a girl who says after a couple of her brother’s friends went there they ended up calling in sick to work the next few days and the next thing you know, they quit their jobs and just dropped out of sight. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police raid that dump and find some major drug-dealing going on. But my point is that even if you don’t care if your last night as a free woman is a blast or not, I do. When it’s my turn in a couple of months, I want those totally babalicious cowboy dancers who entertained at Brittany’s stagette party.”

“The ones who stripped down to their six-guns?” Silver-blond hair swinging like satin around perfectly tanned shoulders, Kat returned from the kitchen carrying a pitcher full of something frosty-looking in her right hand, with stemmed glasses wedged adroitly between the fingers of her left. She set the glasses and pitcher on the spindly Sheraton table in front of Tash. “Appletinis, anyone?”

She didn’t wait for a reply, but started pouring. I sank onto the sofa beside Tash and eased off my shoes with a sigh of relief. My middle sister, as languidly elegant as her nickname, can power-shop all day in a pair of Manolo stilettos and dance till dawn in strappy Jimmy Choos, while Tash’s idea of casual footwear is a pair of Chanel heels, but I occasionally feel the need to reconnect with my baby toes.

“Right, and when you tucked a bill into their holsters, they said, ‘Much obliged, little lady.’ What I don’t want is a dreary little get-together at Mandy Broyhill’s without a square inch of naked male flesh in sight,” Tash insisted. She was indulging in one of her favorite irritating habits—running the silver cross she wore back and forth along its delicate chain. It was irritating because it always made me want to do the same to the identical one around my neck and I couldn’t, because then she’d know she’d irritated me. “Anyhow, I’ll bet tonight had something to do with Grammie being voted president of the Maplesburg Reading Club instead of Mandy’s mother. I mean, Mandy’s the social leader of our set, so she couldn’t very well not throw a party for you, Meg, but maybe she accidentally-on-purpose forgot to arrange any entertainment, as a kind of payback for her mom.”

My irritation turned to annoyance. Dottie Crosse had indulged us, petted us and spoiled us rotten from babyhood after her only child, our father, died. And when three eligible bachelors had popped the question in the same week to her three granddaughters, she hadn’t batted an eyelash at the prospect of arranging June, July and August weddings, so I certainly wasn’t going to let Tash take out her sulks on Grammie when she and Popsie arrived home tomorrow. He’d insisted on a weekend in New York after she’d exhausted herself planning my big day. I opened my mouth to say so but Kat beat me to it.

“Mandy didn’t arrange for half-naked cowboys to show up at the bachelorette because she had her eye on Dean before he started dating Megan, and being the social leader of our set, she’s also a prime bitch. But if you think tonight was dreary, just wait until your party, sweetie. According to the grapevine, most of your so-called bosom buddies don’t intend to show up to give you a send-off—and don’t even dream of trying to blame Grammie for that, because it won’t have anything to do with her.” She drained her glass. “Remember Bev Simmons? The mousy little brunette your darling Toddie was about to propose to before you decided you wanted to be a cosmetic surgeon’s wife?”

I glanced at Kat. Was it my imagination, or was her drawl just a tad slurred? “Kat’s right. You stole a boyfriend and most of our friends are on Bev’s side. You better hope that being Mrs. Doctor Whitmore, wife of a rising young liposuctionist, is enough to buy you a committee seat on the Maplesburg Hospital charity drive next spring, because right now, little Tashie isn’t exactly the most popular girl in town.”

“Not get on the charity committee next spring? But that would be social suicide.” Tash looked appalled and then annoyed. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all,” I informed her with sisterly callousness. “Read the rule book.”

“Under Boyfriends, other girls’, penalties for filching,” Kat corroborated obligingly.

Tashya exploded. “If you two knew this would happen, why didn’t you tell me? I never would have bothered with Todd if I’d thought it would make problems for me! Why would I?”

“Uh, because you love him?” I ventured. “Just a crazy possibility, seeing as how you’re going to go through the till-death-us-do-part thing with the guy.”

“Tha’s right. Till death us do part,” Kat echoed with a hiccup. “You know, I just realized what a creepy phrase that is. Puts visions of twin burial plots in your mind, doesn’t it? Hot damn, girls, I can hardly wait till Lance and I tie the noose, I mean, knot, next month.”

She looked away, but not before I saw the flicker of desperation in her eyes. For a moment I was speechless, but then I found my voice. “Are you saying you feel the same as Tash? Because if you are, I’ve got news for both of you—there’s no way I’m going to let Grammie get humiliated by—”

“I won’t be a no-show at my wedding in August, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Tash snapped. “I wouldn’t do that to Grammie and Popsie. And Todd’s all right, I guess, even if he is stuck on himself a lot of the time. I just want—”

“You just want the kind of life Grammie has.” Kat nodded solemnly. “Same here. When Lance popped the question I had every intention of turning him down. You know me—so many men, so little time…” Her voice trailed off. “Except I found myself saying yes, even though I knew he proposed to me to get in good with Popsie’s old golfing buddy Thaddeus Bayer, of Bayer, Schwartz and Dunhill. But I can’t complain about being his fast-lane ticket to making partner, not when becoming Mrs. Lance Zellweger’s going to get me what I want.”

“A life like Grammie’s.” I didn’t make it a question. “Membership in the Maplesburg Country Club, a showplace home, the benefits of living in a pretty upstate town while still being able to make a day of it in the Big Apple for shopping and a show. That’s what the two of you want badly enough to marry men you aren’t in love with?”

“You should talk, Megan,” Tashya shot back. “Or are you going to pretend that just thinking of becoming Mrs. Dean Hudson the Third makes you feel like jumping into your hottest Victoria’s Secret baby-dolls and waiting between satin sheets, instead of stifling a big ol’ yawn? You’ve got even less excuse than me and Kat. You’re smart enough to get into Harvard, but you don’t want anything more exciting than Grammie’s life, either.”

“That’s not—” I stopped in mid-denial, the breath going out of me. “Omigod, you’re right,” I said unevenly. “Dean’s an investment banker who’s already starting to lose his hair, and I don’t even think I like him, much less love him. But I’m going to marry him, for the same reason you’re going to marry Todd and Kat’s going to marry Lance…because marrying them is the surest way we know to have the dullest lives we can. What’s that about?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out.” Kat squinted at the pitcher. “Enough for one last round,” she said. I started to shake my head but she ignored me. “Uh-uh, you’re going to want this, big sister. Remember when Grammie was worried about me becoming anorexic and she sent me to Dr. Hawes?”

“Hawes the shrink?” Tash shuddered. “Gawd, everyone at school was whispering that you were going to be shipped off to the nuthouse. That’s why Tommy Baldwin backed out of taking you to the Christmas dance that year, wasn’t it?”

“And took you instead,” Kat agreed. “I always wondered if you had something to do with my appointments with Hawes losing their confidential status, Tash. But I got my revenge.”

Slow comprehension filled Tashya’s gaze. “You were the one who stuck toilet paper to the back of my dress the night of the dance? It took months for me to live that down!”

“Cool it, both of you!” I barked the command sharply enough to get their attention. “In seventeen—” I glanced at my watch and saw it was nearly eleven thirty “—no, sixteen and a half hours, I’m going to walk down the aisle. In the next couple of months, the two of you intend to do the same thing, even though all three of us have just confessed that we’re not real crazy about our prospective grooms. You seem to know why, Kat, so dish!”

She sat back. “Okay, Meg. When I went to see Dr. Hawes I found myself telling him about the nightmares we all had when we were little. I told him I always woke up convinced that you and I and Tashya had been in terrible danger.”

“Well, duh,” Tash broke in. “We were being hunted down in them. Whoever was after us had killed Mom and Dad and wanted to kill us. That might be the danger part, no?”

“You remember that much?” Kat turned her attention my way. “What about you, Megan?”

I guess I should explain something here. It doesn’t happen so much now, but when we were kids our dreams were practically always identical, even though we weren’t. So Kat’s question made perfect sense to me, I just didn’t have a good answer to it.

“When they stopped coming, I let the memory of them fade. All I remember was they left me terrified.”

“They were a bunch of dumb nightmares, for heaven’s sake.” Tash shrugged. “I never tried to suppress them, especially after Popsie told me they came from eating cheese before bedtime.”

“He told us that, too,” Kat informed her. “I guess you were the only one either dumb or logical enough to believe him.”

“Maybe both,” I added. “Sometimes you scare me, Tash.”

Unexpectedly, she grinned. “Sometimes I scare myself.”

Once in a while Tash comes out with a flash of humor that makes me wonder what’s really behind those china-blue eyes and under that cloud of red-gold curls. I also wonder if it isn’t my fault and Kat’s that she usually doesn’t reveal that side of herself.

My nanosecond of soul-searching ended with her next words.

“So the reason we’re all getting married is because of some stupid dreams that made you and Kat wee-wee the bed when we were kids and that made Kat go on an air-and-water diet when she was fifteen. That’s the big theory?”

For a moment I thought Kat was going to give one of those bouncy curls a sharp tug, but she got herself under control. “What I learned was that some girls who slip into anorexia are trying to exert control in the one area of their lives they think they can—their body image. And they do it because sometime in their past they’ve experienced a traumatic event. When Hawes told me that, it all clicked into place for me.”

“What clicked into place?” Tash sounded bored. “And what does your eating disorder six years ago have to do with us now?”

“Because this time we’re all trying to impose control over our lives,” I said slowly. “We’re choosing situations where we can pretty much predict what the next fifty years will be like. We’re almost certain those fifty years will be screamingly boring, and we’ll be spending them with a philandering cosmetic surgeon, a lawyer who’d sell his own mother and an investment banker who probably wears three-piece Brooks Brothers suits to bed, but that’s better than—” I stopped.

“Better than what?”

“Better than what used to cause the nightmares until we started wearing these?” Kat flicked a manicured nail at the tiny silver cross around her neck. It was a mirror image of the ones Tashya and I had on, and so much a part of us that I sometimes forgot we wore them.

“Now you’ve totally lost me.” Tash squinted at hers. “I never really liked having to wear this, not even when we were kids, and I always thought it was kind of dumb that it didn’t have a clasp. If it hadn’t been a present from Grammie, I would have snapped the chain long ago. Now you’re telling me that if I had, my nightmares would have come back?”

She reached for the chain around her throat. The next moment she dropped it beside her empty glass.

“Booga-booga,” she said complacently. “Guess who gets to wear Grammie’s antique pearls at my wedding. And don’t either of you dare tell her I broke her chain on purpose,” she warned.

When I think back on that night I tell myself that if I’d had any kind of premonition at the sight of Tash’s broken chain, I might have saved the three of us from our fate. But I didn’t get a premonition—I just got pissed off at Tash.

“Don’t worry, if I told Grammie anything, I’d tell her you broke the only thing you had to remember our grandfather by.”

“Popsie?” Tash made a face. “God, Meg, if I needed anything to remember Popsie by, which I don’t since it’s not like he’s dead, how about my little Mini sitting outside in the driveway? Or our sweet-sixteen diamond tennis bracelets, or—”

“Not Popsie, you birdbrain, Grandfather Darkzyn. Mom’s father.” There was a tight feeling in me, as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff. “Grammie once told me those crosses were a present from him on our second birthdays, and since he died not long after, I’d say you just broke your only bequest from him. But if you thought you’d be the first Crosse triplet to wear Grammie’s pearls down the aisle, think again. I’m the eldest, so I get them first.” I threw down the gleam of silver chain and the small silver cross I’d just snatched from my neck.

“You forgot to add nya-nya, sweetie,” Kat drawled, picking up Tash’s chain from the table. “And our grandfather’s name was Anton Dzarchertzyn, not Dark—”

Okay, time-out here while you try to put yourself in my place. Remember, I’m talking about Kat, for God’s sake—Kat, whose languid sizzle fells males like trees; Kat, whose favorite reading material is the Mr. Boston Guide to Cocktails. That’s what I tried to tell myself, anyway, but as her head jerked up without warning and her eyes suddenly darkened to dull cloudiness, the person standing between Tash and me no longer seemed to be my sister.

Or if she was, someone—or something—had temporarily done a pod-person number on her.

“One will be the striking talons of the eagle—she will begin the battle.” The harsh, guttural voice rasping from Kat’s throat was as chillingly alien as everything else about her. “The second will be the far-seeing gaze of the eagle, and she will warn of coming danger. The third will be our wings. She will fly us into the very core of the darkness; we pray she proves strong enough to fly us out again. These are our roles and our duty, and have been for all the unlit centuries of night. Without my presence the circle is dangerously open. I close it and form the three.”

Pod-Kat’s hand closed over the chain at her throat. With a sudden tug, she broke it free.

“I get it, all right?” Tash snatched the chain from her. “Just because I had the idea of wearing Grammie’s pearls at my wedding, you and Meg have decided to wear them to yours first. Well, be my guest. The last time she took them out of the safe, they looked like they needed restringing, anyway.” She glared at us. “And forget what I said about not wanting to marry Todd. I can’t wait to get away from your stupid insider jokes at my expense. I’m sure you both think this eagle thing is screamingly funny, but for once your dumb little sister isn’t hanging around for the punch line. I’m going to bed.”

“Somebody has trouble handling her cocktails,” Kat purred. “The punch line to what you call the eagle thing is that we don’t know what you’re talking about, right, Meg?”

She was Kat again, right down to her languid tone, and from what she’d just said, she’d totally blanked on her eerie little performance just now. With difficulty I found my voice. “Wrong, Kat. Striking talons, far-seeing gaze, core of darkness—Any of those sound familiar—?” I nearly jumped out of my skin as I heard the familiar chimes of the front door pealing.

Kat arched her eyebrows a fraction. “Tash is in a worse snit than usual, you’re as nervous as a cat…next time I make appletinis, remind me to cut waaay back on the vodka. Anyone planning on seeing who’s on our doorstep at this time of night? My money’s on a pizza delivery driver with the wrong address.”

“I will.” The glance Tash shot over her shoulder at us as she sped to the door was suddenly hopeful. She came to a halt in front of the mirrored doors of the French armoire that stood in the hall and fluffed up her curls. “Pizza guy my butt! Maybe that dreary party tonight was all part of Mandy’s maneuver to get us home in time to send Meg a totally hot strip-o-gram! I should have guessed she had something more planned!”

Okay. Remember what I said about not having a premonition when Tash took her chain off, and how, if I had, I might have been able to change our fates? Well, the premonition thing finally kicked in as Tash looked through the security peephole. Big whoop, since it was already too late to stop what was about to happen, but of course I didn’t know that at the time.

“Don’t open the door,” I said in a rush. “Those stories you mentioned that are going around about the strip club aren’t the only weird things that have been happening in Maplesburg, Tash. The other day I overheard Popsie telling Grammie that the police have gotten more than the usual number of complaints about Peeping Toms in the last couple of weeks. The thing is, more than half of the women insisted someone was standing outside the upper-story windows of their homes. And like you said, there’s been a rash of job absenteeism and disappearances lately, not just of young guys, but girls, too. Something’s going on in this town. I don’t care if Heath Ledger’s body double is standing on the front step, it’s midnight and we’re three women alone. We’re not going to open the door to a stranger—”

“Oh. My. God.” Tash’s hand was already groping for the doorknob. As I reached her side she turned towards me with an expression on her face that could only be described as glowing. “If I can’t answer the door to a stranger, how about to our fiancés?” she said, her tone oddly breathless. “Because that’s Lance and Todd and Dean out there, sis. But there’s something—” A flush of pink rose up beneath her skin. As her lashes swept down over the blue of her eyes, she bit her bottom lip, as if to stop it from trembling.

I’d seen her like this once before, when I’d barged in on her and Todd going at it hot and heavy in the cloakroom of the country club the night he’d proposed to her. Except that time I’d been pretty sure she’d been faking it, and this time I didn’t think she was.

Her lashes swept dreamily up. “There’s something different about them,” she said in a purr Kat might have envied.

“They’re Lance and Todd and Dean,” I scoffed. “And we agreed earlier that they don’t exactly get our motors racing, so what’s with the cave-girl routine?”

“I’m with Meg.” Kat drifted up beside us, her hand at her mouth to cover a delicate yawn. “We all know what our hubbies-to-be are here for, don’t we? They’ve just come from a stag party. They’re probably a lot drunk and a little frisky—and from one or two unfortunate experiences with former boyfriends, I can tell you that drunk almost always wins out over frisky. If we let them in, we’ll be spending the next two hours stroking their—”

“Egos,” I said firmly. “So turn out the porch light, Tash. That should send the message they’re not getting any tonight.”

Tashya’s hand slid slowly from the doorknob, the dreamy look fading from her gaze. “I guess you’re right,” she said in a puzzled tone. “It’s not like I want Todd thinking he can have it any old time he wants it. What kind of marriage would that be?”

“You think one day Dr. Todd might regret dumping mousy Bev Simmons for our sister?” Kat mused as we turned away.

“Big-time,” I agreed promptly. I hesitated. “Kat, we need to talk. Are you sure you don’t remember spouting off about roles and duty and the closing of the circle by—”

“Oh, merde.”

Her disgusted response wasn’t directed at me, I realized as I followed her gaze and saw Tash looking through the peephole again. Even as I headed grimly back to the door, Tash’s fingers flew over the security keypad to disable the alarm.

“I can’t help it, Meg,” she said in the same breathy voice as before. “I mean, look—have you ever seen three hotter males in your whole life?” She flung the door open as she spoke, and I skidded to a halt. Two feet away, just over the threshold, stood Lance and Todd and Dean.

I tried to swallow, but my throat was suddenly too dry. Tash was right, they were different.

They were incredibly, sexily, irresistible.