Houlihan’s was in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s atrium, a vast, round, indoor space filled with shops and restaurants. The atrium served as overflow for the staggering mess of the Atlanta security checkpoint, which fed all the passengers of the world’s busiest airport through one measly row of metal detectors. The rest of Darkrose and Savannah’s crew kept looking at the mammoth knot of passengers nervously, but Savannah was not perturbed; she just took another sip of her drink and leaned back in her chair thoughtfully.
“Surely,” she said, “we could leave her one guard.”
“No,” Vickman said, scratching his beard. Darkrose’s chief bodyguard always seemed to be scowling—and it was worse than normal today. “We can’t. We’re going into the lion’s den here. We need everyone.”
“I don’t think you’re even trying to find a way to protect Dakota,” Savannah said, eyes narrowing at him as they might at Darkrose, or Doug. Vickman wasn’t fazed.
“I’m not,” he said sharply, meeting her eye to eye. “I don’t answer to you, Saffron. I answer to Darkrose, and even then only as long as it doesn’t interfere with keeping her alive. You may be modern and progressive, but South Africa is very definitely populated with Old World vampires. I need every hand I have to keep you safe, so everyone is going.”
Savannah looked at Darkrose, who just shrugged.
“Good bodyguards are hard to find,” she said. “I would never argue with a man who would take a bullet for me, much less a human willing to guard my daytime resting place rather than put a stake in me at the first opportunity. Vickman’s word stands.”
I stared into my own drink. I knew how important this trip was to them. They were going to Johannesburg, where ‘Saffron’ would formally petition Darkrose’s former master to release Darkrose, so she could join Saffron’s court. It had taken a year of delicate negotiations and a huge payout by Delancaster to make this trip happen, but the end result would be the end of animosity between vampires on either side of the Atlantic and… and the beginning of a new life of happiness for my ex-girlfriend and her lover.
I couldn’t begrudge them going. But right at that moment, I was scared shitless for Wulf, by Wulf, and by whatever other forces lurked out there around him.
“The full moon is just tomorrow night,” I pleaded. “Can’t you delay the trip for at least forty-eight hours?”
“We could move the meet to the festival,” Savannah said thoughtfully. “It’s not too late to charter a direct flight to Sunday—”
“Yes, it is,” Darkrose snapped. “Delancaster is already in the air.”
“We’ve been planning for Darkrose to go back to the South African Court for eighteen months now,” Vickman said. “This is a coordinated operation. We can’t stop now. We especially can’t leave your master hanging around in South Africa alone, no matter how good his own bodyguards are.”
Savannah scowled, but slowly nodded. Then she looked up at me.
“So…” she asked. “You going to be OK?”
I stared at my coffee glumly. What was the saying? Unexpected danger on my part didn’t constitute an emergency on her part? Maybe that was unfair, but until last week Savannah and I hadn’t even been speaking, and now here I was asking her to shitcan her trip out of the country, inconvenience her whole entourage, piss off her boss and maybe even screw up her future… just because someone was trying to kill me.
But in all honesty, Savannah’s protection hadn’t helped me much so far, not even when she’d been standing in the same room as the shooter. Even this damn collar was just a warning to whoever decided to break me that Savannah would pick up the pieces—a deterrent, not an actual shield. Even if she stayed, I was still effectively on my own.
“No, I’ll be OK,” I said, pulling at my collar. The metal was surprisingly unyielding and the rubber on its inside was damp with sweat. I hadn’t realized I was that nervous. “Worst comes to worst, I can always call on the Oakdale Clan—”
“Oakdale?” Vickman said. “Wasn’t it one of their fangs that took a chunk out of you? Ain’t that why you took the collar?”
“You have it backwards,” I said. “They’re OK. In fact they punished Transomnia for hassling me. That’s why he was pissed and took out his revenge on me.”
“Calaphase is on the lookout for him,” Savannah said. “You know? Calaphase turned out all right.”