“What?” I asked him, following his gaze.
He shook his head. “Just the name of the plane,” he said, his tone turning ironic. “I suppose it must be fate.”
NINE
“LOT’S WIFE?” I ASKED, peering curiously at the curvy writing.
Guthrie gave a soft snort. “Oh, that’s a good one. Either a sign from above, or final proof that the joke’s on us.”
I frowned. “Someone want to let me in on the punchline?”
Albigard eyed the plane’s name with his usual faint air of disdain. “Lot’s wife is a biblical character from the book of Genesis. Angels counseled her and her husband to flee from the city of Sodom without looking back, or face divine wrath in the cataclysm that was about to be unleashed on the city. She ignored the directive and looked over her shoulder to see whether her daughters were following behind, at which point she was turned into a pillar of salt as punishment for her disobedience.”
The story rang a vague bell in my memory, but it still took a moment for the joke to sink in. “Salt. Right. Gotcha.”
So we would be fleeing our demon pursuers to what we hoped would be a saltwater oasis, using a plane named after a woman who’d been turned into salt. Cool. I followed the others into the cramped cabin and strapped in. Albigard and Rans wordlessly hemmed Guthrie into a seat behind them, ensuring that there would be two people strong enough to overpower him sitting between the new vampire and the pair of human chicks with beating hearts.
Guthrie didn’t protest.
I was jittery as we waited for permission to take off, but I tried my best to hide it. When we finally taxied onto the airport’s single runway, I couldn’t help clutching the metal arms of the seat hard enough to make them creak. The tiny plane was incredibly claustrophobic even for my five-foot, four-inch frame. I couldn’t imagine how the guys were dealing with it.
I clenched harder as the propellers spun deafeningly up to speed and the plane accelerated, my heart pounding in a way that I hoped wasn’t making things rougher on Guthrie.
“Eyes on me, love,” Rans said, just loudly enough to be heard over the roar, and I jerked my attention across the cramped aisle. His blue gaze glowed from within. “That’s it. Relax. Just focus on the fact that your drink with the paper umbrella is almost within reach.”
I tried to let his power slide over me, even though I’d gradually been losing my already limited vulnerability to vampire mesmerism the stronger I got. Still, if I concentrated, I could pretend it was working, at least. With difficulty, I pried my fingers away from the seat arms and took several deep breaths.
The plane lurched off the ground, leaving my stomach behind as it rose unsteadily into the sky. I tried to keep breathing, swallowing a few times until my ears popped. Eventually, we leveled out, and Anaica shot us a thumbs-up sign without turning around from her controls. Some of my remaining tension bled out, and I settled in for the long haul across the water.
* * *
Landing was every bit as bad as takeoff had been. The airport on Anguilla looked like a tiny postage stamp, the runway not nearly long enough to be safe. The plane bumped and skittered on its wheels for several seconds before braking hard enough to knock my knees into the barrier in front of my seat.
We survived, though—and based on our intrepid pilot’s unruffled demeanor, the jostling and squealing of tires on pavement wasn’t unusual or cause for concern. Pilots, I decided there and then, were a bit screwed up in the head.
“Anguilla as promised,” Anaica said cheerfully, as the plane rolled to a stop near one end of the small terminal. “Pleasure doing business, mes amis.”
Unlike the Haitian end of the journey, here we were forced to go through the formal arrivals procedure at the modest airport. Fortunately, there wasn’t all that much to it, compared to the security surrounding departures. Rans flashed his eyes at one airport employee who seemed a little too curious about our plans after Guthrie asked him where we could hire a car. The man’s face immediately went blank, losing all interest in our presence.
A long wait for a taxi followed by a short drive brought us to Blowing Point, a collection of small churches, unprepossessing stores, and tumbledown shacks dotting a brown landscape broken up by occasional palm trees. Beyond lay a protected harbor and the bluest water I’d ever seen.
Guthrie tipped the cab driver, who helped us get our luggage out of the trunk and nodded enthusiastically as we thanked him. The large parking area we were standing in backed up to a square-ish white building that, while good-sized, wasn’t tall enough to completely block the shape of the massive cruise ship docked beyond it.
“Well, it’s still here at least,” Guthrie said. “I assume there’s some plan for actually getting on board, since we’re not currently ticket-holding members of the ‘wealthy douchebag’ contingent?”
Albigard looked at him with a gaze that was almost pitying. “You’re a bloodsucker now, are you not, Leonides? I believe you’ll find that very few places guarded by humans are closed to you.”
“Not to mention the fact that while the douchebag qualifier is questionable, you’re most definitely a member of the ‘swimming in money’ contingent, mate,” Rans added dryly.
“Which reminds me,” I said. “Are there likely to be a lot of people here who’ll recognize you, Guthrie?”
“Some will,” he said. “But I’m not what you’d call chummy with this crowd. The ones who were pestering me to come mostly just wanted to get me somewhere I’d be a captive audience for whatever their latest scheme happened to be.”
“Ah. I get why you opted out, in that case,” I told him. “But, hey—at least now you can flash the brights at anyone who irritates you and tell them to fuck off. And they will.”
If anything, the reminder
