I cast a look at the dusky sky. The lights around the field had come on minutes ago. The black jackal's head on the airplane's tail looked savage in the harsh light, which created deep shadows where none had been. I checked my watch again.
'Yes. I'm very sorry.'
I glanced sideways at my unwanted companion. Had he gotten on the plane in Baton Rouge? I couldn't remember his face, but then, I'd been pretty nervous the whole flight. 'Sorry,' I said. 'For what? Is there some kind of problem?'
He looked elaborately astonished. 'Well,' he said, nodding his head toward the coffin, which was now descending on the ramp on a roller system. 'Your bereavement. Was this a loved one?' He edged a little closer to me.
'Well, sure,' I said, poised between puzzlement and aggravation. Why was he out here? Surely the airline didn't pay a priest to meet every person traveling with a coffin? Especially one being unloaded from Anubis Air. 'Why else would I be standing here?'
I began to worry.
Slowly, carefully, I slid down my mental shields and began to examine the man beside me. I know, I know: an invasion of his privacy. But I was responsible for not only my own safety, but Bill's.
The priest, who happened to be a strong broadcaster, was thinking about approaching nightfall as intently as I was, and with a lot more fear. He was hoping his friends were where they were supposed to be.
Trying not to show my increasing anxiety, I looked upward again. Deep into dusk, there was only the faintest trace of light remaining in the Texas sky.
'Your husband, maybe?' He curved his fingers around my arm.
Was this guy creepy, or what? I glanced over at him. His eyes were fixed on the baggage handlers who were clearly visible in the hold of the plane. They were wearing black and silver jumpsuits with the Anubis logo on the left chest. Then his gaze flickered down to the airline employee on the ground, who was preparing to guide the coffin onto the padded, flat-bedded baggage cart. The priest wanted … what did he want? He was trying to catch the men all looking away, preoccupied. He didn't want them to see. While he … what?
'Nah, it's my boyfriend,' I said, just to keep our pretence up. My grandmother had raised me to be polite, but she hadn't raised me to be stupid. Surreptitiously, I opened my shoulder bag with one hand and extracted the pepper spray Bill had given me for emergencies. I held the little cylinder down by my thigh. I was edging away from the false priest and his unclear intentions, and his hand was tightening on my arm, when the lid of the coffin swung open.
The two baggage handlers in the plane had swung down to the ground. Now they bowed deeply. The one who'd guided the coffin onto the cart said, 'Shit!' before he bowed, too (new guy, I guess). This little piece of obsequious behavior was also an airline extra, but I considered it way over the top.
The priest said, 'Help me, Jesus!' But instead of falling to his knees, he jumped to my right, seized me by the arm holding the spray, and began to yank at me.
At first, I thought he felt he was trying to remove me from the danger represented by the opening coffin, by pulling me to safety. And I guess that was what it looked like to the baggage handlers, who were wrapped up in their role-playing as Anubis Air attendants. The upshot was, they didn't help me, even though I yelled, 'Let go!' at the top of my well-developed lungs. The 'priest' kept yanking at my arm and trying to run, and I kept digging in my two-inch heels and pulling back. I flailed at him with my free hand. I'm not letting anyone haul me off somewhere I don't want to go, not without a good fight.
'Bill!' I was really frightened. The priest was not a big man, but he was taller and heavier than me, and almost as determined. Though I was making his struggle as hard as possible, inch by inch he was moving me toward a staff door into the terminal. A wind had sprung up from nowhere, a hot dry wind, and if I sprayed the chemicals they would blow right back in my face.
The man inside the coffin sat up slowly, his large dark eyes taking in the scene around him. I caught a glimpse of him running a hand over his smooth brown hair.
The staff door opened and I could tell there was someone right inside, reinforcements for the priest.
'Bill!'
There was a whoosh through the air around me, and all of a sudden the priest let go and zipped through the door like a rabbit at a greyhound track. I staggered and would have landed on my butt if Bill hadn't slowed to catch me.
'Hey, baby,' I said, incredibly relieved. I yanked at the jacket of my new gray suit, and felt glad I'd put on some more lipstick when the plane landed. I looked in the direction the priest had taken.
'Sookie,' Bill said, 'are you all right?' He leaned down to give me a kiss, ignoring the awed whispers of the baggage handlers at work on a charter plane next to the Anubis gate. Even though the world at large had learned two years ago that vampires were not only the stuff of legends and horror movies, but truly led a centuries-long existence among us, lots of people had never seen a vampire in the flesh.
Bill ignored them. Bill is good at ignoring things that he doesn't feel are worth his attention.
'Yes, I'm fine,' I said, a little dazed. 'I don't know why he was trying to grab me.'
'He misunderstood our relationship?'
'I don't think so. I think he knew I was waiting for you and he was trying to get me away before you woke up.'
'We'll have to think about this,' said Bill, master of the understatement. 'Other than this bizarre incident, how did the evening go?'
'The flight was all right,' I said, trying not to stick my bottom lip out.
'Did anything else untoward happen?' Bill sounded just a wee bit dry. He was quite aware that I considered myself put-upon.
'I don't know what normal is for airplane trips, never having done it before,' I said tartly, 'but up until the time the priest appeared, I'd say things pretty much ran smooth.' Bill raised one eyebrow in that superior way he has, so I'd elaborate. 'I don't think that man was really a priest at all. What did he meet the plane for? Why'd he come over to talk to me? He was just waiting till everyone working on the plane was looking in another direction.'
'We'll talk about it in a more private place,' my vampire said, glancing at the men and women who'd begun to gather around the plane to check out the commotion. He stepped over to the uniformed Anubis employees, and in a quiet voice he chastised them for not coming to my help. At least, I assumed that was the burden of his conversation, from the way they turned white and began to babble. Bill slid an arm around my waist and we began to stroll to the terminal.
'Send the coffin to the address on the lid,' Bill called back over his shoulder. 'The Silent Shore Hotel.' The Silent Shore was the only hotel in the Dallas area that had undergone the extensive renovation necessary to accommodate vampire patrons. It was one of the grand old downtown hotels, the brochure had said, not that I'd ever seen downtown Dallas or any of its grand old hotels before.
We stopped in the stairwell of a grubby little flight leading up to the main passenger concourse. 'Now, tell me,' he demanded. I glanced up at him while I related the odd little incident from start to finish. He was very white. I knew he must be hungry. His eyebrows looked black against the pallor of his skin, and his eyes looked an even darker brown than they really were.
He help open a door and I passed through into the bustle and confusion of one of the biggest airports in the world.
'You didn't listen to him?' I could tell Bill didn't mean with my ears.
'I was still pretty heavily shielded from the plane,' I said. 'And by the time I got concerned, began to try to read him, you came out of your coffin and he took off. I had the funniest feeling, before he ran …' I hesitated, knowing this was far-fetched.
Bill just waited. He's not one to waste words. He lets me finish what I'm saying. We stopped walking for a second, edged over to the wall.
'I felt like he was there to kidnap me,' I said. 'I know that sounds nuts. Who would know who I am, here in Dallas? Who would know to be meeting the plane? But that's definitely the impression I got.' Bill took my warm hands in his cool ones.
