I told him.
“You think it’s a preview of what could happen?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Don’t borrow trouble, Anita.”
“We’re hunting monsters. People die doing that.”
“You knew all that when you let them get on the plane.”
“You know, you’re not always that comforting,” I said.
He smiled. “But you’re less scared now and more irritated. My job is to make you feel better; sometimes that’s just choosing which emotion you like better. You’d way rather be irritated with me than scared and worried.”
I frowned at him harder, but I couldn’t argue with him. In the end I squeezed his hand tight and we went to get the rest of our bags. Normally I’d have kissed him for that, but Nolan was watching me and he was going to have enough issues with me bringing so many “boyfriends” and “girlfriends”; I didn’t need to add fuel to the fire.
We grabbed our bags, full of all sorts of things that would never have made it through normal inspection. Echo and Giacomo went in large lightproof duffel bags just like Damian had. Fortune and Magda strapped their masters across their bodies and helped Nathaniel get his own balance with Damian. Watching them balance the full literally dead body weight of their masters along with both sets of weapons in other bags made me realize why most vampires chose bigger people for human servants. You needed the size just to carry everything. I wasn’t sure I could have toted Damian and the rest of my gear. Once Nathaniel got the bag balanced he moved easily. Of course, he wasn’t carrying and wearing as many weapons as I was.
Jake and Kaazim offered to carry some of the weapons bags for Magda and Fortune, and the women let them take some of them. Neither man offered to carry the vampires, though Giacomo was a big guy even for someone Magda’s size. She was strong enough, but it was more height and breadth for toting someone else who was as tall, but wider, and heavier. I was beginning to see why Magda hit the weights heavier than Fortune did; it wasn’t just personal preference—she needed the bulk to lift Giacomo.
Socrates said, “I’d offer to carry him for you, but I think you do a better job of it.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” she said, and checked the huge duffel on her back one more time, to make sure the smaller bags were tucked up tight so that they helped hold Giacomo’s body in place. It’s not always how much you’re carrying, but how it moves, how it sits on your body, or how it moves with you.
Nolan didn’t offer to carry anything, just waited with those frown lines furrowing deeper into his forehead. If he had a single smile line on his face I hadn’t seen it yet. I mean, he smiled, but it was as if his face did it so seldom that there was no mark around his mouth of it. There were plenty of frown lines, though. I’d never seen anyone mark themselves up so badly, as if facial lines could be scars.
Nolan led us off across the tarmac with Edward beside him; they were talking in low, serious voices. The rest of us fanned out behind them. Nathaniel fell into step at my side. It actually seemed odd to walk beside him and not hold hands, but I was carrying too much and I needed to focus on work. Nicky was on one side of us, Dev on the other. Domino walked in front of us and Ethan was behind us. They’d put us in the bodyguard box, as I’d started calling it. I realized that Jake, Pride, Socrates, and Kaazim were carrying a little bit more than the other four men. They’d divided it up without a word, so that the four guards directly around us would have more hands free to go for weapons, if needed. Magda and Fortune’s main allegiance was to the safety of their unconscious masters, so they weren’t part of the bodyguard equation in that moment. I understood that; if I’d had Jean-Claude in a duffel bag in full daylight, I’d have been worried as hell that some ray of sunlight would get through. I was worried enough with Damian on Nathaniel’s back, and I knew that sunlight didn’t burn him.
Though, as I glanced up at the overcast sky, thick and gray with the promise of rain, maybe the famous Irish weather would be more vampire friendly than other places. You could get sunburned on a cloudy day if you were pale enough, so did cloud cover really matter to a vampire? In all the years I’d been intimate with vampires, first hunting them and then sleeping with them, I’d never asked about cloud cover. I mean, if your skin fried in the sunlight, was a cloudy day worth the risk?
There were three black vehicles waiting for us that I’d just started thinking of as the police version of the military Humvee, though not all of them were Humvees, and I knew that, but whether it was one of SWAT’s BearCats or an armored military transport, they all looked vaguely the same, like a Jeep, an SUV, and a small tank had gotten together and had one hell of a night, and this was the result. Military would be painted in the camouflage of the area, or the current military fashion. The police were very fond of basic black for them.
There were three soldiers standing in a little cluster by the three black vehicles, dressed in the same all-black that Nolan was; between the outfits and the “SUVs,” it reminded me a lot of working with SWAT, except I’d earned my place with our local cops, and here the hostility and doubt poured off all of them in waves. It wasn’t aimed just at me; we were all unknowns. The three soldiers had no way of knowing how well we were trained, or how our training would complement or conflict with theirs. When you’re about to trust your life to someone, you want to know that they’re worthy of that trust.