Quint sat facing forward, her head swiveling side to side and to the screens that showed views from the cameras of the other cars. On guard. Bruiser played on his phone, in constant communication with all the security types everywhere because of the attack. Still. The silence in the limo only contributed to my unease. I tried to relax. I even sipped some more champagne. Didn’t help. I had the heebie-jeebies, and that was un-queenly, though it was moderately better than bride jitters.
Eventually, the truck and trailer left at the attack site caught up, though they now stayed a steady quarter mile behind. Later, one of the armored SUVs, its windows tinted vamp-black for a fanghead driver or passengers, passed all the other vehicles until it was taking point. Through the bond between us, I knew Koun was driving.
As we neared daylight, our cavalcade sped up and we broke all kinds of speed limits. Some vamps took the crotch rockets and screamed ahead to beat the sunrise. Koun refused to leave me. He was old enough to survive a little daylight, but we were pushing it, and he rode the last hour in his SUV beneath a tarp, Quint driving. Vamp travel was always problematic. A seven a.m. arrival was downright dangerous. When we finally made it to the Dark Queen’s Winter Residence near Black Mountain, Quint pulled the vehicle into the light-proof garage. Relief shed from me like heavy weights.
The residence staff, who were more used to vamp hours than human hours, was up and quickly got us sorted and into our rooms or into the cottages, depending on who went where, a decision and dispersal also made without my input, Koun carted around in a dead box. There were silver linings to not being in charge.
The consort and I barely made it to the bed in our suite before we crashed and burned. It wasn’t romantic. And … Something was off. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the poop was about to hit the prop. “Something’s wrong,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
“Wedding jitters,” Bruiser murmured to me as he pulled me in to spoon. “Sleep, love. We’re together. We’re safe. And so are our people.”
Eventually I slept.
???
Bruiser woke me with feather kisses, just as someone knocked on the door. He sighed and called out, “Enter.”
“No wild hot monkey sex?” I complained, wiping the sleep out of my eyes.
Bruiser snorted.
“Only if I can join in,” Deon said, pushing a cart loaded with multiple silver topper thingies keeping breakfast warm. “And don’t tell me three’s a crowd. Things I can do with—”
“Deon!” I said.
He laughed and batted his eyes at me as he positioned trays across us. “Love you, Queenie darlin’.” He pulled off one of the topper things, revealing two pounds of crispy bacon. “The things I can do with . . .bacon. What did youthinkI meant?”
“Out,” I said, pointing at the door with a slice of pig, the sheets clenched to my chest with the bacon-less hand, protecting my modesty.
Deon put on a show, prancing away. He was wearing scarlet head to toe, including a red chef’s jacket. On his butt were embroidered the words, “Better than Bacon.”
Bruiser snorted again as the doors closed.
The consort and I had breakfast in bed. I inhaled a dozen eggs and most of the bacon, while Bruiser ingested a more nuanced meal that included waffles with rum sauce, some kind of hollandaise dish of eggs, cheese, and ham, with asparagus, a bowl of mixed fresh berries, and yogurt. After stuffing ourselves, we took a sudsy bath together while sipping fruit juice with champagne, which I quite liked, followed by glorious sex, which I liked even better. Bacon and sex eased my mind and calmed my nerves.
Repeat sex in the shower helped even more.
Because it was daylight, no vamps, or vamp problems, interrupted us.
Usually, the peccadillos and interactions of fangheads were fascinating to me. But not this weekend, when I wanted to get married without having to kill anyone and splatter my fantastic dress with gore. Yeah. I had a fantastic dress.Me. I was getting married. In a dress.
Go figure.
The rest of the day was spent lazing, answering more of the never-ending official royal correspondence with Quint, taking a long hike through the wooded area around our winter—and soon to be permanent—residence, shooting and target practice in the outdoor range, and eating the mountains of food emerging from Deon’s kitchen.
My food-buddy was trying to fatten me up for the wedding and I was quickly putting pounds back on. Deon might even have to loosen the dress.
After a gloriously lazy day, we fell into bed early, while the rest of the vamps who were part of my retinue arrived, took rooms and cottages, and fell dead-asleep at dawn. Weak vamp joke. No one laughed when I told it upon waking.
???
The Tail of the Dragon is a coiled, twisty, hilly, totally hazardous, eleven-mile-long section of US 129. It cuts through Deals Gap in the Appalachian Mountains right at the Tennessee / North Carolina state line. Its 318 hairpin curves were also sometimes called, “that damn road to Tennessee.” The tortuous road has been the site of hundreds of accidents by bicyclists, motorcyclists, vehicle drivers, hikers, families, the occasional idiot RVer, (and back in the days of prohibition, shine transporters and revenuers) since before the white man stole the land from the Cherokee,Creek, Yuchi, and Shawnee.
Over fifty of the modern recorded wrecks had been deadly.
Those eleven miles of 129 also had some of the best scenery in the nation, and has been revered—some say worshiped—by bikers since it was first carved along the crest of the mountain range. I used to ride it every fall to see the best colors in the world, and while winter-bare trees were not considered the optimal time of year for riding the dragon, the views would be longer, farther, and add to the scare factor as drops and cliffsides would be revealed in all their vertical glory. I hadn’t ridden the route in way too long.
My certifiable adrenaline junkie, box truck drivers (and one, six-member, motorcycle security team) had driven on that first night after being shot at and shot up—reaching “Begin the Dragon,” at the junction of Highways 28 and 129 before they stopped to rest. The drivers had slept the day and the following night at the motorcycle resort there, and probably drank themselves into oblivion. At daybreak on our second day in the Appalachian Mountains, while the bridal couple (Holy crap. I was part of a bridal couple) ate breakfast and dallied—that’s what my fiancé had called splashy soapy sex—the truck drivers had left the bikes and gear in the tender loving care of my very sober security team and had driven the road in the empty truck to the end of the route to await our arrival at the end of the ride.
