This place was a security nightmare.
Even with Black’s people scattered throughout the guests, and the snipers Jax knew protected the ceremony from above… it was flat-out nuts that they were doing this like this.
Jax had already been told this was only for the ceremony itself, and the formal reception following, meaning the one that included all of the wedding guests.
Afterwards, they’d do more of a seer-human-hybrid reception-slash-mini-ceremony, with the place more or less cleared out of anyone who wasn’t a close friend, or part of the inner circle of either or both couples.
This part, though?
This part was sheer madness.
Jax saw a covered area to one side of the main aisle and stage, where the vampire guests sat out of the New Mexico sun. Press circulated freely with people like Nick Tanaka’s parents, who apparently had been Miriam’s quasi-foster family after her own parents and sister died, not to mention their close relationship to Angel, who grew up next door to Nick Tanaka.
Angel’s own parents were there, who were divorced, and apparently fighting.
Angel had aunts, uncles and cousins from Louisiana.
Cowboy (real name: Elvis Dawson Graves, Jax found out today) had friends and relatives from Louisiana, as well, and some of them looked like they’d just come out of a swamp and were wearing the same suit they’d worn to every job interview, funeral, and wedding they’d ever attended, back since they were eighteen years old.
Somehow Black rustled up a few cousins of Miri’s from Native American reservations on the Northwest Coast of the United States and Canada, as well.
Those were the weird wedding guests you’d find at any wedding, though.
The far weirder aspect of all this came from those people mixing with reporters from major fashion and Hollywood magazines, not to mention the major networks… and the movie stars, talk show hosts, and members of Black’s billionaire club who clearly didn’t know how to interact with normal people.
That list included Wall Street and tech industry pirates, several big-name musicians, at least one movie mogul, and a number of other faces Jax vaguely recognized from the human world but couldn’t place.
At least five bona fide movie stars were in attendance.
Jax didn’t really know who they were, but the Navajo kids had been losing their minds, squealing at the sight of at least one male star, who apparently had some native blood.
Jax saw the guy and he didn’t get it, frankly; the man was handsome, but he looked like a bit of a goof.
It didn’t help that he wore a bright blue tuxedo with red leather shoes and a bolo tie, his hair looking like he’d stuck his whole head in a blender to cut it.
Grant Steele, that talk show friend of Black’s, was there.
A number of military types also circulated in the crowd. Not just the team who worked under the Colonel when he’d been alive (although they were there, too), but a few actual generals and admirals in full dress uniform.
Everyone walked around like they were in a zoo and the other wedding guests were the animals. The family members gawked at the movie stars, the generals and politicians gawked at the vampires and the seers who walked around carrying guns.
Most of Black and Miri’s closest and dearest were either sitting in their respective sections, staring around at the chaos with stunned, deer-in-headlights looks on their faces, or they were doing like Jax himself was doing––milling around the party, pretending to be a guest while he wore a gun and a headset and looked out for any potential problems.
The communications back and forth across the construct were insane.
Jax had his lines of report, but even with everything strictly organized, it still overwhelmed him, the sheer number of people sending in snapshots (most of those positively ID’ing guests and making sure they were supposed to be there) and discussing possible vulnerabilities of the venue itself.
A voice rose over his headset, private channel.
“Stop worrying,” she teased him softly.
“Who’s worrying?” he murmured back.
“I can see your face from here. You look like you think you’re surrounded by hostile forces disguised in flowered hats and carrying designer handbags.”
“I’m pretty sure we are,” Jax said, quirking an eyebrow in her direction.
Kiko laughed, and he felt a ripple of heat go through his light.
He hadn’t really wanted her to come to this.
He understood how insanely unrealistic that was, given who she was, not only to Black, but to Miri, Angel, and Cowboy as well… but his feelings on the subject hadn’t really changed. Knowing that Nick Tanaka slunk around somewhere in this crowd, probably hidden back with the other bloodsuckers, didn’t help.
At all.
“Really,” she said. “You need to chill out, Jax. The boss’s got this covered… nothing is going to go wrong.”
“Until the killer robots show up,” Jax muttered. “Until they send a drone strike to take out the whole wedding party… or one of the vampires gets a little too thirsty… or that freaky dragon dude comes back…”
Kiko laughed again. “You’re cute when you’re being a little stress monkey.”
Jax felt another flush of heat hit his light.
“Cute?” he said, feigning offense. “Little?”
“Well, I can’t exactly tell you what I really think right now, can I? Not only am I at a wedding, but technically, both of us are working.”
Another voice cut in, even as she said it.
“Hey, stop flirting, you two,” Ace joked. “We can all see you looking at each other… and we can see the ‘private channel’ light on your comm feeds.”
“Piss off,” Kiko told him cheerfully.
“Tsk, tsk,” Javier broke in. “Such language. And from such a foxy-looking woman in all your wedding finery…”
Jax felt a flicker of reaction at the other’s words.
He knew he was being ridiculous.
At the same time, he could feel the eyes on Kiko.
He could tell himself rationally that the vast majority of those eyes belonged to her friends, who were deeply worried about her still, and checking her out to make sure she was okay. He could feel the relief on some of them, the humans especially, that she really did seem to be okay, that she wasn’t losing it from Nick being there.
Jax had already gotten into it with some of them, though.
Well… one of them.
Dex had to be physically restrained once that day already.
Well… twice.
The military vet managed to be relatively intimidating, even though Jax was a seer and Dex was a forty-year-old human, if an especially large and fit forty-year-old human. Jax had been a bit shocked, frankly, when Dex lunged at him the first time.
They’d just gotten off the plane, and Jax had been holding Kiko’s hand.
Apparently that enraged Dex to the point where he lost his head.
Later, when Kiko got out of the pool in a tiny, sky-blue bikini, Jax had been staring at her openly, and motioned her over to whisper things in her ear.
Dex tried to hit him again.
Both times, Kiko and Dex’s friends among Black’s team held him back, talking him down. Kiko chewed him out, too, especially the second time.
Jax hadn’t been sure what to do or say, frankly.
He’d had an urge to tell the Marine he hadn’t had intercourse with her yet, but he suspected that wouldn’t go over well, either. It also struck him as somewhat disingenuous, given that Jax fully intended to ask her for intercourse soon… likely that night… and she’d asked him for intercourse at least three times already.
Jax only refused for reasons of timing and situation: the construct being open, her being vulnerable with him about what Nick had done to her, and not wanting to do it when he thought there was a good chance they would be interrupted or overheard.
All reasons for not having sex with her were growing less compellin
g, however, especially after he saw her in the pale gold bridesmaid’s dress she wore for the ceremony.
They’d set up two rows for that, too, with women and men on Black and Miri’s side wearing gold dresses and black tuxes, and the woman and men on Angel and Cowboy’s side wearing pale green dresses and black tuxes.
They all stood up there now on a slanted ramp leading up to the main stage, and Jax had to admit, the symmetry fascinated him.
Weddings were far more circumscribed for humans than the chaotic seer weddings he’d grown up with back on Old Earth.
Then again, he hadn’t gotten to see a lot of those, either.
Because of the enslavement of so much of his kind, full-blown big-bash seer weddings were kind of a rarity on that world.
For the same reason, he was looking forward to tonight’s party, after all of the non-family members left.
The music started.
While Jax’s mind had been elsewhere, people started taking their seats for real.
Jerking his mind off the past, and his eyes off Kiko in the gold dress long enough to scan the rest of the stage, he realized Black and Cowboy stood up there already, both of them wearing tuxedos and standing perfectly still.
Jax noted Kiko a last time on Black and Miri’s side of the stage––noting she stood just in front of Cal, a human friend of Black’s who owned a restaurant in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco.
Yarli and Manny stood together next to them, then Dex and Gina, one of Miri’s old psychiatrist friends. Lawrence “Larry” Farraday, Black’s lawyer, stood next to Kevin Lawless, one of Black’s old Vietnam buddies; the two of them stood just above humans named Maya and Naomi, who were apparently two of Nick Tanaka’s human sisters.
The third Tanaka sister stood on Angel and Cowboy’s side, next to Dog from the Navajo Rez. Easton stood with a human woman named Lucy, who was a childhood friend and cousin of Cowboy’s from Louisiana. Ace and Mika stood next to them, then Angel’s sister, Lara, and an old friend of Cowboy’s from… somewhere. Another cousin of Angel’s stood with Cowboy’s half-brother at the very end, making it five couples for each side.
Jax knew they’d left a few people out.
Frank Blackfoot asked to bow out, since he’d be busy managing the venue.
Same with Devin, who worked at the resort as well.
Jax himself asked to be kept in security, partly so Holo wouldn’t feel left out after he’d been injured and couldn’t participate easily.
The other big omissions of course, were Dalejem and Nick.
No one really had to talk about why they weren’t in it.
Jax scanned faces in the wedding party, noting Ace and Mika poking each other and laughing, and that Kiko and Cal were talking quietly, too.
Cowboy and Black just stood there, unmoving.
In the center, between them, stood Alex Holmes, who would be performing the ceremony for both couples.
The music swelled louder, and everyone in the audience turned, craning their necks and heads to look back towards the other end of the long, flower-coated aisle.
Jax turned his head along with everyone else, swiveling his upper body in his seat.
Then he saw them, and smiled, in spite of himself.
They say your own wedding is always a blur.
As is often true with the ubiquitous “they,” it turned out for me, “they” were right.
I only remember a few things, here and there.
I remember being scared out of my friggin’ mind when I saw all those people staring at me––gawking at my face and body in the dress and hair and make-up Johann used to remake me in his imagination.
In retrospect, that fear strikes me as fairly ludicrous, given the past few years I’d had, or even the time I’d spent at war with Nick, back when we were both so painfully young it felt like another lifetime ago.
Ludicrous or not, the fear nearly had me hyperventilating.
I thought I might have a panic attack, or pass out.
I went back to worrying I might just throw up in the middle of the aisle.
Somewhere in that, I began to walk.
I think someone must have cued me, or even poked me, or shoved at the small of my back. In any case, Angel had already started walking, and some autopilot part of me must have started to follow… again, very likely after I got prodded by Johann or one of the other stylists standing behind me.
I felt the cameras more than saw them.
I don’t remember seeing much of anything, truthfully.
I walked on flower petals in the absurdly high heels, and saw a wash of faces, both strange and familiar, looking at me like they scarcely recognized me.
A few faces stood out.
Yumi and Hiroto stood near the front. Yumi had tears in her eyes.
Jax smiled at me as I passed, and Holo, from his wheelchair in the aisle. I saw Nick’s pale, strangely perfect face out of the sun, in the second row of the vampire section. Dalejem sat beside him, holding his arm and hand. They had Panther with them, too, sitting on the grass beside Nick’s chair… which might have cracked me up if I hadn’t been so freaked out at the insanely large crowd of people.
Somehow, I made it up to where Black stood.
Then I was looking at Black.
I looked at Black, and everything else disappeared.
I barely heard anything as Alex Holmes began intoning words in his deep voice. Black told me Alex used to be a preacher, in some Baptist Church in Virginia where he lived. Neither Black nor I was Baptist, but that didn’t matter. Alex told us he’d do a non-denominational ceremony, and I let Black handle that end of things, anyway.
Like a lot of the seers, Black seemed more excited for the seer side of things anyway, which were slotted to unfold later that evening, after the press and Hollywood people and other non-friends and family had been booted out the door.
They say you don’t remember your wedding… that everything is just a blur.
But I’m a seer.
Technically, I remember all of it.
I have all of it stored in my mind somewhere, for as long as I remain alive.
In the moment, however, most of that whirled around me, insubstantial.
I remember a few things clearly.
I remember everything my husband said to me.
He spoke clearly, quietly, but everyone in the outdoor seating area hushed to near-silence, listening, straining, for every word.
He spoke in seer towards the end.
That part, they may not have understood, but I did.
“Liliere, ilya,” he murmured softly, holding my hands lightly, almost delicately in his. Untielleres uka ak-te, ilya. Ilya nedri az’lenm, Miri. Uka mikra untielleres. Liliere kitrra, i'thir li’dare, y ulen aros y’lethe u agnate sol…”
A collective sigh rose among the seers, even as the humans looked puzzled.
I felt my face warm, but I didn’t look away from the intensity and softness of my husband’s gaze. His gold eyes shone with aleimic light, even as they brightened.
I felt tears come to my own eyes, but I smiled at him.
I smiled so wide, it almost hurt my face.
I knew enough Prexci by then, that I understood every word he spoke.
“I love you, my darling. You and I are one until the end of time. You are my soul’s work, Miri. My everlasting love. I will love you after death, under the blue-white sun, and always know in my heart you are why I was called to this world…”
I know I spoke back to him.
I know I said things I hoped would touch him, that would convey how I felt.
After Angel said her words to Cowboy, it was our turn again, and I said my vows to Black.
I had a thing I’d memorized in Prexci too, but I probably botched it.
If I did, he didn’t mind.
Both of us were crying by the time I finished, then he was kissing my face, kissing my jaw and my neck bared by the dress, and Alex Holmes had to clear his throat a few times befo
re he could get in the last word and end the thing.
When he finished saying those final words, addressing them to all four of us, making Black and I finally married in the conventional sense… meaning, in front of the world, in front of all of our family and friends… and, hilariously, in front of the mainstream and Hollywood media… Alex Holmes beamed at all four of us, and closed the book he held with a snap.
He said gently, “You may kiss the bride.”
…And it was officially over, and everyone laughed, since Black hadn’t stopped kissing me the whole time Alex spoke.
Then Black and I were kissing for real, and everyone whooped as I realized Cowboy and Angel were kissing too, and the ceremony was over, and, well…
…no bombs had gone off.
No one died.
Nothing terrible at all occurred.
For me, right then, that meant everything.
At the same time, it wasn’t even the most important part.
The ceremony itself had gone more perfectly than I could have ever imagined. But it was more than just the bare bones of us surviving such an insane and overly-public, dangerously timed, and probably ill-advised human marriage ritual… it was perfect for me as just an ordinary woman, too.
For as much as I had told myself a ceremony didn’t matter to me… that the dress and the rings and the music and the party and the wedding cake didn’t matter to me, either…
It did matter.
It mattered a lot.
26
Unbelonging
“I cannot believe how insanely gorgeous you look, Dr. Miriam!” the woman gushed, gazing openly over my dress, waving a ring-covered hand to embellish her words, the one that clutched a champagne flute with a strawberry at the bottom. “I am just green with envy that you had Johann Rognarth design your look… he really outdid himself!”
I smiled as politely as I could, thanking her as I tried to make it not-obvious that I was scanning the crowd for Black.
He’d been dragged off by a bunch of his Wall Street buddies, and he’d let them because, as he said, he wanted to “get this part out of the way” so we could all have fun tonight.
Black Of Wing: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Romance (Quentin Black Mystery Book 14) Page 23
