Insatiable (20 page)

“Like with David?” Meena gave a sarcastic laugh. “I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll just ease him into getting to know the real Meena Harper a little bit at a time.”

“Yeah, well, it sounds like he got to know at least a pretty good part of Meena Harper last night,” Leisha said with a sarcastic laugh of her own. Then she sobered. “Seriously, though, Meena. I know I bitch about Adam, but the reason we’ve lasted this long is because he’s the first guy I’ve ever been with who I’ve been able to just be myself around, no holds barred. If you can’t be who you really are with this guy, you might as well just keep being alone.”

Meena looked at her friend thoughtfully. Leisha had a point…a good one.

The scary part was that she didn’t know how much Meena was holding back from
her….
Meena was just going to have to tell her.

And judging from the size of her belly and the level of alarm bells that went off in Meena’s head every time Leisha mentioned
the baby,
it was going to have to be soon.

“Hey,” Leisha said, glancing at her watch. “Shouldn’t you be at work or something?”

“Yeah,” Meena said slowly. “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about…. Can I leave Jack here until after work, then come pick him up? You know how everyone loves him—”

Roberto, coming back with a bowl of water for Meena’s dog and a plate of perfectly cubed mango for Leisha, overheard this last part and gasped. “Yes, please!” he cried. “We’ll babysit the puppy!”

Meena, suppressing an urge to laugh, glanced at Leisha. “It’s just, I don’t want to go all the way back uptown to my apartment to drop him off, then have to come all the way back downtown to go to work—”

“We love the puppy!” Roberto cried. “We’ll give him a puppy pedicure!”

“You,” Leisha said, glaring at Meena as she popped a mango cube into her mouth, “owe me one.”

“I really do.” Meena agreed.

“You’re going to watch my kid for me when he’s born,” Leisha said. “For free.”

“Believe me,” Meena said under her breath as she surrendered a wiggling Jack Bauer to Roberto’s waiting arms. “I already am.”

1:00
P.M
. EST, Friday, April 16
15 Union Square West, Penthouse
New York, New York

T
his is the latest victim,” Emil said, producing a red file folder and placing it solemnly on the black-granite-topped table.

Lucien stared down at the photo.

She’d probably been pretty once…the kind of girl who would have had difficulty keeping herself from smiling when a camera was pointing in her direction.

Except…how had he known that?

But violent death had robbed her of any beauty. Now her face was a dour gray mask, dark purple shadows beneath her eyes.

And below her neck…

Lucien turned the photo over. He’d seen this kind of ravaging before.

But not in the past two centuries.

“They estimate that her time of death was around three this morning,” Emil said.

What had he been doing at three in the morning while this girl’s blood was being drained from her body?

He knew perfectly well. If he’d been doing what he’d come here to the city to do, she might have been alive right now.

“The killings are happening closer together,” Emil observed.
“Whoever is behind them, he seems to be getting more desperate. Or greedy. He tried killing once and found that he liked it. He wants it all the time now. He doesn’t want to stop. Perhaps he
can’t
stop.”

“Perhaps,” Lucien said. He wasn’t sure what to believe anymore about these killings. “It can be addictive. Which is why it can’t be allowed. But these bite marks aren’t from a single individual.”

“It’s still going to get us all staked when the humans finally realize what’s going on,” Emil said mournfully, “and decide to eradicate us the way the Palatine wants to…the way they did your father.”

Emil shuddered, perhaps remembering how Lucien’s father had met his ignominious fate. Then he raised his suddenly guilt-ridden gaze to Lucien’s and blurted, “It’s my fault, my lord. This latest girl’s death. Mine, and mine alone. I should never have allowed my wife to invite…er…
her
to our home last evening.”

There was no mistaking whom Emil meant by
her.
The name seemed to linger in the air of the penthouse the way the scent of her humanness did….

Meena Harper. Meena Harper. Meena Harper
.

Emil went on. “I realize in doing so, I was very wrong. Of course you were distracted from your duties. I would understand it if you chose to kill me, my lord, for my gross negligence.”

Lucien looked down at the smaller man, who was bowing his head, humbly waiting for his body to be lifted and hurled through one of the UV-blocked windows and into the daylight, where he would instantly fry in the sun like a potato crisp.

But Lucien could no more blame his cousin for what had happened the night before than he could explain it. He didn’t yet know why he was so convinced that the dark-eyed girl in pajamas he’d rescued that night outside St. George’s Cathedral would turn out to be the source of his spiritual and emotional redemption.

He certainly hadn’t treated her the way one would treat a redeemer. He had spent the night doing things to her that, in the light of day, he wasn’t sure she remembered…but it had to be admitted that at the time, she’d seemed to fully enjoy them.

God knew he had.

Now Meena Harper’s essence seemed to have entered his long-empty veins. They thrummed with her life force and energy, giving them a kind of electric vitality.

But that wasn’t all. He seemed to…know things.

He couldn’t explain it. It didn’t make any sense. It was almost a sort of…madness.
Her
madness, the exact same flickering images that he’d seen coming and going inside her head every time he’d entered it. How had he known, for instance, that the girl in the photo had difficulty keeping herself from smiling when there was a camera around?

The girl in the photo was dead. And he had never met her.

What did it mean?

He didn’t yet know.

But he knew it meant something different.

And different, after five centuries, was good.

Very, very good.

“It’s all right, Emil,” he said. He felt kindly toward his cousin. Which was ridiculous. Merely a week ago, he’d have been raging over this colossal cock-up. Was it Meena Harper who was making him feel so mellow?

Or something else?

Emil raised his head, confused.

“Then…” He looked around the room, as if expecting to see another of Lucien’s minions appear, stake in hand. “You don’t want to kill me, my lord? Or my wife?”

“I think there’s been enough death lately,” Lucien said mildly. “Why don’t we concentrate instead on finding this killer and stopping him—or them. Are you telling me that no one,” Lucien asked, getting up from the table and going to stand by the plate-glass windows, “was able to give the police any kind of description of any sort of suspect? No one at all was seen dumping the body or anywhere around it?”

Emil, looking immensely relieved to have been given a reprieve, grabbed his files, then leafed quickly through them.

“Oh, plenty,” he said. “So many possible suspects the police are still interviewing them all. Everyone thinks they saw something. Which means, of course, that no one saw anything. Because whoever did this
had sense enough to wipe the memory of anyone who might have seen anything useful.”

Lucien frowned, staring out over the city. He could see the red warning lights of the airport towers across the East River in the distance.

The lights reminded him of the glow he’d seen the other night in his brother’s eyes. Dimitri had always been power hungry, forever looking for new ways to expand his business, his dominance, his control. It had nearly killed him when their father had left all his immense fortune to his eldest son…even though Lucien had been more than willing to share it.

Did Dimitri’s hunger for wealth and power extend to other things, as well? Lucien wasn’t certain he knew for sure.

Which was a sad thing for a man to have to admit about his own brother.

Lucien turned away from the window with a start. Emil had been speaking to him all this time, and he hadn’t been paying the slightest bit of attention.

“Of course,” he said. Whatever it was, Lucien was certain Emil would handle it admirably, as he did all of his endeavors on the prince’s behalf. “Emil.”

“Sire?”

“I’m going to have to cancel my previous plans for this evening.”

Emil looked uncertain. “My lord?”

Lucien ignored the pulsing in his veins—a new sensation…or at least one he hadn’t felt in half a millennium—and said, “I’d made plans to go to the symphony tonight with Ms. Harper. But in light of…this”—he indicated the file on the table—“I obviously have more pressing affairs to see to.”

“Oh,” Emil said, his eyes reflecting true disappointment. “I see. Of course. I’ll take care of it. But are you certain? Surely there’s time for pleasure as well as—”

“Later.” The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan stretched out beneath him. Somewhere down there, he knew, lurked a killer. More than one. He needed to find and stop them.

But would it be before they killed again?

“Four women have already died,” Lucien said. “I can’t afford to be so negligent again.”

But even as he said it, he knew it would be a matter of only hours before he began craving her again. He talked of the killers being addicts.

Yet who, precisely, was the true addict?

2:00
P.M
. EST, Friday, April 16
ABN Building
520 Madison Avenue
New York, New York

I
know who you are,” Tabitha Worthington Stone said in a breathless voice. “Or I guess I should say
what
you are.”

“Do you?” The tall, dark-haired young man looked down at her with a gaze that smoldered, a faint smile playing on his perfectly formed lips. “What am I?”

“You’re a…a…” Taylor glanced away, biting her luscious lower lip and throwing an arm dramatically over her forehead. “No! I can’t say it. It’s just not possible!”

“Say it.” Maximillian Cabrera grabbed her by both shoulders. “Just say it!”

“Oh, hey.” Paul, one of the breakdown writers, nodded at Jon. “Here to see Meena?”

Jon tore his gaze from the incredibly passionate scene being acted out on the empty soundstage in front of him. Taylor Mackenzie still somehow managed to look sexy in leggings and a large gray cardigan, which she wore open over a belly-revealing black T-shirt.

Too bad Jon didn’t have anything as good to say about her costar-to-be, Stefan Dominic. He thought Dominic looked terrible, all black skinny jeans, greasy hair, and a two-day growth of razor stubble.

No way they were going to give him the part, Jon thought. They’d
be way smarter to give it to someone cleaner-cut looking. Like Jon, for instance. Dominic was just so…
obvious
. For someone supposed to be playing a vampire, that is.

“Yeah,” Jon said to Paul. “I mean, Meena knows I’m here, anyway. I had to phone up in order for security to let me sign in.” He pointed to his visitor pass, clipped to the collar of his jean jacket. “But I haven’t seen her anywhere.”

“She’s in her office,” Paul said. “Under the pile of breakdowns I just handed her. You better look out. She’s in a foul mood.”

Jon frowned. “Really? Why?”

“If I had to guess, that’s why,” Paul said, nodding toward the soundstage.

Fran and Stan, Meena’s bosses, had stepped out in front of the cameras and were giving Taylor and Stefan some feedback.

“That was fantastic,” Fran, a middle-aged lady with a lot of pendant necklaces and wildly curling gray hair, was saying. “Stefan, you gave me goose bumps.”

“Thanks,” Stefan said laconically, standing around with his hip bones poking out.

Jon wanted to punch him in the kidneys.

“Right, Aunt Fran?” A skinny girl with very straight black hair and wearing a pencil skirt stepped out from behind a heavyset man. Shoshona, Jon realized. And the heavyset man was Meena’s other boss, Sy. “He’s just brilliant.”

Brilliant. About as brilliant as Jack Bauer. The dog, not the one played by Kiefer Sutherland.

“Thanks,” Stefan said again, pushing some of his dirty-looking hair from his eyes.

“I get a really good feeling from him,” Taylor said in her tinkly little voice. “I think we’ve got good chemistry. It works for me.”

Oh, God,
Jon thought with an inward groan. Why had he even bothered showing up? This was just torture. To see—actually see, in real life, not on a television screen—his beloved Taylor in the arms of another? It was too much.

And then the next thing Jon knew, Taylor was coming toward him in her little white tennis shoes. He sucked in his breath—and his gut,
although he didn’t have much of one, because he’d really been working out this time, not just saying he was going to, since he was serious about this police exam thing—and said, “Hey, Taylor,” as she walked by, leaving a faint scent of grapefruit in her wake.

She turned her head and saw him, her heavily glossed lips parting in surprise…then curling upward in a smile of recognition.

“Oh, hey…” She clearly couldn’t remember his name.

“Jon,” he said quickly. “Jon Harper. Meena Harper’s older brother?”

“Oh, right,” she said, giggling. “I’m so bad with names. How’s it going?”

“Great,” he said. His heart was thumping like a basketball. “I just caught the last bit of that scene with you and…what’s-his-name. That was some fantastic work.”

“Oh, thanks,” Taylor said, her eyes shining. “His name is Stefan. He’s going to play the new vampire on the show. I’m so psyched ’cause it’s really going to pull in a younger demo for the show. Isn’t Stefan fabulous?”

No,
Jon thought. You’re
fabulous. Not Stefan. That guy sucks.

“So they’re definitely going to cast that guy, huh?” Jon asked. “Because, you know, I did some acting in high school—”

“Oh, I think so,” Taylor said. “The network wants him. And he’s got the same manager as Gregory Bane, you know, from
Lust
? That guy over there. Dimitri something-or-other.”

She pointed to a man who was standing in one corner, talking to Stan and Fran and Sy and Shoshona. Dimitri Something-or-Other was huge—physically, just really tall and broad-shouldered, a little like Meena’s prince—and in an impeccably tailored suit that had probably set him back a cool three grand or so. He seemed to have a couple of bodyguards with him.

So he was rich, too.

Another guy Jon was going to have to punch in the kidneys.

“Interesting,” Jon said, pretending not to care. “Hey, what are you doing now? Wanna go grab a drink?”

“Oh,” Taylor said. “I would, but I have to go meet my trainer. Maybe next time, okay?”

Then she actually stood up on tiptoe, placed a hand on his wrist to
balance herself, and gave him a little kiss—light as the brush of a butterfly wing—on his cheek.

And then she was gone, skipping away to go work off some imaginary fat.

Jon stood there staring after her for a minute or two before he was able to rouse himself enough from the spell she’d cast over him to go look for his sister. He eventually found her exactly where Paul had said she’d be, in her office—which, strictly speaking, was actually more of a cubicle than an office, although it did have a narrow window with a view.

She was typing furiously, pages spread all across her desk and every other available flat surface in a seemingly random fashion, though Jon knew from experience that if anyone dared to touch them, she’d scream bloody murder, because there was some kind of order to them; only his sister knew what it was, however.

“Hey, Meen,” Jon said. Since there weren’t many seats for him to choose from, he settled onto a stack of scripts piled perilously high on a chair in front of her desk.

“Go away,” she said. She didn’t take her eyes off the screen in front of her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Everything,” she said. “Nothing. Just go away. This place is imploding. Like my life. You wouldn’t
believe
the lines Fran and Stan—no way Shoshona was smart enough to write this—gave me to feed poor Taylor. Not to mention Cheryl. There’s product placement
everywhere
. I’ve never even heard of any of this stuff. I don’t think they’re CDI products. Revenant Wrinkle Cream? Strigoi Sunglasses? There’s even some kind of spa where Victoria goes to get a total rejuvenating make-over—have you ever heard of the Regenerative Spa for Youthful Awakening?”

Jon shrugged. “No. But, Meena, what did you expect? They’ve got this new vampire story line, and CDI thinks the show has a chance of getting some younger viewers. Why wouldn’t they throw in some product placement? They’re trying to make some money.”

She sighed. “I don’t know. I thought that they’d show some integrity. Respect for the devoted audience this show has had for thirty years.
But
I’m
the idiot, I guess. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Oh,” he said. “I’m here for the audition.”

“What audition?” Meena looked at him bewilderedly.

“For the part of the vampire,” Jon said. God, she really
was
out of it.

“There’s no audition,” she said. “Stefan has the part. They’re just making sure he and Taylor have chemistry—which basically means that he isn’t shorter than she is.”

“Yeah,” Jon said a little bitterly. “I sort of get that now.”

“Look,” she said, turning back to her computer screen. “I’m really busy. You’d better go.”

Paul had been right. She really was in a foul mood.

“What is
with
you?” he asked. “I mean, I get that you’re upset about the new vampire plot, but you could try being a little nicer to people.”

He thought he heard her mutter something like “I
am
trying” and something else about a baby. He had no idea what she was talking about. “What baby?” he asked bewilderedly.

“Just forget it,” she said to the monitor.

But there was no hiding the expression on her face, which he recognized only too well.

And like a bolt from the blue, he knew.

“
That’s
why you’ve been acting like such a psycho lately?” he demanded. “You had a vision about Adam and Leisha’s baby?”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “Of course not. Don’t be stupid.”

“That was the fakest laugh I ever heard,” Jon said, shaking his head. “What did you see?”

She hesitated, then abruptly gave up.

“Fine,” she said. “Whatever. And I didn’t
see
anything. It’s just a feeling. And it isn’t even a bad feeling, necessarily. I just don’t want Leisha to worry. Worrying that something bad is going to happen could be what actually causes something bad to happen. So we’re not telling her, all right? Or Adam. Because there’s nothing to tell.”

Jon shook his head. He had never really understood his sister’s gift, but he’d learned to respect it over the years. Except when girls had refused to go out with him because he was the You’re Gonna Die Girl’s brother.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked.

“Positive,” she said firmly.

“Okay,” he said. “So then what are you stressing over?”

She widened her eyes at him and he realized belatedly that he’d asked exactly the wrong thing.

“Wait,” he said, holding up a hand while she sucked in her breath. “Let me put that another way. What can I do to make things a little easier on you?”

She considered this. “Can you go downtown to pick up Jack and take him home? I dropped him off at Leisha’s salon on my way here from Lucien’s this morning. I’ll owe you so, so big-time. After selling my soul to corporate all day like this, I just want to go home and—”

“Start working diligently on the great American novel?”

“—get ready for my big date tonight,” she finished with a grin.

“Jesus,” Jon said, getting up from the towering pile of paper on which he’d been perched. “You’re seeing him again tonight? You’ve really got it bad for this guy.”

Meena’s grin widened. “You said I should start being nicer to people.”

“I meant me, but fine, I’ll go pick up your dog. And don’t worry,” he added. “I won’t say anything to Leisha about your weird non-vision concerning her unborn kid.”

“You better not,” Meena said. “Considering there’s nothing to tell. Come on, I’ll walk you to the elevators.”

As they approached the elevator bank, he heard Meena curse beneath her breath. He looked up, then saw why. Fran and Stan were standing there, along with Meena’s arch-nemesis, Shoshona; Stefan Dominic; Stefan’s manager; and the bodyguards. Quite a crowd.

“Hi, Meena,” Shoshona said in a voice dripping with honey.

“Hi, Shoshona,” Meena said. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there.

“I’m not sure you’ve met our newest cast member, Stefan Dominic,” Shoshona said, turning to the skinny, dark-haired guy Jon had been longing to sucker-punch just a half hour or so earlier.

“No, I haven’t had the pleasure,” Meena said politely, and she shook hands with the man who would soon be getting the pleasure of sticking
his tongue in the mouth of Taylor Mackenzie on a daily basis.

“Nice to meet you,” Stefan Dominic said, looking down at Meena.

Meena, shaking Stefan Dominic’s hand, kind of froze, staring up at him. Jon knew she was having another one of her visions.

“Have we met before?” she asked curiously.

Which wasn’t what she usually said. Usually she said something like
Don’t take the freeway
or
I’d switch to wheat from white f lour, if I were you.

“I don’t think so,” Dominic said.

“You look so familiar.” She was still holding on to his hand. “I could swear I’ve seen you before.”

“Well, Meena,” Shoshona said with a little sneer, “Stefan’s my boyfriend. You probably
have
seen him before. Around the office here, with me.”

“Oh,” Meena said. She let out an embarrassed little laugh and dropped his hand. “Sorry. Of course.”

With that, the elevator came, and Jon got on it, along with Dominic and his manager, who’d said good-bye to Shoshona and her aunt and uncle.

The last face Jon saw before the elevator doors closed and he rode down with them in silence was Meena’s. She looked confused.

But no wonder: she had a lot to feel confused about. Jon didn’t give Meena’s confusion a second thought.

Instead, he thought about how Taylor Mackenzie had kissed him. It seemed a much more pleasant thing to ruminate on during the elevator ride down to the lobby than the conversation he’d just had with Meena.

What Jon didn’t realize was that his thinking about Taylor Mackenzie instead of his sister actually saved his life during that elevator ride.