Insatiable (31 page)

The flavors that exploded into his mouth were like nothing he’d ever experienced. The foie gras at Per Se couldn’t hold a candle to it.

Behind him, Khaki Pants’s cell phone beeped loudly, then roared with static. Munchkin shouted, “Daddy, Daddy, Mommy wants to know when you’re coming home!”

Alaric laid down his chicken bone. Every one of his muscles tensed for what he knew was coming next. He had no choice, really.

He was going to have to wipe the floor with Khaki Pants for disrupting his dining experience and that of everyone around him. It was, simply, bad manners.

Jon wiped his face with a napkin. “No,” he said, holding up a hand. “Allow me.”

Alaric watched skeptically as Jon rose, stepped over to the table beside theirs, and yanked the cell phone from the belt of Khaki Pants.

“Munchkin,” Jon said into the cell phone. “Can you tell your mommy that your daddy can’t talk now because he’s having lunch with another woman? And that the other woman has really big boobies? Be sure to tell Mommy about the lady’s boobies.”

“Okay,” said Munchkin excitedly into the phone.

“What the hell?” burst out Khaki Pants, standing up so quickly that his chair flipped over backward.

Alaric, picking up another chicken wing, chewed, enjoying the show….

At least until he noticed a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a Yankees baseball cap pulled low over his eyes coming up the stairs, his gaze, behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses, fixed on Meena and Yalena.

Alaric laid down his chicken wing and reached for some napkins with which to wipe his fingers.

“Now, Phil,” the woman with the mink jacket said. “Don’t get excited. Remember your heart.”

“Maybe you ought to take your calls outside,” Jon said, handing Phil his cell phone. “It’ll keep you out of trouble.”

“Maybe I will,” Phil said in a huff as static crackled on his phone and a woman’s voice came on, squawking, “Phil? Phil? What’s munchkin saying about you and some woman?”

Phil pushed a button and the woman’s voice was abruptly cut off. He put the phone to his ear and said, “Aw, honey, never mind. It was just a joke. Some New York nut,” as he moved swiftly toward the stairs…

…brushing shoulders with the man in the baseball cap and sunglasses, who was reaching for the inside pocket of his leather jacket with a gloved hand as he moved swiftly toward Meena and Yalena’s table.

Alaric swore and slid from the booth while pulling out his sword at the same time.

Jon was sidling back into the booth opposite him, looking pleased with himself.

“See?” he said to Alaric. “Some situations you can solve without swinging a sword around…wait. What’s happening? Where are you going?”

But Alaric had already launched himself over the woman in the mink coat—who’d stayed in her seat to finish her daiquiri and texts—pulling Señor Sticky from its scabbard as he dove. Over at Yalena’s table, Gerald—because of course it was Yalena’s boyfriend Gerald in the ball cap and hoodie; who else could it be?—had tugged something small and black from his leather jacket and was pressing it to Meena’s back, speaking to her in a low voice, his sunglasses still shading his eyes beneath the baseball cap brim.

No one in the restaurant was paying the least bit of attention to them. All eyes were now on Alaric, the crazy man in the leather trench coat, doing gymnastic flips with a sword in his hand. Only Alaric saw Meena’s spine go straight as a pool cue again, her eyes wide and frightened looking.

Meanwhile, across the table, Yalena didn’t seem the least bit surprised. More like relieved it wasn’t
her
rib cage the gun was pressed into this time.

At least, not until Alaric came crashing down beside them.

Then
he got a reaction out of Yalena. Her mouth formed a perfect little O of surprise.

Which got even bigger when Alaric seized Gerald by the neck with one hand and brought the flat of his blade smartly down on Gerald’s wrist with the other, causing him to drop the pistol in pain.

Alaric looked down at the .22 Ruger on the floor with a smirk.

“Planning on doing some target practice later?” he asked Gerald. Gerald opened his mouth and let out a hiss, revealing a set of extremely pointed incisors…along with a curled, pointed tongue that darted in and out of his mouth like a snake. Meena, her eyes wide with horror, jumped from her chair and hugged the wall, knocking some Shenanigans memorabilia onto the floor.

“Oh, my God,” she cried. “He’s—”

“Yes, he is, isn’t he,” Alaric said calmly, still holding the vampire by the throat. “Do me a favor, will you? Reach into my coat.”

Meena lifted a shaking hand, then plunged it into the deep pocket of Alaric’s trench coat.

“Got it?” he asked as he felt her slim fingers close around what was at the bottom of his pocket.

“Got it,” Meena said, pulling out a small crystal vial and studying it curiously. “What is it?”

“Holy water. I want you to throw it in his face now.”

The vampire hissed with even more venom upon hearing this and clawed at Alaric’s arm.

Meena looked from the vial to the vampire, her expression horrified.

“I can’t do that,” she said, shocked.

“Yes, you can, Meena,” Alaric said. “He’s not a man anymore. He’s a monster. Look at him. And he just tried to shoot you.”

“It’s not that,” Meena said.

“I don’t want to upset everyone in this nice restaurant by cutting his head off,” Alaric said. It was true. Everyone at the tables around them had lain down their Sticky Wings and was staring, clearly confused by what was going on. “But I need to subdue him somehow. So please do as I ask and throw some holy water in his face. It’s really all right. He’s already dead. So you won’t be hurting him.”

“No,” Meena said, shaking her head. “I mean, I really can’t do that. That’s Stefan Dominic, the new star of
Insatiable
. I knew I’d seen him before somewhere. It was that picture Yalena showed me on her cell phone.
He’s Gerald
.”

“Great,” Alaric said, looking heavenward.

This was, without a doubt, the worst assignment he’d ever had.

1:00
P.M
. EST, Saturday, April 17
910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11A
New York, New York

E
mil wasn’t certain how to console his weeping wife. He had never seen Mary Lou quite this upset.

“It’s probably only for a little while, darling,” he said as she threw armfuls of designer clothing, most of it still on the hanger, into her hard-sided Louis Vuitton suitcases. Because it was the maid’s day off, there was no one to pack for her.

“I love this apartment,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to go. And I’m going to miss all the sample sales!”

“We’ll be back in no time,” Emil said.

In no way did he believe this was true. But he said it to comfort her, since she was crying so violently.

“And there’ll be lots of shopping in Tokyo,” he pointed out.

“T-Tokyo!” Mary Lou echoed miserably. “What’s there for me in Tokyo? Nothing!”

Exactly,
Emil thought to himself.
No one for you to be hosting dinner parties for or sending e-mails to
.

But he didn’t dare say any of this out loud.

“You’ll love it,” he said instead. “And I really don’t think you need to bring so many dresses. We can pick up whatever you need when we get there.” He added, a little hesitantly, since he didn’t want to upset her
further, “Do hurry, darling. I saw the vampire hunter leaving on the elevator with the Harper girl a little while ago. They’ll be back shortly, I’m sure. I don’t think we have much time.”

“
Meena!
” Mary Lou snarled the name like it was a curse word. “After all I did for her! For
her
to be the one to turn on us!”

Emil looked furtively at his watch.

“I don’t think she had much of a choice,” he said. “And you were the one who set her up with the prince. I’m not sure what you thought would happen. It’s never good to mix our kind with the humans.”

Mary Lou had been trying to close her suitcase lid. It wouldn’t shut. Emil wasn’t sure if it was this fact or his remark that caused his wife to lose what was left of her patience and scream, “
I
was human when you met me! Remember? Are you saying
we
don’t mix?”

“Not at all, darling,” Emil said. He reached out, flipped back the suitcase lid, and began tucking in all the loose sleeves and fur cuffs that had been sticking out. “I’m just saying, pleased as the prince is with Miss Harper—and he seems to like her very much—it stands to reason that with all the attention the dead girls have been getting in the media, the Palatine would come sniffing around. And of course, that means they’d figure out where
we
are. And now…well.”

Mary Lou, sniffling, slumped down onto the bed next to the suitcase, her normally perfect blond hair limp. Her eye makeup was smeared as well.

“If he’s going to kill us, why doesn’t he just come already, then?” she demanded. “I’d rather be staked than have to leave Manhattan!”

Emil thought this was a particularly dramatic sentiment but didn’t say anything, since his wife was already so overwrought with emotion. He himself was feeling somewhat at loose ends from his very early morning encounter with the prince, who’d appeared unexpectedly on his terrace, then come strolling into his living room from the balcony doors.

“My lord!” Emil had cried. “Is everything all right?”

“No,” Lucien said. His shirt had been unbuttoned to the waist, showing off his lean physique. Emil wished he’d been taken when he was in such prime condition and not, as had been the case, when he’d
been so close to middle age. “There’s a Palatine vampire hunter next door in Miss Harper’s apartment.”

Emil nearly dropped the glass of human blood he’d been drinking for breakfast.

“
What?
”

“Yes,” the prince had replied grimly. “I would suggest you and Mary Lou find alternate lodgings immediately.”

Emil hadn’t been sure he’d heard the prince correctly.

“Sire? Wouldn’t it…shouldn’t we…” Emil was babbling, but honestly, what else was a man supposed to do in the face of such a pronouncement? “I mean, shouldn’t we just…kill him?”

“I’m afraid we can’t,” Lucien said, sinking into one of Mary Lou’s favorite overstuffed living room chairs. “Meena’s psychic, you know.”

This statement had completely perplexed Emil. “What?” he’d asked again. Rather stupidly, he supposed. A century younger than the prince—fortunately for him, from what he’d heard concerning the things Lucien had gone through at the hands of his newly turned father—he’d never quite gotten used to the fact that he was related to royalty and was never certain how to act around him.

“She can tell how everyone is going to die,” Lucien explained. “Humans, anyway. And so can I, when I’ve drunk from her.”

He didn’t look very happy about it.

Suddenly, Emil understood what the prince had been doing all night.

How extraordinary. He’d never heard of a psychic before, not a real one. Not one who could give consistent predictions.

And for Lucien to be able to make predictions now too…of course it would be better if he could predict something more interesting than when a human was going to die…such as the score in sporting events.

The prince went on. “In any event, Meena’s had a vision that I’m going to kill her brother and the slayer. Obviously, we can’t have that.”

Emil heard this last part with astonishment.

The prince
didn’t
want to kill a member of the Palatine Guard who was threatening their well-being?

Emil understood that Lucien wanted to do things differently than his father had when he’d been the lord of darkness.

And it generally made good business sense, from a publicity standpoint, not to go around killing people for food—especially women and children—something Lord Dracula had seemed never to understand.

But when a papal society was intent on wiping out your entire species, it just didn’t seem like a good idea to let them.

But Emil knew better than to argue with the prince. He valued his neck too much.

“Certainly, my lord,” he said.

“But I can’t have you and Mary Lou being put into danger, either.” Lucien went on. “So you’ll both need to pack up and go. I wouldn’t suggest going to Sighi
oara. I think they’re probably onto all that by now.”

Emil listened to all of this with growing horror. They were onto Sighi
oara? He’d been living there under the very noses of the Palatine for centuries.

And now, because the prince had fallen for the girl next door—who was some kind of psychic freak—he had to abandon it forever? Instead of staying and fighting?

“All right, my lord,” was all Emil said, however.

Because that was all he ever said.

But it wasn’t what he
wanted
to say.

“And what about your brother?” he’d asked.

“What
about
my brother?” Lucien’s tone had been sharp.

Perhaps, Emil had thought, he’d gone too far.

But Dimitri, surely, would want to stay and fight.

And this was going to cause a problem.

“Well…” Emil knew he was going to have to choose his next words with care. “I just thought that you might want to warn your brother that the Palatine is in town, so that he and your nephew can make their escape, as well.”

“And I shall say something to my brother,” the prince said. “When the time is right.”

Emil thought he had seen which way the wind was blowing with
that
remark.

And that was when he decided that he had best do as the prince said and get Mary Lou out of town as soon as possible.

And not just because there was a Palatine guard staying next door, or because that Palatine guard was about to be used as a pawn in the ongoing vampire war between two brothers…

But because there was a glint in the prince’s eye that Emil had never seen there before.

And Emil had a pretty good idea what—or, more accurately, who—had put that glint there.

He would never look at Meena Harper in the same way again. If he ever saw her again, that is.

Now he turned to his wife, who was piling shoes into another suitcase, and said, “Darling. Enough. They have shoes in Tokyo.”

Mary Lou looked at him with streaming eyes. “But I’ve had some of these for over forty years! And you know they’re in style again now.”

“We’ll be back for them, darling,” he said, laying a gentle hand on her arm.

“Are you sure?” she asked with a sniffle.

Emil thought back to the steadfast expression he’d seen on the prince’s face. He didn’t know what Lucien had planned.

But he was certain the prince had a plan of some kind.

And it wasn’t going to be pretty, for anyone who happened to be around, when that plan got under way.

“I’m quite sure,” he said to his wife. “We have to go. I think there’s a battle brewing.”

“You said that already,” Mary Lou said, sniffling. “The Palatine…”

“No,” Emil said. “Between the prince and his brother.”

“Well, of course there is,” Mary Lou said bitterly. “They’ve hated each other for centuries. That’s why I thought if the prince met a nice girl, he might mellow out a little. And I thought Meena would be perfect for him, because of that thing she does.”

Emil stared at her. “What thing is that, dear?” he asked.

She couldn’t, he told himself, know. How could she?
He
hadn’t known until the prince had told him himself, that morning. And he knew everything that went on in their world. Didn’t he?

“You know.” Mary Lou waved a hand impatiently over her head.
“She predicts how people are going to die. I thought the prince might like it. It makes her different, you know, than other girls.”

“You
knew
about this?” Emil asked with a feeling of growing horror. “You
knew
Meena Harper could do this when you asked her to dinner at our home…with the
prince
?”

“Of course I did.” Mary Lou stared at him like he was an idiot. “I ride the elevator with her nearly every day. You think I don’t know what’s going on in that head of hers? Well, I’ll admit…it’s a little confusing in there. But that brother of hers, he’s an open book. I just put two and two together. I’ll admit, I was always a little tempted to take a bite myself, just to see what it would be like. But you always said not to eat where we live. But when I found out the prince was coming, I thought,
Wouldn’t it be nice if
they
got together?
A girl who can tell when everyone is going to die, and your cousin, the prince of darkness, with everything
he
can do. Together…well, talk about a power couple! And then if he turned her…well, think about the possibilities!”

“Mary Lou,” Emil said. He felt as if his entrails had turned to stone. “You haven’t told anyone, have you? About Meena and her ability. And about her and the prince getting together. Tell me you haven’t told anyone.”

“Well, no,” Mary Lou said, her eyelids fluttering. “I mean, no one who
matters.
Just Linda. And Faith. Well, and Carol, from your office. And Ashley. Oh, and Becca, of course.”

“Oh, God,” Emil said with a groan.

Then he reached for his cell phone.