Insatiable (41 page)

12:00
A.M
. EST, Sunday, April 18
St. George’s Cathedral
180 East Seventy-eighth Street
New York, New York

M
eena was never exactly sure what happened after that, because it all seemed to take place in a sort of blur, like it was underwater or in a nightmare.

Or at least, that’s how it seemed to her.

Lucien fell to his knees.

That she knew for certain, because she was standing only a foot or two away from him. She tried to catch him as he swayed, to keep him from pitching to the hard marble floor of the dais.

But Dimitri yanked her back.

She thought she heard someone say, “No,” softly.

Then realized that someone was herself.

Then something whizzed past her head. Dracul and humans began screaming. Dimitri yanked her sore arm very hard again and shouted in her ear, “Get down!”

Then he shoved her roughly to the floor of the dais.

Meena could hear someone—it sounded like Alaric—shouting something. It sounded like, “Stop, you fool! What are you doing?”

Meena knew she should feel frightened. She knew she should feel
something,
anyway.

But she felt nothing. Nothing at all. She just lay with her cheek pressed to the cool marble, staring in the direction where she’d last seen Lucien.

She could see nothing there at all now. Not even the dust he must have crumbled into.

He’s dead,
she thought in the part of her brain that was still working.
He’s dead, and I never got the chance to warn him that he was going to die…because I never got the chance to know him when he was alive in the first place. I only knew him when he was already dead.

And now he’s really, really dead.

Then she thought,
Why did I ever think that he was going to kill Alaric and Jon? He would never do something like that. He’s the sweetest, most wonderful person I’ve ever known.

And now he’s dead.

Then she thought,
I wish I were dead, too.

And then she was wrenched abruptly to her feet by Dimitri Antonescu.

And Meena realized that her wish was about to be granted.

“You’re coming with me,” Dimitri said. His face was a twisted mask of greed and hatred and something else. Something Meena had never seen before.

Evil,
she thought in that part of her brain that had taken over for the rest of her mind, which seemed to have stopped working since she’d seen Lucien die.

Why, Lucien’s brother is nothing but pure evil.

And then Dimitri scooped her up over his shoulder by the hips, as easily as if she were made of straw.

Now the world was suddenly turned upside down.

Not that Meena particularly cared.

But she found it interesting, as she dangled there like a limp doll, to observe that Father Bernard and Sister Gertrude and the rest of the people she’d known from St. Clare’s were suddenly there among the Dracul in the apse of St. George’s, fighting them with stakes and crucifixes and holy water…and, in the case of Abraham Holtzman, with a crossbow and a gleaming Star of David.

Interesting, but not much beyond that. Meena hoped no one would die.

But she knew they would. She’d tried to warn them that they would. They all would.

But none of them had listened. No one ever listened.

And now look at what was happening.

Oh, well. Everyone was going to die eventually. Even her.

It might as well be tonight.

“Meena!”

She heard someone call her name through all the smoke and chaos. She thought it might be Alaric.

She didn’t care.

Dimitri was taking her somewhere. She didn’t know where. He was probably going to bite her—and not in a pleasant way, like Lucien had—and then suck out all her blood.

Then
he’d
be the one to know when everyone was going to die.

Better him than her.

“Meena!”

Why wouldn’t Alaric leave her alone? He really
was
the most annoying person on earth.

Dimitri appeared to be taking her up the steps to the choir loft. He was probably going to rape her, too, when they got up there. Wouldn’t that just be the perfect end to a perfect day?

“Meena!”

Alaric was so irritating. He had never let her alone when she was alive, and now he wouldn’t leave her alone when she was about to die.

Reluctantly, she lifted her head. Alaric was struggling to reach them—no doubt in order to stop Dimitri, not realizing that Meena wanted this to happen; she
wanted
to die. What did she have to live for? No job. No apartment. No Lucien—but Alaric had a vampire hanging off either arm, holding him back. It actually looked a bit comical, the way the Dracul were trying to snap at Alaric’s throat.

Warding off their hissing mouths and pointed, saliva-dripping fangs, Alaric had a hand wrapped around the neck of each of them. He threw Meena a furious glance. He looked enraged with her.

“Stop being an idiot,” he roared at her. “He’s not dead.
Look
.”

Meena looked in the direction Alaric had tipped his head. The sanctuary.

And then she saw it.

It was true.

Lucien wasn’t dead. He was getting up.

Slowly. Painfully.

But he was getting up.

Meena saw more than just that in her glance, though.

She saw that the warriors from the Shrine of St. Clare were getting soundly beaten by the Dracul, who outnumbered them almost three to one. Jon may have gotten off a single lucky shot into the back of the prince of darkness, but the rest of his shots wouldn’t have hit the side of a barn if he were standing next to it. Gregory Bane was giving her brother’s face a pummeling, and seeming to enjoy it, if the movie-star grin he was wearing was any indication. Stefan Dominic had Sister Gertrude in a head-lock. And Emil Antonescu had three or four men—who were dressed, oddly, like the kind of guys Jon had used to work with at Webber and Stern—shredding his suit jacket with their fangs, while Mary Lou tried to hold them off with a wrought iron candle sconce.

Meena flung out both arms—even the sore one—against the sides of the stairwell up which Dimitri was carrying her, grabbing the stone walls.

Dimitri wasn’t expecting his formerly semicomatose victim to suddenly come to life. That was the only way Meena managed to propel herself out of his powerful grip and down from his broad shoulders, a physical maneuver that required both the element of surprise and a complete lack of fear of pain on her part…especially since it ended with her falling down the last few steps and landing on her tailbone.

Dimitri spun around, looking flabbergasted. She’d gone from completely limp to human projectile in a matter of seconds.

“Get away from me,” Meena warned him, crab-walking as fast as she could from the bottom of the steps.

But Dimitri was already thundering down the stairs after her, his eyes glowing red as twin stoplights. Meena scrambled to her feet and whirled around to make a run for it…

…only to careen directly into Alaric Wulf’s wide, solid chest. He’d managed to shake off his new vampire buddies and had come running over with his sword drawn to help her.

“You’re very popular with the Dracula boys,” Alaric remarked drily. “They all seem to want to have you for dinner.”

“Less joking,” she said. Dimitri had his dagger out, the blade gleaming in the candlelight. “More head chopping. And please don’t miss this time.”

“Isn’t this nice?” Dimitri asked Alaric as he tossed the dagger from hand to hand. “We finally get to finish what we started in Berlin. You ran off with your partner that day before we were done. It wasn’t at all sporting.”

“Yes,” Alaric said. “Well, I had more important things to do than stick around to kill you. My partner was bleeding to death, as you might recall.”

Dimitri’s grin broadened.

“I know,” he said. “He was delicious. I’m looking forward to another bite someday.”

Alaric, his face darkening, lifted his sword.

Uh-oh,
Meena thought.
This isn’t good. Should he be fighting angry?
“Alaric,” she said urgently. “Don’t—”

That’s when they all heard it: a sound like no other—certainly nothing human. But it wasn’t anything vampire, either.

It came from the apse at the front of the church, where the altar sat. It was so loud it shook the building to the foundations. So loud dust floated down from the choir loft and the low ceiling that hung over Alaric’s and Meena’s heads.

Turning slowly, Meena was afraid of what she was about to see—but knew full well what it was. Of course it was. She was in St. George’s. All her visions had been of fire. And there were crude drawings of it all over the walls.

She still couldn’t believe her eyes.

But there it was.

A dragon.

On the Upper East Side.

12:15
A.M
. EST, Sunday, April 18
St. George’s Cathedral
180 East Seventy-eighth Street
New York, New York

I
t was crouched in the apse, its huge body and enormous wingspan filling the entire space, while its serpentine head perched on a neck that was stretched nearly the height of the thirty-foot ceiling.

Its claws made obscene scratching noises on the marble floor.

Its scales were ruby red.

Smoke poured from its nostrils.

Out of one of its shoulders poked a tiny wooden stake.

Lucien,
Meena thought, feeling as if her heart had turned to ice in her chest. My God.
Lucien.

What’s happened to you? What have they done to you?

“Oh…my God,” said Dimitri, dropping the dagger he held when he saw it.

Hearing Dimitri’s voice—and then the noisy clatter of the falling knife—the dragon’s head whipped in their direction…then dipped low to peer at them where they stood beneath the choir loft.

Meena’s frozen heart gave a convulsive double beat.
Oh, God. Oh,
God. The dragon was looking at them.

A mixture of steam and what smelled like sulfur shot straight at them as the beast exhaled hot air with enough force to douse all the candles in their area.

Suddenly they were plunged into semidarkness.

But Meena could still see, thanks to the fiery glow coming from the dragon’s nostrils, which loomed closer and closer to them…and from which she could hear a strange snuffling sound.

“Whatever you do,” Alaric whispered in the dark, startling her, as he slowly reached out to lay a warm, steadying hand on the back of Meena’s neck, “don’t move.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Meena whispered back. “But what’s…happening?”

It wasn’t what she wanted to ask. What she wanted to ask was,
Where is Lucien? Can he really be in there, beneath all those scales? Is that really
him?

“I don’t know,” Alaric replied. “I’ve never seen this before. But I think he’s—”

Suddenly, the dragon’s head reared up right next to Meena. She froze, every muscle in her body tensing. She couldn’t remember ever being that paralyzed with fear in her life—not even when she’d realized Lucien was actually a vampire—as she found herself being examined by a huge, double-lidded, foot-wide eye, its many facets, each the color of a blood-red sun, casting her own terrified reflection back at her.

Calm down,
she tried to tell herself.
This is
Lucien’s
eye. It’s going to be all right.

But she wasn’t sure that was really true since she could see no hint at all of the man she had known and loved in there. What she found herself gazing at wasn’t a man at all. It was completely, entirely beast.

A giant lid slid sideways over the pupil staring at her, then opened again as the dragon peered at her—and then at Alaric, standing behind her.

Then came that huge snuffling sound again, so loud that Meena would have jumped out of her skin entirely if Alaric hadn’t been keeping such a firm grip on the back of her neck.

Did he just…
smell
me?
Meena asked herself, stunned.

Alaric squeezed the back of her neck.

She got the message. Don’t talk. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.

It was good advice.

Too bad Dimitri couldn’t seem to follow it.

He’d found the knife somehow where he’d dropped it.

And now he made a running lunge out of the darkness at the beast, going for its giant blinking eye with a scream of pure, unadulterated hate.

This, it turned out, was a mistake. A big mistake.

“…pissed,” Alaric said, finishing his thought about Lucien’s state of mind. He shoved Meena to the floor, then threw himself on top of her. “
Stay down
.”

The fire that came bellowing out of the dragon’s nose and throat in Dimitri’s direction was white-hot.

It was the searing heat of the sun. It was the brimstone-filled heat from the fiery pits of hell, and it was aimed at a single target. It went shooting over their heads and bodies.

Meena had never felt heat like that before in her life and hoped she never would again.

Meena wasn’t sure if Dimitri ever even knew what hit him. One minute he was there, and the next, there was only fire….

And then there was only thick black smoke.

Where Dimitri had been standing was a charred, smoldering spot.

“Oh, my God,” Meena heard someone saying. And then she realized it was herself. She was saying it, over and over. “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”

“Stay down.” She heard Alaric’s deep voice in her ear. “Just stay down.”

Meena caught her breath as the dragon’s head dipped toward them once more. Lucien swept his gleaming red snout just inches above them, making that snuffling sound again.

He
was
smelling them. She was certain of it.

Then the head disappeared.

Lucien was turning his attention—and his breath of fire—to the people and vampires in the rest of the church.

Alaric must have realized it, too. That’s why he sprang up from Meena and ran after Lucien’s departing head.

She knew instantly where he was going.

And why. “
No!
” she screamed.

And she tore off after him.

She lost him in the chaos that was ensuing outside of the sheltering roof of the choir loft.

Yes, there might have been a seventy-foot-long dragon breathing fire in one part of the church.

But in the rest of the building, there was still a vampire-versus-human war being waged. She saw the Dracul sinking their fangs into the necks of novices…Sister Gertrude stabbing a Dracul with a piece of pew…Jon firing his crossbow at point-blank range at a Dracul (and missing). Fran and Stan flipping friars over with a superhuman strength amazing for people Meena had never before seen lift anything heavier than a knish. Abraham Holtzman and Emil and Mary Lou Antonescu had formed some kind of bizarre partnership and seemed to be trying to kill as many Dracul as they could with whatever they could…which appeared to be not many with very little.

Meena, appalled, knew she couldn’t just stand there. She had to do something to help…even if there
was
a dragon lumbering around, incinerating people with its breath.

Scooping up a jagged chunk of crushed pew, she grabbed the hair of the nearest vampire, who happened to be trying to sink its teeth into the throat of a hapless novice…

…and was shocked to find herself face-to-face again with Shoshona.

“Oh, right,” Shoshona said, smirking at her and at the pointed chunk of wood Meena held in her fist. “Like you have the guts.”

“Oh,” Meena assured her, “I have the guts.”

There was no way she had the guts.

This was
Shoshona.
Sure, Meena had never liked her very much. She had told herself, nearly every day for a year, that today was the day she was finally going to warn her coworker that if she didn’t stop working out so much, she was going to die.

Now Meena realized that it was never the gym Shoshona had to fear.

It was Stefan Dominic, the man she’d met in it.

Still, Meena had always had every intention of saving Shoshona’s life.

So was she really going to put a stake through her heart and end it? Here, now?

No. Of course not.

“Yeah.” Shoshona smirked some more. “I knew it. By the way, I took something else from your apartment, besides this bag.”

Shoshona unzipped the top of the red Marc Jacobs bag she still wore slung across her chest and showed Meena a glimpse of something inside.

“Thanks for all the great story ideas,” she said, smirking. “Have a nice time on unemployment.”

Then she turned around to look for the novice, who’d run off, crying.

Meena stared at Shoshona’s slender back.

Her
laptop
? Shoshona had stolen her
laptop
?

Meena didn’t have backup files of
anything
she’d kept on that laptop. Not on her work computer. Not online. Not anywhere.

Meena stalked forward, grabbed the back of Shoshona’s two-hundred-dollar shirt, and spun her around to face her…

…then plunged the broken piece of pew into her chest.

Shoshona turned into a pile of dust before Meena’s eyes.

On top of the dust lay the ruby red jewel-encrusted dragon tote Lucien had given to her, tangled in Shoshona’s clothes. Meena picked it up, dusted it off, and slung it across her own chest.

The weight of her laptop inside it felt reassuring.

When Meena lifted her gaze again, it was to see the last person she’d ever expected: Leisha, carefully holding her belly and picking her way toward Meena through the smoke and rubble.

“Oh, my God,” Meena cried. “
Leish?
”

All of Meena’s worst nightmares seemed suddenly to be coming true. Her boyfriend was a vampire. She’d just killed her own boss.

And her pregnant best friend was wandering around a live battlefield with no regard for her own safety or that of her unborn child.

Meena rushed to Leisha’s side.

“What are you still doing here?” Meena demanded anxiously. “I thought Mary Lou Antonescu got you out!”

“Oh, was that who that was?” Leisha looked dazed. “Well, yeah,
she did. But then after she broke Adam out of those handcuffs and told him what was going on, he decided he wanted to stay to see the end of the play.”

Meena raised her eyebrows. “
Play
?”

“Yeah,” Leisha said. “I was kind of cool with it at first, but now I don’t know, there’s that
thing
—”

She pointed over Meena’s shoulder. Meena turned around and there, behind her, was Lucien, his dragon head weaving back and forth as if he were looking for something—or someone—his long serpent’s tongue darting in and out of his mouth. Every once in a while he opened his mouth and let out an eardrum-splitting roar.

“Now see? That just seems like overkill to me,” Leisha said.

Meena’s gaze slid back toward her friend. Leisha, she was pretty certain, had had her mind scrambled by a combination of shock and some kind of Dracul brainwashing. Her normally alert brown eyes looked glazed over.

“I realize it’s all in good fun,” Leisha complained, “but I’m pretty sure the smoke isn’t good for the baby. I’m actually not feeling so hot—”

Meena reached out and grabbed her friend by both arms.

“Leisha, this isn’t a play,” she said, urgently. “You have to get out of here. The baby is coming early. And it’s not a boy. It’s a girl. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I knew, but—”

“What?” Leisha cried, flinging both her hands away. Whatever they had done to Leisha’s memory, it hadn’t affected her concern for her unborn child. “You knew and you didn’t tell me? Meena, what’s wrong with you?
How
early?”

“Early enough that Adam should have started on that baby room a long time ago,” Meena said. Suddenly spying her brother over Leisha’s shoulder, she cried, “Jon! Jon! Get over here.”

Jon staggered over. Blood was streaming from a cut on his forehead; Gregory Bane had split it open with a fist. Jon was dirty and sweaty and looked like he was having the time of his life.

“What?” he demanded. “Oh, my God. Leisha, what are you still doing here?”

Over in the sanctuary, the dragon let out another roar.

The walls shook.

Outside the church, sirens were wailing. The NYFD and New York City police were on their way. It had only taken a vampire war and a seventy-foot dragon to get some of St. George’s neighbors to call 911.

“Oh, thank God,” Leisha said when she heard the sirens. “Someone needs to shoot that thing.”

“No!” Meena cried. Then, seeing the expressions on the faces of her brother and friend, she said, more calmly, “Jon, I think Leisha is in labor. You need to find Adam and get them both out of here.”

“
What?
” Leisha and Jon exclaimed together.

“Yes,” Meena said firmly. “Leisha, I think you’re having your baby now. Jon, you’ve got to get her and Adam into the first ambulance you see and get her away from here.
Far
away from here. Do it now, Jon. I want you to go with them. It’s all your fault they’re even here in the first place.”

“How is it
my
fault?” Jon demanded indignantly.

“Remember that note I left down at St. Clare’s?” Meena asked. “The one in which I specifically stated that anyone who followed me up here was going to die tonight?”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Oh, right. Yeah, we all saw that. But what were we supposed to do, Meen? Just let you come up here and fight these guys on your own? It looked like you were doing a real terrific job when we got here.”

“You
shot
my boyfriend,” Meena reminded him. “He was handling it fine, and then you shot him. And now look what’s happening. The police are here, and the fire department, and innocent people are going to get hurt. And by the way, I’m pretty sure it’s
you
he’s looking for.”

The dragon let out another one of its roars. It sounded much closer than the previous one. Jon jumped and seemed to realize Meena was right: Lucien
was
coming for him. Those huge, blood-red eyes seemed to be searching the apse for someone….

Jon hastily surrendered his cocked and loaded crossbow to Meena.

“Yeah,” he said guiltily. “I really am sorry about that. I was actually aiming for his brother.” He took Leisha by the arm. “Relax, Leish,” he said to her. “I’ll have you out of here in no time. I’m pretty sure I saw Adam over by the doors. He must have been looking for you.”

Leisha threw a frantic look over her shoulder at Meena as Jon led her away.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” she asked.

Meena smiled and waved at her. “I want to stay to see the end of the play,” she said. “Call me later and let me know where you are.” She held an imaginary cell phone to her face.

Leisha nodded, then looked concerned. “The baby’s really a girl? We never even talked about any girls’ names.”