by Meg Cabot
“Which,” Alaric had pointed out, “is why we are employed, and will continue to be so for many years to come.”
This always provoked a great deal of laughter from his fellow guards.
But then Meena would come in with some quote from Saint Thomas like, “ ‘Fire could not exist without the corruption of what it consumes; the lion must slay the ass in order to live. And if there were no wrongdoing, there would be no sphere for patience and justice.’ True,” she’d go on, “without evil we’d be out of a job. But maybe our job is to provide better fireproofing and protection for the asses, rather than kill all the lions.”
None of this made Alaric feel any better about this book Meena had requested from the Vatican Secret Archives, which she swore—if it was the book from her dream, and what were the chances of that?—was going to prove her theory correct. The still-healing scars that he and many of his fellow guards bore from their battle last spring with Lucien Antonescu and his clan was all the proof Alaric needed of just how wrong she was . . .
. . . as was the feeling he and so many of them had in their guts since the fire that had ripped through and destroyed St. George’s Cathedral, the site of that battle.
It was a belief every guard—but especially one who had put in as many years as Alaric had on the force—shared, honed from sheer experience:
True evil did indeed exist, and it was out there, waiting.
Like the quiet just before a storm, they could feel it. It had the hairs on the back of all their necks standing up. Maybe they couldn’t see the clouds rolling in, and maybe they couldn’t hear the thunder . . .
But that didn’t mean there wasn’t something on its way.
Maybe that something wasn’t Lucien Antonescu. Meena swore up and down that he hadn’t been in contact with her in months.
And there was no reason not to believe her. While they’d had plenty of reports of other paranormal phenomena—succubi, werewolves, and more ghosts than he could count—there’d been no reports from anywhere in the tristate area of attacks by members of Antonescu’s clan, the Dracul. In fact, there’d been no reports of any attacks at all that could be attributed to vampires.
This was frustrating, because the entire reason the Manhattan unit had been created was to root out and destroy the prince of darkness. If they killed him, it was theorized, the demonic beings over which he ruled would be weakened. Demoralized and disorganized without their leader, they’d be that much easier to slay.
Alaric wasn’t certain how much credence he put into this theory. But he did know Antonescu had to be close by. Because what kind of man—even a half man, half beast like that bloodsucking son of all that was evil, Antonescu—would simply fade into the night with a girl like Meena around? Every time Alaric glanced at her, he felt an almost magnetic pull in her direction.
And he hadn’t risked half a millennium of anonymity to be with her, the way Antonescu had.
It didn’t make sense to believe that the vampire would give up now, even if she’d rejected him. He was only biding his time, Alaric knew. Biding it a little too well, unfortunately.
Because everything between Alaric and Meena had gone wrong as well. Not as spectacularly wrong as it had between her and the vampire because, well, for one thing, he wasn’t a vampire. And for another, he and Meena had never actually gone out.
But he’d at least considered them friends. Now he wasn’t sure they were even that anymore.
It seemed to have started not long after he’d been released from the hospital for the wound he’d sustained protecting her from what undoubtedly would have been certain death at St. George’s Cathedral, when he’d asked Meena if she’d like to have dinner with him.
When she’d looked up at him with those big dark eyes and asked, “Where would you like to eat?” he’d replied, “Well, my apartment, of course. I’ll cook for you.” His culinary skills were excellent.
And why should they go to a stuck-up Manhattan restaurant where some customer was bound to do something to annoy him—such as talk too loudly on a cell phone, Alaric’s number one pet peeve—causing him to have to get into a fight, when he could make something just as good in his own apartment, where no one would annoy him?
She’d instantly looked wary. He had no idea why.
“Do you really think that’s such a good idea?” she’d asked.
“Why would that be a problem?” he’d inquired, genuinely confused.
“Maybe we should just keep it professional,” she’d said, giving him what he supposed she considered a “professional” pat on the shoulder.
That had been weeks and weeks ago, and she was still treating him like he had the plague and leprosy combined. He couldn’t understand it. What had he done that was so wrong? He’d asked Carolina de Silva, a fellow guard with whom Meena had become friendly, and she’d only smiled and told him he should have gone for the restaurant after all.
This information only made him more confused.
Now she wouldn’t shut up about her damned dream.
Why did he get “Maybe we should just keep it professional” when that soulless creature of the night got to be in her dreams?
“Wulf!” Holtzman barked the name. It echoed throughout the high-ceilinged room. The new headquarters for the Manhattan unit of the Palatine Guard had, just six months earlier, been a Catholic elementary school.
A cataclysmic decline in enrollment—no one who could afford to live in such a trendy neighborhood of Manhattan had children . . . or if they did, they were certainly not choosing to send them to Catholic school—and the building’s general state of disrepair had caused the Church to shut down St. Bernadette’s, with zero protest from the community, at exactly the same time as the Palatine had put in their request for a similar-size space in New York City.
Abraham Holtzman had been pleased . . . until he’d stepped inside and seen its dismal state, and the tiny desks still littering its hallways. It had taken weeks to clear them all out. The fountain in the courtyard—of Saint Bernadette kneeling before the Virgin Mary at Lourdes—still didn’t work. Apparently, it had been dry for almost a hundred years.
“What?” Alaric blurted, startled from his private thoughts.
“I was saying,” Holtzman snapped, “since I’m aware of your previous, er, dealings with Father Henrique Mauricio from the archdiocese of São Sebastio do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, that I thought I ought to mention to you privately, before you heard it from anyone else, that the Vatican has been very impressed with him, and the way he handled himself during the outbreaks of the Lamir in the favelas, and he’s being transferred to America . . .”
Alaric sank backward into the seat closest to Holtzman’s desk. Unfortunately, it turned out to be some kind of secretarial chair dating from World War II. It squeaked in what sounded like terror and protest as Alaric’s muscular weight hit it. Apparently it was used to the significantly softer backsides of nuns.
“Tell me you’re joking.” Alaric tried to keep his tone neutral and failed.
“Honestly, Alaric, I’ve never understood what your problem is with the man. He’s had, after all, close to a hundred kills. And considering his age—he’s just a bit younger than you, barely thirty-three or -four, I believe—and profession—he’s a priest, after all, not a Vatican-trained demon hunter—that’s thoroughly impressive.”
Alaric stared at his boss. “Is it?” he asked impassively.
“Yes,” Holtzman cried. “It is! You know the Lamir are the most mysterious vampire clan in the entire world. We know very little about them because they’re relatively new, and they come from the heart of the Amazon. Really, Alaric, I know he may not be your favorite person in the world—I’ll never understand what happened between the two of you during that exorcism in Vidigal a few years back—but can’t you give Father Henrique a second chance?”
“No,” Alaric said, lean
ing precariously back in the office chair. As he did so, he casually lifted some files that were lying on top of a still-unpacked box near his boss’s desk. The files were marked Missing Persons. “I don’t think I can, actually.”
“Well,” Holtzman said drily, “you’d better try. There’s a gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow night for the opening of the new exhibit of Vatican treasures, and all the high-ups from the archdiocese are expected to attend, which means we’ll be pulling security. Since he’s been appointed the new pastor at St. George’s Cathedral, Father Henrique will be a guest of honor, so I don’t want you—”
Alaric was so startled he would have fallen out of the chair if he hadn’t dropped his feet with a crash to the wood floor in order to regain his balance. The stack of files toppled over.
“What?” he cried. “Padre Caliente? Here?”
“I’ve asked you before,” Holtzman said exasperatedly, “not to call him that. He is a man of the cloth who has taken a lifelong vow of chastity. It’s both inappropriate and disrespectful to refer to him as Padre Caliente. Which isn’t even Portuguese, by the way. I asked Carolina, who you might recall is from São Paulo. So it only shows your ignorance. And pick those up.”
“We don’t need him here,” Alaric said. “What’s he coming here for?”
“If you’d listened to a word I’d said, you’d have heard that Father Henrique hasn’t been assigned to work here, for our unit. He’s the new pastor at St. George’s, now that the reconstruction is nearing completion—”
“Right,” Alaric said sarcastically. “You honestly think I’m that stupid?” He was doing a poor job of restacking the files. “Hasn’t this city got any of its own priests? What’s wrong with the old priest from St. George’s?”
“Considering he had a massive coronary after he heard his parish was nearly burned to the ground by the prince of darkness, and died, quite a lot.” Holtzman regarded Alaric impatiently. “You were in the hospital at the time, so I suppose it’s only natural you might not have heard, but must you be so insensitive? Is it the leg that’s bothering you so much? My understanding is that you came through your physical therapy with flying colors and are as good as new. It’s the sessions with your Palatine-assigned psychiatrist that you haven’t quite completed, because you keep walking out of them—”
Alaric straightened up and glared at him. “Fiske is giving me a discharge due to my not passing my psych eval?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Alaric,” Holtzman said. “Dr. Fiske seems to be impressed with your progress . . . when you show up. You just need to show up more often.” He held out his hand for the files Alaric was holding. “One thing you might want to consider discussing with him is the hostility you feel toward Father Henrique. Have you ever considered that it might be rooted in jealousy?”
Alaric rolled his eyes, surrendering the files. “Yes, Abraham. That’s exactly it. I’m jealous of a pretentious blowhard who’s so in love with himself that it doesn’t bother him at all that one of the requirements for his job is that he’s not allowed to have sex.”
“The Church is expecting to get quite a lot of press—and some sizable donations—out of this show at the museum,” Holtzman said, ignoring Alaric’s crudeness as he neatly restacked the files. “That’s why they worked so hard to time it to coincide with the Feast of San Gennaro, which is one of the largest, longest-running, and most revered outdoor festivals in the United States. This opening tomorrow night at the Met is expected to be one of the premier social events in the city. Transferring Padre Cali—I mean, Father Henrique—here in time for it was a deliberate move on the part of our superiors—”
“I’m certain it was,” Alaric muttered. “The padre definitely isn’t camera shy.”
“You may consider him a preening prima donna,” Holtzman continued, “but I assure you, the rest of us have the utmost admiration and respect for him. And I’m going to expect you to treat him accordingly. I will no longer tolerate your complete lack of respect for proper procedure. If you have a problem with him, you’re to go through established channels. You will not mock or humiliate him. And that includes pranks and physical displays of aggression. Do you understand?”
Alaric ignored him. “Why do we have so many missing-persons files? No one’s mentioned them to me.”
“Oh.” Holtzman shrugged and set the files aside. “There’s always an uptick in missing people—especially in the Manhattan area—in the fall, I’m told.”
When Alaric continued to stare at him, Holtzman elaborated. “The fall is the beginning of the new school year and often students starting college in the city drop out and don’t tell their parents because they’re embarrassed over their poor grades or experimentation with drugs or their sexuality and whatnot. So there’s nothing nefarious behind it. Our contact with the NYPD sent the files over anyway because this year there’s a larger than usual number of reports, but I couldn’t find anything unusual, so I’m sending them back—”
Alaric leaned forward to take the stack away from his boss again, then began to shuffle through them.
“I said,” Holtzman repeated irritably, “I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.”
Alaric only grunted as he opened first one, then another file from the stack, then tossed them onto Holtzman’s desk.
“There’s nothing there, Wulf,” his supervisor said tiredly. “You know, Dr. Fiske’s quite positive about many areas of your recovery. You’re one of our finest guards—impressive number of kills, splendid record at interrogation, and all of that. But there’s one area in which the doctor says he’s yet to see any difference at all, and I must say, I’ve got to agree. Your interpersonal communication skills have always been sadly lacking.” Another file hit the top of Holtzman’s desk. “You still haven’t gotten over what happened to your partner in Berlin, even though he’s perfectly fine now—”
“Except for missing his face,” Alaric said, with a grunt. Another file hit Holtzman’s desk.
“This resentment you feel toward Father Henrique is another example,” Holtzman said. “What did the man ever do to you? Nothing. So he botched that exorcism. It was his first one. He was young. Do you know what I did at my first exorcism?”
“Ran,” Alaric said, at the same time as his boss.
“That’s exactly right,” Holtzman went on. “It’s extremely frightening to look into the face of evil for the first time.”
“Not,” Alaric said, “as frightening as looking into the face of a man who has willingly taken a vow of chastity.”
“That is a bad habit of yours,” Holtzman commented. “Expecting everyone to conform to your standards of behavior.”
Alaric stared at him. The man was clearly growing senile . . . or had he been hit over the head so many times by escaping yeti that he didn’t know what he was saying.
“I do not expect Henrique Mauricio to conform to my standards of behavior,” Alaric said. “I expect him not to do things that make me want to pound his face into a bloody pulp. Sadly, every time I meet him, he fails to live up to this expectation.”
“I understand,” Holtzman said kindly. “And given the circumstances of your upbringing, it sometimes surprises me that you don’t beat more people that you don’t like into bloody pulps. It took me quite some time to dissuade you from indulging in such behavior after I plucked you from the streets as a teenager, if you’ll recall. But there’s still a part of you that becomes quite angry when others don’t conform to your beliefs. I believe that’s why you’re so angry with Meena Harper.”
Alaric’s head came up with a snap. “I am not angry with Meena Harper.”
“That is a lie,” Holtzman said. “Why else are you so outraged about a theory she has that, for all we know, could be completely valid? Do you know what I was thinking the other day?”
“That this building still smells like vomit and school paste? Because i
t’s true.”
“If you like Meena so much, you should ask her out on a date.”
Alaric ducked his head back into the files. “I do not date. And besides, I did ask her over to dinner once. She said no, that it wouldn’t be pro—”
“What do you mean, you don’t date?” Holtzman looked annoyed. “All single people date. And of course she said no to dinner at your apartment. I wouldn’t come to dinner at your apartment if I was a woman. That’s like the spider asking the fly to step into his web. You truly are an imbe—” Another file landed on the older man’s desk. He snatched it up and said, “Would you stop? I told you, I’ve been through these. There’s nothing there. No commonality whatsoever.”
“There is,” Alaric said, laying down two more files. “All of them are from out of town.”
“What do you mean?” Holtzman looked more annoyed than ever.
“Each of the people in those files was a tourist on vacation in this city when he or she disappeared,” Alaric said. “All of those reports were filed in the missing person’s home state, though the victim actually disappeared here in Manhattan within the last few months. You said you were looking for a commonality. I found it for you.”
“I beg your pardon,” Holtzman said, his gaze dipping to all the files spread across his desk. “But are you seriously suggesting to me that there is someone out there killing tourists?”
“It looks like it,” Alaric said. He thumbed through one file. “Here’s an entire family. The O’Brians from Illinois, a family of five. Last seen by the concierge at their midtown hotel when they asked directions to M&M World. They never checked out. No one seems to have thought anything about it until Mr. O’Brian never showed back up at his job and the kids never returned to school. That’s when Grandma contacted the police in Illinois, and they, in turn, contacted the hotel, who assumed the family had simply flaked out—”