by Meg Cabot
“I do,” he said, still looking perplexed . . . and also slightly amused, judging by the slightly upturned corners of his mouth.
“If it lights up,” Meena informed him, “it means a UV ray is being shot wherever the person aims. And if the target happens to be a vampire, that means you’re going to be in pain. A lot of it. I know, because I used it on Brianna. And she didn’t like it. It burned a hole in her, as a matter of fact. That’s how I was able to find her down here. I just followed the smell of burning vampire.”
“Actually,” Lucien said, his smile turning wry, “I think she found you. I’m not going to argue with you, however, since you’re holding a gun on me. Do you really hate me that much, Meena, that you’d burn a hole through me?”
“I’m . . . concerned about you,” she said. “You tried to kidnap me. You’ve basically shown that you can’t be trusted. There’s no telling what you’ll try to do next. You aren’t the person you were when I fell in love with you. You . . . you’ve changed.”
He spread his hands wide, giving a very convincing imitation of an innocent man. “I still love you. In that way, I haven’t changed. I’ll admit that last night I might have exercised poor judgment. And the night before that, I obviously wasn’t myself either. For that, I humbly beg your pardon. But I’m much better now, Meena. You’ve helped make that possible.”
She eyed him doubtfully. “How did I do that? You don’t listen to a word I say.”
“I feel strong,” he said, his dark eyes glowing in the firelight from the sconces along the wall. “Stronger than I’ve ever been in my life. I was depending on the Mannette to make the transformation for me, but I didn’t realize it couldn’t do that while there was still such a vital part of me missing. That part was you, Meena. Once you came back into my life, everything fell into place.”
Meena stared at him, confused. “What transformation? What is the Mannette?”
“The Mannette is another name for the Minetta Stream,” Lucien explained, nodding toward the water she could see trickling past the carpets on the ground. “The original inhabitants of this island thought it to be very powerful, but later settlers forced it underground . . . in a manner not dissimilar to the way our kind has always been forced into hiding—”
“I know what the Minetta Stream is,” Meena said. She recalled having read something about it as part of the research she’d done on New York City’s underground tunnels. “But what do you mean, our kind? Your kind likes to eat my kind.”
“Meena.” He reached up as if he were going to stroke her hair, but saw that she still had the SuperStaker trained on him and lowered his hand. “I meant those who are different. You know perfectly well that if you had been born in another century, you’d have been burned at the stake, or pressed under rocks until you suffocated, or drowned, for your ability to predict the future.”
“Being a psychic,” Meena said, “is not the same as being an immortal who can only survive on human blood.” She glanced around the cave and gave a shiver. “You can put all the fancy furniture in here that you want, Lucien, but this place is never going to seem very homey. I can’t believe you’ve been living here.”
“It’s near you,” Lucien said, with another one of his heart-melting smiles. “And it’s a sacred place.” The smile faded. “Which makes it all the more insulting that you continue to point that thing at me. I could have done anything I wanted to you while you were unconscious, including turning you into one of my kind. But I did not. So why can’t you trust me?”
Meena only narrowed her eyes in disbelief at this.
“You couldn’t have turned me into one of your kind,” she said. “To be turned into a vampire, a person has to be bitten three times, then drink a vampire’s blood. You couldn’t force me to drink your blood while I was unconscious. So you don’t get points for that. And anyway,” Meena added, “I have some things I need you to do for me. And since you aren’t going to like doing them, I will probably have to shoot you a couple of times to motivate you.”
“There’s nothing in the world that would make me happier than doing something for you,” Lucien said.
“Fine,” she said, shrugging. “Find Alaric Wulf.”
He raised his eyebrows, surprised . . . but he didn’t look angry.
Since this was hardly the reaction she’d been expecting, she said, “Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said I want you to—”
“Oh no,” he said. “I heard you. And I quite understand. You want me to find Alaric Wulf.”
“He isn’t answering his cell phone,” she said. “Which means something has to be wrong. He always picks up. They told me they sent him back to Rome, but you and I both know he’d never have allowed that to happen. I was on my way to his place to look for him when Brianna attacked me. I’m hoping he’ll be there, but—”
“Oh,” Lucien said knowingly. “He isn’t.”
Meena felt a chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the temperature of the cave.
“What do you mean, he isn’t?” she asked. “How would you know? Did you go there?”
“I didn’t have to,” Lucien said. “I know he isn’t there. I’m looking for him, too.”
Meena almost squeezed the trigger on the SuperStaker in surprise. This was why, she now realized, people shouldn’t own guns—or at least, people like her. Because of their tendency accidentally to shoot them. She removed her finger from the trigger.
“Why?” she asked. “That net with the holy water wasn’t his idea, Lucien. Nor was the opening last night. He had nothing to do with that. And he’d never have tried to lure you out into the open by turning my friends into vampires and setting them loose into society. So why on earth are you looking for Alaric?”
“Because I believe he has something of mine,” Lucien said, his voice dropping to the same cool temperature as the cave. “Something I want very badly. So despite what you may think of my opinion of him, I actually hold his safety in the very highest regard. And so I’ve been searching for him all day. That’s why I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. Mary Lou and Emil are searching for him as well. Therefore you really needn’t continue to hold that gun on me, Meena. I’m more than prepared to join forces with you to find him. In fact, I already have.”
Meena shook her head. She felt so confused, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t due to the blow she’d received to her skull. “But . . . what could Alaric possibly have of yours?”
“That’s not actually important right now,” Lucien said. He reached up and laid a hand on the barrel of the SuperStaker. “Though I’d like to point out something that is.”
“What?” she asked.
“That you’re currently attempting to use force to get me to do something,” he said, in his deep, hypnotically soothing voice. “Which is exactly what I believe you strongly objected to my doing to you last night.”
She blinked. He was right. She wasn’t treating him any differently than he’d treated her the night before. She was actually treating him worse, because he’d done what he had out of desperation, loneliness, and, she presumed—because he kept insisting it was true—love.
She was acting out of . . . well, she wasn’t even sure anymore.
“Oh, Lucien,” she said, her shoulders sagging. “I’m so sorry.”
“You should be,” he said, and plucked the SuperStaker lightly out of her hands. She watched as he set it on the far side of the couch, out of her reach, unless she wanted to crawl across him to get it.
“You are many things, Meena,” he went on, “but a hardened criminal isn’t one of them. If there’s something you’d like me to do for you, I’d suggest a different form of persuasion.”
Then, before she knew what was happening, he’d wrapped his arms around her.
She would have liked to think it was her very recent head injury that caused her to do nothing to fight off this e
mbrace. After all, she probably had a concussion. Without an X-ray or CAT scan, she’d never know for sure.
The truth was, the feeling of his hard chest as it pressed up against her, the reassuring strength of his arms as they tightened around her, even the scent of him . . . all of these brought familiar and welcome sensations. For a dizzying second or two, it was as if no time had gone by, and things were back to the way they should be, the way they’d been before . . . before all the damage had been done, none of the lies had been told, none of the terrible things had happened . . .
But that, of course, wasn’t reality.
Reality was that people were dead. A lot of people.
Reality was the pain Lucien had put her—and her friends and family—through.
Reality was her realization that, just as his lips were about to touch hers, the smell of something burning was filling the air.
Chapter Thirty-two
Lucien pulled away with a blistering curse, then looked down at the triangle of skin framed by the open collar of his white shirt. Emblazoned on his flesh, like a brand, was the image of the cross Alaric had given her, and which still hung at her throat.
Meena gasped . . . but not as loudly as Lucien did.
“I thought I told you to take that damned thing off,” he said furiously.
“It’s saved my life,” she murmured, still staring at his singed skin. It had saved her life several times, actually.
“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” he said. “You know I would never hurt you. Take it off.”
“I don’t want to,” she said. “And previous experience indicates otherwise.”
He threw her a stinging look. The burn on his chest was already starting to heal before her eyes.
The injury she’d just inflicted to his heart would not be as easily soothed.
“That’s not fair,” he said. “I want only what’s best for you . . . to protect you. No one else seems to. You saw what happened today when I wasn’t there—”
Her voice cracked in disbelief. “Lucien, I don’t think you heard me before. My brother’s in the hospital. I don’t know where my boss or Alaric is. And I got fired. All because of you. And while you’ve been making yourself a snug little . . . whatever this is down here . . . vampires have apparently been running around the streets of Manhattan eating their victims whole—blood, skin, bones, and all—”
“That’s impossible,” Lucien said shortly. “Vampires don’t eat flesh. Only zombies and werewolves do that.”
“No, Lucien,” she said, “it’s not impossible. Because I saw it for myself. Brianna, the vampire you killed? She took a chunk out of my brother, and that was after snacking on some poor tourist she’d caught and dragged behind a Dumpster.” She swung her legs from the couch. “And this new guy at the Palatine, Father Henrique Mauricio, the one who tried to catch you last night, told me about this species of vampires from South America . . . the Lamir. They’re supposed to be descended from some kind of fishing bat that eats the flesh of its prey.”
“The Lamir,” Lucien muttered darkly, staring at the small stream that ran through the middle of his living room. “I know of them.”
“You know of them?” Again Meena’s voice cracked. “Lucien, you’re supposed to be the prince of darkness, the son of Satan. Aren’t you supposed to be a little more in tune with this stuff?”
“I am aware,” Lucien said, in a cold voice, still staring down at the stream, “that in the past I haven’t always shown the full commitment to my position that I should have. And for that, I have been made to suffer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Although she didn’t feel a hundred percent steady on them yet, Meena managed to climb to her feet and walk to Lucien’s side. Up close, she noticed, the Minetta Stream had a stale odor, like something that had been bottled up for too long. She took a hasty step away from the murky brown water that was about to touch the tip of one of her sneakers. “How have you suffered? How have you not shown the full commitment that you ought to have?”
He swung his dark gaze upon her. “How do you think, Meena?” he asked, his tone bitterly sardonic. “How do you think I have suffered? Open your eyes. You ask why I would choose to live here? I didn’t choose to . . . I must, if I hope to regain enough strength not to be destroyed by my enemies in my next battle with them. And how have I not shown my commitment? What kind of vampire bids his minions not to kill? What kind of dark prince does not know—or even care—the names of those who serve him . . . much less falls in love with a mortal who is convinced she was put on this earth to save it from the likes of him?”
“Lucien,” Meena said anxiously, taking another step away from him . . . and the murky brown stream. She wished she could have moved toward him, to comfort him in some way. The raw anger in his voice—and the foul smell from the water—seemed to be warning her to keep her distance, however.
“You didn’t know,” Lucien said. He stared down into the brackish water, which—it was not Meena’s imagination—had begun to rise. Just a fraction of an inch, but unmistakably. And it was definitely burbling with more vitality. “How could you? But that’s who the prince of darkness is, Meena. That was the pact my father made . . . to become, in exchange for his soul, Lucifer’s son on earth. And when the Palatine killed my father, that title was passed on to me. It’s true I’ve had my struggles accepting it—especially after I met you.”
He turned his head so that the full heat of his dark-eyed gaze fell upon her. Meena wanted to take another step backward, but she forced herself to stay where she was.
“But now I’ve begun to realize that I’ve had the solution to my problems all along,” he said. The anger left his tone, and he even managed a smile . . . although not a very convincing one. “And that was simply to accept my fate, not fight it. Isn’t that what they say on all of those television talk shows? Embrace what you are, and others will embrace you as well? Find what it is that you do well, then do it, and the rest will fall into place?”
Meena shook her head. She didn’t like this. Any of it. It smelled about as badly as the stream.
“Lucien,” she said. “No, that’s not what they mean. Not when it comes to being good at doing evil. Does this have anything to do with why you wanted your mother’s book so badly?”
Lucien glanced at her sharply. “What has my mother’s book to do with any of this?” he asked, sounding stunned.
“Because Father Henrique says possessing your mother’s book of hours will make you all-powerful.”
Meena wasn’t sure, considering everything Lucien had just been saying, that this was information she ought to be revealing to him.
On the other hand, her feelings about the book she’d seen in her dream were the opposite of Father Henrique’s. She was sure that there was nothing terrible in it, and that the reason she’d been having the dream was that someone—or something—wanted to make sure she showed the book to Lucien. She desperately wanted to see what Lucien himself thought . . . and she wanted to see the book itself so she could confirm her beliefs.
“He says it isn’t an ordinary devotional,” Meena went on, “and your getting control of it will mean the end of the world.”
Lucien looked surprised. “Who said this?”
“Father Henrique,” she said. “The priest who tried to capture you with the net, and then had me fired. It didn’t make any sense to me either. Because if something like that existed, the Vatican would never be stupid enough to let it out of Rome. Not if they knew what it was.”
Lucien’s dark eyebrows furrowed. “Of course not,” he said. But his gaze suddenly looked far away. “You’re perfectly correct.”
Meena began to feel as if she’d only made matters worse. What was it about that book that was making everyone—except her—so nervous?
“So,” she said, “it’s not true, then, about your mother’s book? He was just m
aking it up to get me to tell him where you were?”
“Of course,” Lucien said, glancing back toward her with another one of those smiles that didn’t reach his eyes. “There’s nothing like that inside it. How could there be? When my father had that book made for my mother, he was in love. He was happy. He was looking forward to what he thought was going to be many years of domestic bliss. He had no idea of what awaited him . . . or my mother . . . or me.”
His gaze drifted away from her. Meena followed it and saw that he was looking at the stream again. She remembered having read that Minetta Lane was named for a stream that used to run through the center of Fifth Avenue, all the way down Spring Street. It had been covered up because of its tendency to flood local homes, sometimes even killing people. Once it had supposedly provided water for the fountain that had been turned off in the courtyard of St. Bernadette’s School, because of a terrible accident nearly a century earlier. Apparently this brown trickle was all that was left of the stream.
It seemed strange to her that Lucien was so drawn to it. Something about that bothered her. Mannette. She was certain she’d heard—or read—that word before.
“Maybe,” she said, trying to stick to the matter at hand, “we should just check the book. Because it’s possible that after your mother’s death, your father did something to it . . . altered it in some way, with an occult element. And that some members of the clergy—like Father Henrique—know about it, and others don’t. And that’s how it ended up in the show. The Catholic Church, I’m figuring out, is a bureaucracy like any other company.” And unjustly fired people, like any other company, she thought but didn’t add. “For every employee to be involved in every detail is sheer impossibility . . . So, where is it?”
Lucien appeared startled by the question. “Where is what?”
“Your mother’s book,” she said patiently. Although she wasn’t feeling very patient anymore. More like frightened. The constant trickling sound of the water was making her want to scream.
“That,” Lucien said, “is exactly what I’d like to know. And why I’d like to find your friend Alaric Wulf.”