Overbite

by Meg Cabot

  “Alaric?” Meena shook her head. A knot had suddenly formed between her shoulder blades. “Why would Alaric know where your book is? Mary Lou stole it. I saw her. Everyone chased after her.”

  “Yes,” Lucien said, speaking very carefully. “Everyone did chase after Mary Lou. But only one person caught up to her and snatched her bag away before she managed to escape. The bag containing my mother’s book of hours.”

  Meena stared at Lucien in growing horror. She remembered Mary Lou’s bag. It had been shaped like a pagoda.

  “You mean . . .” She could barely speak the words.

  “Yes,” he said. “Your friend . . . Alaric.” He pronounced the word friend as if it were a curse.

  “Alaric didn’t have the bag when we were arrested,” she said, thinking back to when she’d seen him by the vans.

  “No,” Lucien said. “He did not. Emil found his wife’s bag later that night, when he returned to the museum thinking, by some miracle, it had been dropped in all the confusion. It had. It had been stuffed into a wastebasket in a men’s bathroom. The bag was empty.”

  “But,” Meena said, “that would mean Alaric had to have had the book on him. Or that he hid it at the museum somewhere—”

  “Precisely,” Lucien said. He looked so angry, his eyes were beginning to flare red. It might have been Meena’s imagination, but the trickling of the stream had also begun to sound significantly louder. “Emil has been at the museum all day, looking for it. He’s found nothing. And Mary Lou has been watching Palatine headquarters since last night. She says she saw them drag Alaric Wulf inside just after they brought you there. But so far, she’s yet to see him come out.”

  Meena looked at him, her heart flying suddenly in her throat.

  “Alaric’s still in there,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Alaric didn’t have to chew through the cuffs holding his wrists in place after all, which he’d feared he was going to have to do. He was able to undo the buckles with his teeth, although it took some time, and there was nothing at all dignified about the position in which he’d had to contort—and hold—his body to do so.

  After dropping to the floor, he had to rest for a while in order to recover. He was bone-tired, dehydrated, hungry, and most of all, furious.

  His employers were really slipping. What if they made it this easy for vampires or other demons to escape?

  After he could feel his extremities again, he explored the boiler room. There wasn’t much to find, though he did drink liberally from the faucet of the rusty-piped sink he’d discovered in one corner. Then he pondered how next to proceed.

  He had no phone, no access to a phone, and no shoes, shirt, or belt. He had no weapon and knew that the door to the boiler was not only locked but probably guarded.

  There weren’t any windows or other form of egress from the room except a small locked door he found behind the industrial, freight car–sized boiler that said NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.

  He really had no other choice but to kick this open. Otherwise, he could wait, batlike, in the rafters, for someone to come through the main door, drop upon them, and hope, using the element of surprise, to take them out, then escape.

  He was fairly certain they’d be expecting a move like this from him, though, and would be sure only to enter his holding area in large, well-armed groups.

  Really, his best option seemed to be the “No Unauthorized Entry” door. Even if it led only to an electrical room, perhaps he could find a way to call Johanna by doing some rewiring of the internal phone system.

  He kept his mind carefully blank about what he was going to do after that. As someone who had spent many years of his life in a state of uncertainty about where his next meal was coming from, Alaric had learned that it was usually better not to plan too far ahead. He would take it one step at a time.

  First, he needed to leave the boiler room.

  He kicked out the small, locked door.

  Behind it he found another room, considerably smaller than the boiler room, and much better furnished for human habitation with industrial-grade carpeting, fluorescent lighting, a cot, and even a desk with a computer on it. At the desk sat a man Alaric instantly recognized.

  “Oh,” Abraham Holtzman said, seeming unsurprised to see him. “Hello. I couldn’t get that panel open. I wondered why I hadn’t heard from you. What on earth happened to your shirt?”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Freewell was a disaster,” Holtzman explained. “David Delmonico’s wife was in the house, you know. I’ve never seen anything like it. And you know I thought I’d seen nearly every form of evil under the sun. But when she came leaping out at us from the laundry room . . .” He shuddered. “It was terrible.”

  “Abraham.” Although Alaric was happy to see that his boss and friend was alive and well, he was starting to regret having found him. His head was still throbbing, and Holtzman seemed to have a need to process what he’d been through.

  Alaric did not. He needed only to concentrate on how he was going to get them all out of the building.

  “Brianna Delmonico went for Carolina’s throat,” Holtzman said. “And she would have gotten to it, if Patrick hadn’t been in the way. Patrick Chen, the tech, did you know him?” Holtzman asked. “Very reliable. He does excellent analysis work—used to, I mean.”

  “What do you mean, used to?” Alaric asked.

  “That woman just”—Holtzman shook his head, his expression haunted by the memory—“attacked him. Blood and brain matter everywhere. Then—Alaric, I swear to you this is true—she ate it. Not just the blood. All of it.”

  Alaric stared at his boss, feeling sickened. He hadn’t known Patrick Chen.

  But he felt as if nothing could surprise him anymore.

  “Where is Carolina now?” Alaric asked. “And the others?”

  “Oh,” Holtzman said, tilting his head, “she’s next door. Santiago and Morioka are down the hall. We’ve been put on administrative probation for ineffectively analyzing critical data—can you believe that? We can communicate via e-mail—” He nodded at the computer on the desk. “But they aren’t allowing us any access to outside communications, pending their investigation into what went wrong in Freewell. Morioka thinks he can break through their firewall, but I have my doubts.”

  “Who’s they?” Alaric demanded, pressing his face to the door.

  “If you’re listening for guards, you needn’t waste your time,” Holtzman assured him. “Trust me, they haven’t even bothered to post any. They say we aren’t prisoners. And yet the doors are locked. Spring-latch bolt. Key-code entry. Impossible to bypass.” He shook his head. “Believe me, I’ve tried. They’ve changed all the pass codes—”

  “We’ve been ineffectively analyzing the data, all right,” Alaric assured him. He nodded at the computer on Holtzman’s desk. “Does that thing let you go on the Internet?”

  Holtzman looked at his computer. “No. I just told you. It’s only for interoffice communication—”

  “What about Meena Harper?” Alaric asked. “Can you contact her?”

  “Alaric,” Holtzman said. “I just explained that they’ve set them so that we can only contact one another, so we can work together on our alleged defense. It’s one of our employee—what are you doing?”

  Alaric had begun to open the desk drawers, each one of which he pulled out and tipped over onto the floor.

  “Oh, Alaric,” Holtzman said with a sigh. “Now you’re just making a mess. There’s nothing you can use there to open the door. Even the hinges are on the other side.”

  “I might notice something you overlooked,” Alaric said. “But go on. Did anyone do anything while Chen was being eaten?”

  “Of course,” Holtzman said, horrified at the suggestion that they’d sat idle while a colleague was being consumed. “Carolina got out that blade of hers—
the twelve-inch one. But before she could take a swing, the vampire just bolted. Straight through a plate-glass window. Of course, she grabbed a cashmere throw off the couch before she ran, so that offered her some protection from the daylight. And she didn’t have to go far to reach shade. The back of the house sits along the western edge of the Pine Barrens.”

  Alaric raised his eyebrows. “The Barrens? Is that where you were when you called me?”

  Holtzman nodded. “Yes. We gave chase, though we weren’t exactly equipped for traipsing through heavily forested coastal plains. As you know, there are over a hundred thousand acres of pinelands there, and the trees can become quite dense . . . and the mobile-phone reception is, quite frankly, terrible. Hardly any cell towers. We tried calling for backup multiple times, and could neither get through nor get an answer, until I reached you. That was after . . .” Holtzman’s face went a shade grayer beneath the fluorescent light. “After we found it, of course.”

  Alaric looked up from the pile of paper clips and Post-it notes he’d made on the floor. “Found what?” he asked.

  Though, judging from Holtzman’s expression, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “Its nest,” Abraham said. “It was in the darkest part of the woods I’ve ever been. A sort of swampy area. I don’t know if anyone—anyone human—had ever been there. Certainly not lately, anyway . . . not while they were alive. Brianna Delmonico led us right to it, as if she’d been guided there by some kind of homing beacon. You know I’ve always believed that there are places of great evil, just as there are places of great goodness. Well, this was one of those, Alaric. It was right beside the water. You could smell the stench of death and decay. And there it was, standing there by its nest, its wings folded, gnawing on something.”

  “There what was?” Alaric asked, feeling a chill. Although he already knew.

  “The devil,” Holtzman said simply. “He was exactly the way all those people who live around the Barrens have reported seeing him . . . bipedal, winged, horse-headed. He seemed quite surprised to see us. And disappointed that we weren’t bearing gifts.”

  “Gifts?”

  “Yes,” Holtzman said. “It appeared that usually when he was visited, it was by someone carrying food. The nest was surrounded by bones. They were piled all around his nest.”

  “Bones?” Alaric repeated. He’d heard of some strange things in his years on the job. But never anything quite like this.

  “Yes,” Holtzman said. “Human bones. I believe we found your missing tourists, Alaric.”

  Alaric stared at him in shock. “That’s how the remains are being disposed of? By giving them to the New Jersey Devil?”

  “It appears so,” Holtzman said. “Clever, if you think about it. One demon using another to cover up its crimes.”

  Diabolical was the word Alaric would have chosen, not clever. “So what did you do?” he asked.

  Holtzman blinked in surprise at the question. “Well, we hit him with everything we had, of course,” he said. “Holy water, stakes, blades. Carolina kicked him a few times in the head. Morioka had a Glock loaded with silver bullets. He shot him in the heart. That seemed to do the trick. Squawked a few times, but that was all. Then he turned to ash. Quite satisfying, as kills go.”

  “Nice,” Alaric said admiringly.

  “I thought so myself,” Holtzman said. “Surprisingly, however, Father Henrique seemed less than pleased when he arrived—”

  Alaric thought he must have spent so much time hanging by his arms that a blood clot had formed in them, traveled into his brain, and popped.

  That’s what it felt like, anyway, when Holtzman said the words Father Henrique.

  “What?” he almost shouted.

  “Yes,” Holtzman said. “I found that curious, too, at first. And I knew you would react that way when I told you about it, because, of course, I assured you that he’d been assigned here only as a pastor, not as part of our unit. That, however, apparently is not the case. He’s been given a position of unprecedented authority, from what I can gather—”

  Alaric bit back a colorful stream of curse words so that Holtzman could finish.

  “—with some new internal division I’ve never heard of,” Holtzman said. “He and his team seemed quite distressed about the cryptid. He even accused us of excessive force. Apparently they’d have preferred to take it alive. And the helicopter scared off the vampire, who of course was still—”

  “They came by helicopter?” Alaric could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  “Oh yes,” Holtzman said. “I was surprised by that, too. Quite a needless expense. It wasn’t as if we were in mortal peril. I could have understood it if we’d been under attack, but we were not. Then Father Henrique began ordering his team to begin immediate disposal of the remains, the way they did at the house in Freewell, to cover up what had happened to Patrick, poor man. There was no possible way to explain so much carnage to the local authorities. And there are frequent forest fires in the Barrens. Considering the dryness this past summer, it wouldn’t be at all surprising for one to start now, according to Father Henrique.”

  Alaric had finally heard enough.

  “Did he not take into consideration that if those bodies are the tourists who’ve gone missing over the past few weeks,” he asked, “DNA analysis needs to be done on them so they can be identified, and their families notified of their deaths? I understand that we need to keep the public ignorant of the truth of the existence of supernatural beings in order to avoid worldwide panic. But these were people’s family members, Abraham.”

  Holtzman looked tired. He sank down onto the cot. It had been neatly made, with hospital corners. Abraham Holtzman had never married. He didn’t think it would be fair to ask a partner to worry at home about him while he was out fighting demons. He’d devoted his entire life to the job.

  And now this. He appeared haggard and pale in the fluorescent lights.

  “Do you think we didn’t mention that, Alaric?” he asked. “That’s when things began to get a little . . . a little heated. We were all on edge. We’d spent nearly twelve hours in the Barrens, and lost a team member, and in a particularly gruesome manner. True, we killed the New Jersey Devil. But then Henrique shows up in this helicopter, the vampire gets away, and he announces he’s torching the entire place. That’s when Carolina . . . well, you know how she is. She had some words with Father Henrique—in their native tongue, so I’m not entirely certain what was said. Carolina believes Father Henrique might be trying to hide something from us. I don’t think the words exchanged were pleasant.”

  “I’m sure they weren’t,” Alaric muttered. He knew Carolina de Silva. She was devoted to her job at the Palatine, and a consummate professional. She’d have seen through Padre Caliente’s phoniness in a red-hot second. “What happened then?”

  Holtzman looked uncomfortable. “Father Henrique said we could settle the matter here, during debriefing. But there was no debriefing. We were escorted from the helipad to these rooms, where I received an official reprimand for failing to supervise my staff properly, and we were all put on administrative probation by Dr. Fiske. I don’t mind telling you, Alaric, I’m becoming concerned that Carolina might actually be right.”

  Alaric set his jaw, staring at the mess he’d made on the floor without really seeing it. He was relieved to have found Holtzman and the others, since he’d escaped in part to find them.

  But their turning out to be locked up with him in the headquarters of their former employer was complicating things. Obviously, Alaric now had to think of a way to get all of them out. Otherwise, like the evidence left behind in Freewell and the Pine Barrens, they were going to be eliminated, neatly and efficiently. They knew too much to be allowed to live. There was only one reason he could think of that they hadn’t been gotten rid of already . . . and that was the other person he needed to rescue, Meena Harper.

>   If anything bad were to happen to any of them, Meena would know.

  Alaric had seen the look on Mauricio’s face when the net had failed to hold Antonescu. It had been an expression of utter terror. Henrique Mauricio needed Lucien Antonescu dead—or locked up tight.

  The key to finding Lucien, though, was Meena Harper. Mauricio might try to intimidate Meena, but he wouldn’t dare do anything to risk really upsetting her . . . not yet. She was the queen bee, and Antonescu the honey. Mauricio might stir up the hive, but he wasn’t ready to smash it.

  Alaric, on the other hand, didn’t have such reservations.

  “You can communicate with Carolina and the others?” he asked his boss. Or former boss, he supposed.

  “Yes, of course,” Holtzman replied. “I already told you that.”

  Alaric smiled. “Then I want you to send them a message.”

  Holtzman looked surprised. But he got up and went to his keyboard.

  “Fine,” he said, beginning to type. “What’s the message?”

  “Tell them,” Alaric said, “heads up.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Emil joined Lucien at the table where he was sitting in the large front window of the pretentiously Euro-shabby café.

  “Everything seems secure,” Emil said.

  “Excellent,” Lucien said.

  “Nasty day it turned out to be,” Emil remarked.

  “Isn’t it?” Lucien agreed. He didn’t look the least bit unhappy about it.

  The same could not be said for all of the pedestrians streaming by from the now nearly empty San Gennaro Festival. Huddled beneath umbrellas hastily purchased from street vendors or delis, they were heading home, wet and thoroughly dispirited. The forecast had called for sunny skies, with only a 10 percent chance of precipitation.

  Overhead, thunder rumbled ominously.

  The forecast had clearly been wrong.