by Meg Cabot
“I think we should get you to a hospital,” she heard herself say.
Or me, she thought. For a full head CT.
“Not at all,” the man said, putting an arm around her shaking shoulders. His grip seemed to say, I’m in control. There’s no need to worry about anything. Everything is going to be all right now. In a distant part of her brain, she hoped he would never, ever let go. “I’m fine. I think we should get you home, though. You seem done in. Where did you say you lived?”
“I didn’t,” Meena said. Her mind was awhirl, she knew. But whose wouldn’t be after such an event? How could he be so calm? Bats, Meena remembered, sometimes carried rabies. “Did any of them bite you? You should go to the ER right away. They can stop rabies if they catch it early enough.”
“None of them bit me,” he said in an amused tone of voice. He had taken the leash from her and was now walking both her and Jack Bauer-though unlike Meena, Jack Bauer wasn’t in the least bit unsteady on his feet and was fighting against his lead, wearing an expression not unlike the one Kiefer Sutherland wore when terrorists kidnapped the president on his show, like he was going to attack anyone and everyone who got in front of him. “But I’ll go to the hospital and get myself checked out as soon as I’ve gotten you home safely.”
“It’s important,” Meena said as they crossed the street. She was babbling. She knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t help it. What was going on? Who was this man? How could he be uninjured? Why was Jack Bauer acting like such a maniac? “It’s important you go. Victoria Worthington Stone got rabies once from a rabid bat when she was in a plane crash in South America, and in the ensuing brain fever, she slept with her half brother…although she didn’t know he was her half brother at the time.”
What was she talking about? Victoria Worthington Stone? Oh, God. Really?
The man hesitated. “Is this a friend of yours?” he asked.
Cringing with embarrassment, Meena said, “Well, I mean, Cheryl is. She plays Victoria Worthington Stone on Insatiable. I write her dialogue. But it’s true about the bats and rabies. We may be just a soap opera, but we strive for authenticity in our plotlines…”
Or at least we used to, before Shoshona made head writer and caved to the demands of the sponsor, she just managed to stop herself from adding.
“I understand,” he said, gently leading her past the grocery store where Jon had said the chicken delivery hadn’t been made. There was a delivery truck outside the store now, though, the motor running noisily. Oh, so there’ll be chicken today, Meena thought disconnectedly. Yeah. She was losing it.
“So you’re a writer.”
“Dialogue writer.” Meena felt the need to correct him. “I’ve never written a scene like that,” meaning what had just happened outside St. George’s.
She couldn’t get it out of her head: the sound of all those wings flapping. And the smell of them-so foul, the way she’d always imagined death would smell, had she ever smelled death, which, thankfully, she hadn’t. She’d known so many people for whom death had come so near, some of whom it had even touched, because she hadn’t been able to save them…
But death had never, ever come that close to her.
And the shrieking…that sound they’d made as they’d come tearing down from the sky, and then as their bodies had thudded into his…
And those eyes. Those red eyes.
Surely she’d only imagined those.
Meena had now come as near, personally, to death-to hell on earth-as she ever wanted to.
And she didn’t understand how she’d escaped it. She didn’t understand it at all.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling to a stop in front of him and lifting her chin to look him in the face. She didn’t care about the tears anymore, or the way she must have looked and sounded. She had to know. She had to know what was going on. “But I don’t understand. How can you not be hurt? I saw them. There were hundreds of them, coming right at us. I felt them hitting your body. You should be torn apart. But there’s not a scratch on you.”
He was so handsome, so…nice. How could she ever have thought anything about him, except that he was what he was? A tall, wonderful stranger who’d saved her life?
“D-don’t get me wrong,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m eternally grateful. What you did…that was so incredible. I’ll never be able to thank you enough. But…how did you do that?”
“They were only a few little bats,” he said with a smile.
Only a few little bats.
But…no. It had been more…much more than that. She was sure of it.
As sure as she could be of anything so late at night, after something so traumatic.
“You’re home now,” he said, and nodded toward the automatic brass doors a few feet away. “I’m sorry for what happened. I’m afraid it was my fault. But you should be quite safe for the night.”
Meena’s gaze focused, and she realized that, indeed, they’d arrived at 910 Park Avenue. The familiar green awning stretched over their heads. Through the glass of the doors, she could see Pradip, still dozing at the reception desk with his face on his textbook.
“But…” She looked back up at her rescuer, confused. “I didn’t tell you where I live. I never even told you my na-”
Jack Bauer whined, tugging on his leash, anxious to get away from the man who had saved their lives.
“Of course you did. It was wonderful to meet you, Meena,” the man said, letting go of her shoulders. “But it would be better for you if you forgot all about this and went inside now.”
Jack Bauer pulled her toward the doors, which opened automatically with a quiet whooshing sound. Pradip, behind the desk, stirred and began to raise his head. Meena’s feet, as if of their own accord, began to move toward 910 Park Avenue.
But at the threshold, she turned to look back.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said to the tall stranger, who stood waiting with his hands in his coat pockets, as if to be certain she made it safely inside before he went on his way.
“It’s Lucien,” he said.
“Lucien,” she repeated, so she would remember it. Not that it was likely she’d forget anything about this night. “Well. Thank you so much, Lucien.”
“Good night, Meena,” he said.
And then Jack Bauer pulled her the rest of the way inside, and the automatic doors closed with a gentle whoosh behind her.
When she turned to see if she could catch one last glimpse of him, he was gone. She wasn’t entirely certain he had ever been there at all.
Except for the fact that, when she got safely inside her apartment again, she saw that the knees of her pajamas were dirty from where she’d scraped them diving for the sidewalk.
Proof that what had happened hadn’t been a dream-or a nightmare-after all.
Chapter Seventeen
4:45 A.M. EST, Wednesday, April 14
St. George’s Cathedral
180 East Seventy-eighth Street
New York, New York
It wasn’t to be borne. They’d attacked him, and in the open, where anyone could have seen. Someone had seen. Granted, only the human girl, and she was in too much shock from the extreme violence of what had occurred and her own near brush with death ever to give anyone a rational account of it…
…in the unlikely event she were to remember it at all, which she wouldn’t.
But that wasn’t the point.
Someone was going to have to pay.
The question was, who?
Lucien stood in front of the cathedral, staring up at the spires. He had circled back after delivering the girl safely to her home. He hadn’t missed the irony of where she lived. But that was probably only to be expected. In many ways, Manhattan was a collection of small villages, just like his home country. People rarely ventured out of their own neighborhoods, especially young women walking small, fluffy dogs at four o’clock in the morning.
St. George’s. The irony of that wasn’t lost on him
either. For hadn’t St. George slain the dragon?
And now the cathedral stood empty while undergoing renovation. What better time for the children of Dracul-or “dragon,” in his native Romanian-to desecrate it?
And what better time than now for the Dracul to convey their message to the only full-blooded son of the prince of darkness that they would no longer abide by his rule?
Sighing, Lucien climbed the steps where, just moments before, he’d fended off the attack from his own kind. They must have put out word of his arrival mere seconds after he’d set foot on American soil in order to have rallied so many to the cause of destroying him.
It was a bit disappointing to discover that he was so violently disliked among his own brethren.
On the other hand, he’d never asked to be liked. Only to be obeyed.
Glancing up and down the street to make sure he was alone-no more pretty, pajamaed dog walkers-he lifted away a section of the blue scaffolding that surrounded the cathedral, then slipped behind it. The church, badly in need of repair-and even more in need of cleaning-rose up before him, some of its ornate stained glass windows broken, even where they were covered in metal wire.
Not that this would keep him out, nor any like him.
They were all gone now, of course. How long they must have waited, knowing he would pass by eventually, going to or from Emil’s. He could only imagine the bickering. Especially among the females. The Dracul women had always been venom tongued.
With only a quick adjustment, he was inside the chained doors of the church and striding down the trash-strewn center aisle. The pews were in disorder, some knocked completely over, some lying askew like drunken sailors after a night out.
Just as he’d suspected, the Dracul had been inside the church as well. There was a primitive spray-painted outline of a dragon on what had once been an ornately decorated marble altar.
Now it was completely ruined. However much the congregation had raised for their renovation, they would need that much more to have the altar sandblasted.
Lucien shook his head. So much needless destruction. So much disregard for beauty.
Behind him, he heard something and whirled, his lightning-fast reflexes a fraction slower than usual from all the energy he’d had to exert during the encounter outside the church.
But fortunately it was only a dove, fluttering up from between the riotously disturbed pews, that interrupted Lucien’s solitude now. The Dracul had all gone, no doubt frustrated by their ineffectual attempt to assassinate him.
Relieved he would not be called again to defend himself so soon, he let his shoulders sag a little. It had taken every ounce of power he’d had left after the attack to heal himself from the wounds he’d received from the Dracul. It wouldn’t have been right to have allowed the girl to see the gouging his face and body had undergone, and so he’d taken care to repair himself even as the wounds were being inflicted. There were those humans who could take in stride the sight of a man’s face shredded by an attack of flesh-eating bats…
And then there were those who could not.
The dog walker had definitely fallen into the category of not. She had seemed like a good sort of person-or someone who strived to do the right thing, anyway. Though her thoughts, for some reason, had been as difficult to penetrate as a rain forest.
Some humans were like that. Some had minds as dry and arid as a desert, and just as easily navigated. Others had psyches more like the dog walker’s, only accessible with a machete.
It was strange that such a pretty, vivacious girl would have so much emotional baggage. He trusted, however, that whatever dark secrets she was harboring, they wouldn’t get in the way of the memory wipe he’d conducted upon on her, which would guarantee that she’d remember none of the incident and go happily about her business as if the attack had never happened.
He wished he could be as fortunate.
Lucien stood in the ruins of the cathedral, contemplating his next move. The sun would be coming up soon. He needed to go to ground, then have a few words with his half brother, Dimitri.
And of course make out a generous check to the St. George’s Cathedral Renovation Fund.
Chapter Eighteen
8:45 A.M. EST, Wednesday, April 14
The Tennessean Hotel
Chattanooga, TN
Alaric, just back from his morning swim, stared down at the message on his computer screen. It seemed entirely too good to be true.
YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED…
WHAT: A fancy dinner at our place, 910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11A
WHEN: Thursday, April 15, at 7:30 P.M.
WHY: Emil’s cousin, the prince, is in town!
“Where did you get this?” he asked Martin over his mobile phone.
“The IT department found it during their routine scanning and thought it might be something.”
The Vatican had gone high-tech some time ago and now employed an entire fleet of full-time computer programmers and analysts for the Palatine, taking their battle against the forces of evil to the cyber as well as street level.
“And what makes them think,” Alaric asked in Italian, “that this has anything to do with our prince?”
Martin sounded annoyed. And no wonder. It was nap time in Rome, at least for Martin’s daughter, Simone. And probably for Martin, too. He’d been sleeping a lot while recovering from his wounds, thanks to all the painkillers he’d been prescribed by the Vatican surgeons.
“They’re checking the passenger manifests of every incoming flight, private as well as commercial, to New York City, and there was a Lucien Antonescu, professor of ancient Romanian history, on a flight from Bucharest last night. First-class seat.”
“So?” Alaric was bored already. His kill the day before hadn’t been all that exciting-except for the part where Alaric had crashed through the window, which of course he’d enjoyed. And the breakfast buffet, which he’d checked out on his way back to the room from the pool, had been uninspiring, to say the least.
“They’ve looked into this Professor Antonescu,” Martin said. “Rumor has it he’s been teaching at this university-night classes only-for thirty years. But they got hold of a copy of his last author photo…the guy looks thirty-five, at the oldest.”
Alaric snorted. “Oh,” he said sarcastically. “His author photo. Well, that cinches it. No writer would ever use an outdated author photo.”
“He has a summer place in Sighi oara,” Martin went on. “A castle, people say.”
“Who doesn’t own a castle in Sighi oara these days?” Alaric asked. He picked up the remote from his hotel bed and began flipping through the channels. The Tennessean, which had promised to be a luxury hotel, offered only one premium cable channel, HBO, and there was nothing good on it, except, predictably, a show featuring vampires. Alaric watched the Hollywood vampires for a while, smirking at how attractive and self-restrained they were. If only people knew the real story.
“I think this one might be legitimate, Alaric,” Martin said. “The woman who sent it, her last name is Antonescu. She’s a Manhattan socialite. Her husband’s a big real estate wheeler-dealer. We’ve never had any reason to suspect them before, except that the techno geeks got a hit with the names, the word prince, and the flight today. Anyway, it can’t hurt to check out the party, is what they’re saying from above. Everyone says this guy is a royal. He’s got to be the prince from the e-mail. I mean, this woman claims her husband’s descended from the Romanian royal family, and that she’s a countess. They’ve got property in Sighi oara as well.”
“Romanian royal family.” Alaric’s finger froze as he was flipping away from the Hollywood vampires.
“Exactly,” Martin said. “That’s why Johanna sent it my way. She thought you’d want to see it.”
“Why didn’t she just forward it straight to me?” Alaric asked, confused.
“Why do you think, dumbass?” Now Martin sounded not only annoyed but amused. “It’s not your case. You’re supposed to be
finding the serial killer. Besides…”
Alaric leaned forward. “Besides what?” he asked. He hadn’t slept well. The pillows of his hotel bed hadn’t been very comfortable. He’d piled them all up against one another, and they still didn’t equal the luxuriousness of his goose-down-filled pillows from home. Alaric hadn’t even wanted to think about what he’d find if he ran a blue light over the bed’s comforter. He’d wadded it up and stashed it in the closet anyway along with what had passed for the room’s wall “art.”
“Holtzman’s ordered that you be kept on the Manhattan serial killer. Johanna says there’s a feeling you might be too personally invested in all this to be allowed to go after the prince.” Martin finished quickly. “Sorry, old bud.”
Alaric nearly choked on the swallow he’d taken from the bottle of sparkling water he’d plucked from the minibar.
“I know,” his former partner said soothingly as Alaric spurted out a few choice curses. “Look, I know how you feel. You think it’s not killing me to be out of action while all this is going down?”
“This is bureaucratic bullshit,” Alaric declared, and hurled his empty water bottle at the place on the wall where the offensively bad art had once hung. Irritatingly, the bottle didn’t even break. It was plastic.
“I know,” Martin said into his ear. “But look at it from Holtzman’s perspective. You can hardly be considered impartial anymore. And you don’t exactly follow protocol when it comes to demon hunting, do you? Nor is impulse control one of your strong suits. What did you just throw?”
“Nothing,” Alaric said, getting out of bed and going to pick up his sword. “And I resent the implication that in a one-on-one with the prince of darkness, I’d be anything but strictly professional.” He pointed his sword at the pretty vampire boy on the television screen. “I’m eminently capable of keeping my emotions in check while severing that bastard’s head from his body.”
“I know,” Martin said. “Why do you think I sent you that e-mail in the first place?”
Alaric shook his head. Damned bureaucrats. He loved his job, but one thing he could never understand was how the higher-ups couldn’t see that they only made things more difficult with their damned red tape.