by Meg Cabot
Then he extracted from an inside coat pocket a dagger with a gold, elaborately jeweled hilt. This he pressed to Meena’s throat. She swallowed, her heart hammering.
But all Dimitri did next was look over at Gregory Bane and Shoshona, then nod.
“You can kill the woman now,” he said to them.
“What?” Meena twisted around just as Dimitri, still pressing the blade in the direction of her neck, seized her by the arm and began dragging her toward the altar. “No!”
But it was too late. The Dracul surged forward, falling hungrily upon the spot where Meena had last seen Leisha, even as Alaric leapt toward them, intent on saving her friend.
Except that Leisha wasn’t there anymore. Meena blinked, thinking her eyes must be playing tricks on her in all the candlelight.
But it was true. The hungry Dracul-Fran, Stan, Shoshona, all of them-were staring at an empty spot where Leisha had been. Meena, twisting in Dimitri’s grip on the dais by the altar, caught sight of a flash of movement on the far side of the church.
That’s how she saw that Leisha was already in the back of the church, being rushed out the doors and into the waiting arms of her husband, Adam, by none other than…
Mary Lou Antonescu?
Meena would have thought that she’d imagined the whole thing in some kind of post-traumatic-stress-induced hallucination if Dimitri hadn’t pointed the dagger after Mary Lou and screamed, “Traitor!”
The Dracul whipped around, almost as one, and launched themselves toward Mary Lou, as if intent on ripping her apart, as they’d been about to do to Leisha.
That’s when a gust of wind rose up from nowhere and tore through the church. It was so strong that it blew out every single candle flame, causing everyone to throw an arm up over his or her eyes in order keep out all the dust it raised from the construction.
Then the wind turned and whipped back through the church again, this time in the opposite direction.
Now each and every candle wick magically reignited, the flames burning merrily again.
After the final breath of wind died down, and Meena had cautiously lowered the arm Dimitri wasn’t grasping, shaken by what had just occurred, she-and everyone else in St. George’s-saw that there was someone else standing on the dais beside Dimitri Antonescu. Someone who hadn’t been there before that freakish wind had whipped so savagely throughout the church, dousing and then reigniting all those candles.
It was Dimitri’s brother, Lucien.
The prince of darkness.
Chapter Fifty-six
11:00 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17
St. George’s Cathedral
180 East Seventy-eighth Street
New York, New York
Lucien didn’t even glance in Meena’s direction. Instead, all his powers of concentration appeared to be focused on his brother.
“Dimitri,” he said. His voice, as always, was like velvet. “I understand you wanted to see me about something?”
Dimitri still had hold of Meena’s arm. It was her sore arm, the wrist he’d nearly broken. Or maybe he had broken it. Meena didn’t know.
He still held the knife, as well.
“Why, yes, Lucien,” he said. His own voice purred like a kitten’s. “What a pleasure it is to see you tonight. And what an entrance. But then, you always did know how to make those, didn’t you?”
“Let go of her,” Lucien said. Now the velvet was more like ice.
“But Miss Harper and I were only just getting acquainted,” Dimitri said, casually running the point of the jeweled dagger down her bare neck. “And I want to be able to read everyone’s minds and tell the future, too. I don’t think it’s fair that you’re getting to have all the fun.”
“I think you’ve been having quite enough fun,” Lucien said coldly. “I went to Concubine earlier today, and I saw what you were keeping in the basement.”
Dimitri looked surprised. He was holding Meena close enough to him that she felt him go still. Everyone in the church-the Dracul, even Alaric, at the bottom of the dais-seemed to be watching the brothers’ tense conversation intently.
“Did you?” Dimitri asked. Then he smiled so that his fangs showed again. “So you happened to stumble across part of my latest financial enterprise-”
“TransCarta,” shouted a male voice from somewhere near the back of the church.
Meena, recognizing that voice, froze.
No. Oh, no.
Every head in the building swiveled to follow the sound of that voice.
Which was how everyone managed to get such a good look at Meena’s brother, Jon, standing in the entrance of the church, flanked by Sister Gertrude and Abraham Holtzman, who was holding a stake to Stefan Dominic’s chest. Behind them stood every friar, nun, and novice from the Shrine of St. Clare.
Meena raised her gaze to the ceiling. As if things hadn’t been going badly enough. Just how awful was this night going to get?
“Oh, hello,” Abraham called out cheerfully, waving to them. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Do go on. As long as no one makes a move to attack us, I’ll let this fellow here live.”
“Let him kill me, Father,” Stefan Dominic cried, struggling in the guard’s arms. “Please! I’d rather die than dishonor you in this way!”
Neither Dimitri nor Lucien looked particularly impressed by this impassioned speech. But it was at least clear that Stefan’s theatrical ambitions hadn’t been misdirected.
“Stefan!” Shoshona looked upset. She flung a panicky look up at Lucien and Dimitri. “Please don’t let them kill him, my lords. You can’t!”
But Dimitri hadn’t taken his gaze off Lucien, who went on. “Yes. TransCarta is the bank where all the dead men I found in your basement used to work.”
“TransCarta bought the network that owns the show I work for,” Meena said with a gasp of surprise.
Although she ought, she realized belatedly, to have said used to work for.
“It’s actually the Swiss private equity firm that Dimitri Antonescu formed last year,” Jon said.
“Trans for Transylvania, obviously,” Alaric said thoughtfully. “I don’t know what Carta is for.”
Lucien looked at his half brother with a raised eyebrow. “That would be Carta Abbey, I presume,” he said. “Where you tried to kill me…what was it? The third time?”
Dimitri shrugged. “I thought it had a nice ring to it. A private equity firm allows one to conduct business without the usual scrutiny by the federal government or the prying eyes of other entities.” He gave Alaric a knowing wink.
“Because they aren’t publicly traded on the stock exchange or subject to any other requisite filings or disclosures,” Alaric said through gritted teeth. He looked as if he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of this before.
“Absolutely.” Dimitri grinned. “They’re a fine way for an individual like myself who might value his privacy to expand his, er, brand…through, say, a television network.”
Lucien frowned. “Dimitri,” he said in a warning tone, “we don’t have a brand.”
“Actually, members of both the financial and the entertainment community,” Dimitri said, “are quite impressed by the Dracula name and eager to experience immortality, it turns out. And consumers…well, their fear of death is what drives the beauty industry. By the year 2013 they’re set to spend at least forty billion dollars on cosmetic surgery services alone. Well, who wouldn’t want to live forever, if they could? You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Miss Harper, in your line of work?”
Meena felt as if a cold shadow had passed over her soul.
Revenant Wrinkle Cream.
Of course. Revenant meant animated corpse.
“It’s you,” she cried in disgust, trying to break away from Dimitri’s grip. “You’re the one behind the new products they want us to feature on Insatiable.”
“Of course,” he said with a smile, easily defeating her attempts to free herself from him. “But you needn’t look that way, my dear. We�
�re no different from your former sponsor, really. We too only want to help your viewers find products that help improve their lives.”
“Like the Regenerative Spa for Youthful Awakening?” Meena demanded.
“I’ve visited one of those,” Lucien said in a voice as cold as January. “In the basement of Concubine.”
“Nonsense,” Dimitri said. “That was merely a prototype. You were never supposed to see it in that state, Lucien. We have plans to upgrade and expand our spas worldwide-”
“No,” Lucien said, cutting him off. “Because this ends. Now.”
Dimitri shrugged. “This may not be how you envisioned the family enterprise, Lucien, but I can assure you I’ve seen the financials, and the potential for growth is astrono-”
“There is no family enterprise,” Lucien said, taking a step toward Dimitri. “And I believe the potential for growth of your enterprise is going to significantly decrease if you keep feeding defenseless girls to your newborns. Although they may enjoy the idea of looking young forever, one thing you seem never to have learned about humans over the years, Dimitri, is that they tend to dislike murder.”
Meena, looking from the face of one brother to the other, was too stunned to keep up with the conversation.
Not because she was standing in a deconsecrated church with a dagger at her throat, in front of a ravenous horde of vampires.
But because she’d realized that Dimitri was right:
She did know all about wanting to live forever.
Not only had she spent over half her life protecting everyone she’d ever met from an untimely death, but it was what she wrote about: the insatiable thirst for life (and love) of Victoria Worthington Stone and her daughter Tabby.
But were Victoria and Tabby really so insatiable? All they’d ever wanted was someone to love and care for them.
Wasn’t that very human need exactly what corporations like Dimitri’s were taking advantage of when they hinted that women would never find that special someone unless they purchased their products in order to look a certain way? They preyed upon human insecurity the way the Dracul preyed on human life.
Suddenly, Meena realized just how twisted Lucien’s brother really was. And who the truly insatiable ones had been all along. “If you’re so eager to expand the Dracul brand but still so frightened of the Palatine that you’d go to all the trouble to form a Swiss company just so they couldn’t seize your funds, why not at least hide the dead girls’ bodies, Dimitri?” Lucien was asking in wonder, shaking his head. “That’s what I can’t understand. Exposing the bodies meant exposing everything.”
Bait.
That’s what Alaric had meant.
“Because he wanted to lure you here, Lucien,” Meena said. It was all so clear to her now. “He was never worried about the Palatine. The dead girls were just to bring you to New York, so he could get you here and do this.”
The coronation was just the final phase in Dimitri’s master plan to turn all of America-and soon the world-into a vampire smorgasbord. The only thing standing in his way was…
Lucien’s glance shifted away from his brother and toward her.
And when their gazes met, Meena felt something like an explosive charge go off inside her head.
She could see in his eyes how much he loved her.
And how hard it was for him not to kill his brother then and there, with his bare hands, for what Dimitri had done to her.
But he couldn’t.
Not while Dimitri stood so close to her, with one arm still wrapped around her, a dagger at her neck, his fangs within such easy snapping distance.
Meena nodded. She understood. It was all right. The important thing was that she had to keep Dimitri and the Dracul from doing what they were there to do:
Kill the one impediment to their master plan. Lucien.
It was right then that a stake went whizzing from a crossbow somewhere near the doors of the church and plunged directly into the center of Lucien’s back.
“Yes!” Meena heard her brother scream. “Did you see that? I got him!”
Chapter Fifty-seven
12:00 A.M. EST, Sunday, April 18
St. George’s Cathedral
180 East Seventy-eighth Street
New York, New York
Meena 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 w
hen 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.