Insatiable

Chapter Twelve

6:30 P.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13

West Fourth Street

Chattanooga, TN

Alaric Wulf wasn’t surprised to find that Sarah, like most women-and men-in love with a vampire, was initially resistant to the idea of giving up the address of her lover.

“Just tell me where he is, and I’ll let you live.”

Sarah had hedged for a while. Like most victims, she didn’t care anymore about her own life. Her brain was too nutrient deprived. She cared only about protecting her sire.

Until Alaric finally put his sword to her throat.

The Palatine Guard was listed in most encyclopedias and search engines as a now-defunct military unit of the Vatican, formed to defend Rome against attack from foreign invaders.

This was partly true: the Palatine Guard was a military unit of the Vatican.

But it was hardly defunct. And the invaders it had been formed to defend against weren’t foreign.

They were demon.

And the Guards weren’t defending just Rome from them, but the entire world.

Members of the Guard had different methods for getting victims of these demons, who were often besotted by their attackers, to talk. Abraham Holtzman-currently the Guard’s most senior officer, who’d trained both Alaric and Martin-had always preferred deception. He’d flash a fake card from a fancy (fictitious) legal firm, explaining that he’d been hired by the vampire’s estranged family to deliver a large inheritance check.

Often the victim was so flustered by delighted surprise that she didn’t notice Holtzman had never even mentioned the vamp’s name.

That was because he didn’t know it.

But that was Holtzman. Alaric had always suspected that Holtzman could get away with this because he was so scholarly looking. His Jewish parents had been appalled when he’d gone to work for the Vatican, though Holtzman hadn’t converted. (Conversion was not a job requirement. It was difficult enough to find anyone able to keep his head while swinging a sword at a screaming succubus, let alone someone who was also a devoted Catholic. Palatine Guard members were of a wide mix of religions…even, like Alaric, complete nonbelievers.)

It helped Holtzman’s ruse, Alaric supposed, that he looked like a lawyer.

Still, there was nothing wrong with looking like a muscle-bound demon-hunter…especially if that was what one was. Alaric didn’t have degrees in anything, except chopping the heads off vampires and returning their victims to full humanity once more.

So Alaric didn’t waste time on ruses the way Holtzman did. Especially not when it came to Sarah. He got straight to the point…by applying Señor Sticky to her throat.

When she finally stammered, “Felix…Felix lives in a loft over an antiques store on West Fourth…but please…,” he grabbed her by the back of the neck and stuffed her into the passenger seat of his rental car. He didn’t need her texting her undead lover any warnings so Felix could call his vamp friends and set up a trap.

It wasn’t the most uplifting drive over to Felix’s place. Especially because Sarah sobbed most of the way and whispered, “Please, please…don’t hurt him. You don’t understand…he doesn’t want to be the way he is. He hates what he is. He hates that he has to…hurt me.”

“Yes?” Alaric glanced at her. He’d turned the car radio to the heavy metal station. He didn’t particularly like heavy metal, but he needed something loud enough to drown out the sound of her sniffling. “So why do you let him do it, then?”

“Because,” Sarah said, sniffling, “he’ll die if I don’t.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Alaric said. “He can’t die unless someone stabs him with a wooden stake through the heart or cuts off his head. Or, alternatively, if someone shoves him into some direct sunlight or completely immerses his body in holy water. But then,” he added, throwing a glance her way, “you must know all this.”

“None of that’s true,” Sarah said. “He told me all those things were myths. Also about how vampires can live on animal blood. He said if they do that, they’ll die. That’s why he has to drink my blood. To stay alive.”

Alaric rolled his eyes. “Do you realize girls like you have been falling for that one for centuries? Vamps just don’t like animal blood. It weakens them. And they don’t look as nice after they’ve been drinking it for a while. And if they’re anything, vamps are vain. Human blood’s like filet mignon to them. So if he told you he’ll die if you don’t let him drink your blood, he’s a damned liar, in addition to being a putrid stinking woman-abusing soulless abomination.”

Sarah seemed to find his language objectionable, since this statement only made her weep harder.

Alaric felt a little bad about this. Holtzman was always telling him that he needed to work on his people skills more.

Accordingly, Alaric passed her a tissue from the little packet the rental car agency had left in the car.

“You’re mean,” Sarah said, blowing her nose into the tissue. “Felix isn’t a soulless abomination. He’s sensitive. He has feelings. He reads me poetry. Shakespeare.”

Alaric wanted to pull the car over so he could throw up, but they didn’t have time. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could go back to the hotel; order some room service; have a nice, relaxing bath (in the world’s tiniest tub, which had those grainy strips attached to the bottom, so guests wouldn’t slip in the shower-this was Alaric’s number one pet peeve about less-than-five-star hotels; he was a grown man, he knew how to stand without falling in the tub); and go to bed.

Then, tomorrow morning, he’d fly to New York, check into the Peninsula, find the prince, and kill him.

This made him quite happy to think about.

“This,” Alaric explained to Sarah in what he thought was a kindly voice, “isn’t love you’re feeling. Only dopamine. Because Felix isn’t like anyone else you know. Being a creature of the night, he’s new and exciting and activates a neurotransmitter in your brain that releases feelings of euphoria when you’re around him…especially because you know you can never actually be together, and he seems complicated, and perhaps even sensitive and vulnerable at times. But I can assure you: he’s anything but.”

“How dare you?” Sarah demanded hotly. “It isn’t dopa…whatever! It’s love! Love!”

Alaric wanted to argue. Vampires were incapable of love-human love-because they didn’t have hearts. Well, technically, he supposed they possessed hearts, since that’s what he had to stab a stake into in order to kill them. But their hearts didn’t pump blood or beat.

So how could they feel love, much less return it?

But arguing with a teenager over the semantics of vampire love didn’t seem like a winning proposition to him.

“Oh, come on, then,” Alaric couldn’t help saying finally, noticing that his passenger continued to sob quietly to herself. “It’s not all bad.”

“How?” Sarah demanded, flashing an aggravated look at him. “How is this not all bad? You’re going to try to kill my boyfriend!”

“True,” Alaric said. They were nearly to the address she’d given him. “But look at it this way. He promised to turn you into a vampire, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, sounding a bit surprised. “He said he was going to turn me, just as soon as he got his strength up. Then I’ll be beautiful, like him. And immortal.”

“Right,” Alaric said a little sarcastically. He knew this Felix had no intention whatsoever of turning her. Doing so would deprive him of his primary food source.

What Alaric was sure the vampire would do instead was string her along for a few more months; then, when she grew too sickly from anemia to be of any more use to him, he’d move on to some healthier host. He’d probably tell her it was him, not her…that he needed time to “think about things.” Then he’d disappear.

Then, after her broken heart-and even more broken body-had healed, Felix would probably find his way back to Sarah-and to Chattanooga-and start the cycle all over again. Unless Sarah found the strength to put her foot down and tell him no, she would not be abused in this way.

But that wouldn’t happen. The vamps were just too alluring. And their victims just never seemed to think they deserved better than the treatment they were given. It was almost as if they were afraid to put their foot down, because they thought they’d never get anything better…

But that was what Alaric was for. He would be Sarah’s foot, since she didn’t have the strength, or willpower, to put her own down. He’d make sure she got something better and stop the cycle from continuing. Permanently.

Alaric found a parking space…except that it was beside a fire hydrant.

It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t be there that long.

“Supposing he did turn you into one of his kind,” he said, switching off the engine and turning to look at her, “then me, or one of my fellow officers, would only have to kill you eventually, because that’s what we do. We’re demon killers. And trust me, you really wouldn’t want any of us on your tail. We’d be your worst nightmare. It’s much better this way. This way, you’ll stay a human, and maybe you can go to college and get a degree and a fun job doing something you like. Or maybe you can find some nice guy back at the Walmart you can go out with, even marry. And, assuming you want them, you two can have a few babies, and grow old and watch them have babies, and be grandparents someday. Wouldn’t you like that? You could never have babies with Felix.”

“Vampires can have babies,” Sarah informed him. “I read it in a book.”

“Yes,” Alaric said, feeling annoyed. “Well, in books, the vampires struggle nobly against themselves not to bite you, because they love you so much. But that didn’t exactly happen, did it? So the books aren’t really very accurate, are they?”

Sarah glared at him.

“I hate you,” she said.

Alaric nodded. “I know,” he said. He reached across her and opened the car door. “Get out.”

She looked at him blankly. “What?”

“Go on,” he said. “I know you’re dying to run ahead and give lover boy the heads-up. I’m going to let you. Tell him I’ll let him go, on one condition.”

Her entire demeanor changed. Suddenly, she was all that was accommodating and pleasant.

“What condition?” she asked eagerly.

“Tell him that if he tells me where I can find the prince, I’ll let you both go. Then you can run off and have vampire babies together.”

Alaric couldn’t say the last part without laughing, though he did try, remembering that he was supposed to be working on his people skills.

Sarah evidently didn’t notice. “Oh, thank you!” Sarah was smiling as she scrambled from the car. “Thank you so much!”

“Not a problem,” Alaric said. He watched as she ran across the sidewalk and up to an unobtrusive-looking door beside the display window of an antiques shop inside an industrial-looking building. He gathered his things as she pressed an intercom. Then he calmly strode to the alley, where, as he’d suspected, there was a fire escape. He leapt for the rusted metal ladder as he heard Felix’s voice asking through the intercom, “Who is it?”

Then the buzzer went off, letting Sarah inside the building.

It only took Alaric a moment or two to climb to the roof of the building, and less than that to secure a grappling hook to the side of the building, then fasten the end of the rope to his belt.

A few seconds later, Alaric jumped from the roof, crashing through Felix’s plate-glass living room windows…

…just as the vampire was putting on a black cloak to shield himself from the sun, preparing to make a run for it. Sarah screamed as UV-protection glass went flying everywhere.

The vampire, desperate to get out of the sun’s rays, which could be fatal to him, threw himself at the front door.

“Now, Felix,” Alaric said calmly. “You can’t go that way, either.”

A second later, Felix was shrieking. This was because Alaric had hurled a glass vial filled with holy water at the door. It burst over the knob, singeing the vampire’s fingers as he reached for it. He drew his hand away, hissing with pain and cradling his smoking fingers.

“I thought you said you’d let him go if he told!” Sarah shouted with outrage.

“And I will,” Alaric said, smiling at her. He turned toward Felix. “So,” he said. “Where can I find your prince?”

Felix, who looked like a handsome boy of eighteen or twenty-and appeared from his taste in wall posters to have a fondness for the band Belle and Sebastian-curled back his lips to reveal a set of extremely strong white teeth. His incisors were unnaturally long and, true to his species, not unpointy.

“I’ll never tell, demon hunter,” he growled.

Then he threw back his head and let out a hiss, his long tongue darting in and out of his mouth like a lizard’s tail.

Sarah looked shocked. She’d apparently never heard her boyfriend use that tone of voice before. Or seen his eyes glow red.

“Felix,” she cried. “Just tell him! He said he’d let you go if you told.”

When Felix swung his glowing red eyes and twisting tongue toward her, she staggered back a step. “Why did you bring him here, you stupid whore?” Felix demanded.

Horrified, Sarah started crying all over again.

Alaric took her tears as his cue that it would be all right with her if he performed his duty. So he stepped forward, swinging Señor Sticky free of its scabbard.

It was over in a matter of seconds. To his credit, the vampire put up a good fight.

But cornered by sunlight on one side and holy water on the other, he had nowhere to go. There was no escape.

Alaric didn’t give him a chance for any last words. In his experience, vampires didn’t really have anything that interesting or insightful to say. It was all Shakespeare and emo.

When he was done, he looked at the girl. She was curled up in a ball over by the broken window, weeping softly to herself.

But-and Alaric knew he wasn’t imagining it-her hair had already begun to recover its luster, and there was color in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before.

She’d be fine in a few days, if her parents fed her enough protein.

He sheathed his sword.

“Get up now,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. He was so bad at this part. Martin was the one who always knew the right thing to say. “I will drive you home to your mother.”

She uncurled a little and looked at him coldly. “You said you wouldn’t kill him if he told,” she said. Her voice sounded stronger than before, and her eyes had a shine to them that had nothing to do with tears. She was, he knew, her own person again and no longer a pawn to a vampire sire. His killing Felix had released her.

“And he didn’t tell,” Alaric pointed out.

“You didn’t give him a chance!” she cried.

But she was getting up, carefully avoiding looking in the direction where the body was.

Except that there was no body. Only clothes lay where Felix had been. He had to have been over a hundred years old. His bones were dust.

“He would never have told,” Alaric said. “If he had told, the prince, or his minions, would have killed him, and far less gently than I did. He chose to die by my sword because he knew it would be quicker.” He looked down at her. “They’d have killed you, too, you know, if they’d have found you here with him. They’d have fed on you until there was nothing left.”

Sarah blinked. “You mean…he died to protect me? Oh…that’s so sweet!”

Alaric wanted to show her the photographs he always carried of what some of her now former boyfriend’s friends had done to Martin. How they’d bitten and peeled strips of his flesh off, just for fun. Vampires were incapable of sweetness.

But Holtzman, he knew, wouldn’t approve of this.

Besides, his job there was done. She was free now.

And that meant it was time for him to go back to the hotel and pack for New York, to go after a vampire who might really prove a challenge to his sword arm, unlike her silly boyfriend.

So he only said, “Let’s take you home now.”

And that’s exactly what he did.