Insatiable

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.