Insatiable

Chapter Thirty

9:30 A.M. EST, Friday, April 16

Peninsula Hotel

New York, New York

Alaric swam a hundred laps every morning, freestyle, before breakfast. He might switch to the backstroke if there was anyone of the attractive female variety lounging at the side of the pool.

But with the Peninsula hosting a national conference for designers and salespeople of dental implants, that was most decidedly not the case.

Alaric was on his one hundred and eighty-eighth lap (the pool at the Peninsula was smaller than Alaric was used to, so he’d had to increase his number of laps) when a hand erupted through the crystal-blue water and seized his head.

Alaric’s usual lightning-fast reaction would have sent the person who’d accosted him plummeting over his shoulder and into the pool if he hadn’t looked up at the last minute and realized it was his boss.

“Goddamnit, Wulf!” Holtzman thundered as he strode away, looking for a towel with which to dry his now-soaking-wet arm and shoulder. “Did you have to try to drown me? I was only trying to get your attention. We’ve got a crisis here, in case you’re too busy enjoying your luxury accommodations to notice.”

Panting, Alaric clung to the side of the pool. He tried not to show his delight at the fact that he’d managed to ruin his boss’s incredibly ugly suit jacket.

“What crisis?” he asked. His voice echoed satisfyingly in the glass-enclosed pool atrium.

“Shhh,” Holtzman said. He’d gotten a towel from one of the pool attendants and was rubbing vigorously at himself. “Not so loud. Someone will hear you.”

Alaric shrugged. There were two or three conference attendees around, but they were hardly a threat to Palatine Guard business.

“None of them speaks German,” Alaric said in German. “They’re American dentists.”

“Nevertheless,” Holtzman said. He came to the side of the pool where Alaric waited for him. “There’s been another dead girl found in a park this morning.”

Alaric perked up. “Meena Harper?”

“No, it wasn’t Meena Harper,” Holtzman said. “How could Meena Harper have been found dead? She was with the prince last night, and the prince is here to stop the murders, not commit them.”

Alaric, disappointed, shrugged. Not that he would have liked to have seen Meena Harper dead, of course. She was their only lead to finding the prince, and she was, if he remembered rightly, quite pretty, in her way.

But her death would have connected his case to the prince.

And then the head office might have let him go after the prince, after all.

“They haven’t identified the dead girl yet,” Holtzman said. He had knelt down by the side of the pool, careful to avoid any wet spots on the deck, and was speaking out of the side of his mouth. As if anyone in the pool area might not already realize that Holtzman and Alaric knew one another. “Just like all the others.”

“Then it might be Meena Harper after all,” Alaric said, thinking a little regretfully of Meena Harper’s shapely legs and dark hair.

“It isn’t her,” Holtzman said angrily. “I saw a picture of her. The dead girl has long hair. Meena Harper had short hair. Would you stop with this obsession with Meena Harper?”

“I’m not obsessed with her,” Alaric said. “It’s just that if we’re going to catch the prince-”

“We’re not going to do anything,” Holtzman said. “I’m going to catch him. You’re going after this killer. I want you to get dressed and go look at passport photos of recent émigrés fitting this girl’s general age and description to see if you can get a match. They think because of her dental work that she might be of Eastern European descent, too, like the others.”

“Right,” Alaric said. Waste of time, he thought. “But if I were you, what I would do this morning is go pay a visit to Meena Harper.”

“Oh, you would, would you?”

“Well, what do you think she and Lucien Antonescu did last night? They didn’t go back to her place. She knows where the bat is roosting. Find out where that is, and we’ll have him.”

“I have a better idea,” Holtzman said. “I thought I would just pay a visit to Emil and Mary Lou Antonescu.”

Alaric splashed an enormous wave of water on his boss.

“Stop that!” Holtzman cried, leaping back. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Some of the dental implant salesmen, lounging on nearby chaises, laughed.

“Say one word to the Antonescus, and you’ll have the entire Dracul population of Manhattan on our heads,” Alaric declared. He was angry now, really angry. First Holtzman had ruined his swim. And now he was making even more sweeping bureaucratic decisions that were going to make his job more difficult.

“I don’t know how the prince didn’t see us last night,” Alaric said, “but evidently he didn’t. I know that because the two of us are still alive, and the Antonescus haven’t moved out of 910 Park Avenue. You know how I know that, Holtzman? Because I’m still breathing and I called the building this morning pretending to be the cable repairman asking about a connection in their apartment. And they’re still there.”

Holtzman stared down at Alaric, his brown-eyed gaze troubled.

“I knew I should have put you on psychological leave,” he said. “You aren’t fit for duty. You-”

“I’m the best you’ve got, Holtzman,” Alaric said, hauling himself out of the pool. He reached for the towel his boss had dropped. “I’ll bring your killer in. But more important, I’ll bring the prince in, too. Just let me do my job without telling me how, for once. No manuals. No rules. Just dead vampires.”

His boss stared at him. Alaric was not unaware that Holtzman’s gaze had gone to his lean, well-muscled torso.

And why wouldn’t it? Alaric took good care of himself, working out regularly with weights besides swimming laps. He cut quite an intimidating figure. Even the dental implant salesmen couldn’t help looking.

Then he noticed Holtzman’s gaze seemed particularly riveted to a rather ugly, raised scar just beneath Alaric’s rib cage, where one of the vamps in Berlin had managed to worry open a section of his flesh-using just its razor-sharp fangs-while Alaric had been trying to pry Martin from the jaws of some of its brethren.

Alaric sighed. He knew why Holtzman was staring.

The Vatican doctors had advised plastic surgery.

But Alaric had refused. He didn’t like hospitals, let alone unnecessary medical procedures.

Holtzman, Alaric supposed, was assuming Alaric had refused to rid himself of the scar for the same reason he’d refused counseling after the Berlin incident.

But the scar served an important purpose: it reminded him every time he saw it just how very much he hated the undead.

And how important it was that he rid the world of them all.

“If you want to find a vampire,” Alaric said, ignoring Holtzman’s stare and the fact that the older man was obviously trying to think of something to say about the scar, “you ask his latest meal. In the prince’s case, that’s Meena Harper, 910 Park Avenue, apartment 11B.”

This seemed to distract Holtzman from the scar. “Quite right,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to her apartment this evening, pretending I’m a-”

“Abraham,” Alaric said, interrupting him. “The bit with the inheritance check from the long-lost relative isn’t going to work. She isn’t going to believe you. Who’d leave an inheritance check for a prince? The guy is richer than Midas.”

“Oh.” Holtzman looked crestfallen. “Right. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“That’s why I’m going to her apartment tonight,” Alaric said. “And I’m going to do the interview my way.”

“I don’t think that’s at all wise,” Holtzman said. “In fact, I forbid you to go. I will not allow it.”

Surprised, Alaric stared at him. “Why not?”

“Because you’re only going to do that thing where you go bursting in with your sword drawn. You know we’ve had quite a few complaints about that, Alaric. People really don’t seem to like it.”

“She just spent the night with the prince of darkness,” Alaric said indignantly. “You really think I’m so scary in comparison?”

Alaric found it disappointing that Holtzman only glanced at his scar again and said nothing. His scar wasn’t so scary. What was really scary, in Alaric’s opinion, was Holtzman’s suit.