Insatiable

Chapter Thirty-two

1:00 P.M. EST, Friday, April 16

15 Union Square West, Penthouse

New York, New York

This is the latest victim,” Emil said, producing a red file folder and placing it solemnly on the black-granite-topped table.

Lucien stared down at the photo.

She’d probably been pretty once…the kind of girl who would have had difficulty keeping herself from smiling when a camera was pointing in her direction.

Except…how had he known that?

But violent death had robbed her of any beauty. Now her face was a dour gray mask, dark purple shadows beneath her eyes.

And below her neck…

Lucien turned the photo over. He’d seen this kind of ravaging before.

But not in the past two centuries.

“They estimate that her time of death was around three this morning,” Emil said.

What had he been doing at three in the morning while this girl’s blood was being drained from her body?

He knew perfectly well. If he’d been doing what he’d come here to the city to do, she might have been alive right now.

“The killings are happening closer together,” Emil observed. “Whoever is behind them, he seems to be getting more desperate. Or greedy. He tried killing once and found that he liked it. He wants it all the time now. He doesn’t want to stop. Perhaps he can’t stop.”

“Perhaps,” Lucien said. He wasn’t sure what to believe anymore about these killings. “It can be addictive. Which is why it can’t be allowed. But these bite marks aren’t from a single individual.”

“It’s still going to get us all staked when the humans finally realize what’s going on,” Emil said mournfully, “and decide to eradicate us the way the Palatine wants to…the way they did your father.”

Emil shuddered, perhaps remembering how Lucien’s father had met his ignominious fate. Then he raised his suddenly guilt-ridden gaze to Lucien’s and blurted, “It’s my fault, my lord. This latest girl’s death. Mine, and mine alone. I should never have allowed my wife to invite…er…her to our home last evening.”

There was no mistaking whom Emil meant by her. The name seemed to linger in the air of the penthouse the way the scent of her humanness did…

Meena Harper. Meena Harper. Meena Harper.

Emil went on. “I realize in doing so, I was very wrong. Of course you were distracted from your duties. I would understand it if you chose to kill me, my lord, for my gross negligence.”

Lucien looked down at the smaller man, who was bowing his head, humbly waiting for his body to be lifted and hurled through one of the UV-blocked windows and into the daylight, where he would instantly fry in the sun like a potato crisp.

But Lucien could no more blame his cousin for what had happened the night before than he could explain it. He didn’t yet know why he was so convinced that the dark-eyed girl in pajamas he’d rescued that night outside St. George’s Cathedral would turn out to be the source of his spiritual and emotional redemption.

He certainly hadn’t treated her the way one would treat a redeemer. He had spent the night doing things to her that, in the light of day, he wasn’t sure she remembered…but it had to be admitted that at the time, she’d seemed to fully enjoy them.

God knew he had.

Now Meena Harper’s essence seemed to have entered his long-empty veins. They thrummed with her life force and energy, giving them a kind of electric vitality.

But that wasn’t all. He seemed to…know things.

He couldn’t explain it. It didn’t make any sense. It was almost a sort of…madness. Her madness, the exact same flickering images that he’d seen coming and going inside her head every time he’d entered it. How had he known, for instance, that the girl in the photo had difficulty keeping herself from smiling when there was a camera around?

The girl in the photo was dead. And he had never met her.

What did it mean?

He didn’t yet know.

But he knew it meant something different.

And different, after five centuries, was good.

Very, very good.

“It’s all right, Emil,” he said. He felt kindly toward his cousin. Which was ridiculous. Merely a week ago, he’d have been raging over this colossal cock-up. Was it Meena Harper who was making him feel so mellow?

Or something else?

Emil raised his head, confused.

“Then…” He looked around the room, as if expecting to see another of Lucien’s minions appear, stake in hand. “You don’t want to kill me, my lord? Or my wife?”

“I think there’s been enough death lately,” Lucien said mildly. “Why don’t we concentrate instead on finding this killer and stopping him-or them. Are you telling me that no one,” Lucien asked, getting up from the table and going to stand by the plate-glass windows, “was able to give the police any kind of description of any sort of suspect? No one at all was seen dumping the body or anywhere around it?”

Emil, looking immensely relieved to have been given a reprieve, grabbed his files, then leafed quickly through them.

“Oh, plenty,” he said. “So many possible suspects the police are still interviewing them all. Everyone thinks they saw something. Which means, of course, that no one saw anything. Because whoever did this had sense enough to wipe the memory of anyone who might have seen anything useful.”

Lucien frowned, staring out over the city. He could see the red warning lights of the airport towers across the East River in the distance.

The lights reminded him of the glow he’d seen the other night in his brother’s eyes. Dimitri had always been power hungry, forever looking for new ways to expand his business, his dominance, his control. It had nearly killed him when their father had left all his immense fortune to his eldest son…even though Lucien had been more than willing to share it.

Did Dimitri’s hunger for wealth and power extend to other things, as well? Lucien wasn’t certain he knew for sure.

Which was a sad thing for a man to have to admit about his own brother.

Lucien turned away from the window with a start. Emil had been speaking to him all this time, and he hadn’t been paying the slightest bit of attention.

“Of course,” he said. Whatever it was, Lucien was certain Emil would handle it admirably, as he did all of his endeavors on the prince’s behalf. “Emil.”

“Sire?”

“I’m going to have to cancel my previous plans for this evening.”

Emil looked uncertain. “My lord?”

Lucien ignored the pulsing in his veins-a new sensation…or at least one he hadn’t felt in half a millennium-and said, “I’d made plans to go to the symphony tonight with Ms. Harper. But in light of…this”-he indicated the file on the table-“I obviously have more pressing affairs to see to.”

“Oh,” Emil said, his eyes reflecting true disappointment. “I see. Of course. I’ll take care of it. But are you certain? Surely there’s time for pleasure as well as-”

“Later.” The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan stretched out beneath him. Somewhere down there, he knew, lurked a killer. More than one. He needed to find and stop them.

But would it be before they killed again?

“Four women have already died,” Lucien said. “I can’t afford to be so negligent again.”

But even as he said it, he knew it would be a matter of only hours before he began craving her again. He talked of the killers being addicts.

Yet who, precisely, was the true addict?