Insatiable

Chapter Forty-one

1:00 A.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B

New York, New York

Meena lay in the dark of her bedroom, blinking up at the ceiling, Jack Bauer resting his head on her shoulder.

She was trying hard not to think about anything, because every time she remembered what was actually going on-why, for instance, she could hear the faint sounds of two men talking in her living room, along with The Fast and the Furious DVD Jon was playing-she wanted to start crying.

The muffled sounds from the other room seemed harmless enough: two grown men enjoying a film about cars and guns. They’d somehow managed to scrape together the Chinese food that hadn’t spilled out of its cartons and were enjoying it, so she could smell that, too, the mingled odors of moo shu and fried dumplings. Just a typical Friday night at her place, while outside a thunderstorm was brewing. She could hear the wind stirring in the treetops below and the far-off rumble of thunder, and see the occasional flash of lightning against her wall through the slits in the shades over her window and the gauze curtains that covered the panes in the French doors to her balcony.

But she knew perfectly well what was really going on. Alaric Wulf was guarding her front door to keep her from sneaking out to go see Lucien. He was doing it for the same reason he’d smashed all her phones. (She hoped he hadn’t thought of e-mail. If he smashed her laptop, she’d find a way to sue. She didn’t care if his boss was the Pope.)

But Alaric needn’t have worried about her trying to sneak out. She wasn’t particularly anxious to have a confrontation with Lucien. She’d even taken a weapon into bed with her: a single wooden knitting needle left over from a brief and ill-fated attempt at crafting she and Leisha had once embarked upon.

She held the knitting needle tight in one hand while with the other, she absently stroked Jack Bauer’s head, watching the shadows dance against her ceiling, as the occasional slice of moonlight shone through the clouds.

What exactly she planned on doing with the knitting needle, she wasn’t sure.

But stabbing it through the heart of any man who came into her bedroom-human or vampire-seemed to be a good plan. Meena wasn’t feeling too warmly toward any members of the opposite sex at that moment.

She still hadn’t exactly come to terms with everything that she had discovered during the course of the evening. She wasn’t sure she’d ever really be able to understand-much less believe-it all.

All she knew for sure was that, after everything she’d seen and all she’d been through that night, she was feeling quite tired, and she wanted to rest.

But-even after changing into her softest white nightgown-the minute she’d lain down and pulled her comforter up to her chin, sleep became impossible. She felt wide awake, and not because of the thunder or the muted noises she could hear coming from the living room.

All she could think about was the fact that the man of her dreams-the guy she’d thought was so perfect…the guy whom, if she were really being totally honest with herself, she’d been idly considering moving to Romania for-was a vampire.

A vampire! Those creatures of fiction that she despised so much!

Only not. Because real-life vampires were nothing like the vampires of fiction. Real-life vampires did things-way more horrible things than vampires on film, the images of which Meena was convinced would forever be burned into the backs of her retinas-to people that no script-writer could ever in a million years have imagined.

Not only that, but Lucien was the supreme ruler of the vampires.

And he was the son of Vlad the Impaler. Of Dracula.

After locking herself into her bedroom, Meena dug out her old, battered copy of the novel-which she’d bought during her death-obsessed goth stage in high school-and made the mistake of trying to read it again.

Then it all came flooding back to her. Not just the gory details about the creatures against whom Alaric Wulf had pledged to fight, but Mina! There was actually a character in the book named Mina! This was a character who, Meena remembered right away, fell in love with Dracula and actually drank some of his blood…then had, like so many women in horror novels and films, to be rescued.

And all right, in the book the name was spelled differently than hers.

But still.

How did these kinds of things keep happening to her? Like it wasn’t bad enough she had to know how everyone she met was going to die and then feel morally obligated to warn them about it.

Then she had to go and fall in love with-and get bitten by-the son of the most despised character in all of gothic literature? Who turned out actually to be real?

When she got through all this (and she would, indeed, get through all this-she had to; what other choice did she have?), she was going to write a book.

Of course she was. Someone had to get the word out there. It was the only way to save other women from what she was going through now.

Women Are from Venus, Vampires Are from Hell.

Meena lay there thinking about her book, watching as the shadows on her ceiling danced. She was so deeply engrossed in what she was going to say when Oprah asked why Meena had let Lucien do the things he had done to her, she didn’t even notice when Jack Bauer lifted his head and, his gaze on the French doors, tilted his ears forward.

The Palatine, Meena was certain, would try to stop her from going on Oprah. Alaric Wulf had been adamant that word of the existence of vampires could not get out to the public.

But why, when they caused so much pain and heartache?

And those were just the ones who weren’t murdering young girls.

And all right, she had pretty much given Lucien her full consent to do what he’d done. And she’d certainly enjoyed it.

But that didn’t make it all right-

Beside her, Jack Bauer’s body started to vibrate. He was growling, his foxlike face pointed toward the French doors. Meena looked at him, then glanced at the doors. She thought she saw something black flutter past the curtained windows.

A pigeon, more than likely. Or a plastic bag, tossed around by the growing storm.

“What is it, little man?” Meena whispered. “A bird? Are you going to go kill that bird?”

Jack Bauer rose onto his four paws, and standing in the middle of the bed with the fur on his back fully extended, he growled more loudly. All his attention was focused on the French doors, his small body quivering like a wire.

Meena felt her own skin prickle at his reaction to whatever he sensed outside her balcony doors.

This was no bird.

Who-or, more accurately, what-was out there?

“Okay, boy,” Meena said quietly, swinging her legs from the bed. She clutched the knitting needle tightly in one hand. “Stay.”

She should, she knew, go and get Alaric Wulf. This was what he was there for. To protect her.

Except that he wasn’t. He was there to try to wrest from her the address of her lover.

So that he could kill him.

And, in turn, be killed by him. Along with Jon.

Meena couldn’t let that happen, any more than she could let Lucien be killed, whatever he might be, whatever he might have done to her…however much he might have lied.

Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled a second or two later, sounding much closer now than it had before. The storm had crossed the river. It would be upon them in a few minutes.

She couldn’t run for Alaric. If she did, he’d die at Lucien’s hands, and Jon would quickly follow…if she wasn’t losing her mind and Lucien was, in fact, beyond those glass doors. Not, of course, that that was even possible, because she lived eleven stories up and there wasn’t a fire escape he could have climbed (she refused to think about bats, or the way Count Dracula, in Bram Stoker’s book, had been able to climb buildings like a lizard).

Raising the knitting needle shoulder-high in her fist, she moved cautiously toward the French doors, the gauzy white curtains obscuring her view of what was on the balcony. Behind her, Jack Bauer jumped off the bed and followed along, still growling, even though Meena hissed, “Jack! Bad dog! Stay!”

Jack, as usual, paid absolutely no attention to her whatsoever.

Laying a hand on the door handle, Meena took a deep breath and pulled.

A sudden gust of wind helped push the door toward her, and Jack, excited, ran out onto the balcony. Meena, her heart in her throat, whispered, “Jack! No!” and tore out onto the terrace to stop him before he got hurt.

Except that there was no one-nothing-there.

Meena, shivering, stood in the rising wind. Above her head, the sky was a wildly patterned mosaic of dark clouds, behind which lightning continued to flash every few seconds. She could barely see the moon anymore. Thunder sounded, so loudly she seemed to feel it reverberating inside her chest.

Maybe that’s why she didn’t hear her name at first. The voice calling it was as wild and as deep as the thunder.

But then she noticed that Jack was growling again, his head turned in the direction of the Antonescus’ terrace, his nose poking through the wrought iron rails as he bared his teeth.

And when Meena turned, she saw it.