Insatiable

Chapter Forty-two

1:15 A.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B

New York, New York

Lucien.

He was there, standing on his cousin Emil’s terrace, his long black trench coat whipping around him in the wind like a cape…

What was he doing standing there, staring at her like that?

It was the middle of the night. The clouds overhead fairly throbbed with rain.

She laid a hand to her thumping heart.

“Meena.”

His voice was like liquid silk. She could almost feel it, licking her skin like the smooth white cotton of her nightgown.

He was calling to her. Calling to her the way the lightning was calling to the thunder.

What was she going to do? What was she going to say to him?

Meena moved to the terrace wall and, leaning against it, said, across the eight-foot-wide plunge that separated them, “I can’t really talk right now, Lucien.”

Her voice was shaking as much as her fingers, but she still managed to clutch her wooden knitting needle. She hoped he didn’t notice.

“Why not, Meena?” Lucien asked, the concern in his voice a caress. “Are you upset because I had to cancel our evening together? Didn’t you get my note?”

His voice curled and coiled along her heartstrings, the way his trench coat was wrapping against his legs every time the wind blew.

“I got your note,” she said. “Thank you very much for the bag. But now just isn’t a very good time.”

“Perhaps I could come over,” he said. “I tried calling earlier, but you didn’t seem to be picking up the phone.”

“I know,” Meena said, swallowing hard. If he truly was the prince of darkness, he was going to find out sometime. So she might as well tell the truth. “I couldn’t pick up my phone. There’s a Palatine Guard in my living room. He destroyed all my phones.”

Lucien grew very still. In fact, it seemed to Meena as if everything grew still. The sky above their heads froze. The lightning, the thunder, her heartbeat…even the wind died down. The clouds, which had been moving so swiftly overhead just seconds before, seemed to pile up on top of one another. The thick black storm clouds shut out the glow from the moon, concealing Lucien’s expression.

“Meena,” she heard him say.

The word-just those two syllables-told her everything she needed to know, as if the sudden meteorological display hadn’t been enough to convince her. They held a world of pathos.

And danger.

Some small part of her-the romantic in her, she supposed-had been holding out hope that Lucien would deny it. A vampire? Of course not! How ridiculous. Everyone knew there was no such thing as vampires.

But she’d heard the truth of it just now in his voice.

“I tried to tell you,” he said. His voice sounded as broken as her heart. “In the museum…”

“Go away.” She was whispering so that they wouldn’t be overheard by anyone in her living room. But it was as hard to keep the horror from her tone as it was the pain. “Go away, Lucien. And never come back.”

“Meena.” The moon was still lost behind the skidding clouds.

But now she could hear that he sounded less wounded and more impatient. Like he had any right to be impatient with her.

“I can’t believe what an idiot I was.” Meena felt as if she were choking. She was clutching the knitting needle to her chest like some kind of talisman to ward off evil. “Here I thought we had this incredible bond. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was the part where you saved my life in front of that cathedral. Except I didn’t know it was you those bats were attacking! I didn’t know you were a…a…”

She couldn’t even say the word.

“Meena,” he said. “I can explain.”

Was he serious? He could explain? “Who were they, Lucien?” she demanded. “You knew them, didn’t you?”

Lucien’s tone was rueful. “In a way…”

“And the whole time”-Meena’s voice sounded ragged, even to her own ears-“you were just reading my mind, weren’t you? That’s how you knew where I lived! And that purse!” She shook her head. “That stupid purse! I should have told him to throw it out the window instead of my phone. You have slain the dragon. God, I can’t believe I ever fell for that! Have you ever considered writing dialogue for an American soap opera, Lucien? Because I could get you a job where I work.”

“Meena,” Lucien said. Now his tone was sharp…as sharp as his teeth, she thought, which she’d never even felt sinking into her skin. “Is he still there? The guard from the Palatine?”

“Oh, what’s wrong?” She knew she probably sounded more hysterical than sarcastic. “Can’t you read my mind to find out?”

An extremely strong gust of wind that seemed to appear from nowhere suddenly swept across her terrace and would have knocked her off her feet if she hadn’t dropped the knitting needle and reached out to grab the balcony railing with one hand while shielding her eyes with the other.

For a few seconds she couldn’t see, there was so much dust and debris-some of it was the dried petals from the dead geraniums on her balcony, swirling in a sudden springtime tornado, from out of nowhere.

But she was quite sure she saw the blurry outline of a large, bat-like object hovering between her terrace and the Antonescus’, blocking out what little light still shone from the night sky and the windows of the apartments around hers. It was like the time the bats had swooped down to attack her and Jack Bauer…

Except that now she knew they hadn’t been coming after her at all. It had been Lucien they’d wanted.

And the reason they’d had no effect on him whatsoever was that he wasn’t human. Their teeth and claws couldn’t harm him because nothing could. Nothing except chopping off his head with a sword-at least according to Alaric Wulf-or stabbing a pointed piece of wood into his heart.

And she had foolishly just dropped the single piece of pointed wood she owned.

When the wind died down and Meena was able to open her eyes, she saw Lucien standing in front of her, on her own balcony, just a foot or two away from her.

Meena, her heart now feeling as if it might slam out of her chest, tilted her chin to look into his face-that incredibly sensitive, handsome face-and saw that he was wearing an expression of extreme displeasure.

For the first time, she recognized the surging of her pulse for what it really was: fear.

And not just for Jon and that Palatine Guard inside her apartment: fear for her own life.

“Frankly,” Lucien said calmly, “I’ve never been able to read your mind, Meena. Your thoughts have always been a bit…jumbled.”

Meena, her fingers shaking convulsively, tightened her grip on the balcony railing. What had she done? What was happening? What was he doing there? Was he going to kill her?

“I thought vampires c-couldn’t enter a home unless invited,” she stammered through teeth that had begun to chatter. Was it her imagination, or did his dark eyes have a flicker of red in them, deep inside the pupils?

“That used to be true,” he said. The thunder had started up again, so loud it shook the metal railing beneath her fingers. The storm over their heads was beginning to crest. “At least in the days when people cared enough about their homes to have them blessed by their priests or rabbis. These days, when no one seems to bother anymore? It’s not really such a problem for us.”

“Oh,” Meena said. “Right.” Her gaze was fixed on his, though she fumbled surreptitiously with her bare foot along the balcony floor, searching for the knitting needle she’d dropped. If she found it, would she really have the courage-and the strength-to plunge it into his heart (or the place where his heart had once been)?

Maybe she should just jump. Death had to be preferable to this.

“But when we do encounter a sacred threshold,” Lucien said, continuing in the same detached, almost conversational tone, “we can find ways around it. We can use mind control to get the less…strong-willed to invite us inside. Some of us can even turn into mist and go through a keyhole, if we don’t care to be seen by others afterwards.”

“You can turn to mist?” she asked faintly.

His red-eyed gaze focused on her. “Yes,” he said. “I can turn to mist. I can turn into a wolf, too. And you’re not going to kill me, Meena. Not with a knitting needle. You’re not going to jump, and you’re not even going to scream for that Palatine Guard to come out here, even disgusting as you find me.” Now his dark eyebrows knit. “Why is that?”

He could read her thoughts. He could.

Almost, anyway.

Suddenly the world seemed to tilt crazily in front of her.

Lucien reached out and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her body against his. The feel of his hard muscles through the thin material of her nightgown caused her swaying universe to right itself.

But only a little.

Now his voice was a soothing tether. “I can understand why you’re upset…”

“No.” She craned her neck to look up at him. She was ashamed of the tears that were swimming in her eyes, but there wasn’t anything she could do to stop them. “I don’t think you can. A few hours ago I thought you were the best thing that ever happened to me. And now I just found out I never knew you at all.” Her conscience pricked her.

“And all right, you don’t really know me at all, either…but you aren’t even human.”

The sky lit up with a single brilliant streak of lightning and then gave a heaving shudder of thunder.

Then it began to rain. Fat, stinging drops that struck her head and shoulders.

Lucien said, “Meena.” He didn’t sound detached anymore. Now his voice, like the thunder, sounded angry and desperate. “I was human…once.” He’d turned so that his body blocked Meena’s from the rain, holding her in what dubious shelter the doorway to her bedroom offered from the downpour while the world continued to pitch sicken-ingly around her. Her dog, seeing them so close together, flew into a frenzy of snarls but didn’t seem to dare approach.

“Don’t you think I long to feel those things again?” Lucien asked her.

His voice was raw. He knew what he was-and clearly hated it.

But he had come to accept it…the exact same way, Meena knew in a moment of clarity, that she had come to accept what she was.

“Do you think I like what my father made me?” he asked her desperately. “No. But do you think I had any choice? I don’t know what unholy pact he made or who it was with…demons, witches, or the devil himself. All I know is that one night I died and woke to find myself…like this. He did the same to my brother Dimitri. He told us not to worry, because now we’d live forever. Unlike my mother…her death was what drove him to seek this grotesque half life for all of us.”

Meena stared up at him in horror from the shelter of his arms as behind him, the rain streamed down in a heavy curtain and thunder rolled relentlessly. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to hear any of it.

“Of course,” Lucien said with a wry smile, “it wasn’t as simple as that. There were…urges. I tried not to give in to them. But they were so strong. Father did nothing but encourage us, bring us…gifts. Dimitri, who had always been weak willed, didn’t care about letting the fever take over and allowing his baser instincts to rule him, slaughtering innocents and becoming more monster than man. But I…I don’t know. Maybe because I had the benefit of having been born of my mother, who, as you know, was rumored to have been part angel-”

“Lucien.”

She pitied him. She did. She raised a hand…she didn’t know why. Maybe to stroke his cheek.

She knew what he was. And she hated it.

But he was suffering.

He flinched before she could touch him and looked away, toward the rain.

“I’m not saying I’m a better man than my brother,” he said. “Or that my mother was a better woman than his. And I’m not saying that I couldn’t have done more to try to stop him and my father. I could have. I should have. Eventually I…did.”

He looked back at her, and his eyes were burning coals. Meena lowered her hand as hastily as if it had been burned.

“When my father was finally destroyed, and I became prince,” he said, “I told them all the killing had to stop.”

Meena didn’t want to hear it. The photos Alaric Wulf had shown her were fresh in her mind.

But she couldn’t just stand there while he broke down in shame in front of her, either. Especially as the storm lashed at his back, pelting them with a hurricane-like downpour.

Like he’d said-he might be a vampire now.

But he’d been human once.

“Come inside,” she whispered. “You’re getting soaked.”

He looked down at her, as if startled to see he was still holding her in his arms. Then his gaze focused with a laserlike intensity that she wasn’t sure she liked at all.

Was he seeing her finally as Meena, the woman he loved…or as his next meal?

She knew it might be the worst mistake she’d ever made in her life.

But she still opened the door to her bedroom.

Lucien followed her into the darkness.

“You think I’m a monster,” he said.

She couldn’t deny it.

So she feigned hospitality.

“I have a towel here somewhere,” she said as she lifted Jack Bauer, who’d followed them, still snarling, into the room. She deposited him inside the closet, grabbing a towel from there as well. Jack Bauer looked around confusedly at all of Meena’s shoes, then yipped, just once, as she closed the door. He’d be all right, she knew, in there. Safer than she was.

More important, no one would hear him, especially over the sound of the storm outside and the movie she could still hear blaring away in the living room.

“You did something to me.” Lucien accused her in a choked voice as she handed him the towel, then helped him shed his wet coat.

“What? I did something to you? I’m not the one who did anything,” Meena whispered incredulously, sinking to face him on the bed. “All I did was make the really big mistake of falling in love with you. Which, believe me, I am putting up there with my deepest, darkest regrets, like that perm I got in the eighth grade because I didn’t listen to Leisha, and going to the senior prom with Peter Delmonico. Okay? So just let’s chalk this whole thing up to one really bad decision and end it now. When it stops raining, you have to go. Trust me, I’m doing you a really big favor. Because one scream, and that guard in my living room will be in here like a shot to stake you.”

She saw that red-eyed gaze flick past her and toward her bedroom door.

She shook her head and, reaching up to grab twin handfuls of his white shirtfront, pulled him down beside her onto the bed.

“You know I can’t go,” Lucien said, still looking toward the bedroom door.

“Yes, you can,” Meena said, shaking her head. She continued to cling to his shirtfront. “Why can’t you?”

His gaze turned back toward her, the red dying down a little, thankfully. “You know why, Meena.”

What was he talking about? He couldn’t possibly mean…there wasn’t any way he could-

“I can’t go because I’m in love with you, Meena,” he said in his deep voice. He reached up to curl his hands around hers. “I told you. You have slain the dragon.”

He was in love with her? Lucien Antonescu was in love with her?

Just a few hours earlier, this news would have made her the happiest girl in the world.

But now…

Now she knew he wasn’t just Lucien Antonescu, professor of Eastern European history.

He was the prince of darkness.

He went on in the same deep, ragged voice, still holding her hands. “But you’re hiding something from me, Meena. And it’s not just a Palatine guard in your living room. I’ve known since the moment I met you. Something that you hide from everyone-”

“I’m hiding something?” She knew exactly what he was talking about, of course. But she lied automatically. Because she always did.

“Yes, you,” he said. Now his hands moved to grip her shoulders. “I know. I should never have thought I could deceive you, of all people. But you know I was as honest with you as I could be without…terrifying you. But you…you weren’t honest with me, either. There’s something about you. Ever since we…were together-I…I…”

“You what?” Meena asked. Her heart was thumping. She knew she was taking an enormous risk letting him into her room-let alone into her heart. At any moment, Alaric might come bursting in, bringing Jon running after him. After that, if the worst happened, it would all be her fault…

By letting him into her room, she was essentially doing what he’d just confessed to doing, all those years with his father and brother…committing murder.

What was she doing?

“Ever since I left you this morning,” Lucien said, “I’ve had the oddest sensation that I know how almost every human I’ve come into contact with is…is going to die. And not, whatever you might think of me, by my own hands.”

Meena stared up at him. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she couldn’t think of anything to say.

“I’m sure the man in your living room told you some very colorful things about me.” Lucien went on. “A good many of them might even be true. I’ve been what I am for a very long time.” He was obviously choosing his words with care. “But I’ve never, ever experienced anything like this. Not until…well, being with you. Would you care to tell me what, exactly, is going on? I think it has something to do with this secret of yours. The thing that you’re hiding. What makes it impossible for me to read your mind fully. And what makes you identify so strongly with Joan of Arc, who heard voices. Because that’s what I feel like I’m doing. Hearing voices.”

In the next room, she heard a stereophonic car crash. The Fast and the Furious was pounding its way to a metal-crunching crescendo.

“It’s me,” she said. She heaved a tearful sigh.

His grip on her tightened.

Not very gently, either.

“What are you talking about?” he rasped.

“You drank my blood,” she reminded him.

“Not a lot, so it’ll probably go away after your next feeding. This should teach you to be more careful. You are what you eat, you know.”