Insatiable

Chapter Fifty

8:30 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

Concubine Lounge

125 East Eleventh Street

New York, New York

Lucien Antonescu had listened as calmly as possible to the information from his cousin Emil that his wife, Mary Lou, had known all along about Meena Harper’s ability to predict death-had known it well before ever setting up the two of them. That it was, in fact, the reason she’d set them up.

That Mary Lou should have chosen for him a young woman of her acquaintance who was in possession of such an…unusual talent was flattering, to say the least.

But the fact that Mary Lou had told everyone she knew about Meena’s talent, putting Meena in a position of such danger?

That Lucien couldn’t accept calmly.

Lucien had already come to several decisions in the wee hours of the morning as he’d watched Meena sleep, before ever speaking to his cousin Emil.

The first was that he would not, of course, be able to return to his teaching position in Romania or to any of his homes there.

Not now that the Palatine knew who he really was.

Obviously, he was going to have to change his name.

Again.

Surprisingly, he was not as irritated by these things as he might have been had he not met Meena. The fact that she was in his life now made everything that would have once seemed unbearable a mere annoyance.

Of course, the Palatine was no longer an organization that merely hunted its prey on foot, satisfied with an old-fashioned stake to the heart, and then left it at that.

Oh, no. Not anymore.

They now used sophisticated technology to track their quarry’s financial and real estate assets as well, monitoring bank accounts even in countries that criminalized the violation of their banking privacy laws, such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. If the Palatine could not snare the monster, they would find ways to seize his money. And they did so with a ruthlessness that would make the CIA green with envy…were the Palatine not such a highly secretive organization that even the CIA knew nothing of its existence.

The money, more than anything, was an issue. Starting over without any money would have been fine, had it just been himself.

But he couldn’t ask it of Meena. That would be impossible.

And he wasn’t going anywhere without Meena…despite her insistence that they no longer see each other.

She would never be safe now. Every vampire in the world would want a taste of her. Any chance to be able to experience what Lucien had-the ability to foretell the death of a human, and not by vampiric hands-would be irresistible to them. It wouldn’t be irresistible for the same reasons it was to Lucien…it allowed him in some small way to make up for the sins of his past-such as when he’d taken away that boy’s car keys, saving his own life-or even because it was just something, anything different after centuries of sameness.

But because it was something they might be able to use to their own advantage. Lucien had no doubt that his brother Dimitri would find a way to use Meena’s gift of prophecy to prey on the human race’s very real fear of mortality, and somehow profit financially from it.

Then there was the fact that Meena’s blood coursing through Lucien’s veins hadn’t just afforded him the ability to predict how humans were going to die. It had heightened his other senses as well, in a way no other human’s he’d tasted ever had, making him feel for the first time in centuries as if he were alive again.

He knew this was something he could never share with anyone. Because if this got out, Meena Harper would become demon meat…the most hunted mortal on earth.

The fact that Meena was his might have been protection enough under ordinary circumstances. But these weren’t ordinary circumstances. The Palatine had their hands on her…and had found him out. How could he protect her properly? He couldn’t even find her, let alone get in touch with her. His frantic phone calls to her had all gone straight to voice mail. Her apartment, according to Emil, whom Lucien had ordered to stay put until Meena’s whereabouts could be traced, was empty, except for her little dog. It didn’t, Emil had reported, look like anyone-anyone human, anyway-had been there all day. Had they abandoned the place? Surely not. Lucien would know, would sense it if something had happened to her…

But he sensed nothing…nothing except dread and a tightness in his chest where his heart had once been. He hadn’t felt anything in that spot in centuries. Not since Meena Harper had come into his life.

Then he received the call from Emil that changed everything:

A weeping and repentant Mary Lou, intent on trying to rectify her wrong and give help where she could, had seen a gossip piece while surfing the Internet that an altercation had taken place at a midtown eatery involving a man with a sword…

…and a certain popular soap opera star’s best friend.

This, surely, could only have been Meena’s Palatine guard.

And Dimitri’s son, Stefan.

There was no other explanation.

Lucien had only had to hear the name Dimitri and he was in one of Emil’s black cars, headed downtown for his brother’s club. If he discovered that his brother had anything, anything at all, to do with Meena’s disappearance…if he or that idiot son of his had harmed so much as a hair on her head-

There wasn’t a hole on earth deep enough into which Lucien could throw them.

But when Lucien got to Concubine, it was closed.

Not that this particularly bothered Lucien. Given his mood, he merely kicked the doors in.

The club was quite a different place empty than when it was occupied. With all the lights on, and no dry ice, it lost something of its mystique. The only shine to the large room, surrounded by black velvet curtains, was the metallic top to the long bar. The place wasn’t as clean as it could have been; the floor was a bit sticky.

Perhaps the cleaners hadn’t yet arrived. There was no one around.

And yet Lucien, his senses heightened because of Meena, felt that there were quite a few souls around-human, and in the gravest of danger…

…and not just because of him.

“Hello?” he called. Where were all these people? Why couldn’t he see them?

His voice echoed hauntingly around the dance floor, the bar, the VIP room. No one.

Nothing.

Where was his brother? Why had he felt such a powerful pull to this distasteful place if the certain source of all his problems-Dimitri-wasn’t even here?

Then Lucien heard it. Heavy footsteps, coming from the front of the building. He turned expectantly.

“Can I help you?”

It was Reginald, Dimitri’s three-hundred-pound bodyguard/ bouncer, still wearing his gold chain with his name emblazoned proudly across it. His dark head gleamed, newly shaved.

“Hello there, Reginald,” Lucien said, genuinely pleased to see him. This was going to be easy. Some humans-like Meena, for instance-were impossible to control, their minds too damaged or crowded with mental baggage. But Reginald’s was a vast, open plain.

“How did you get in here?” Reginald had a Hollywood-gangster-style grip on his gun, raising it sideways to shoot at Lucien instead of straight on, using his other hand to steady it for better aim.

Lucien felt even more cheered. Poor Reginald.

“Put the gun down, son,” he said. “You remember me. I was here the other night, to visit my brother.”

Reginald lowered the gun obediently. “Oh, yeah,” he said, recognition dawning. “You messed Mr. Dimitri up.”

“That’s right,” Lucien said, smiling fondly at the memory. “I’ve come back to do it again. You wouldn’t happen to know where Mr. Dimitri is right now, would you?”

Reginald shook his head, putting the gun back into the waistband of his sweatpants…not the most propitious place to keep a loaded firearm, in Lucien’s opinion. “Naw,” Reginald said. “Everybody got all excited about something and took off a little while ago and just left me here. They didn’t say when they’d be back or nothing. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to open up tonight or what.”

“Interesting,” Lucien said. “And would you happen to know what it was they got ‘all excited about,’ Reginald?”

“Hell, no,” Reginald said. “No one tells me nothing around here.” Lucien reached into the man’s brain with his own mind and probed gently. Reginald was telling the truth. He knew nothing…except…

“Reginald,” Lucien said. “Are we the only people here?”

“No,” Reginald admitted. Lucien could feel the man’s fear. It was as sharp and as pointed as a knife. “There’s the folks in the basement.”

“The basement,” Lucien repeated. “Would you take me to the basement, Reginald?”

Reginald’s fear stabbed him. “Mr. Dimitri said none of us is supposed to go down there,” Reginald protested. He did not want to go down to the basement.

“It’s all right, Reginald,” Lucien said calmly. “I’ll be with you. Nothing bad will happen to you in the basement if I’m there with you.”

Reginald believed him…but only because Lucien was there in his brain to comfort him. Reluctantly, he went to the bar to get the keys to the basement, then led Lucien to a door that he unlocked with hands that still shook, despite Lucien’s presence.

Whatever was in the basement, the human employees of Concubine, who weren’t supposed to know about it, not only knew about it but feared it.

Lucien followed Reginald down the narrow concrete staircase, sensing approaching death more closely with every step. He couldn’t just smell it…he could feel it, oozing through his pores the way moisture seeped from the basement walls. This had been what he’d noticed when he’d entered the club: the thump of human heartbeats, quivering with life…and impending doom.

Was this what Meena Harper felt every day of her life, walking down the street, getting on the subway, going about her daily business?

How could she stand it?

They came to two doors. Behind one of them Lucien could hear the heartbeats thundering so loudly, he wanted to fling his hands over his ears.

Behind the other, he heard…nothing.

He nodded toward the door where there was only silence.

“Open it,” he said to Reginald.

Reginald, holding the keys like they were a rosary, looked like he was about to cry. “I really don’t want to, sir,” he said. “Please don’t make me.”

Lucien nodded, understanding. There was only so much the human mind could take.

He lifted his foot and smashed down the heavy metal door with a single powerful kick.

Inside the darkened room, on concrete mortuary slabs, lay the seven financial analysts from TransCarta to whom his brother Dimitri had introduced him the night before.

Only they were no longer alive.

On the other hand, they weren’t quite dead, either.

They were in a place between life and death. Someone had turned their stiff white shirt collars down and bitten each one neatly along the carotid artery, not once, not twice, but three times.

And along each man’s mouth, Lucien saw faint traces of blood.

They were turning. They were currently in a metamorphic state. When they woke, they would be vampires.

And they’d be hungry as hell.

“Who did this?” Lucien demanded, turning to face Reginald, who, unable to control his curiosity-even terrified as he was-stood peering in past the broken door, which hung by its hinges.

“I have no idea,” he said. “What the hell is wrong with those guys? Why are they just laying there like that, all bitten on the neck? Are they…are they-” Reginald couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

“Yes,” Lucien replied.

He swept from the room and back out into the hallway to face the second door, the one behind which he could hear so many heartbeats.

Reginald stared at him.

“I know you’re not going to kick that door down,” Reginald said. “If there were vampires behind that first door, what’s going to be behind that door? Don’t even think about-”

Lucien kicked down the second door.

Behind it blinked a half dozen young women, all very much alive, all in various states of semi-dress, stretched out across cheap mattresses, seeming very weak and confused to see so much light streaming into the room all of a sudden. The smell was not very pleasant.

None of the girls, Lucien could tell, was a vampire. Yet.

But all of them had been bitten and drained, just enough to keep them compliant.

The mystery about what the vamps next door would eat when they awoke was solved.

“Gerald?” one of the girls asked in a bewildered voice.

“Is not Gerald,” another said, sounding even more bewildered.

All of them looked terrified.

Lucien turned around and signaled to Reginald.

“Get them out of here,” he said. “Start taking them upstairs. Wait for me there.”

“Okay,” Reginald said, affable now that the mystery of the basement had been solved. “But what about-” He nodded his head toward the room next door.

Lucien looked around the tiny cell in which the girls had been held, clearly for quite some time, and with no toilet facilities that he could see, save for a bucket. He saw a rickety chair and smashed it to pieces.

“This will do,” he said, lifting one of the chair legs and examining the pointiest end. “Now go.”

While Reginald went to work corralling the girls up the stairs-they needed a lot of assurance that it wasn’t a trap and that they were being set free-Lucien set about his own task.

It was grim work. He had no idea if the men had asked to be turned or if his brother was forming some kind of indentured vampire investment banker army to handle his finances.

Knowing his brother, he guessed the latter.

In any case, these men were not going to wake immortal, with superhuman powers, and thirsting for human blood.

They were never going to wake again at all.

When Lucien was finished with his foul task, he threw the chair leg away, washed himself off as best he could-humans who had not quite turned still exuded massive amounts of blood-and turned to leave the concrete room, giving it one last glance over his shoulder.

It was exactly the last resting place he’d pictured for all of them when he’d met them at the burlesque club.

Only he’d thought they’d be dying in a parking garage, in some sort of car accident. He’d never imagined he’d be the instrument of their death.

Except, he told himself, that he hadn’t been.

His brother was.

Dimitri knew the rules. What was he doing, turning humans and leaving them in a nightclub basement to awaken alone, then throwing them weakened human girls on which to feed?

At least now Lucien had a good idea where the bodies in the parks had been coming from.

“Reginald,” he called as he came up the basement stairs.

Reginald was waiting for him in the bar. He’d given all the girls cans of soda and little bowls of nuts, as if they were VIP guests of the club. Reginald had also, Lucien saw, raided the lost and found on the girls’ behalf. All of them were now fully, if somewhat whimsically, clothed.

“Yes, boss?” Reginald asked. He’d been wiping the bar as if the club was open for business and he was tending it.

“Where does Mr. Dimitri keep his safe?” Lucien asked.

“In his office,” Reginald responded promptly. “Here, I’ll show you.”

Reginald no longer needed the slightest mental push to do Lucien’s bidding. Having found a nest of soon-to-be vampires in his employer’s basement, alongside their next meal, Reginald’s loyalty to Mr. Dimitri seemed to have ended.

“Ladies,” Lucien called to the girls. “This way, please.”

The girls, chattering softly in their native languages, brought their sodas and nuts along as they followed Lucien and Reginald up the stairs to Dimitri’s plush office.

“It’s there,” Reginald said, pointing to a mirror that hung above a large art deco desk. “Behind the mirror. He keeps loads of cash in it. In case he has to make a quick getaway.”

“How fortuitous for us,” Lucien said. “Stand out of the way, ladies.”

He lifted a paperweight shaped like a greyhound and smashed the mirror to pieces with it.

“Dude really likes smashing shit,” Reginald remarked to the girls, who looked impressed.

Lucien took hold of the door to the safe and peeled it away, dropping it to the floor with a thump.

“Whoa,” he heard Reginald say. The young ladies gasped.

Lucien ignored them. He had work to do. As Reginald had stated, the safe was filled with a great deal of cash. There were also a lot of passports. Lucien reached for these and flung them to Dimitri’s desk.

“Look through these,” he said. “Perhaps the girls will find their own.”

There was a flutter of excitement behind him as the girls did just that. Lucien continued to rifle through the safe but found nothing else that would be of any use, to him or anyone else he could think of, except a set of keys and the title and registration papers to a car.

“Reginald,” he said. “What are these?”

“Oh,” the young man said. “Those are to Mr. Dimitri’s Lincoln Continental. He keeps it parked in a garage downtown. He lets me drive him in it sometimes. It’s a black ’69 Mark III. Sweet ride.”

Lucien nodded. “Consider it yours,” he said, and flung the keys and papers toward Reginald, who caught them expertly.

“Are you kidding me?” Reginald looked down at the keys in his hands. “But what’s Mr. Dimitri going to say?”

“Not much,” Lucien said, “when I get through with him. Ladies, come here, please.”

When the girls had gathered around the desk, Lucien gave them each several stacks of the neat piles of hundred-dollar bills.

“Take this money,” he instructed them, “and your passports, and start a new life, somewhere far away from here. Or go back to your old lives, if that’s what you think will make you happy. Just forget all about what happened here. I’ll take care of the people who hurt you. They won’t harm anyone else again. I promise. You have nothing more to fear. Go, and be healthy and happy.”

The girls, whose grasp of English was shaky, smiled-first down at the money in their hands, then at each other, and then at him.

They didn’t need to know English to understand what he’d said to them.

Because he hadn’t even spoken out loud. He’d said all he had to say in their minds, giving them each a gentle memory wipe.

It would be a long time before they were completely healed. Even he couldn’t do that for them.

But this, he knew, was a beginning.

The money would do nothing to bring back the lives that had been lost due to his failure to control his brother’s barbarism.

But for now, this was the only penance he could make.

“Reginald,” he said aloud. “Take the women outside, and make sure they get safely into cabs. Have the drivers take them to JFK. They can decide from there where they want to head next.”

“You got it,” Reginald said.

“Then,” Lucien said, “you’re going to take the car and drive it to Georgia to live with your brother.”

“My brother,” Reginald said, looking pleased. “That’s a good idea!”

“I thought so. Don’t forget anything here at the club. If you do, you won’t be able to come back for it. It’s just going to burn.”

“Burn, sir?” Reginald looked confused. “How?”

“In the fire,” Lucien explained patiently. “Go now. And don’t worry. No one will be left to point a finger at you, I assure you.”

Reginald turned, his arms open wide, and shepherded the girls away. They all left, smiling back at Lucien gratefully…and a little bit worshipfully.

He looked away. Gratitude was the last thing he deserved, much less worship.

He was dousing the bodies in the basement with rum from the bar-he’d always found that 151 burned quickest and most efficiently, leaving very little tissue residue-when his cell phone buzzed.

He pulled it out and saw the name on the screen he’d been longing to see all day.

Meena Harper.