Insatiable

Chapter Fifty-six

11:00 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

St. George’s Cathedral

180 East Seventy-eighth Street

New York, New York

Lucien didn’t even glance in Meena’s direction. Instead, all his powers of concentration appeared to be focused on his brother.

“Dimitri,” he said. His voice, as always, was like velvet. “I understand you wanted to see me about something?”

Dimitri still had hold of Meena’s arm. It was her sore arm, the wrist he’d nearly broken. Or maybe he had broken it. Meena didn’t know.

He still held the knife, as well.

“Why, yes, Lucien,” he said. His own voice purred like a kitten’s. “What a pleasure it is to see you tonight. And what an entrance. But then, you always did know how to make those, didn’t you?”

“Let go of her,” Lucien said. Now the velvet was more like ice.

“But Miss Harper and I were only just getting acquainted,” Dimitri said, casually running the point of the jeweled dagger down her bare neck. “And I want to be able to read everyone’s minds and tell the future, too. I don’t think it’s fair that you’re getting to have all the fun.”

“I think you’ve been having quite enough fun,” Lucien said coldly. “I went to Concubine earlier today, and I saw what you were keeping in the basement.”

Dimitri looked surprised. He was holding Meena close enough to him that she felt him go still. Everyone in the church-the Dracul, even Alaric, at the bottom of the dais-seemed to be watching the brothers’ tense conversation intently.

“Did you?” Dimitri asked. Then he smiled so that his fangs showed again. “So you happened to stumble across part of my latest financial enterprise-”

“TransCarta,” shouted a male voice from somewhere near the back of the church.

Meena, recognizing that voice, froze.

No. Oh, no.

Every head in the building swiveled to follow the sound of that voice.

Which was how everyone managed to get such a good look at Meena’s brother, Jon, standing in the entrance of the church, flanked by Sister Gertrude and Abraham Holtzman, who was holding a stake to Stefan Dominic’s chest. Behind them stood every friar, nun, and novice from the Shrine of St. Clare.

Meena raised her gaze to the ceiling. As if things hadn’t been going badly enough. Just how awful was this night going to get?

“Oh, hello,” Abraham called out cheerfully, waving to them. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Do go on. As long as no one makes a move to attack us, I’ll let this fellow here live.”

“Let him kill me, Father,” Stefan Dominic cried, struggling in the guard’s arms. “Please! I’d rather die than dishonor you in this way!”

Neither Dimitri nor Lucien looked particularly impressed by this impassioned speech. But it was at least clear that Stefan’s theatrical ambitions hadn’t been misdirected.

“Stefan!” Shoshona looked upset. She flung a panicky look up at Lucien and Dimitri. “Please don’t let them kill him, my lords. You can’t!”

But Dimitri hadn’t taken his gaze off Lucien, who went on. “Yes. TransCarta is the bank where all the dead men I found in your basement used to work.”

“TransCarta bought the network that owns the show I work for,” Meena said with a gasp of surprise.

Although she ought, she realized belatedly, to have said used to work for.

“It’s actually the Swiss private equity firm that Dimitri Antonescu formed last year,” Jon said.

“Trans for Transylvania, obviously,” Alaric said thoughtfully. “I don’t know what Carta is for.”

Lucien looked at his half brother with a raised eyebrow. “That would be Carta Abbey, I presume,” he said. “Where you tried to kill me…what was it? The third time?”

Dimitri shrugged. “I thought it had a nice ring to it. A private equity firm allows one to conduct business without the usual scrutiny by the federal government or the prying eyes of other entities.” He gave Alaric a knowing wink.

“Because they aren’t publicly traded on the stock exchange or subject to any other requisite filings or disclosures,” Alaric said through gritted teeth. He looked as if he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of this before.

“Absolutely.” Dimitri grinned. “They’re a fine way for an individual like myself who might value his privacy to expand his, er, brand…through, say, a television network.”

Lucien frowned. “Dimitri,” he said in a warning tone, “we don’t have a brand.”

“Actually, members of both the financial and the entertainment community,” Dimitri said, “are quite impressed by the Dracula name and eager to experience immortality, it turns out. And consumers…well, their fear of death is what drives the beauty industry. By the year 2013 they’re set to spend at least forty billion dollars on cosmetic surgery services alone. Well, who wouldn’t want to live forever, if they could? You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Miss Harper, in your line of work?”

Meena felt as if a cold shadow had passed over her soul.

Revenant Wrinkle Cream.

Of course. Revenant meant animated corpse.

“It’s you,” she cried in disgust, trying to break away from Dimitri’s grip. “You’re the one behind the new products they want us to feature on Insatiable.”

“Of course,” he said with a smile, easily defeating her attempts to free herself from him. “But you needn’t look that way, my dear. We’re no different from your former sponsor, really. We too only want to help your viewers find products that help improve their lives.”

“Like the Regenerative Spa for Youthful Awakening?” Meena demanded.

“I’ve visited one of those,” Lucien said in a voice as cold as January. “In the basement of Concubine.”

“Nonsense,” Dimitri said. “That was merely a prototype. You were never supposed to see it in that state, Lucien. We have plans to upgrade and expand our spas worldwide-”

“No,” Lucien said, cutting him off. “Because this ends. Now.”

Dimitri shrugged. “This may not be how you envisioned the family enterprise, Lucien, but I can assure you I’ve seen the financials, and the potential for growth is astrono-”

“There is no family enterprise,” Lucien said, taking a step toward Dimitri. “And I believe the potential for growth of your enterprise is going to significantly decrease if you keep feeding defenseless girls to your newborns. Although they may enjoy the idea of looking young forever, one thing you seem never to have learned about humans over the years, Dimitri, is that they tend to dislike murder.”

Meena, looking from the face of one brother to the other, was too stunned to keep up with the conversation.

Not because she was standing in a deconsecrated church with a dagger at her throat, in front of a ravenous horde of vampires.

But because she’d realized that Dimitri was right:

She did know all about wanting to live forever.

Not only had she spent over half her life protecting everyone she’d ever met from an untimely death, but it was what she wrote about: the insatiable thirst for life (and love) of Victoria Worthington Stone and her daughter Tabby.

But were Victoria and Tabby really so insatiable? All they’d ever wanted was someone to love and care for them.

Wasn’t that very human need exactly what corporations like Dimitri’s were taking advantage of when they hinted that women would never find that special someone unless they purchased their products in order to look a certain way? They preyed upon human insecurity the way the Dracul preyed on human life.

Suddenly, Meena realized just how twisted Lucien’s brother really was. And who the truly insatiable ones had been all along. “If you’re so eager to expand the Dracul brand but still so frightened of the Palatine that you’d go to all the trouble to form a Swiss company just so they couldn’t seize your funds, why not at least hide the dead girls’ bodies, Dimitri?” Lucien was asking in wonder, shaking his head. “That’s what I can’t understand. Exposing the bodies meant exposing everything.”

Bait.

That’s what Alaric had meant.

“Because he wanted to lure you here, Lucien,” Meena said. It was all so clear to her now. “He was never worried about the Palatine. The dead girls were just to bring you to New York, so he could get you here and do this.”

The coronation was just the final phase in Dimitri’s master plan to turn all of America-and soon the world-into a vampire smorgasbord. The only thing standing in his way was…

Lucien’s glance shifted away from his brother and toward her.

And when their gazes met, Meena felt something like an explosive charge go off inside her head.

She could see in his eyes how much he loved her.

And how hard it was for him not to kill his brother then and there, with his bare hands, for what Dimitri had done to her.

But he couldn’t.

Not while Dimitri stood so close to her, with one arm still wrapped around her, a dagger at her neck, his fangs within such easy snapping distance.

Meena nodded. She understood. It was all right. The important thing was that she had to keep Dimitri and the Dracul from doing what they were there to do:

Kill the one impediment to their master plan. Lucien.

It was right then that a stake went whizzing from a crossbow somewhere near the doors of the church and plunged directly into the center of Lucien’s back.

“Yes!” Meena heard her brother scream. “Did you see that? I got him!”