Insatiable

Chapter Fifty-eight

12:15 A.M. EST, Sunday, April 18

St. George’s Cathedral

180 East Seventy-eighth Street

New York, New York

It was crouched in the apse, its huge body and enormous wingspan filling the entire space, while its serpentine head perched on a neck that was stretched nearly the height of the thirty-foot ceiling.

Its claws made obscene scratching noises on the marble floor.

Its scales were ruby red.

Smoke poured from its nostrils.

Out of one of its shoulders poked a tiny wooden stake.

Lucien, Meena thought, feeling as if her heart had turned to ice in her chest. My God. Lucien.

What’s happened to you? What have they done to you?

“Oh…my God,” said Dimitri, dropping the dagger he held when he saw it.

Hearing Dimitri’s voice-and then the noisy clatter of the falling knife-the dragon’s head whipped in their direction…then dipped low to peer at them where they stood beneath the choir loft.

Meena’s frozen heart gave a convulsive double beat. Oh, God. Oh, God. The dragon was looking at them.

A mixture of steam and what smelled like sulfur shot straight at them as the beast exhaled hot air with enough force to douse all the candles in their area.

Suddenly they were plunged into semidarkness.

But Meena could still see, thanks to the fiery glow coming from the dragon’s nostrils, which loomed closer and closer to them…and from which she could hear a strange snuffling sound.

“Whatever you do,” Alaric whispered in the dark, startling her, as he slowly reached out to lay a warm, steadying hand on the back of Meena’s neck, “don’t move.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Meena whispered back. “But what’s…happening?”

It wasn’t what she wanted to ask. What she wanted to ask was, Where is Lucien? Can he really be in there, beneath all those scales? Is that really him?

“I don’t know,” Alaric replied. “I’ve never seen this before. But I think he’s-”

Suddenly, the dragon’s head reared up right next to Meena. She froze, every muscle in her body tensing. She couldn’t remember ever being that paralyzed with fear in her life-not even when she’d realized Lucien was actually a vampire-as she found herself being examined by a huge, double-lidded, foot-wide eye, its many facets, each the color of a blood-red sun, casting her own terrified reflection back at her.

Calm down, she tried to tell herself. This is Lucien’s eye. It’s going to be all right.

But she wasn’t sure that was really true since she could see no hint at all of the man she had known and loved in there. What she found herself gazing at wasn’t a man at all. It was completely, entirely beast.

A giant lid slid sideways over the pupil staring at her, then opened again as the dragon peered at her-and then at Alaric, standing behind her.

Then came that huge snuffling sound again, so loud that Meena would have jumped out of her skin entirely if Alaric hadn’t been keeping such a firm grip on the back of her neck.

Did he just… smell me? Meena asked herself, stunned.

Alaric squeezed the back of her neck.

She got the message. Don’t talk. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.

It was good advice.

Too bad Dimitri couldn’t seem to follow it.

He’d found the knife somehow where he’d dropped it.

And now he made a running lunge out of the darkness at the beast, going for its giant blinking eye with a scream of pure, unadulterated hate.

This, it turned out, was a mistake. A big mistake.

“…pissed,” Alaric said, finishing his thought about Lucien’s state of mind. He shoved Meena to the floor, then threw himself on top of her. “Stay down.”

The fire that came bellowing out of the dragon’s nose and throat in Dimitri’s direction was white-hot.

It was the searing heat of the sun. It was the brimstone-filled heat from the fiery pits of hell, and it was aimed at a single target. It went shooting over their heads and bodies.

Meena had never felt heat like that before in her life and hoped she never would again.

Meena wasn’t sure if Dimitri ever even knew what hit him. One minute he was there, and the next, there was only fire…

And then there was only thick black smoke.

Where Dimitri had been standing was a charred, smoldering spot.

“Oh, my God,” Meena heard someone saying. And then she realized it was herself. She was saying it, over and over. “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”

“Stay down.” She heard Alaric’s deep voice in her ear. “Just stay down.”

Meena caught her breath as the dragon’s head dipped toward them once more. Lucien swept his gleaming red snout just inches above them, making that snuffling sound again.

He was smelling them. She was certain of it.

Then the head disappeared.

Lucien was turning his attention-and his breath of fire-to the people and vampires in the rest of the church.

Alaric must have realized it, too. That’s why he sprang up from Meena and ran after Lucien’s departing head.

She knew instantly where he was going.

And why. “No!” she screamed.

And she tore off after him.

She lost him in the chaos that was ensuing outside of the sheltering roof of the choir loft.

Yes, there might have been a seventy-foot-long dragon breathing fire in one part of the church.

But in the rest of the building, there was still a vampire-versus-human war being waged. She saw the Dracul sinking their fangs into the necks of novices…Sister Gertrude stabbing a Dracul with a piece of pew…Jon firing his crossbow at point-blank range at a Dracul (and missing). Fran and Stan flipping friars over with a superhuman strength amazing for people Meena had never before seen lift anything heavier than a knish. Abraham Holtzman and Emil and Mary Lou Antonescu had formed some kind of bizarre partnership and seemed to be trying to kill as many Dracul as they could with whatever they could…which appeared to be not many with very little.

Meena, appalled, knew she couldn’t just stand there. She had to do something to help…even if there was a dragon lumbering around, incinerating people with its breath.

Scooping up a jagged chunk of crushed pew, she grabbed the hair of the nearest vampire, who happened to be trying to sink its teeth into the throat of a hapless novice…

…and was shocked to find herself face-to-face again with Shoshona.

“Oh, right,” Shoshona said, smirking at her and at the pointed chunk of wood Meena held in her fist. “Like you have the guts.”

“Oh,” Meena assured her, “I have the guts.”

There was no way she had the guts.

This was Shoshona. Sure, Meena had never liked her very much. She had told herself, nearly every day for a year, that today was the day she was finally going to warn her coworker that if she didn’t stop working out so much, she was going to die.

Now Meena realized that it was never the gym Shoshona had to fear.

It was Stefan Dominic, the man she’d met in it.

Still, Meena had always had every intention of saving Shoshona’s life.

So was she really going to put a stake through her heart and end it? Here, now?

No. Of course not.

“Yeah.” Shoshona smirked some more. “I knew it. By the way, I took something else from your apartment, besides this bag.”

Shoshona unzipped the top of the red Marc Jacobs bag she still wore slung across her chest and showed Meena a glimpse of something inside.

“Thanks for all the great story ideas,” she said, smirking. “Have a nice time on unemployment.”

Then she turned around to look for the novice, who’d run off, crying.

Meena stared at Shoshona’s slender back.

Her laptop? Shoshona had stolen her laptop?

Meena didn’t have backup files of anything she’d kept on that laptop. Not on her work computer. Not online. Not anywhere.

Meena stalked forward, grabbed the back of Shoshona’s two-hundred-dollar shirt, and spun her around to face her…

…then plunged the broken piece of pew into her chest.

Shoshona turned into a pile of dust before Meena’s eyes.

On top of the dust lay the ruby red jewel-encrusted dragon tote Lucien had given to her, tangled in Shoshona’s clothes. Meena picked it up, dusted it off, and slung it across her own chest.

The weight of her laptop inside it felt reassuring.

When Meena lifted her gaze again, it was to see the last person she’d ever expected: Leisha, carefully holding her belly and picking her way toward Meena through the smoke and rubble.

“Oh, my God,” Meena cried. “Leish?”

All of Meena’s worst nightmares seemed suddenly to be coming true. Her boyfriend was a vampire. She’d just killed her own boss.

And her pregnant best friend was wandering around a live battlefield with no regard for her own safety or that of her unborn child.

Meena rushed to Leisha’s side.

“What are you still doing here?” Meena demanded anxiously. “I thought Mary Lou Antonescu got you out!”

“Oh, was that who that was?” Leisha looked dazed. “Well, yeah, she did. But then after she broke Adam out of those handcuffs and told him what was going on, he decided he wanted to stay to see the end of the play.”

Meena raised her eyebrows. “Play?”

“Yeah,” Leisha said. “I was kind of cool with it at first, but now I don’t know, there’s that thing-”

She pointed over Meena’s shoulder. Meena turned around and there, behind her, was Lucien, his dragon head weaving back and forth as if he were looking for something-or someone-his long serpent’s tongue darting in and out of his mouth. Every once in a while he opened his mouth and let out an eardrum-splitting roar.

“Now see? That just seems like overkill to me,” Leisha said.

Meena’s gaze slid back toward her friend. Leisha, she was pretty certain, had had her mind scrambled by a combination of shock and some kind of Dracul brainwashing. Her normally alert brown eyes looked glazed over.

“I realize it’s all in good fun,” Leisha complained, “but I’m pretty sure the smoke isn’t good for the baby. I’m actually not feeling so hot-”

Meena reached out and grabbed her friend by both arms.

“Leisha, this isn’t a play,” she said, urgently. “You have to get out of here. The baby is coming early. And it’s not a boy. It’s a girl. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I knew, but-”

“What?” Leisha cried, flinging both her hands away. Whatever they had done to Leisha’s memory, it hadn’t affected her concern for her unborn child. “You knew and you didn’t tell me? Meena, what’s wrong with you? How early?”

“Early enough that Adam should have started on that baby room a long time ago,” Meena said. Suddenly spying her brother over Leisha’s shoulder, she cried, “Jon! Jon! Get over here.”

Jon staggered over. Blood was streaming from a cut on his forehead; Gregory Bane had split it open with a fist. Jon was dirty and sweaty and looked like he was having the time of his life.

“What?” he demanded. “Oh, my God. Leisha, what are you still doing here?”

Over in the sanctuary, the dragon let out another roar.

The walls shook.

Outside the church, sirens were wailing. The NYFD and New York City police were on their way. It had only taken a vampire war and a seventy-foot dragon to get some of St. George’s neighbors to call 911.

“Oh, thank God,” Leisha said when she heard the sirens. “Someone needs to shoot that thing.”

“No!” Meena cried. Then, seeing the expressions on the faces of her brother and friend, she said, more calmly, “Jon, I think Leisha is in labor. You need to find Adam and get them both out of here.”

“What?” Leisha and Jon exclaimed together.

“Yes,” Meena said firmly. “Leisha, I think you’re having your baby now. Jon, you’ve got to get her and Adam into the first ambulance you see and get her away from here. Far away from here. Do it now, Jon. I want you to go with them. It’s all your fault they’re even here in the first place.”

“How is it my fault?” Jon demanded indignantly.

“Remember that note I left down at St. Clare’s?” Meena asked. “The one in which I specifically stated that anyone who followed me up here was going to die tonight?”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Oh, right. Yeah, we all saw that. But what were we supposed to do, Meen? Just let you come up here and fight these guys on your own? It looked like you were doing a real terrific job when we got here.”

“You shot my boyfriend,” Meena reminded him. “He was handling it fine, and then you shot him. And now look what’s happening. The police are here, and the fire department, and innocent people are going to get hurt. And by the way, I’m pretty sure it’s you he’s looking for.”

The dragon let out another one of its roars. It sounded much closer than the previous one. Jon jumped and seemed to realize Meena was right: Lucien was coming for him. Those huge, blood-red eyes seemed to be searching the apse for someone…

Jon hastily surrendered his cocked and loaded crossbow to Meena.

“Yeah,” he said guiltily. “I really am sorry about that. I was actually aiming for his brother.” He took Leisha by the arm. “Relax, Leish,” he said to her. “I’ll have you out of here in no time. I’m pretty sure I saw Adam over by the doors. He must have been looking for you.”

Leisha threw a frantic look over her shoulder at Meena as Jon led her away.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” she asked.

Meena smiled and waved at her. “I want to stay to see the end of the play,” she said. “Call me later and let me know where you are.” She held an imaginary cell phone to her face.

Leisha nodded, then looked concerned. “The baby’s really a girl? We never even talked about any girls’ names.”

“I’ve always been partial to the name Joan,” Meena called after her…

…just as a Dracul spotted her standing there and began racing her way. While Jon hurried to get Leisha to safety, Meena spun to face the vampire…

…who turned out to be none other than Gregory Bane.

“Hello, Meena Harper,” he said, giving her the same slow, deliberate smile that had sent so many thousands of women in the eighteen-to-forty-nine demographic into screaming fits.

Meena rolled her eyes, lifted Jon’s crossbow, and shot him directly in the chest.

Then she stepped through the crumbling dust of his remains. That’s when yet another projectile went hissing through the air, missing Meena’s cheek by mere inches.

A second later, the dragon let out a bellow-this one of pain-that was loud enough to shake the building’s foundation. Meena, confused, looked up to see a stake sticking out of its long neck.

A stake. Another stake.

Someone else, other than her brother, was shooting at Lucien. Meena spun around, trying to see who it was.

She spotted Abraham Holtzman in the center of the smoke-filled apse, a crossbow to one shoulder, reloading.

She threw down her own crossbow and flew toward him.

“Stop,” she yelled at him. “You’ve got to stop. You’re hurting him!”

“Of course I’m hurting him, Miss Harper,” Abraham said matter-of-factly. “That would be the point, wouldn’t it? I’m trying to distract him while Alaric-”

“But Lucien is on our side,” Meena cried. “He’s trying to help us! He killed Dimitri.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Harper. He killed his brother in order to preserve his grip on the throne,” Abraham said with measured patience. “He’s the prince of darkness, Satan’s chosen son on earth to rule over all demon beings. I know you think you love him, my dear, but he must be destroyed in order for goodness and light to stand a chance-”

“But he’s part of goodness and light,” Meena insisted. “His mother was-”

“Miss Harper,” Abraham said. “You surely can’t be telling me that there’s any part of that that isn’t evil.”

On the word that, he gestured toward the dragon, which was loosing a stream of its white fire at the bankers Meena had previously seen attacking Sister Gertrude. One minute they were there.

The next, they were gone.

“Oh, dear,” Meena heard a voice close to her say. She turned her head and saw Emil and Mary Lou Antonescu standing beside her.

But they didn’t look anything like they ever had when she’d seen them around their apartment building. They were both covered in soot and blood, their designer clothing torn and Mary Lou’s hair in complete disarray. She was clinging to her husband, watching in utter terror as Lucien breathed fire onto the Dracul.

“Did you know about this?” Meena demanded of them. “Did you know Lucien”-she didn’t even know what to say, exactly-“could…could…”

Emil turned to look down at her. His expression was grave. And a little bit sad.

And left absolutely no doubt, in Meena’s mind at least, that he’d known. Oh, he’d known all along.

“The prince has always had a very bad temper,” was all he said, however.

“A bad temper?” Meena cried. She gestured toward the dragon, which had dipped its long, slender neck to pick up Stefan Dominic in its mouth and was now ripping him apart, limb from limb. Meena had to cover her eyes with her hands. “You call that a bad temper?” she asked, with a moan.

“It’s never a good idea,” Emil said, “to make the prince angry. Dimitri really ought to have known better.”

Meena, careful not to look in Lucien’s direction, lowered her hands and asked, “Well, how do we stop it? How do we make him turn back?”

“Oh,” Emil said, tightening his arm around his wife. “We can’t.”

Meena’s jaw dropped. “What? You mean-”

This was exactly what Meena had feared when she’d stood so close to that giant eye and seen nothing in it of the man she loved…that Lucien would never go back to being himself again.

Not that it mattered. Meena was still going to do everything in her power to keep him from being obliterated by a combination of the NYFD, the NYPD, the Palatine, and the Dracul, whatever he was, man or beast. Or vampire.

“Oh, he’ll turn back eventually, when he stops being so angry,” Emil said. “In the meantime”-he glanced over his shoulder at the police officer who was now shouting into the church on a megaphone for them to put down their weapons and come out with their hands on the back of their heads-“Mary Lou and I are leaving. I would suggest you do the same, Miss Harper.”

And with that, both of them disappeared before Meena’s eyes. One minute they were there, and the next, there was nothing at all where they’d been standing, except twin wisps of mist.

Stunned, Meena looked back at Abraham, who was reloading his crossbow. He seemed to take what had just happened in stride. He didn’t even care about having missed his opportunity to stake the Antonescus.

He was after much bigger game.

She was going to wake up soon, Meena decided. Because this all had to be a nightmare. She was going to wake up in her own room, with Jack Bauer in her arms, and it would be morning, and the sun would be shining, and everything would be okay. None of this would have happened. She would get up and go to work, and-

“Meena!” She heard Alaric calling to her from somewhere across the church. “Meena!”

Then she saw him. He was standing directly behind the dragon.

“Move!” he shouted at her, and made a get-out-of-the-way gesture with his arms, indicating that he wanted her to step away from Abraham.

And right then-in that moment-she knew exactly what he and his boss were planning to do:

Abraham would shoot at Lucien, distracting him with another stake to the neck.

Then, while Lucien was roaring over the pain of that, Alaric would run up onto the dragon’s back…

…then slice off its head.

Alaric, Meena concluded, was crazy. Especially if he thought Meena was ever going to let this happen.

“You’d better do as he says, Miss Harper,” Abraham said, lifting the crossbow to his shoulder and taking aim. “I know this is painful for you. But trust me, it’s the best way. I promise you’ll feel much better when it’s all over.”

As Abraham was speaking, the dragon, which had finished its latest meal, looked around. It had been weaving its head back and forth on its long, serpentine neck as if searching the apse for its next victim. But now it finally froze…and squared both Meena and Abraham in its sights.

Those gigantic, crystalline eyes focused directly on them, unblinkingly, like a snake’s. All the hairs on the back of Meena’s neck stood up as the dragon stared at her. She saw a stream of smoke release from its nostrils. The noxious odor of sulfur engulfed them a second later.

“Oh, dear,” Abraham said, freezing with his finger on the crossbow’s trigger. “I think-”

Meena reached up to undo one of the hooks on the messenger strap of the dragon tote. It slid down from her shoulder. Then, clasping the strap in both hands, she swung the bag as hard as she could at Abraham, the weight of her laptop inside catching him full across the back.

“What-?” he cried as he stumbled.

He didn’t go down, though. He was too heavy and had far too much experience.

His shot, however, did go wild.

What happened next wasn’t part of Meena’s plan.