Overbite

But she knew this was wrong, and not just because he was the most wanted man in the entire demon-fighting world—black-and-white photos of him papered nearly every wall of Palatine headquarters. She had to pass them every day in the hallways at work—but because of the other dreams she’d been having. The ones that she’d been having ever since she and Lucien had parted—long before the ones she’d started having lately about David.

These were the dreams that had driven her to make an unorthodox request from a highly restricted area—to the public, anyway—belonging to her employer.

Meena wasn’t even a hundred percent certain what she wanted was there. But if it was, it could hold the key to everything.

The answer, so far, had been a resounding No Response.

“How could I have not noticed right away that he was already dead?” she asked bleakly, staring at David’s body. If this was how things were going to go from now on, she might as well just quit. It was possible she’d be better off working back in scriptwriting.

Then again, no one she knew in that field could find jobs anymore, thanks to the success of reality shows, like the one about the housewives of New York City.

“I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” Lucien said, smiling again. “He’s very freshly turned, no more than a day or two at the most. And not handling it well, judging by the alcohol intake. And of course, had he gone home, he’d have killed the baby and its mother. So you did save two lives tonight.”

“You saved two lives tonight,” she said, glancing at him. This was definitely something she was going to tell Alaric Wulf, who often swore that Lucien Antonescu was evil incarnate. But why would someone evil be interested in saving lives? And, of course, she couldn’t tell Alaric, because he’d just hunt Lucien down and decapitate him. “Three, if you include mine.”

“I don’t think so,” Lucien said coolly. “He didn’t want to kill you.” He waved a hand, indicating her throat. “Would you mind? I’m finding that a bit … distracting.”

“Oh.” Flushing, she pressed his handkerchief against the wound in her neck. “Sorry.”

This, she thought grimly, didn’t exactly help bolster her theory that Lucien wasn’t like other vampires. He obviously wasn’t immune to the sight of blood.

Not even her blood.

“Might I ask,” Lucien was saying as he abruptly crossed the street toward some old furniture piled by the garbage cans near a front stoop, “why you agreed to meet with him in his vehicle? I would have thought you’d know by now to be more cautious than that.”

Meena tied the handkerchief around her neck. She watched as he tipped over an abandoned armchair and gave a vicious kick to one of its legs.

“Especially”—he took the jagged piece of chair and handed it to her, then approached David, who was starting to come around, despite his hideously contorted neck—“considering your new place of employment. Or haven’t they trained you better?”

She stuck out her chin indignantly.

“Certainly,” she said. “They have. But this was different. I know him.”

“Knew him,” Lucien corrected her.

“I meant that we’re old friends,” Meena said. “We used to live together. Even so, I was careful. It wasn’t like I told him where I live, or anything.”

He looked wry. “No. You do a good job of keeping that information private.”

She glanced at him sharply. What did he mean by that? Had he been looking for her, the same way the Palatine had been looking for him?

Well, he’d obviously found her. Probably some time ago, too. She wondered why he’d waited until someone was attacking her before attempting to speak to her.

“I guess it just never occurred to me,” she said dejectedly as David began to rub his neck and moan, “that someone I once loved might actually want to kill me.”

Although Lucien had once tried to do precisely the same thing … for slightly different reasons.

“But he didn’t want to kill you, did he?” Lucien asked. “I thought you understood that. What was it you once told me about the daughter of the Trojan king?”

Meena’s eyes suddenly filled with tears … not at the reproach, but at the fact that he remembered. It had been a conversation during a happier time. She was fairly certain now that she’d never know such happiness again. Not unless she was able somehow to prove to everyone—including Lucien himself—that he was not the monster he seemed.

“That she was given the gift of prophecy,” she said, keeping her gaze on the ground in the hope that Lucien wouldn’t notice her brimming eyelids. “And because she did not return a god’s love, that gift was turned by that god into a curse, so that her prophecies, though true, would never be believed.”

“Well,” Lucien said, “your prophecies are believed. By them.” His tone was bitter as he thrust his chin in David’s direction. “As you know, any demon who drinks your blood temporarily possesses your gift of prophecy. That’s an irresistible temptation to most of them. And they’re apparently not above resorting to turning your friends and family members into one of themselves in order to lure you out into the open to get it. I once offered you protection from this, but you turned it down.”

Meena lifted a wrist to swipe at her moist eyes.

“You’re right,” she said, looking at David as he twisted on the hood of the car, trying to get his head back into a normal position. “I did turn down your offer of protection, because it came with a price that was too high for me. And I should never have agreed to meet him. I should never have come out of my apartment, except to go to work. Why should I expect to have a normal life, considering what I am?”

Lucien looked at her, his expression remorseful.

“Meena,” he said, apparently regretting his harsh words. “I didn’t mean—”

“No.” She cut him off with a shrug. “It’s true. Except for one thing.” There were no tears in her eyes as she lifted her gaze to look back at him. “You’re not a god, Lucien.”

“No.” His mouth twisted painfully. “I know I’m not. If I were, I’d—”

But he didn’t have a chance to finish, because it was at this point that David, his head pushed back into something like its normal position, sat up and looked at them. “Who are you?” he demanded of Lucien.

The sky, which had been cloudless, grew dark. The moon disappeared behind a bank of storm clouds. The music playing in the nearby window had long since gone dead. A cool wind stirred, whipping up dead leaves and abandoned plastic bags, and ruffling Meena’s hair and the hem of her skirt.

“You should know me.” Lucien’s voice was so deep and commanding, it seemed to reverberate through her chest. It also held an undercurrent of ice that caused goose bumps to rise on the back of her arms. “I am the unholy one, ruler of all demon life on the mortal side of hell, evil in human form. I am, in fact, the dark prince, son of Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula.”

As he said the name Dracula, another wind swept the street, this time from a different direction, sending all the leaves and plastic bags that had been stirred up before whipping the other way. Meena shivered and held her cardigan closed with one hand. David seemed to notice her for the first time since waking up.

“Oh,” he said, in a slightly less truculent voice. He began to lean away from Lucien and toward her. “I remember now. I think someone did mention you. But they said you were dead—”

“As you can see,” Lucien said, reaching out to grab the front of David’s shirt and pull him closer, “they were misinformed. Now who is they?”

David’s gaze darted back toward Meena. “Hey,” he said to her. “Aren’t you going to help me out here?”

She used the piece of wood Lucien had handed her to point at the handkerchief wrapped around her neck.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Remember this? You did this. Among other things I could mention but won’t.”

David, to her surprise, burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” he cried. “I didn’t want to. I swear I didn’t. I couldn’t stop myself. I don’t know what’s come over me lately. I think I’m sick or something. Meena, could you feel my head? I think I’m running a fever.”

Meena raised her eyebrows. “Uh,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it’s not a fever.”

Lucien wasn’t tolerating any of David’s theatrics. He lifted the smaller man by his shirtfront from the hood of his car.

“Tell me who turned you,” he said, “and who sent you to this girl, or this time, I’ll rip your head off.”

“I don’t know,” David insisted with a sob. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please put me down. I’m sorry for what I did to Meena. I told you I couldn’t help it—”

Lucien squeezed David’s throat, choking off the rest of his words. Though of course vampires couldn’t breathe, the noises David began to make were unbearable to Meena. He was obviously suffering terribly.

“Lucien,” she said, her heart aching. “Stop it. You’re hurting him. He said he doesn’t know anything.”

“He’s lying,” Lucien said emotionlessly. He didn’t even glance in her direction. “He’s a vicious, evil fiend.”

“There are people I know who’d say the same thing about you,” she said. “How am I going to convince them they’re mistaken, and to give you a second chance, when you won’t do the slightest thing to prove them wrong?”

Lucien hurled a startled glance at her over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

“I know there’s good in you, Lucien,” she said. “And I’m trying to persuade the people I work with that I’m right. But you make it really hard when you go around torturing people. Even people who might deserve it.”

He stared at her as if she were insane.

“How can you, of all people, ask me to show him mercy?” he asked. “Especially after what he tried to do to you? How can you possibly pity him? There is no vestige of humanity left in him.”

“That might be true of David,” Meena said. “But I refuse to believe it about you. How can I, after what we’ve been through together? But if that’s what you really believe,” she went on, reaching into her pocket, “fine.”

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking astonished as she pulled out her cell phone.

“My job,” she said. She didn’t know any other way to make him understand. “You’re a vicious, evil fiend. So is he. I’m calling the Palatine to report having spotted you both.”

Their gazes met as she brought the phone to her ear.

And for a moment, it all seemed to disappear … the dark, deserted street; the whimpering vampire; the shattered windshield; the broken car. Everything. It was just the two of them, the way it had been before—before she’d discovered he was a vampire, before he had discovered she was cursed with her horrible gift—when they had been so in love, and filled with so much hope for the future.

A future that had been dashed when Alaric Wulf had arrived at Meena’s door with the news of Lucien’s true identity.

It was at that exact moment—when she and Lucien were distracted, lost in each other’s dark-eyed gaze—that David proved he really was without any vestige of humanity, and the demon inside him had completely taken over. He lashed out at Lucien, striking him so forcefully that Lucien staggered back a few steps in surprise, releasing his hold on him entirely.

Which gave David just enough time … not to get away, as any other demon might have, but to lunge directly toward Meena, his face contorted in a mask of rage and hate, his mouth spread wide open, razor-sharp fangs ready to sink into her throat.

Lucien sprang after him, but it was too late. Unfortunately for David.

Because Meena was more than ready for him this time. She merely held out the jagged piece of chair leg Lucien had given to her. It was David’s own momentum—and her steady hold—that drove it into the center of his chest.

He looked down at it in wonder.

“Meena,” he said, in a slightly wounded voice.

A second later, he was gone, in a cloud of exploding bone and dust.

Chapter Four

Meena stared at the space where, a second before, David had stood.

Then she looked down at the wooden stake she held in one hand, and the cell phone she held in the other. She hadn’t actually pressed send.

She glanced at Lucien. He was standing just a few feet away from her, an expression she didn’t recognize on his face … or at least wasn’t sure she remembered ever having seen him wear before, anyway. What was it? Alarm, certainly. Concern for her, yes.

But there was something else there, too. What was it? Was it … pain?

But it couldn’t possibly be. Because he was the prince of darkness. He wasn’t capable of feeling pain.

That’s what everyone back at the Palatine, especially Alaric Wulf, kept telling her, anyway.

“Are you all right?” he asked her. “I’m sorry, he surprised me. I’m not … I shouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”

She opened her mouth to reply …

But before she had a chance, she became aware of sounds—footsteps, approaching rapidly—behind them.

People were coming. But who? She hadn’t dialed.

And David hadn’t made a sound as he’d imploded.

She squinted into the darkness, trying to see. But some of the bulbs in the streetlights overhead were burned out, leaving large sections of the block in darkness. She hadn’t known this when she’d chosen this address as a meeting spot, or noticed it when she arrived.

Now she wondered if someone—or something—had broken the bulbs on purpose, knowing she was coming.

“Meena,” Lucien said, his tone anxious. He’d heard the footsteps, too.

Meena wasn’t normally called upon to make lightning-fast decisions in her new position at the Palatine. This was her first time in the field, since she was considered too valuable an asset to be allowed anywhere near actual demon activity. She’d always been confined to Palatine headquarters during working hours, where she stuck to determining who among her colleagues was most likely to run into fatal danger while on assignment.

And when demon activity was slow in North America, Meena spent her days Skyping with units overseas … or researching the online sections of the incredibly large Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, to which she had unlimited access as an employee of the Palatine, the military branch of the Vatican. This meant she was allowed to enter the Vatican Library’s secret archives, as well, which were restricted to members of the public. She was supposed to be looking for anything that might help in the Palatine’s battle against paranormal beings.

But of course what she was actually looking for was much more personal. Recently, she thought she’d found it.

Now, her heart hammering against the back of her ribs, she realized she had to act fast, or everything for which she’d been working so hard these past six months—especially the last two—would be ruined.

So she dropped her cell phone back into the pocket of her cardigan, where earlier, she’d slipped David’s car keys. Then instinctively, she dropped the stake …

But before it could strike the pavement, Lucien snatched it in midair. He slipped it into the pocket of his suit jacket.

“Let’s go,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders and spinning her toward the closest busy street.

“Why—” Then comprehension dawned. “Oh, of course,” she said. She’d killed vampires before, but never quite like that. “Evidence. My fingerprints are all over it.” But there was no body. She would never get used to any of this.

She kept walking, panic mounting as the footsteps behind them seemed to increase in speed. Who could it be? Surely not the Palatine, since she hadn’t called them … although her cell phone had a built-in GPS tracker. But who could have alerted them? Surely not the police, or there’d be sirens …

“It’s all right,” Lucien was saying. He, too, seemed concerned about the footsteps. She saw him glance behind them several times.

He possessed strength and powers considered by the Palatine to be superior to those of any other paranormal entity. She herself had witnessed him do things that no living being ought to have been able to do, including transform himself into a creature twelve times the size of a normal man. That breathed fire. Just a quarter of an hour earlier, he’d ripped the locked door off a Volvo station wagon and hurled a man so far into the air, he hadn’t fallen back to earth until many seconds later.

But maybe these things, coupled with David’s sucker punch, had taken more out of him than he’d realized, since for some reason Lucien didn’t snatch her up and fly off, or dissipate into thin air, both of which she knew he was perfectly capable of doing. He didn’t even pick up the pace, really, though she could tell he was as anxious as she was to get out of there.

What was wrong with him? she wondered He almost seemed …

“Are you all right?” she asked, putting an arm around him. “Here, lean on me.”

“Meena,” he growled. “I’m fine.”

“Of course you are,” she said. “We both are.”

She didn’t sound convincing even to herself.

They turned onto a better-lighted, much more highly trafficked street. There were couples out walking their dogs, and families standing at every corner, waiting for the light to turn so they could cross, eager to get to the Feast of San Gennaro, which had recently started in Little Italy, a few blocks away. Everyone was laughing, enjoying the late-summer air.

No one paid the slightest bit of attention to the man with his arm around the shoulders of the girl with the white kerchief encircling her neck. No one seemed to notice that her arm was around his waist beneath the jacket of his suit, or that they were possibly being pursued.

“Are they still behind us?” he asked her tersely.

She peeked over her shoulder.

“I can’t tell,” she said. “I didn’t get a good look at them. Did you?”

He shook his head. “It was probably whoever turned your friend, then sent him after you.”

“Then …” she said, looking around at all the smiling people, enjoying the first night of their weekend, “Vampires.”

It seemed hard to believe that on such a warm, pretty evening, something so evil could exist.

But she had just killed one. And she had her arm around the waist of another.

“It isn’t anyone from my clan, I can tell you that much,” he said. “Your friends at your new job have done excellent work annihilating almost every single one of them.”

“You told David you rule over all demon life on this side of hell,” Meena said, ignoring his sarcasm. “So how can any of them do something like this without your knowing about it?”

Lucien’s dark eyes flashed menacingly.

“I haven’t been very … available lately,” he replied.

She wasn’t sure if his curtness was due to her having touched upon a sensitive subject, or to their having reached an intersection, and the light was warning them to wait. A bus roared by, followed by a dozen taxis, making it impossible to cross.

She could feel the tension in Lucien’s body, and saw the way he was scanning the crowds of weekend revelers around them.

She also saw, for the first time, the faint purple shadows beneath those dark eyes of his, now easily visible in the much brighter lights along this street.

Meena wasn’t quite sure what it meant for a vampire to have shadows beneath his eyes. At no time during her training with the Palatine had this subject ever come up.

But she was beginning to suspect that despite the impeccable suit and lustrous hair, Lucien had not spent the months since she’d last seen him in some kind of vampire resort, relaxing in a lounge chair in the shade. He had obviously been suffering in some way.

“Lucien, are you all right?” she asked him. “I mean … are you sick, or something?”

He looked down at her, clearly offended by the question. “I told you,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“Well,” she said, “it’s just that you don’t seem like your old self … not in a bad way,” she hastened to add.

“How unfortunate,” he said. “I try so hard to be bad.”

He smiled down at her then. She instantly wished he hadn’t.

Because Lucien Antonescu’s smile did things to her, things that the smile of a vampire had no business doing to a girl who had joined an organization dedicated to eradicating his kind.

But there was still a part of him that was human. Or maybe—as she’d recently begun trying to prove—even better than human.

“You shouldn’t joke about that,” she said, nervously pushing some of her hair from her eyes. “I was serious when I said before that I think—”

That’s when someone—a kid, walking shoulder to shoulder with a group of his college friends down the sidewalk—slammed right into Meena, as if he hadn’t seen her at all.

“Oof,” she said as Lucien pulled her protectively against him.

The kid spun, then landed on the sidewalk. “What the hell?” he complained good-naturedly as his friends laughed at him. He obviously wasn’t hurt, just a little buzzed on beer, and confused.

“I’m so sorry,” Meena said to him, even though technically, he’d been the one who’d walked into her.

The kid said nothing, just continued to laugh as his friends pulled him back to his feet, calling him rude names. Lucien, meanwhile, had already steered Meena away from the group, navigating her quickly back down the crowded sidewalk.

“That was weird,” Meena said. “It was like he didn’t even see me.”

“He couldn’t see you,” Lucien said.

“Couldn’t see me?” Meena looked up at him in shock. “What do you mean? How could he not see me?”

“No one can see us right now,” Lucien said, his face devoid of expression. “It’s called a glamour. I’m afraid I can’t keep it up for long. But it should last us until I can get you back to your apartment. You should be safe there, providing you’ve taken the usual precautions against unwanted demon entry.”

She stared up at him, feeling a sudden mix of emotions. Especially when she realized they were turning onto her street.

“Lucien,” she said, freezing suddenly in her tracks. “How do you know where I live?”

She had been so careful, leaving the rectory at the Shrine of St. Clare’s—where she’d moved after his minions had gutted her last apartment—as soon as she’d realized he knew she was there. She’d had all her mail forwarded to a post office box, canceled her old cell phone, her gym membership, even her library card. She’d sold her old apartment and now shared a sublet with her brother in which even the cable bill was under the original owner’s name.

How could he possibly have known?

Then again … how could he not have?

She wasn’t afraid, necessarily. Not as afraid as she’d been just minutes before. And she certainly wasn’t afraid for her life. All she had to do was press a button on her phone, and the entire Manhattan unit of the Palatine would be there within a few minutes.

Of course, by that time, she could easily be dead.

But dying wasn’t what she was most afraid of. Not anymore.

“Meena,” he said. The smile was long gone. “What you were saying, about my not seeming like my old self …”

The effort it was causing him to form the words was obvious. And now she recognized what it was she hadn’t been able to identify in his face before. It was pain. It was deeply etched in the hollows beneath his eyes.

“I suppose,” he said, “that’s part of my problem.”

She cocked her head, confused.

“What is?” she asked.

He took another step, but this time it was more of a stumble. Only not a drunken one, like the boy they’d seen down the block. His body weight began to sag against hers.

“That in spite of your choice last spring,” he said, his voice a ragged whisper, “my feelings for you are unchanged. I’m still as in love with you as ever.”

Chapter Five