Insatiable

So Alaric didn’t waste time on ruses the way Holtzman did. Especially not when it came to Sarah. He got straight to the point … by applying Señor Sticky to her throat.

When she finally stammered, “Felix … Felix lives in a loft over an antiques store on West Fourth … but please …,” he grabbed her by the back of the neck and stuffed her into the passenger seat of his rental car. He didn’t need her texting her undead lover any warnings so Felix could call his vamp friends and set up a trap.

It wasn’t the most uplifting drive over to Felix’s place. Especially because Sarah sobbed most of the way and whispered, “Please, please … don’t hurt him. You don’t understand … he doesn’t want to be the way he is. He hates what he is. He hates that he has to … hurt me.”

“Yes?” Alaric glanced at her. He’d turned the car radio to the heavy metal station. He didn’t particularly like heavy metal, but he needed something loud enough to drown out the sound of her sniffling. “So why do you let him do it, then?”

“Because,” Sarah said, sniffling, “he’ll die if I don’t.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Alaric said. “He can’t die unless someone stabs him with a wooden stake through the heart or cuts off his head. Or, alternatively, if someone shoves him into some direct sunlight or completely immerses his body in holy water. But then,” he added, throwing a glance her way, “you must know all this.”

“None of that’s true,” Sarah said. “He told me all those things were myths. Also about how vampires can live on animal blood. He said if they do that, they’ll die. That’s why he has to drink my blood. To stay alive.”

Alaric rolled his eyes. “Do you realize girls like you have been falling for that one for centuries? Vamps just don’t like animal blood. It weakens them. And they don’t look as nice after they’ve been drinking it for a while. And if they’re anything, vamps are vain. Human blood’s like filet mignon to them. So if he told you he’ll die if you don’t let him drink your blood, he’s a damned liar, in addition to being a putrid stinking woman-abusing soulless abomination.”

Sarah seemed to find his language objectionable, since this statement only made her weep harder.

Alaric felt a little bad about this. Holtzman was always telling him that he needed to work on his people skills more.

Accordingly, Alaric passed her a tissue from the little packet the rental car agency had left in the car.

“You’re mean,” Sarah said, blowing her nose into the tissue. “Felix isn’t a soulless abomination. He’s sensitive. He has feelings. He reads me poetry. Shakespeare.”

Alaric wanted to pull the car over so he could throw up, but they didn’t have time. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could go back to the hotel; order some room service; have a nice, relaxing bath (in the world’s tiniest tub, which had those grainy strips attached to the bottom, so guests wouldn’t slip in the shower—this was Alaric’s number one pet peeve about less-than-five-star hotels; he was a grown man, he knew how to stand without falling in the tub); and go to bed.

Then, tomorrow morning, he’d fly to New York, check into the Peninsula, find the prince, and kill him.

This made him quite happy to think about.

“This,” Alaric explained to Sarah in what he thought was a kindly voice, “isn’t love you’re feeling. Only dopamine. Because Felix isn’t like anyone else you know. Being a creature of the night, he’s new and exciting and activates a neurotransmitter in your brain that releases feelings of euphoria when you’re around him … especially because you know you can never actually be together, and he seems complicated, and perhaps even sensitive and vulnerable at times. But I can assure you: he’s anything but.”

“How dare you?” Sarah demanded hotly. “It isn’t dopa … whatever! It’s love! Love!”

Alaric wanted to argue. Vampires were incapable of love—human love—because they didn’t have hearts. Well, technically, he supposed they possessed hearts, since that’s what he had to stab a stake into in order to kill them. But their hearts didn’t pump blood or beat.

So how could they feel love, much less return it?

But arguing with a teenager over the semantics of vampire love didn’t seem like a winning proposition to him.

“Oh, come on, then,” Alaric couldn’t help saying finally, noticing that his passenger continued to sob quietly to herself. “It’s not all bad.”

“How?” Sarah demanded, flashing an aggravated look at him. “How is this not all bad? You’re going to try to kill my boyfriend!”

“True,” Alaric said. They were nearly to the address she’d given him. “But look at it this way. He promised to turn you into a vampire, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, sounding a bit surprised. “He said he was going to turn me, just as soon as he got his strength up. Then I’ll be beautiful, like him. And immortal.”

“Right,” Alaric said a little sarcastically. He knew this Felix had no intention whatsoever of turning her. Doing so would deprive him of his primary food source.

What Alaric was sure the vampire would do instead was string her along for a few more months; then, when she grew too sickly from anemia to be of any more use to him, he’d move on to some healthier host. He’d probably tell her it was him, not her … that he needed time to “think about things.” Then he’d disappear.

Then, after her broken heart—and even more broken body—had healed, Felix would probably find his way back to Sarah—and to Chattanooga—and start the cycle all over again. Unless Sarah found the strength to put her foot down and tell him no, she would not be abused in this way.

But that wouldn’t happen. The vamps were just too alluring. And their victims just never seemed to think they deserved better than the treatment they were given. It was almost as if they were afraid to put their foot down, because they thought they’d never get anything better. …

But that was what Alaric was for. He would be Sarah’s foot, since she didn’t have the strength, or willpower, to put her own down. He’d make sure she got something better and stop the cycle from continuing. Permanently.

Alaric found a parking space … except that it was beside a fire hydrant.

It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t be there that long.

“Supposing he did turn you into one of his kind,” he said, switching off the engine and turning to look at her, “then me, or one of my fellow officers, would only have to kill you eventually, because that’s what we do. We’re demon killers. And trust me, you really wouldn’t want any of us on your tail. We’d be your worst nightmare. It’s much better this way. This way, you’ll stay a human, and maybe you can go to college and get a degree and a fun job doing something you like. Or maybe you can find some nice guy back at the Walmart you can go out with, even marry. And, assuming you want them, you two can have a few babies, and grow old and watch them have babies, and be grandparents someday. Wouldn’t you like that? You could never have babies with Felix.”

“Vampires can have babies,” Sarah informed him. “I read it in a book.”

“Yes,” Alaric said, feeling annoyed. “Well, in books, the vampires struggle nobly against themselves not to bite you, because they love you so much. But that didn’t exactly happen, did it? So the books aren’t really very accurate, are they?”

Sarah glared at him.

“I hate you,” she said.

Alaric nodded. “I know,” he said. He reached across her and opened the car door. “Get out.”

She looked at him blankly. “What?”

“Go on,” he said. “I know you’re dying to run ahead and give lover boy the heads-up. I’m going to let you. Tell him I’ll let him go, on one condition.”

Her entire demeanor changed. Suddenly, she was all that was accommodating and pleasant.

“What condition?” she asked eagerly.

“Tell him that if he tells me where I can find the prince, I’ll let you both go. Then you can run off and have vampire babies together.”

Alaric couldn’t say the last part without laughing, though he did try, remembering that he was supposed to be working on his people skills.

Sarah evidently didn’t notice.

“Oh, thank you!” Sarah was smiling as she scrambled from the car. “Thank you so much!”

“Not a problem,” Alaric said. He watched as she ran across the sidewalk and up to an unobtrusive-looking door beside the display window of an antiques shop inside an industrial-looking building. He gathered his things as she pressed an intercom. Then he calmly strode to the alley, where, as he’d suspected, there was a fire escape. He leapt for the rusted metal ladder as he heard Felix’s voice asking through the intercom, “Who is it?”

Then the buzzer went off, letting Sarah inside the building.

It only took Alaric a moment or two to climb to the roof of the building, and less than that to secure a grappling hook to the side of the building, then fasten the end of the rope to his belt.

A few seconds later, Alaric jumped from the roof, crashing through Felix’s plate-glass living room windows…

… just as the vampire was putting on a black cloak to shield himself from the sun, preparing to make a run for it. Sarah screamed as UV-protection glass went flying everywhere.

The vampire, desperate to get out of the sun’s rays, which could be fatal to him, threw himself at the front door.

“Now, Felix,” Alaric said calmly. “You can’t go that way, either.”

A second later, Felix was shrieking. This was because Alaric had hurled a glass vial filled with holy water at the door. It burst over the knob, singeing the vampire’s fingers as he reached for it. He drew his hand away, hissing with pain and cradling his smoking fingers.

“I thought you said you’d let him go if he told!” Sarah shouted with outrage.

“And I will,” Alaric said, smiling at her. He turned toward Felix. “So,” he said. “Where can I find your prince?”

Felix, who looked like a handsome boy of eighteen or twenty—and appeared from his taste in wall posters to have a fondness for the band Belle and Sebastian—curled back his lips to reveal a set of extremely strong white teeth. His incisors were unnaturally long and, true to his species, not unpointy.

“I’ll never tell, demon hunter,” he growled.

Then he threw back his head and let out a hiss, his long tongue darting in and out of his mouth like a lizard’s tail.

Sarah looked shocked. She’d apparently never heard her boyfriend use that tone of voice before. Or seen his eyes glow red.

“Felix,” she cried. “Just tell him! He said he’d let you go if you told.”

When Felix swung his glowing red eyes and twisting tongue toward her, she staggered back a step. “Why did you bring him here, you stupid whore?” Felix demanded.

Horrified, Sarah started crying all over again.

Alaric took her tears as his cue that it would be all right with her if he performed his duty. So he stepped forward, swinging Señor Sticky free of its scabbard.

It was over in a matter of seconds. To his credit, the vampire put up a good fight.

But cornered by sunlight on one side and holy water on the other, he had nowhere to go. There was no escape.

Alaric didn’t give him a chance for any last words. In his experience, vampires didn’t really have anything that interesting or insightful to say. It was all Shakespeare and emo.

When he was done, he looked at the girl. She was curled up in a ball over by the broken window, weeping softly to herself.

But—and Alaric knew he wasn’t imagining it—her hair had already begun to recover its luster, and there was color in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before.

She’d be fine in a few days, if her parents fed her enough protein.

He sheathed his sword.

“Get up now,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. He was so bad at this part. Martin was the one who always knew the right thing to say. “I will drive you home to your mother.”

She uncurled a little and looked at him coldly. “You said you wouldn’t kill him if he told,” she said. Her voice sounded stronger than before, and her eyes had a shine to them that had nothing to do with tears. She was, he knew, her own person again and no longer a pawn to a vampire sire. His killing Felix had released her.

“And he didn’t tell,” Alaric pointed out.

“You didn’t give him a chance!” she cried.

But she was getting up, carefully avoiding looking in the direction where the body was.

Except that there was no body. Only clothes lay where Felix had been. He had to have been over a hundred years old. His bones were dust.

“He would never have told,” Alaric said. “If he had told, the prince, or his minions, would have killed him, and far less gently than I did. He chose to die by my sword because he knew it would be quicker.” He looked down at her. “They’d have killed you, too, you know, if they’d have found you here with him. They’d have fed on you until there was nothing left.”

Sarah blinked. “You mean … he died to protect me? Oh … that’s so sweet!”

Alaric wanted to show her the photographs he always carried of what some of her now former boyfriend’s friends had done to Martin. How they’d bitten and peeled strips of his flesh off, just for fun. Vampires were incapable of sweetness.

But Holtzman, he knew, wouldn’t approve of this.

Besides, his job there was done. She was free now.

And that meant it was time for him to go back to the hotel and pack for New York, to go after a vampire who might really prove a challenge to his sword arm, unlike her silly boyfriend.

So he only said, “Let’s take you home now.”

And that’s exactly what he did.

Chapter Thirteen

10:00 P.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11A

New York, New York

What is this?” Emil walked into the spacious master bedroom he shared with his vivacious and slender wife, holding a printout of the e-mail he’d found on his desktop.

“Oh, hon,” Mary Lou said as she breezed by on her way to her dressing table. “That’s just a little Evite I sent out to all my girlfriends for the dinner party I’m having in Prince Lucien’s honor on Thursday.”

Emil felt a small but persistent sensation in the center of his belly that was not unlike being poked over and over by someone with very long nails … a sensation with which, as it happened, Emil was not unfamiliar.

“You sent out an e-mail about the prince?” he said. “You do realize that if this message falls into the wrong hands, it could jeopardize everything?”

“Oh, don’t be such a ninny,” Mary Lou said. “I only sent it to my very best friends. Whose hands is it going to fall into?”

Emil fought for inner patience.

“The Dracul, for one?” he said drily when he could speak again. “The Palatine Guard, for another? Not to mention the humans? All the people who’d like to see us, not to mention the prince, destroyed?”

“Oh, pooh,” Mary Lou said. She sat down in front of the large mirror behind her dressing table and began removing her makeup. “You’re being melodramatic. No one wants to destroy us anymore. The prince has the Dracul under control. The Palatine Guard don’t know where we are, and the humans love us! Look at how popular we are in books and on the TV. Why, if everyone found out, I’m sure I’d be invited onto Oprah as a special guest.”

“Mary Lou!” Emil stared at her reflection in astonishment. “Someone is killing women! All over town! No one is going to be inviting you onto Oprah while women are being killed by a member of our brethren. And the prince isn’t going to want a dinner party in his honor. He’s going to prefer to keep a low profile while he’s in town, trying to find that killer.”

“I have so many beautiful, intelligent female friends,” Mary Lou said, gazing thoughtfully at herself. “Why shouldn’t I show them off? The prince has been alone too long.”

“Lucien’s not here,” Emil said, feeling as if he were drowning, “to find a wife. He’s here on business. The murders—”

“And if he should happen to meet a nice girl,” Mary Lou said, interrupting, “while he’s here, would that be so terrible? Apparently he hasn’t had any luck in his own country. But you know we have the most amazing women in the world right here in the good old U.S. of A—”

“Mary Lou.” Emil stared uncomfortably at his wife’s bare shoulders. “You understand that you’re putting me in a terribly awkward position. Lucien asked that I not mention his arrival to anyone, and here you are sending out e-mails to everyone on your cc list, an e-mail that could be traced back—”

“Not everyone,” Mary Lou said indignantly. “Just my best single girlfriends, and a few of the married ones so as not to make it look obvious he’s being set up. None of them is employed by the Vatican, for goodness sake, or members of the Dracul. I just asked Linda and Tom, and Faith and Frank, and Carol from your office, and Becca and Ashley, and Meena from across the hall.”

“Meena?” Emil was confused. Many things about his wife confused him. He was certain that even if they spent an eternity together—and it already felt like they had—he’d never fully understand her. “The prince … and Meena Harper? But she’s—”

“Why not?” Mary Lou gave her naturally curly—and still naturally blond—hair a flip. “At first glance she may not seem like his type, but I like her. She’s got that cute little figure, and a pixie cut suits her. Most women can’t pull it off, you know, but she works it. And if the prince likes her, just think how grateful he’ll be to us. Besides,” she added with a shrug, “all she does is work to keep her and that no-good brother of hers financially afloat. I think she needs a break.”

“She likes her job,” Emil said, thinking of all the times he’d seen his neighbor in her pajamas barefoot in their floor’s trash room, disgruntledly stuffing heavily crossed-out script pages down the chute to the incinerator.

Well, maybe she didn’t always like her job.

“Oh, sure,” Mary Lou said. “The soap opera thing. But do you think she’d work if she didn’t have to?”

Emil thought about this. “Yes,” he said.

“Well, that shows what you know about women, which is nothing. Look at those ladies she writes about on Insatiable, Victoria Worthington Stone and her daughter, Tabby. Victoria’s never had a job in her life, except for that time she was a model. Oh, and a fashion designer. Oh, and when she was a race car driver, but that was only for a week before she crashed and lost the baby and was in that coma. Those aren’t even real jobs. They say you write about what you wish would happen to you. So, obviously Meena wishes she didn’t have a job.”

“Or,” Emil said, “she wishes she were a race car driver.”

“And Prince Lucien would be able to provide for her.” Mary Lou went on, ignoring him. “And since the prince likes writing, the two of them already have something in common.”

“It’s a very different kind of writing,” Emil said. “Lucien writes historical nonfiction. And anyway, he made it very clear when I spoke to him that he wanted to keep his visit under the radar. We’re at a very critical time with the Dracul. These murders—”

“Oh, stop being such a worrywart,” Mary Lou said. “No man wouldn’t want to have dinner with a lot of pretty ladies.” She laughed and turned to poke her husband in his belly, which stuck out ever so slightly over the waistband of his trousers. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t enjoy being the center of attention of me and all my friends. Not that you aren’t …”

“Well.” Emil felt the pressure in his gut receding slightly. “Maybe he won’t mind so much. A man has to eat, after all.”

“Exactly,” Mary Lou exclaimed. “And so why not do it in the company of a lot of lovely, accomplished ladies?”

“Why not?” Emil asked.

Maybe, he thought, his wife was right:

The man did have to eat, after all.

Chapter Fourteen

3:45 A.M. EST, Wednesday, April 14

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B

New York, New York

Meena stared at the bright red numbers on the digital clock in her bedroom. Three forty-five. She had five hours before she had to leave for the office. Four more to sleep before she had to get up to start getting ready.

Except that she couldn’t sleep. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, grinding her teeth, and thinking about Yalena—all she could see was a picture of the girl’s body, battered almost beyond recognition—and Cheryl and CDI and the job she hadn’t gotten and Jon and her parents and David and the countess and Leisha and Adam and the baby.

Now she’d never get to sleep.

There was only one answer to Meena’s problem, and it lay in a little orange prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. She hated resorting to pills, but lately she’d been relying on them more and more.

She was just about to reach for her secret stash of pills in the medicine cabinet when she heard it:

The clickety-clack of Jack Bauer’s claws on the hardwood floor behind her.

Seeing her up and around, Jack Bauer thought it was morning and time for his first walk of the day.

“Okay, Jack,” Meena whispered to him. “Okay. We’ll go.”

She spat out her mouth guard, leaving it in the sink, then slipped as quietly as she could into her coat and a pair of sneakers and got Jack Bauer’s leash from its hook.

She’d just take him on a short walk, she decided, then go back to bed. She’d be home in less than fifteen minutes. With half a pill, she could still get a full four hours of restorative sleep before work. Everything would be okay.

In the lobby of Meena’s building, Pradip, the night doorman, had dozed off with his head resting on one of his textbooks. He was studying to be a masseur, which Meena thought was a fine career option for him, since people were having multiple careers nowadays well into their eighties, and his death didn’t appear to be imminent.

Meena crept past him, careful not to disturb him—all the staff in her building worked so hard—and slipped out the automatic doors to the sidewalk, where Jack Bauer hurried to relieve himself against the potted palm just beside the red carpet by the building’s entrance, as was his ritual. Meena waited beside him, inhaling the fresh morning air. Or was it still night? She wasn’t sure. The sky above was a dark blue wash, a paler blue at the edges, where it disappeared behind the tall buildings.

Meena gave Jack Bauer’s leash a tug, and he obediently began trotting beside her. They had a route they always took this time of night—down Park Avenue to Seventy-eighth; past St. George’s Cathedral, currently closed for badly needed renovations; then back down Eightieth, and to the apartment.

But for some reason that night—or that morning—Jack was feeling jumpy. Meena could tell, because he ignored some of the places he usually liked to take an inordinately long time sniffing and just kept trotting forward, nervously snuffling the air, almost as if … well, as if he were anticipating something.

But because this was the way he often behaved—his name was, after all, Jack Bauer: he was a jumble of nerves, always expecting the worst, barking at their front door when it was only the countess and her husband coming home from a party—Meena thought nothing of it.

She let Jack Bauer pull her along, thinking idly about work. How was she going to fit a prince for Cheryl into Shoshona’s vampire story line?

And Yalena—should Meena have followed her to her meeting with the boyfriend? She was wondering whether she could have said something to him, given him a look, done something to let him know she was onto him, when she noticed the first other person she’d seen on foot since leaving her building, coming toward her on the same side of the street, but from the opposite direction.