Insatiable

“You told me I was going to die,” he said with a shrug. “You said it would be dark and

that there would be fire. And now it’s happening. You were right.”

“No,” she said. Her heart seemed to be racing a mile a minute. Please, it seemed to

thump out. Let me be wrong. Just this once. Back away from the precipice. “I was wrong. I

need your belt or something.”

“No one takes Señor Sticky from me,” Alaric said, grasping his sword hilt.

“Oh, my God,” Meena said. “I don’t want your stupid sword. I—”

Then she remembered.

“My scarf,” she said. “The one I gave you. Are you still wearing it?”

He lifted his wrist and pulled back his sleeve. She was relieved to see that the red scarf

she’d given him at the rectory was still there. “You mean this?” he asked. “But you gave it to

me.”

“Well, I need it back,” she said. “Take it off. Give it to me.”

His big fingers, so skilled at so many things, proved clumsy with this, fumbled with the

tiny knot she’d made. “I’m very surprised at you, Meena Harper,” he said, sounding childishly

disappointed. “I thought you gave it to me as a present. It isn’t very polite of you to take

something back after you’ve given it to someone, you know.”

Beyond the thick pile of rubble around them, Meena heard a roar—Lucien. Then the

building shook. Meena closed her eyes. What was Lucien doing?

Please, she prayed. No more death. There’d already been so much death that night. Too

much. She couldn’t take any more.

Alaric heard it, too. He shook his head as he continued to fumble at the knot.

“This is why,” he said, “you need to come work for the Palatine.”

“What?” Her hands were wrist-deep in his blood as she pressed on his wound. “What are

you talking about?”

“You,” he said. “Don’t you see, Meena? If you came to work for the Palatine Guard, you

could keep things like this from happening. The demons…they wouldn’t stand a chance if you

were on our side instead of theirs.”

“I’m not on the demons’ side,” Meena snapped. She knew it wasn’t his fault. He was

obviously delusional from all the blood loss. It was why he’d kissed her. He’d never have done

that if he’d been in his right mind. He hated her. “I just don’t see why everyone wants to kill

Lucien. He—”

“Like that day when Martin and I went into that warehouse outside of Berlin,” Alaric

said, ignoring her, “we had no idea we were walking into a trap. But if you were working for

the Palatine, you might have said, ‘Hey, Alaric. Hey, Martin. There’s danger there. Be careful.’

And we would have been more careful. And maybe now, Martin would still be able to chew.”

He held the scarf out to her, having managed to untie it.

Meena stared at him for a second.

Was he serious? Or was this part of the delusion, brought on by the massive blood loss?

Come work for the Palatine Guard? Her?

No. That was her brother’s dream, not hers. She didn’t want to be a demon hunter. She

was in love with a demon.

Wouldn’t that be a slight conflict of interest?

“I wish you would come work with us, Meena,” Alaric said, his gaze fixed on hers. “I

don’t want to die. A heads-up from you about when to expect it would be very nice. I know

everyone else would appreciate it, too.”

She took the scarf from him. His eyes, even in the semi-darkness, were very blue.

“I’ll…think about it,” she said.

Then she bent to concentrate on making a tourniquet with the scarf and a piece of wood

she’d found in the rubble. Fortunately, she’d written the dialogue for the episode of Insatiable

where Victoria Worthington Stone had been forced to put a tourniquet on the leg of her half

brother when that plane they’d been on had gone down in the jungle of South America.

Victoria had radioed a local medical clinic for instructions, and Meena had been scrupulous

about getting the details exactly right, just in case any of their viewers ever happened to be in

the same situation….

She had never in a million years imagined she might be one of them.

But the tourniquet worked. The blood stopped gushing from his leg.

Either that, or the blood flow had stopped because Alaric was dead.

But when she looked down at his face, she saw that he was still gazing up at her, a

thoughtful expression on his face.

“So?” he asked.

“The bad news is, you’re a terrible kisser,” she informed him with mock gravity. Better

to use humor to make him think the situation wasn’t as grave as it was than let him know the

truth. “The good news is, you have time to work on your technique. You’re going to live.”

“No,” he said. He reached for her hand, not seeming to care that it was covered in blood.

His blood. “I don’t mean about that. I mean about the other thing.”

She shook her head. “Alaric,” she said, laughing shakily. “I’m not moving to Rome .”

He seemed to think about this. “Would your psychic powers work over Skype?” he

asked finally.

Then he passed out.

He didn’t let go of her hand, though. He was still holding tightly to it, in fact, hours later

when firefighters broke a hole through the rubble and asked if they were all right.

“I’m fine,” Meena called. “But my friend needs an ambulance. His leg is badly hurt.”

“All right, ma’am,” the firefighter said. “Just stay back. We’ll have you both out in a

minute.”

“What about everyone else?” Meena asked worriedly, thinking about Lucien…but also,

she told herself, about Abraham Holtzman and Sister Gertrude and the others. “Is everyone

else all right?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that, ma’am,” the firefighter said.

“As far as I know, you two are the only survivors.”

Chapter Sixty

6:00 P.M ., Friday, April 23

Lenox Hill Hospital

100 East Seventy-seventh Street

New York, New York

A laric was deeply unhappy.

It was bad enough that he was in the hospital.

But to make matters worse, he had been there for almost a week, and no one had thought

to bring him his own things from his room at the Peninsula. His silk pajamas, or his sheep’swool-lined slippers, or even a robe.

Nothing.

So he was stuck—in traction, no less—in a wretchedly uncomfortable hospital bed, on

inferior hospital bedsheets, with one of those flat, inferior hospital-bed pillows, in a hospital

gown. A hospital gown!

It didn’t even properly close up the back. So if he’d wanted to take a walk around the

floor (which he couldn’t do because he was in traction; he’d been told he wouldn’t be walking

for weeks—weeks!—and they called themselves doctors), he couldn’t, because he’d be

exposing his backside to the whole of the ward.

And his hospital room television didn’t get any premium movie channels.

And there was no minibar. Not that he could have walked to one and opened it if there

had been, since he was in traction. If he wanted so much as a drink of water, he had to ring the

nurse for one.

He couldn’t even walk to the bathroom.

He had never been so humiliated.