Insatiable

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.

It was a man.

But he was a very tall man, dressed in a long black trench coat that flapped behind him

almost like a cape.

Meena tightened her grip on Jack Bauer’s leash, and not just because the dog had begun

growling. She was alone on a dark street approaching a large man she didn’t know. What on

earth was he doing out at four in the morning without a dog if he wasn’t drunk?

She didn’t blame Jack Bauer for being suspicious. She was suspicious, too.

But as they approached the wide steps to St. George’s Cathedral, surrounded by

scaffolding, Meena saw from the security lights shining down from the church spires that the

man was unusually good looking—maybe in his mid to late thirties—and was in no way giving

off signs that he didn’t belong in the ritzy neighborhood. His clothes were impeccably tailored

and in good taste; his dark hair, brushed back from his temples without a hint of gray,

immaculately groomed. Even his sideburns were the perfect length.

She was the one, she belatedly realized, who probably looked suspicious, given the fact

that her short hair was doubtlessly pointing up in spikes (as it was wont to do when she’d just

gotten up), she was without makeup, and her blue flannel pajama legs—with white puffy

clouds on them—were sticking out of the bottom of her own trench coat, above her well-worn

sneakers.

When she raised her gaze to meet his as he walked past her—Jack Bauer was practically

snarling by this time—she was smiling apologetically, both for her appearance and for her

dog’s behavior.

He smiled back, his eyes dark and as full of mystery as the windows peering down

around them.

And she relaxed.

She had no bad feelings about this man. Not a single twinge about how or when he was

going to die. Amazingly enough she felt nothing…

…nothing at all about him.

“Shhh,” Meena said to Jack Bauer, embarrassed over the dog’s antics.

It was right then that the sky collapsed.

Chapter Fifteen

4:00 A.M . EST, Wednesday, April 14

St. George’s Cathedral

180 East Seventy-eighth Street

New York, New York

T he sky didn’t really collapse, of course.

It only seemed that way, because a huge section of it came swooping down at Meena

from one of the spires of the cathedral.

She screamed and ducked, covering Jack Bauer with her body and arms, trying to protect

them both from what looked like an ink-dark swath of material that came hurtling down at her

head.

Except that she could see glimpses of the misty yellow glare from the street and security

lights between the objects that were propelling themselves toward her at such an unbelievably

fast speed.

Which was when Meena realized this wasn’t a single solid piece of St. George’s

Cathedral, crumbling at last.

It was, unbelievably, bats. Hundreds, maybe thousands of black, shrieking bats, all

headed straight at her, their pink mouths open, razor-sharp claws extended, beady yellow eyes

bulging as they swept down from the cathedral’s spires, blocking out most of the night sky and

available lamplight with their foot-wide wingspan, their only target Meena Harper and her

Pomeranian-chow mix.

At first Meena froze. She wasn’t paralyzed with fear so much as with shock. All she

could think was, this was how she was going to die? Being chewed to death by rats with

wings?

Meena had been envisioning other people’s deaths for so long, it had never occurred to

her that she might one day be experiencing her own.

And now, faced by her own imminent destruction, all she was able to think was that

she’d never, not even for a second, seen it coming.

Then, her heart stuck in her throat, too terrified to let out a second scream as she stood at

the bottom of the steps of the cathedral, she pulled Jack Bauer into her arms—those bats were

nearly as big as he was—then dropped to the pavement to protect her dog, her face, and her

eyes. Burying her nose in Jack’s fur, she began frantically to pray, though she’d never been a

particularly religious person before that moment. Oh, please, oh, please, oh, please, she

prayed, to no deity in particular, as every second the bats’ shrieks sounded more and more

loudly in her ears.

And then, just as it seemed the first of those claws had to sink into her scalp, the back of

her neck, her unprotected spine, she felt something—or rather some one —drop on top of her,

envelop her, blocking out the light and sound almost completely.

And she realized, risking a brief upward glance, that it was the man who’d been standing

next to her…the tall, good-looking man with the nice hair, in the expensive coat. The man

about whose future she’d felt exactly nothing.

Except that that was impossible. Because he’d thrown himself over her, in order to

protect her from the bats.

And now he, not she, was being torn apart by bat claws and pummeled by the impact of

their careening bodies. She could feel the force of them as they struck him, one after another,

reverberating all the way through his body to hers, as the two of them crouched on the

cathedral steps, bombarded by keening winged missiles.

Why he wasn’t crying out with the pain he had to feel as each talon struck him, Meena

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