Insatiable

didn’t know. He wasn’t even trying to shield his face and neck from the bats as they continued

to tear at him. Meena couldn’t quite see his face beneath the dark protective folds of his coat,

which had formed a sort of canopy over her, shielding her from the menacing attack.

But she thought she caught a glimpse of his eyes once as she glanced out, trying to see

what was happening, and she could have sworn…

Well, she could have sworn they flashed as red as the brake lights she’d seen all up and

down Park Avenue.

But that, of course, would have been impossible.

As impossible as the fact that she hadn’t sensed he was going to die tonight the minute

she’d seen him coming toward her.

And die protecting her .

But that had to be what was happening. Because no human being could go through an

attack like this and live.

Meena couldn’t believe any of this was happening. It was four in the morning, and she

was on Seventy-eighth Street in front of a church she’d walked by a hundred—maybe even a

thousand—times before, and she was being attacked by killer bats, while a man—a total

stranger—had thrown himself over her, voluntarily giving his own life for hers.

And then, just when Meena was certain she couldn’t take it a moment longer—when she

was convinced the attack would never stop and that they would eat right through the man’s

body and down to hers—as suddenly as the bats had appeared, they were gone.

Just vanished into the night sky, disappearing as mysteriously as they’d come.

And the street was silent again, save for the distant sound of traffic over on Park Avenue.

There wasn’t a noise to be heard, except for Jack Bauer’s whines and her own ragged

breathing. She hadn’t realized until then that she was crying.

She couldn’t hear the man’s breathing. Was he dead already? How could he be dead

without her having felt his death approaching? Even though he was a stranger to her, she

ought to have known. Her power to predict death—unwanted as it had always been—had

never once failed her before.

“Oh!” She found that she couldn’t catch her breath. She was trying to take in large gulps

of air, but no oxygen seemed to be reaching her lungs. And it wasn’t because her protector was

dead weight on top of her, either. “Oh, my God.”

That was when the man rolled off Meena and, in a deep voice tinged with an accent that

sounded to her like a mixture of British and a hint of something else, asked, “Are you all right,

miss?”

Chapter Sixteen

4:10 A.M . EST, Wednesday, April 14

St. George’s Cathedral

180 East Seventy-eighth Street

New York, New York

N one of it was the slightest bit possible, of course.

That he should be completely unhurt and conversing with her as politely as if she’d just

tripped over Jack Bauer’s leash and fallen across the sidewalk and he was a passerby who’d

stooped to help her back up.

That she was looking into the eyes of the charming stranger kneeling beside her and saw

that they weren’t red at all, but a perfectly ordinary dark brown.

“I—I’m fine,” Meena stammered in response to his inquiry after her health. She’d let

Jack Bauer go because she could no longer hold on to his wildly wiggling body. He darted as

far as the end of his leash would allow him to, then stood there growling, all the fur on his back

raised. Meena couldn’t believe how horribly behaved he was being.

“Are you all right?” she asked her rescuer in a trembling voice.

“I’m very well, thank you.” The man had risen to his feet and now reached down to take

Meena’s hands in his, to help her up. “I’d heard, of course, that New York City was dangerous.

But I’d no idea it was quite as dangerous as that .”

Was he…? He was.

He was making a little joke.

His grip on her hands was steady. Meena felt oddly reassured by it. And by the little

joke.

“I-it’s not,” Meena stammered.

Meena needed, she decided, to sit down. His grip on her hands was the only thing

keeping her on her feet.

“I think we should get you to a hospital,” she heard herself say.

Or me, she thought. For a full head CT.

“Not at all,” the man said, putting an arm around her shaking shoulders. His grip seemed

to say, I’m in control. There’s no need to worry about anything. Everything is going to be all

right now. In a distant part of her brain, she hoped he would never, ever let go. “I’m fine. I

think we should get you home, though. You seem done in. Where did you say you lived?”

“I didn’t,” Meena said. Her mind was awhirl, she knew. But whose wouldn’t be after

such an event? How could he be so calm? Bats, Meena remembered, sometimes carried rabies.

“Did any of them bite you? You should go to the ER right away. They can stop rabies if they

catch it early enough.”

“None of them bit me,” he said in an amused tone of voice. He had taken the leash from

her and was now walking both her and Jack Bauer—though unlike Meena, Jack Bauer wasn’t

in the least bit unsteady on his feet and was fighting against his lead, wearing an expression not

unlike the one Kiefer Sutherland wore when terrorists kidnapped the president on his show,

like he was going to attack anyone and everyone who got in front of him. “But I’ll go to the

hospital and get myself checked out as soon as I’ve gotten you home safely.”

“It’s important,” Meena said as they crossed the street. She was babbling. She knew she

was babbling, but she couldn’t help it. What was going on? Who was this man? How could he

be uninjured? Why was Jack Bauer acting like such a maniac? “It’s important you go. Victoria

Worthington Stone got rabies once from a rabid bat when she was in a plane crash in South

America, and in the ensuing brain fever, she slept with her half brother…although she didn’t

know he was her half brother at the time.”

What was she talking about? Victoria Worthington Stone? Oh, God. Really?

The man hesitated. “Is this a friend of yours?” he asked.

Cringing with embarrassment, Meena said, “Well, I mean, Cheryl is. She plays Victoria

Worthington Stone on Insatiable . I write her dialogue. But it’s true about the bats and rabies.

We may be just a soap opera, but we strive for authenticity in our plotlines….”

Or at least we used to, before Shoshona made head writer and caved to the demands of

the sponsor, she just managed to stop herself from adding.

“I understand,” he said, gently leading her past the grocery store where Jon had said the

chicken delivery hadn’t been made. There was a delivery truck outside the store now, though,

the motor running noisily. Oh, so there’ll be chicken today, Meena thought disconnectedly.

Yeah. She was losing it.

“So you’re a writer.”

“Dialogue writer.” Meena felt the need to correct him. “I’ve never written a scene like

that, ” meaning what had just happened outside St. George’s.

She couldn’t get it out of her head: the sound of all those wings flapping. And the smell

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