Insatiable

should have been on the lower half was only skull. It had clearly been shredded by fangs.

Meena could only stare.

Alaric took the photo from her limp fingers and said, putting it away, “But a photo, I

know, doesn’t prove anything. Next you will say what happened to his face could have

happened in a car accident.”

Meena stammered, “I…I wasn’t going to say that.”

She didn’t know what she was going to say. She looked over at Jon. He was still busy in

the kitchen with the sodas. She wished he would hurry up. She was feeling less and less certain

that Alaric Wulf was actually deranged with every passing second.

Why that should be more unnerving to her than the alternative, Meena wasn’t sure.

“Here,” Alaric said. “These are photos of the four girls who’ve been recently murdered

in your city, their bodies found in city parks the next morning, naked and drained of all their

blood.”

He scattered four photos onto the coffee table in front of Meena. They were pictures of

the women, taken from the chest up. The one thing they all had in common was the multiple

bite marks they had not just on their throats, surrounded by ugly purple and green bruising, but

all over, as if they’d been savagely attacked by someone….

Or something.

Meena gazed down at the photos. Jon, coming back from the kitchen holding three

glasses of soda, joined her on the couch and stared down at the photos as well.

“These are the girls they’ve been reporting about on the news?” he asked.

“Yes,” Alaric said.

“But it didn’t say anything about them having died from being bitten,” Jon said. “It said

they died from being strangled.”

“Because the mayor’s office doesn’t want to start a panic,” Alaric said.

“But you’re not saying Lucien did this,” Meena said in a faint voice, still unable to tear

her gaze away from the photos. She worked in a world where photos like these were faked

every day…a world where duping viewers into believing something this incredible could

happen was what she and her fellow writers strived for. She was trying desperately to find

some sign that these photos had been faked, that they’d been an invention of someone like

herself or Shoshona.

But the images looked heartbreakingly real. She recognized the girls’ faces from photos

she’d seen on the news. Photos that had carefully shown nothing below the chin.

“No,” Alaric said, taking a sip of his soda. “The prince is not behind these

murders…insofar as he himself did not commit them. But one of his kind did. One of his

minions.”

“Minions?” She stared at him. “You said I’m a minion.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Different kind of minion. To become a vampire, one

must be bitten three times, then drink the blood of one’s host. I take it that you didn’t do that

last night, did you?”

Meena’s eyes widened with horror. Jon, sitting back on the ottoman, raised his eyebrows

to their limits.

“Whoa,” he said. “I’ve heard of some kinky stuff, but that’s—”

Meena interrupted him.

Because, really, she’d heard about as much as she could.

“Excuse me,” she said, knowing she was lashing out because suddenly, she was

frightened…frightened of the photos she’d just seen but had no rational way to explain. But

more than that, frightened of some things she’d suddenly begun to piece together in her mind.

“But you can’t just come in here and expect us to believe that there’s this gigantic vampire

conspiracy out there that the rest of humanity knows nothing about but that my boyfriend is the

head of, and that you, somehow, have been privy to. I mean, what are you, anyway? Some

kind of vampire hunter?”

“Yes,” Alaric said simply.

Meena sagged against the back of the couch. “Oh,” she said. “Right. Of course you are.”

Because after the week she’d had, what else was he going to be?

“Seriously?” Jon asked. He looked excited. “How do you get a job like that? Are there

benefits?”

“You have to begin training very young,” Alaric said, not taking his gaze off Meena.

“And there’s a hiring freeze right now.”

“Yeah,” said Jon. “Of course. There are hiring freezes everywhere. But the thing is, I

think I would be exemplary in a position like that. Because you know, I’m very good with my

hands, and I’ve always really, really hated vampires. I mean, Dracula was like my favorite

movie when I was a kid. Tell him, Meen. The part where they stake him—”

“Decapitation is more effective,” Alaric said, still not taking his gaze off Meena.

“Now, see,” Jon said, “I’d be even better at that. I was on my high school baseball team.

I could really swing a bat. Meena, seriously. Tell him.”

Meena didn’t say anything. She was watching Alaric. He’d reached into his inside

pocket again. This time he pulled out a small gold medal, which he flung down onto the center

of the coffee table as casually as if it were a coin. Jon snatched it up and held it toward the

light from the lamp beside the couch.

“Cool,” he said, squinting at it. “What is this? I recognize this. On one side…isn’t

this…?”

“The papal seal,” Alaric said in the same bored voice he seemed to use habitually.

“The Pope?” Jon glanced at him. “No way.”

“That is my employer.” Alaric continued to stare at Meena. She stared right back at him.

She noticed in a detached part of her brain that his mouth was too small for the rest of his face.

The rest of her brain was screaming that it couldn’t be true. It wasn’t true. She and

Lucien had had that whole long conversation about vampires, back at his apartment….

Oh. God.

“And what’s this on the back?” Jon asked. “Meena, here, you look at it.”

Meena took the medallion from him. She could clearly see the image on the back.

It was of a mounted knight. Slaying a dragon.

She caught her breath.

“St. George?” Her heart twisted.

“The patron saint of the Palatine Guard,” Alaric said. “My order. St. George and St. Joan

are the patron saints of soldiers. St. George slayed the dragon—”

“I know,” Meena said quickly. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe.

“Hey,” Jon said excitedly. “Didn’t Lucien say something about dragons in that note he

wrote to you, Meena? That you’d slain the dragon?”

“Yes,” Meena said. Why wouldn’t Jon just shut up for once? Her heart was pounding so

hard, she could barely breathe.

Alaric, she noticed, had raised a single light brown eyebrow. “He wrote to you?” he

asked.

“Yeah,” Jon said, getting up and crossing over to the dining table where Lucien’s letter

rested alongside the bag he had sent her. “The note’s right over—”

“ No, ” Meena said, her heart pounding even harder as she darted up from the couch. “Jon,

don’t give it to—”

But Alaric was, as usual, too quick for her. He was up from his chair and throwing a

rock-hard arm around her waist, swinging her off her feet before she’d gone more than a single

step.

“Give me the note,” he said, still holding a struggling Meena as Jon, taken aback by this

turn of events, stood there in the space between the living and dining rooms, staring at them,

Lucien’s letter in his hand.

“Don’t give him the note, Jon!” Meena yelled hoarsely, lashing at Alaric’s legs with her

Читать дальше