Insatiable

stop him. Before things get even worse. So, please, just tell me where he is, and I will leave

here. You will never have to see me again.”

Meena shook her head. Her grip on Jack Bauer’s ear was hard enough that he jerked his

head, annoyed. Her fingers felt like ice.

But she still didn’t let go.

“I…can’t,” she said.

“You can’t?” Alaric asked her, raising both his eyebrows. “Or you won’t?”

“I won’t,” she said. Even her voice had begun to shake.

But what, exactly, was she supposed to do? She’d never liked vampires.

And now he had brought them to her door.

Well, she supposed he hadn’t been the one to do it. That, she supposed, she’d brought

upon herself, that night she’d put the leash on Jack and gone on that walk outside St.

George’s….

“Come on, Meena!” Jon shouted at her. “What are you doing? You aren’t that girl!

Protecting your abusive boyfriend? Are you kidding me?”

“I’m not protecting him,” she said through frozen lips. She was visibly trembling now.

She couldn’t help it. She had never felt this cold, not even during the most brutal of New

York’s winters, when the wind whipped down Madison Avenue in front of the ABN building.

“I’m p-protecting the two of you,” she said quietly, fighting back tears. “You d-don’t

understand. He’s going to kill you. For trying to keep me from him. He’s going to kill you

both.”

Alaric had turned toward her, one arm draped along the back of the couch. “What,” he

asked Jon, “is she saying?”

Jon’s face had gone a little green. “She knows,” was all he said in a faint voice.

“She knows what ?” Alaric demanded.

“How everyone is going to die.” Jon flung him a dazed look. “She’s always known. It’s

what she does. She just knows. If Meena says he’s going to kill us…we’re going to die.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

10:00 P.M . EST, Friday, April 16

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B

New York, New York

A laric knew he might have overreacted just a little. Especially when the girl had thrown

the phone at him. A phone!

But Meena Harper had shown a great deal more spirit than he had expected.

Of course he’d leapt on her. To immobilize her. That was all. What other choice had he

had?

He didn’t know why he’d been unable to keep his hands off her. That had been a

surprise.

It was just that she had such nice skin. So soft and smooth…like the wax he used to

polish his skis when he went to Kitzbühel every year between Christmas and New Year’s.

It had been virtually impossible for him not to touch her…and to keep on touching her,

even though it clearly annoyed her.

Well, she annoyed him . He didn’t want to touch her. He wanted to find out where the

prince was, go there, destroy him, then go back to his hotel room and have a nice hot bath.

What Alaric did not want was to be stuck in a New York City apartment crammed with

cheap—albeit fairly comfortable—Ikea furniture with the big-eyed, silky-skinned current lover

of the prince of darkness, who apparently had the psychic ability to predict how people were

going to die.

“She knows all this?” Alaric asked the brother skeptically.

“She’s never wrong,” Jon said to Alaric. “She knows. She just…knows. Since she was a

kid.”

Alaric stared at Meena Harper. He had encountered a lot of things in his time since

joining the Palatine: a succubus that had detached itself from the body of its evening’s

plaything with a discontented shriek because Alaric had hurled holy water at it.

Chupacabras—often mistaken for mangy coyotes but actually a vampiric species all their

own, sucking the life from grazing sheep in Texas.

But when they couldn’t find sheep, they’d suck the life from sleeping children happily

enough, when they could get at them through an open window.

Demons, flying at him with mouths agape, as a local priest attempted to exorcise them

from possessed villagers in the mountains of Colombia.

And of course more vampires than he cared to recall, all with blood streaming down their

chins and scarlet-stained shirtfronts, rushing at him from the darkness, screaming obscenities.

Vampires, while romanticized on film and in literature, were generally quite

foulmouthed in reality. Only the Dracul made any pretense at civility.

But Alaric could not recall ever once encountering a psychic—not one who actually had

anything valuable to say. Why all psychics, if their powers were bona fide, did not

immediately go and predict the winning numbers for the lottery, then take their earnings and

move to Antigua, Alaric could never understand.

The Vatican didn’t believe in them either—probably for the same reasons as Alaric—and

didn’t have a single one on its payroll.

But Alaric could tell by the frightened—yet resolute—look on Meena Harper’s brother’s

face that he believed in his sister’s abilities.

And he could tell by the misery on Meena Harper’s face that she, too, believed.

Meena had shooed the dog off her lap and now sat with her elbows on her knees and her

face hidden in her hands. With her petite build, short dark hair, and slender limbs and neck,

dressed in nothing but the black silk slip, she looked like a ballet dancer.

A ballet dancer having a nervous breakdown.

In another place, in another lifetime, Alaric thought they might have had quite a pleasant

time together, because she was not unattractive.

But this was not going to happen now. Because she quite clearly hated him.

Alaric knew what he had to do, of course: call for backup. Let Holtzman deal with these

two. He just wanted the address. Señor Sticky would take care of the rest.

He would dispatch Emil and Mary Lou Antonescu, too, on his way out. It was going to

be a very satisfactory evening, it turned out.

“Look,” Meena said, lifting her tear-stained face from her hands and glaring at him. Her

eyes were very large and dark in her face. “I know you don’t believe me. No one ever does.

But I’m not making this up. I didn’t believe it myself until…well, until you said you were

going to kill him and showed me that bite mark. And then I knew. And the fact…well, that

he’s already dead. Which is why I could never tell—never mind. But he’s going to kill you .

Both of you. You’ve got to believe me.”

Her voice, which had irritated him before, had taken on a throaty sweetness now that she

was worried. One that he found irresistibly sexy.

What was wrong with him? He was not going to fall for the charms of this…whatever

she was. No way. He had some vampires to kill. Then some delicious room service waiting.

“Hold that thought, will you?” he said, and took out his cell phone, pressing Holtzman’s

number. “I just have to make a quick call. It will only take a second. Do you want another

Coke? You’re shivering. Maybe some tea. Your brother can make you some tea.”

“He’s going to find you first,” she said, a single tear trickling down one of her smooth,

gently rounded cheeks. Her eyes were closed, like she was observing something on the back of

her eyelids. “Somewhere…a room made out of glass. An atrium. There’s water everywhere.

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