Insatiable

she’d been idly considering moving to Romania for—was a vampire.

A vampire! Those creatures of fiction that she despised so much!

Only not. Because real-life vampires were nothing like the vampires of fiction. Real-life

vampires did things—way more horrible things than vampires on film, the images of which

Meena was convinced would forever be burned into the backs of her retinas—to people that no

script-writer could ever in a million years have imagined.

Not only that, but Lucien was the supreme ruler of the vampires .

And he was the son of Vlad the Impaler. Of Dracula.

After locking herself into her bedroom, Meena dug out her old, battered copy of the

novel—which she’d bought during her death-obsessed goth stage in high school—and made

the mistake of trying to read it again.

Then it all came flooding back to her. Not just the gory details about the creatures

against whom Alaric Wulf had pledged to fight, but Mina! There was actually a character in

the book named Mina! This was a character who, Meena remembered right away, fell in love

with Dracula and actually drank some of his blood…then had, like so many women in horror

novels and films, to be rescued.

And all right, in the book the name was spelled differently than hers.

But still.

How did these kinds of things keep happening to her? Like it wasn’t bad enough she had

to know how everyone she met was going to die and then feel morally obligated to warn them

about it.

Then she had to go and fall in love with—and get bitten by —the son of the most

despised character in all of gothic literature? Who turned out actually to be real?

When she got through all this (and she would, indeed, get through all this—she had to;

what other choice did she have?), she was going to write a book.

Of course she was. Someone had to get the word out there. It was the only way to save

other women from what she was going through now.

Women Are from Venus, Vampires Are from Hell.

Meena lay there thinking about her book, watching as the shadows on her ceiling

danced. She was so deeply engrossed in what she was going to say when Oprah asked why

Meena had let Lucien do the things he had done to her, she didn’t even notice when Jack Bauer

lifted his head and, his gaze on the French doors, tilted his ears forward.

The Palatine, Meena was certain, would try to stop her from going on Oprah. Alaric

Wulf had been adamant that word of the existence of vampires could not get out to the public.

But why, when they caused so much pain and heartache?

And those were just the ones who weren’t murdering young girls.

And all right, she had pretty much given Lucien her full consent to do what he’d done.

And she’d certainly enjoyed it.

But that didn’t make it all right—

Beside her, Jack Bauer’s body started to vibrate. He was growling, his foxlike face

pointed toward the French doors. Meena looked at him, then glanced at the doors. She thought

she saw something black flutter past the curtained windows.

A pigeon, more than likely. Or a plastic bag, tossed around by the growing storm.

“What is it, little man?” Meena whispered. “A bird? Are you going to go kill that bird?”

Jack Bauer rose onto his four paws, and standing in the middle of the bed with the fur on

his back fully extended, he growled more loudly. All his attention was focused on the French

doors, his small body quivering like a wire.

Meena felt her own skin prickle at his reaction to whatever he sensed outside her balcony

doors.

This was no bird.

Who—or, more accurately, what —was out there?

“Okay, boy,” Meena said quietly, swinging her legs from the bed. She clutched the

knitting needle tightly in one hand. “Stay.”

She should, she knew, go and get Alaric Wulf. This was what he was there for. To

protect her.

Except that he wasn’t. He was there to try to wrest from her the address of her lover.

So that he could kill him.

And, in turn, be killed by him. Along with Jon.

Meena couldn’t let that happen, any more than she could let Lucien be killed, whatever

he might be, whatever he might have done to her…however much he might have lied.

Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled a second or two later, sounding much closer now

than it had before. The storm had crossed the river. It would be upon them in a few minutes.

She couldn’t run for Alaric. If she did, he’d die at Lucien’s hands, and Jon would quickly

follow…if she wasn’t losing her mind and Lucien was, in fact, beyond those glass doors. Not,

of course, that that was even possible, because she lived eleven stories up and there wasn’t a

fire escape he could have climbed (she refused to think about bats, or the way Count Dracula,

in Bram Stoker’s book, had been able to climb buildings like a lizard).

Raising the knitting needle shoulder-high in her fist, she moved cautiously toward the

French doors, the gauzy white curtains obscuring her view of what was on the balcony. Behind

her, Jack Bauer jumped off the bed and followed along, still growling, even though Meena

hissed, “Jack! Bad dog! Stay!”

Jack, as usual, paid absolutely no attention to her whatsoever.

Laying a hand on the door handle, Meena took a deep breath and pulled.

A sudden gust of wind helped push the door toward her, and Jack, excited, ran out onto

the balcony. Meena, her heart in her throat, whispered, “Jack! No!” and tore out onto the

terrace to stop him before he got hurt.

Except that there was no one— nothing —there.

Meena, shivering, stood in the rising wind. Above her head, the sky was a wildly

patterned mosaic of dark clouds, behind which lightning continued to flash every few seconds.

She could barely see the moon anymore. Thunder sounded, so loudly she seemed to feel it

reverberating inside her chest.

Maybe that’s why she didn’t hear her name at first. The voice calling it was as wild and

as deep as the thunder.

But then she noticed that Jack was growling again, his head turned in the direction of the

Antonescus’ terrace, his nose poking through the wrought iron rails as he bared his teeth.

And when Meena turned, she saw it.

Chapter Forty-two

1:15 A.M . EST, Saturday, April 17

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B

New York, New York

L ucien.

He was there, standing on his cousin Emil’s terrace, his long black trench coat whipping

around him in the wind like a cape….

What was he doing standing there, staring at her like that?

It was the middle of the night. The clouds overhead fairly throbbed with rain.

She laid a hand to her thumping heart.

“Meena.”

His voice was like liquid silk. She could almost feel it, licking her skin like the smooth

white cotton of her nightgown.

He was calling to her. Calling to her the way the lightning was calling to the thunder.

What was she going to do? What was she going to say to him?

Meena moved to the terrace wall and, leaning against it, said, across the eight-foot-wide

plunge that separated them, “I can’t really talk right now, Lucien.”

Her voice was shaking as much as her fingers, but she still managed to clutch her

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