Insatiable

wooden knitting needle. She hoped he didn’t notice.

“Why not, Meena?” Lucien asked, the concern in his voice a caress. “Are you upset

because I had to cancel our evening together? Didn’t you get my note?”

His voice curled and coiled along her heartstrings, the way his trench coat was wrapping

against his legs every time the wind blew.

“I got your note,” she said. “Thank you very much for the bag. But now just isn’t a very

good time.”

“Perhaps I could come over,” he said. “I tried calling earlier, but you didn’t seem to be

picking up the phone.”

“I know,” Meena said, swallowing hard. If he truly was the prince of darkness, he was

going to find out sometime. So she might as well tell the truth. “I couldn’t pick up my phone.

There’s a Palatine Guard in my living room. He destroyed all my phones.”

Lucien grew very still. In fact, it seemed to Meena as if everything grew still. The sky

above their heads froze. The lightning, the thunder, her heartbeat…even the wind died down.

The clouds, which had been moving so swiftly overhead just seconds before, seemed to pile up

on top of one another. The thick black storm clouds shut out the glow from the moon,

concealing Lucien’s expression.

“Meena,” she heard him say.

The word—just those two syllables—told her everything she needed to know, as if the

sudden meteorological display hadn’t been enough to convince her. They held a world of

pathos.

And danger.

Some small part of her—the romantic in her, she supposed—had been holding out hope

that Lucien would deny it. A vampire? Of course not! How ridiculous. Everyone knew there

was no such thing as vampires.

But she’d heard the truth of it just now in his voice.

“I tried to tell you,” he said. His voice sounded as broken as her heart. “In the

museum…”

“Go away.” She was whispering so that they wouldn’t be overheard by anyone in her

living room. But it was as hard to keep the horror from her tone as it was the pain. “Go away,

Lucien. And never come back.”

“Meena.” The moon was still lost behind the skidding clouds.

But now she could hear that he sounded less wounded and more impatient. Like he had

any right to be impatient with her.

“I can’t believe what an idiot I was.” Meena felt as if she were choking. She was

clutching the knitting needle to her chest like some kind of talisman to ward off evil. “Here I

thought we had this incredible bond. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was the part where you

saved my life in front of that cathedral. Except I didn’t know it was you those bats were

attacking! I didn’t know you were a…a…”

She couldn’t even say the word.

“Meena,” he said. “I can explain.”

Was he serious? He could explain ? “Who were they, Lucien?” she demanded. “You

knew them, didn’t you?”

Lucien’s tone was rueful. “In a way…”

“And the whole time”—Meena’s voice sounded ragged, even to her own ears—“you

were just reading my mind, weren’t you? That’s how you knew where I lived! And that

purse!” She shook her head. “That stupid purse! I should have told him to throw it out the

window instead of my phone. You have slain the dragon . God, I can’t believe I ever fell for

that! Have you ever considered writing dialogue for an American soap opera, Lucien? Because

I could get you a job where I work.”

“Meena,” Lucien said. Now his tone was sharp…as sharp as his teeth, she thought,

which she’d never even felt sinking into her skin. “Is he still there? The guard from the

Palatine?”

“Oh, what’s wrong?” She knew she probably sounded more hysterical than sarcastic.

“Can’t you read my mind to find out?”

An extremely strong gust of wind that seemed to appear from nowhere suddenly swept

across her terrace and would have knocked her off her feet if she hadn’t dropped the knitting

needle and reached out to grab the balcony railing with one hand while shielding her eyes with

the other.

For a few seconds she couldn’t see, there was so much dust and debris—some of it was

the dried petals from the dead geraniums on her balcony, swirling in a sudden springtime

tornado, from out of nowhere.

But she was quite sure she saw the blurry outline of a large, bat-like object hovering

between her terrace and the Antonescus’, blocking out what little light still shone from the

night sky and the windows of the apartments around hers. It was like the time the bats had

swooped down to attack her and Jack Bauer….

Except that now she knew they hadn’t been coming after her at all. It had been Lucien

they’d wanted.

And the reason they’d had no effect on him whatsoever was that he wasn’t human. Their

teeth and claws couldn’t harm him because nothing could. Nothing except chopping off his

head with a sword—at least according to Alaric Wulf—or stabbing a pointed piece of wood

into his heart.

And she had foolishly just dropped the single piece of pointed wood she owned.

When the wind died down and Meena was able to open her eyes, she saw Lucien

standing in front of her, on her own balcony, just a foot or two away from her.

Meena, her heart now feeling as if it might slam out of her chest, tilted her chin to look

into his face—that incredibly sensitive, handsome face—and saw that he was wearing an

expression of extreme displeasure.

For the first time, she recognized the surging of her pulse for what it really was: fear.

And not just for Jon and that Palatine Guard inside her apartment: fear for her own life.

“Frankly,” Lucien said calmly, “I’ve never been able to read your mind, Meena. Your

thoughts have always been a bit…jumbled.”

Meena, her fingers shaking convulsively, tightened her grip on the balcony railing. What

had she done? What was happening? What was he doing there? Was he going to kill her?

“I thought vampires c-couldn’t enter a home unless invited,” she stammered through

teeth that had begun to chatter. Was it her imagination, or did his dark eyes have a flicker of

red in them, deep inside the pupils?

“That used to be true,” he said. The thunder had started up again, so loud it shook the

metal railing beneath her fingers. The storm over their heads was beginning to crest. “At least

in the days when people cared enough about their homes to have them blessed by their priests

or rabbis. These days, when no one seems to bother anymore? It’s not really such a problem

for us.”

“Oh,” Meena said. “Right.” Her gaze was fixed on his, though she fumbled

surreptitiously with her bare foot along the balcony floor, searching for the knitting needle

she’d dropped. If she found it, would she really have the courage—and the strength—to plunge

it into his heart (or the place where his heart had once been)?

Maybe she should just jump. Death had to be preferable to this.

“But when we do encounter a sacred threshold,” Lucien said, continuing in the same

detached, almost conversational tone, “we can find ways around it. We can use mind control to

get the less…strong-willed to invite us inside. Some of us can even turn into mist and go

through a keyhole, if we don’t care to be seen by others afterwards.”

“You can turn to mist?” she asked faintly.

His red-eyed gaze focused on her. “Yes,” he said. “I can turn to mist. I can turn into a

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