Insatiable

giving the bat the most vicious kick she could, sending it shrieking off the roof…

…just as it changed into a young woman wearing jeans and a leather jacket. The girl

screamed as she tumbled through the air, not changing back into a bat quickly enough to save

her from falling onto the spikes of the churchyard fence below, which pierced her body in

several places.

But since the spikes weren’t made of wood, she just lay there, impaled and twitching,

while her friends tried to pull her off.

Meena, watching all this transpire over the side of the roof, made a horrified face and

looked away.

“I really hope you’re right, Lucien,” she said, lifting the phone back to her ear. “About

all of this being over soon. Because I’m not sure how much more I can take.”

There was no response.

“Lucien?” she said. She held the phone away from her face, looking down at the screen.

She still had service.

Lucien, she realized, had hung up on her.

Had she said the wrong thing?

Meena jumped as her phone vibrated in her hand. He was calling back.

“Lucien?” she cried.

“Who?” A familiar voice filled her ear.

“Oh,” Meena said, disappointed. “Hi, Paul. Look, I really can’t talk right now.”

“Whatever,” Paul said. “Sorry to interrupt your Saturday-night mini-Butterfinger orgy. I

just wanted to see if you’d gotten Shoshona’s e-mail.”

“What e-mail?” Meena asked. She needed to get downstairs to warn everyone. She

understood now why the Dracul were trying so hard to get inside the rectory. It wasn’t just her

they wanted.

It was Dimitri Antonescu’s son.

“We’ve been sold,” Paul said.

Meena nearly dropped her phone. “What? What do you mean? The show?” But that

made no sense. Shows couldn’t be sold. Could they?

“Not the show,” Paul said. “The network. Consumer Dynamics and everything it owns.

This morning. To something called TransCarta.”

“I never heard of it,” Meena said.

“Me neither,” Paul said. “I had to Google it. It’s a private equities firm.”

Meena stood there clutching her BlackBerry to her face. She really didn’t have time to

talk, like she’d told him. And yet…“But…what does this mean?”

Fired. Like everything else, she’d now lost her job, too. “Shoshona assures everyone in

her e-mail that it doesn’t mean anything, that everything will go on as normal, that TransCarta

supports ABN and Insatiable wholeheartedly and looks forward to a profitable future working

with us.”

“ Shoshona said all this?” Meena asked incredulously. Shoshona could hardly even string

together a lunch order.

“I know,” Paul said. “But Fran and Stan cosigned. And here’s the weird thing: Shoshona

sent the e-mail an hour before any of this was announced on CNN.”

“So then how did she even know about it?” Meena wondered aloud.

It was right then that the hatch that led to the rooftop was thrown suddenly open, letting

out a strip of brilliant yellow light from the rectory’s third floor.

“What are you doing up here?” her brother, Jon, demanded. He climbed up onto the roof,

dragging a crossbow after him. “What happened to my holy water brigade? It’s like it suddenly

dried up or something.”

“Sorry,” Meena said, hanging up on Paul and slipping her cell phone surreptitiously back

into the pocket of her suede jacket. “I got distracted. They’re starting to dive-bomb me.” She

looked up, scanning the night sky for winged assassins, but everything seemed quiet…for the

moment. “Looks like they’ve backed off for now.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m here. Abraham thinks they’re repositioning, and that you better

come back down. It’s probably not all that safe up here anymore anyway.”

“Okay,” Meena said. “Look, I need to tell Abraham something. That Stefan guy? He’s—

”

Jon’s cell phone went off.

“Who the hell could that be?” He fished the phone out of his pocket. “Oh, my God. It’s

Weinberg.” To Meena’s astonishment, her brother actually answered the call. “Adam,” Jon

crowed. “How the hell are you?”

Meena shook her head. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Jon in such a

good mood. Maybe back when he’d been employed.

It was nice to know someone, at least, was enjoying himself on this, the worst night of

her entire life.

Then Meena felt her pocket vibrate. What was going on? Someone was texting her?

Now?

Casting a furtive glance at her brother—he was still having his animated conversation

with Leisha’s husband—Meena pulled her phone out of her pocket and glanced at the text that

had just been left for her.

It was from Lucien.

Stay where you are, he’d written. I’m coming for you.

That was when, over in the distance, on the east side, there was the sound of an

extremely large explosion.

“Jesus Christ,” Jon said, glancing up. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” Meena said, looking in the direction from which the sound had come.

“That was too loud to be a car.”

“It sounded like a whole freaking building exploding,” Jon said. “Oh, man, look at that.”

He pointed at a bright orange glow that had begun to fill the sky in the east where the sun

would have been, if it had been morning. Meena, looking at it, could think of only one thing.

Lucien. Lucien had something to do with that.

She was as sure of it as she was that she was standing there.

The pouring sound she’d heard in the background when she’d been speaking to him. Had

that been gasoline?

It didn’t matter.

This vampire war had just been taken to a whole new level.

“Definitely a building,” Jon was saying. “Some insurance company has gotta be

bumming right now.” To Adam, who was still on the phone, he said, “What? Yeah, sorry, no,

something on TV. Yeah, Meena and I are just chilling in the apartment right now.” He made a

comical face at Meena. “We’re gonna maybe order in some Chinese food…. Do we wanna

have a drink? Uh, naw, I think we’re just gonna take it easy tonight, right, Meen?”

“Uh, yeah,” Meena said, raising her voice so Leisha could hear her if she was there on

the phone with her husband. “We’re just going to stay home and chill.”

“Yeah,” Jon said. “So, we’ll see you guys….” All at once, his face went the color of ash.

“Oh. You are?” he asked into the phone.

Meena stared at him. “What?” Suddenly, all her concerns about Leisha and her unborn

baby came flooding back, full force. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re in front of your place,” Jon said to her, holding the phone away from his face.

He looked as if he were going to be sick. “Nine ten Park. They want to know if they can come

up.”

Meena felt as if the roof had suddenly shifted a little under her feet. And not because

vampires were making another assault.

No, she thought. Not Leisha and the baby. Not this way.

Except…of course. Of course it was going to be Leisha and the baby.

And of course it was going to happen this way.

And she’d always known it was going to.

She’d just refused to see it, because it was too horrible even to contemplate.

Until now, when it was staring her straight in the face.

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