Insatiable

How being dead was never a happy ending.

Because when Meena looked into the futures of people who were going to die, all she

saw was a vast pit of nothingness, stretching out before her like a huge crevasse. She stood

with the toes of her shoes poking over the edge of that crevasse, so deep she couldn’t even see

the bottom.

She hoped there was some kind of afterlife beyond the pit of nothingness. But maybe it

was better that if there was, she couldn’t see it.

Because it was the nothingness that drove Meena to warn people to look out, even

though they often didn’t listen. It was nothingness she saw in her friends’ futures that night.

Their lives were barreling straight toward it.

Which was why, standing there in the rectory, she took action. She grabbed a pen and a

sheet of paper and jotted a quick note; scooped up enough change for train fare from a jar by

the door, since Alaric had long ago taken her wallet; and left, making sure the note would be

easily discovered.

She knew they’d be upset. In fact, Alaric Wulf’s explicit orders, when Jon had reached

him over the phone, had been the exact opposite of what she was doing: to keep Meena as far

away from St. George’s Cathedral as possible.

Oh, and he’d also said that her dog was fine and that Alaric was leaving him in the

safekeeping of Pradip, the doorman, for the time being.

Apparently, Meena going to St. George’s was only going to hasten, not put an end to, the

coming demonic apocalypse.

But none of that changed the fact that Meena knew she was the one who had caused all

this.

And that she had seen what she had seen, and knew what she knew. Which was more

than Alaric Wulf, with all his experience, or Abraham Holtzman, with his Palatine Guard

Human Resources Handbook, knew.

She was the one who had looked into the future and seen it filled with fire, darkness, and

finally, slow, agonizing death for all of them.

Then, nothingness.

No. Not today.

Because if she knew anything at all, it was that that was only one version of the future.

The future could change. She could change it. She’d done it before, lots of times. She’d

stopped people from hurtling over the side of that precipice more times than she could count.

She was going to do it again tonight.

And no one, not Alaric, not Lucien, not even a crazed pack of vampires, was going to

stop her.

The subway train roared into the Seventy-seventh Street station. Meena’s station.

She got up from her seat…then paused before stepping through the sliding doors when

they opened. There was a couple that had been making out on the seat across from hers. They

had gotten up at the same time she had. She glanced at them….

And saw, in her mind’s eye, both of them getting struck on the head and killed by a

gigantic piece of flying blue scaffolding.

It looked suspiciously like the blue scaffolding that surrounded St. George’s.

The couple had their arms around each other, still canoodling as they started to get off

the train. Meena, standing in the open subway car door, held up both her hands like claws,

opened her mouth, and hissed at them.

“Get back!” she shrieked. “Don’t get off at this stop!”

“Shit!” the boy cried, staggering backward.

The girl looked torn between fear and embarrassment. She giggled nervously. “Dude,”

she said to her boyfriend. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I’m a vampire!” Meena yelled, stepping off the train but staying in the doorway and

still making menacing motions with her hands. “A vampire! Stay on the train!”

“Stand clear of the closing doors,” the voice announced.

The train doors closed, trapping the couple safely inside. Meena immediately dropped

her hands, resumed her normal posture, turned, and began walking away. She saw the boy

make an obscene gesture at her as the subway car pulled past her and out of the station.

She waved at him.

Meena hurried through the station, which was empty on a Saturday night, inhaling the

familiar scent of stale urine, then jogged up the steps to Seventy-seventh Street.

It wouldn’t be long now. What would she do when she got there? She didn’t know,

exactly. She still had the stake that Alaric had given her in her back pocket. Maybe she’d stake

someone. Like Dimitri.

She’d demanded her cell phone back from Jon after he’d called Alaric. She’d texted

Lucien about what had happened with Leisha.

With luck, he would already be at St. George’s when she got there and everything would

be taken care of. She’d walk in and find Leisha freed and perfectly fine, and Dimitri and the

rest of the Dracul dusted, with stakes in their hearts. Lucien would take her tenderly in his

arms, and they’d fly off to Thailand to begin their new lives together as man and wife…after

they picked up Jack Bauer from Pradip, of course. Jon could be best man at their wedding.

Yeah, Meena thought cynically as she approached the church, its spires floodlit against

the inky sky. That so wasn’t going to happen.

The church looked abandoned…dead. The blue scaffolding that surrounded it was

undisturbed, covered in razor wire at the top, chained with padlocks.

No one, human or vampire, was around, that Meena could see.

Had this all been some kind of sick vampire joke? Had they made her come all the way

up there for nothing?

And if so…where was Leisha? How was Meena ever going to find her?

Frustrated, Meena stood there at the bottom of the steps in front of the church, exactly

where Lucien had tackled her a few nights ago and saved her from what she knew now had

been an attack by the Dracul. If only she could go back in time and…

And what? What would she have done differently?

Nothing at all. She’d have fallen in love with him all over again right then and there.

Who wouldn’t have? He was everything that—

“Meena!”

Startled, Meena turned around. A familiar voice was calling her name.

She turned again, at first failing to see anyone. Then finally she spotted a man sitting on

the stoop of a brownstone across the street. She recognized him in the light from the

streetlamps.

“Adam?” she cried. “What are you doing over there?”

As Meena hurried to cross the street to his side, however, she soon saw the answer to her

question.

Adam, a white bandage around his throat, had been handcuffed to the metal railing

alongside the steps to the building.

“That freak chained me here!” Adam yelled, rattling the cuffs in an effort to free himself.

“He told me to stay with Pradip after he patched me up, but I followed him instead. So he

threw these cuffs on me so I couldn’t go into the church after him. He said it was too

dangerous. What am I supposed to do now, huh, Meena? They have my wife in there! And I’m

stuck out here. You have to help me get free, Meena. Do you have a hairpin or something?

You can pick locks, right?”

Meena looked down at Adam. He was a mess. His entire shirtfront was covered in what

appeared to be his own blood from the bite wound he’d sustained on his neck.

But he didn’t seem to be in shock anymore. His pupils looked normal sized.

And his anger was typically Adam.

“Who left you here, Adam?” Meena asked. She actually had a pretty good idea. But she

wanted to be sure. “Whose handcuffs are those?”

“That freak vampire-slayer friend of yours,” Adam cried. “That’s who. The one you and

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