Meg Cabot - Insatiable

…just as the vampire was putting on a black cloak to shield himself from the sun, preparing to make a run for it. Sarah screamed as UV-protection glass went flying everywhere.

The vampire, desperate to get out of the sun’s rays, which could be fatal to him, threw himself at the front door.

“Now, Felix,” Alaric said calmly. “You can’t go that way, either.”

A second later, Felix was shrieking. This was because Alaric had hurled a glass vial filled with holy water at the door. It burst over the knob, singeing the vampire’s fingers as he reached for it. He drew his hand away, hissing with pain and cradling his smoking fingers.

“I thought you said you’d let him go if he told!” Sarah shouted with outrage.

“And I will,” Alaric said, smiling at her. He turned toward Felix. “So,” he said. “Where can I find your prince?”

Felix, who looked like a handsome boy of eighteen or twenty-and appeared from his taste in wall posters to have a fondness for the band Belle and Sebastian-curled back his lips to reveal a set of extremely strong white teeth. His incisors were unnaturally long and, true to his species, not unpointy.

“I’ll never tell, demon hunter,” he growled.

Then he threw back his head and let out a hiss, his long tongue darting in and out of his mouth like a lizard’s tail.

Sarah looked shocked. She’d apparently never heard her boyfriend use that tone of voice before. Or seen his eyes glow red.

“Felix,” she cried. “Just tell him! He said he’d let you go if you told.”

When Felix swung his glowing red eyes and twisting tongue toward her, she staggered back a step. “Why did you bring him here, you stupid whore?” Felix demanded.

Horrified, Sarah started crying all over again.

Alaric took her tears as his cue that it would be all right with her if he performed his duty. So he stepped forward, swinging Señor Sticky free of its scabbard.

It was over in a matter of seconds. To his credit, the vampire put up a good fight.

But cornered by sunlight on one side and holy water on the other, he had nowhere to go. There was no escape.

Alaric didn’t give him a chance for any last words. In his experience, vampires didn’t really have anything that interesting or insightful to say. It was all Shakespeare and emo.

When he was done, he looked at the girl. She was curled up in a ball over by the broken window, weeping softly to herself.

But-and Alaric knew he wasn’t imagining it-her hair had already begun to recover its luster, and there was color in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before.

She’d be fine in a few days, if her parents fed her enough protein.

He sheathed his sword.

“Get up now,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. He was so bad at this part. Martin was the one who always knew the right thing to say. “I will drive you home to your mother.”

She uncurled a little and looked at him coldly. “You said you wouldn’t kill him if he told,” she said. Her voice sounded stronger than before, and her eyes had a shine to them that had nothing to do with tears. She was, he knew, her own person again and no longer a pawn to a vampire sire. His killing Felix had released her.

“And he didn’t tell,” Alaric pointed out.

“You didn’t give him a chance!” she cried.

But she was getting up, carefully avoiding looking in the direction where the body was.

Except that there was no body. Only clothes lay where Felix had been. He had to have been over a hundred years old. His bones were dust.

“He would never have told,” Alaric said. “If he had told, the prince, or his minions, would have killed him, and far less gently than I did. He chose to die by my sword because he knew it would be quicker.” He looked down at her. “They’d have killed you, too, you know, if they’d have found you here with him. They’d have fed on you until there was nothing left.”

Sarah blinked. “You mean…he died to protect me? Oh…that’s so sweet!”

Alaric wanted to show her the photographs he always carried of what some of her now former boyfriend’s friends had done to Martin. How they’d bitten and peeled strips of his flesh off, just for fun. Vampires were incapable of sweetness.

But Holtzman, he knew, wouldn’t approve of this.

Besides, his job there was done. She was free now.

And that meant it was time for him to go back to the hotel and pack for New York, to go after a vampire who might really prove a challenge to his sword arm, unlike her silly boyfriend.

So he only said, “Let’s take you home now.”

And that’s exactly what he did.

10:00 P.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11A

New York, New York

What is this?” Emil walked into the spacious master bedroom he shared with his vivacious and slender wife, holding a printout of the e-mail he’d found on his desktop.

“Oh, hon,” Mary Lou said as she breezed by on her way to her dressing table. “That’s just a little Evite I sent out to all my girlfriends for the dinner party I’m having in Prince Lucien’s honor on Thursday.”

Emil felt a small but persistent sensation in the center of his belly that was not unlike being poked over and over by someone with very long nails…a sensation with which, as it happened, Emil was not unfamiliar.

“You sent out an e-mail about the prince?” he said. “You do realize that if this message falls into the wrong hands, it could jeopardize everything?”

“Oh, don’t be such a ninny,” Mary Lou said. “I only sent it to my very best friends. Whose hands is it going to fall into?”

Emil fought for inner patience.

“The Dracul, for one?” he said drily when he could speak again. “The Palatine Guard, for another? Not to mention the humans? All the people who’d like to see us, not to mention the prince, destroyed?”

“Oh, pooh,” Mary Lou said. She sat down in front of the large mirror behind her dressing table and began removing her makeup. “You’re being melodramatic. No one wants to destroy us anymore. The prince has the Dracul under control. The Palatine Guard don’t know where we are, and the humans love us! Look at how popular we are in books and on the TV. Why, if everyone found out, I’m sure I’d be invited onto Oprah as a special guest.”

“Mary Lou!” Emil stared at her reflection in astonishment. “Someone is killing women! All over town! No one is going to be inviting you onto Oprah while women are being killed by a member of our brethren. And the prince isn’t going to want a dinner party in his honor. He’s going to prefer to keep a low profile while he’s in town, trying to find that killer.”

“I have so many beautiful, intelligent female friends,” Mary Lou said, gazing thoughtfully at herself. “Why shouldn’t I show them off? The prince has been alone too long.”

“Lucien’s not here,” Emil said, feeling as if he were drowning, “to find a wife. He’s here on business. The murders-”

“And if he should happen to meet a nice girl,” Mary Lou said, interrupting, “while he’s here, would that be so terrible? Apparently he hasn’t had any luck in his own country. But you know we have the most amazing women in the world right here in the good old U.S. of A-”

“Mary Lou.” Emil stared uncomfortably at his wife’s bare shoulders. “You understand that you’re putting me in a terribly awkward position. Lucien asked that I not mention his arrival to anyone, and here you are sending out e-mails to everyone on your cc list, an e-mail that could be traced back-”

“Not everyone,” Mary Lou said indignantly. “Just my best single girlfriends, and a few of the married ones so as not to make it look obvious he’s being set up. None of them is employed by the Vatican, for goodness sake, or members of the Dracul. I just asked Linda and Tom, and Faith and Frank, and Carol from your office, and Becca and Ashley, and Meena from across the hall.”