Meg Cabot - Insatiable

“Reginald,” he said. “What are these?”

“Oh,” the young man said. “Those are to Mr. Dimitri’s Lincoln Continental. He keeps it parked in a garage downtown. He lets me drive him in it sometimes. It’s a black ’69 Mark III. Sweet ride.”

Lucien nodded. “Consider it yours,” he said, and flung the keys and papers toward Reginald, who caught them expertly.

“Are you kidding me?” Reginald looked down at the keys in his hands. “But what’s Mr. Dimitri going to say?”

“Not much,” Lucien said, “when I get through with him. Ladies, come here, please.”

When the girls had gathered around the desk, Lucien gave them each several stacks of the neat piles of hundred-dollar bills.

“Take this money,” he instructed them, “and your passports, and start a new life, somewhere far away from here. Or go back to your old lives, if that’s what you think will make you happy. Just forget all about what happened here. I’ll take care of the people who hurt you. They won’t harm anyone else again. I promise. You have nothing more to fear. Go, and be healthy and happy.”

The girls, whose grasp of English was shaky, smiled-first down at the money in their hands, then at each other, and then at him.

They didn’t need to know English to understand what he’d said to them.

Because he hadn’t even spoken out loud. He’d said all he had to say in their minds, giving them each a gentle memory wipe.

It would be a long time before they were completely healed. Even he couldn’t do that for them.

But this, he knew, was a beginning.

The money would do nothing to bring back the lives that had been lost due to his failure to control his brother’s barbarism.

But for now, this was the only penance he could make.

“Reginald,” he said aloud. “Take the women outside, and make sure they get safely into cabs. Have the drivers take them to JFK. They can decide from there where they want to head next.”

“You got it,” Reginald said.

“Then,” Lucien said, “you’re going to take the car and drive it to Georgia to live with your brother.”

“My brother,” Reginald said, looking pleased. “That’s a good idea!”

“I thought so. Don’t forget anything here at the club. If you do, you won’t be able to come back for it. It’s just going to burn.”

“Burn, sir?” Reginald looked confused. “How?”

“In the fire,” Lucien explained patiently. “Go now. And don’t worry. No one will be left to point a finger at you, I assure you.”

Reginald turned, his arms open wide, and shepherded the girls away. They all left, smiling back at Lucien gratefully…and a little bit worshipfully.

He looked away. Gratitude was the last thing he deserved, much less worship.

He was dousing the bodies in the basement with rum from the bar-he’d always found that 151 burned quickest and most efficiently, leaving very little tissue residue-when his cell phone buzzed.

He pulled it out and saw the name on the screen he’d been longing to see all day.

Meena Harper.

9:15 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

Shrine of St. Clare

154 Sullivan Street

New York, New York

Lucien?” Meena cried when someone finally picked up at the other end. “Is that you?”

She had to stick a finger in her other ear in order to hear him.

That was because of all the screaming coming from the ground below her.

She supposed it was her own fault, though: she’d just lobbed a water balloon filled with holy water at a pack of vampires who’d been trying to climb the churchyard fence in order to get into the rectory.

“Meena,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m fine. But I’m sorry. I can barely hear you. Where are you? This is a horrible connection.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Lucien said. He sounded impossibly far away. “I’m not in a very good location for cell phone reception right now. Let me just…there. Can you hear me now?”

“Oh,” Meena said. A wave of warmth washed over her at the sound of his voice. Suddenly, she felt as if everything was going to be okay.

Which was ridiculous, because one man couldn’t possibly fix all the things that had gone wrong in the past few hours.

Even Lucien, who was no ordinary man.

“That’s much better,” she said. “You sounded like you were in some kind of tunnel before. So you’re not at the apartment?”

“No,” Lucien said. “Meena, where are you? Is that…screaming?”

“Oh,” Meena said. She glanced down at the vampires beyond the churchyard fence, feeling a twinge of fear…and loathing.

Then she instantly felt guilty about the loathing. She couldn’t quite believe how quickly she’d gone from feeling pity for these creatures who couldn’t help what they were, and insisting there were surely some redeeming qualities in them, just as there were in Lucien, to callously hurling water balloons filled with a liquid that was as corrosive to them as battery acid from the rectory rooftop.

What was happening to her? What was she turning into?

She was just as much a monster as they were.

Then again, she supposed being nearly murdered tended to bring out the monster in everyone.

“Never mind about that,” she said to Lucien. “They’ll be all right again in a few minutes.” Her brother had been right about vampiric healing powers. They were amazing. Nothing killed these things. Well, except a stake to the heart, apparently, but Meena, up on the rectory roof, hadn’t been close enough to one to test this theory. Yet.

“Meena.” Lucien’s deep voice sounded like heaven to her ears. Especially when he said her name like that, so filled with pure, masculine love…and longing. “What are you talking about? Who’ll be all right?”

“No one,” she said. She didn’t want to spoil things by having to admit that she’d just spent the past quarter of an hour dousing his kind with holy water so she could get a few minutes alone to call him. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“It’s good to hear you, too,” he said. “You can’t know what I’ve been going through, not knowing where you’ve been all this time. I’ve been torturing myself, thinking of all the things that might have happened to you and how I haven’t been there to protect you.”

“Oh,” Meena said, flattening a hand to her chest. Tears filled her eyes. “Lucien, you have to stop saying that kind of stuff. You know we can’t be together. It’s impossible.”

“You keep saying it’s impossible,” Lucien said. “But if there’s anything I’ve learned in my five centuries on earth, Meena, it’s that nothing is impossible. Especially to a man as much in love as I am with you.”

A hand appeared over the edge of the rooftop beside Meena’s foot-a vampire, trying to claw his way up the building toward her. Stifling a startled gasp, Meena pulled a squirt gun from the back pocket of her jeans, aimed, and launched a steady stream of holy water at him. He shrieked as his fingers caught fire, lost his footing, and fell fifty feet to the pavement below. Horrified, Meena turned away.

“Meena,” Lucien said. “What was that?”

“That? Oh, nothing. Look, I want you to know I did get your messages. I would have called sooner, but I had to steal my phone back from my brother. He doesn’t know I have it-”

As if right on cue, she heard her brother shouting from a second-story window below, “You want a piece of this? You want a piece of this? Well, then come and get it, you sick vampire pusswad!” This was followed by a small explosion.

“Meena,” Lucien said. There was renewed urgency in his tone. He’d definitely, she realized, heard the explosion. “Where are you?”