Meg Cabot - Insatiable

“Is th-that,” the husband stammered, “th-the-”

“Oh, don’t worry, hon,” Mary Lou said. “The Dracul seem to have all gone. And this is just the Palatine guard, here to pick up Meena’s dog. He promised not to hurt us. Well, he didn’t promise, exactly. But I’m sure he won’t. He seems all right, for a Palatine guard. Oh, look at the mess you’ve made, Emil. Who do you expect to clean that up? You know it’s the maid’s day off. Do you want a drink?” This last was directed at Alaric. “I never did get your name. What is it?”

Alaric was looking at a painting of a pretty young girl they had hanging in their foyer. The signature at the bottom said Renoir.

“Alaric Wulf,” he said, studying the painting. “And I don’t drink. I’m just here for the dog. I like this painting very much.”

“Isn’t that nice?” Mary Lou said about the painting. “Emil picked that up for a song from the artist when he was just an unknown. Emil has quite an eye. Are you sure you don’t want anything? Not even a soda or something?”

“Nothing for me,” Alaric said. Like he was going to accept a drink from a vampire. What if they put poison in it? “Just the dog, please.”

“Of course. I’ll be right back.”

Mary Lou drifted away, leaving Alaric alone with the husband, who was standing on the far side of the spreading brandy stain on the highly polished wood floor, staring wide-eyed at him.

“I would kill you right now,” Alaric said casually to Emil Antonescu, “but I promised Meena Harper I would bring her dog back in a timely fashion.”

“I would kill you right now,” Emil Antonescu said, hatred causing his eyes to flare red, “but my prince forbade me from it.”

“Did he now?” Alaric heard this with interest. “I wonder why.”

Emil shrugged. “Your people,” Emil said, “have done nothing but harass my people for decades, causing us misery and heartache.”

“Well, I believe your people started it,” Alaric pointed out, “by dining on the blood of innocents.”

“We no longer drink to kill,” Emil said. “We’re forbidden from it. Now we dine only on willing donors or blood purchased from blood banks. Why can’t you leave us alone?”

Alaric’s sword hand itched. It was incredibly difficult for him to be standing this close to a vampire and not kill it. “Perhaps,” he said, “because there’s no such thing as a willing donor, only human beings who are too weak willed to stand up to your freakish mind games. And your people are the ones who keep attacking mine.”

“In self-defense,” Emil hissed. “In self-defense only.”

Alaric took a step toward him…and kept on stepping until they were standing only inches apart.

“It wasn’t self-defense when a pack of Dracul attacked my partner and me in a warehouse outside of Berlin and nearly killed him,” he snarled, glaring down at the smaller man.

“It’s a shame it was only nearly,” Emil snarled back, giving him a chest bump.

Alaric drew his sword. It came singing from its scabbard, the blade shining in the glow from the crystal chandelier hanging from the foyer’s high, arched ceiling…

“Here we are,” Mary Lou sang. She came back dragging a highly reluctant Jack Bauer behind her on a leash. The dog fought her every step of the way, growling and struggling against the leash, his claws skidding on the polished floor.

The men parted at once, going back to their separate squares of parquet.

When Jack Bauer saw Alaric, however, he stopped fighting and bounded over to him excitedly.

Alaric stooped down and lifted the dog, who appeared to be unharmed and in perfect health.

“He looks good,” he said, unable to keep the surprise from his tone.

“Of course he looks good.” Emil glared at him. “We aren’t savages. We wouldn’t hurt a little dog.”

Alaric raised an eyebrow in the vampire’s direction. But Mary Lou had already given her husband a little smack across the chest.

“Oh, Emil!” she cried. “Alaric, don’t mind him. He’s just in a bad mood because you all finding out where we live means we have to move again. You know, because now you’re going to try to kill us and all. And it’s my fault, because I’m the one who sent that-”

“Mary Lou.” Emil Antonescu locked an arm around his wife’s slim waist, then dragged her to his side. “Please. Just stop talking. For once.”

That’s when Mary Lou’s gaze fell to the sword in Alaric’s hand. “Well,” she said, her smile fading. “What was going on here with you two boys while I was gone?”

“Nothing,” Emil said. “Nothing was going on. Mr. Wulf was just leaving. Weren’t you, Mr. Wulf?”

Alaric just stood there, holding Meena Harper’s squirming dog. For the first time in his career, he wasn’t certain what to do.

He was sworn to kill all demons, no matter what their form.

And sometimes those forms could be very deceiving indeed. That’s what the dark side did: worked to play tricks on the human mind, to rouse compassion and sympathy to keep a man from doing what he’d been trained to do-plow a stake through the heart of whatever evil creature was before him.

But for once, Alaric wasn’t certain what stood before him truly was evil.

Maybe all that chattering Meena Harper had been doing, about redemption and rehabilitation and how Lucien Antonescu wasn’t like the other vampires, was getting to him.

But he actually believed these two vampires were just a couple of pathetic losers-with very good taste in home furnishings and art-who deserved to have to spend all of eternity with each other.

Could he actually feel sorry for them?

And the truth was…they had saved Jack Bauer from being blown up in the microwave by the Dracul.

And Meena Harper liked them.

Good God. What was happening to him?

“If you tell anyone about this,” he said, pointing Señor Sticky at their necks, causing them both to stagger back a few steps, “I’ll find you, wherever you are, and force one of you to choke on the dust of the other.”

Mary Lou looked queasy. “Good heavens,” she said. “We won’t tell.”

Alaric turned and ran from the apartment. He didn’t bother with the elevator. He took the stairs, two at a time, down all eleven flights, giving Jack Bauer quite a jogging in his arms. It wasn’t until he reached the bottom that he paused to think about what he’d just done:

Let two vampires go free.

He was going to regret this. It was going to come back to haunt him.

On the other hand…

He could always hunt them down and kill them later. How hard would it be, considering the woman’s obvious taste for designer clothes?

He sheathed his sword and put Jack Bauer down on his four paws. Then he hit the exit door and walked out into the lobby.

His cell phone buzzed. He reached down to answer it.

“Alaric Wulf,” he said.

“Alaric?” Jon Harper’s anxious voice was on the other end of the line. “Where are you? Are you still at the building? Because we have a problem. A big problem.”

10:15 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

Uptown 6 train

New York, New York

The subway. Of course it had to be the subway.

Well, how else was she supposed to get there? It was Saturday night, and she was downtown. There weren’t any cabs.

And Meena had to get uptown as quickly as possible.

What else was she supposed to do, exactly? Sit quietly in a windowless room in the convent, like they wanted her to, and let Sister Gertrude and “the men” go uptown with Stefan Dominic and get themselves killed trying to save Leisha?

Sitting quietly in a windowless room might have been all right for Yalena, who was traumatized physically and emotionally. But that wasn’t all right for Meena, who was the reason all of these people, including Leisha, were in so much danger in the first place.