Meg Cabot - Insatiable

And maybe that, Meena thought, her heart pounding harder than ever, was what scared her most of all.

The one thing they did have in common was that they all looked…hungry.

But hungry, Meena wondered, for what, exactly?

Dimitri was leading her into the church. Meena had never been inside St. George’s before. She knew it was fairly large and had always heard it was pretty. She had seen from the outside that it had a lot of stained glass windows. The largest of them hung above the front doors to the church and was supposed to depict St. George mounted on his steed, slaying a serpentlike dragon.

But she had never even been able to tell the glass was stained because it was so badly in need of cleaning. It just looked black. Hardly any light whatsoever got into the church, even from the safety lamps attached to the spires. The only light to see by was thrown by hundreds of candles that had been lit by the Dracul…and these weren’t votive candles, either. They were thick black candles that had been placed, wax dripping, over every available flat surface in the church, including the pews, which looked like they’d been kicked over.

The walls of the church hadn’t fared any better. They’d met with the wrong end of a few dozen cans of spray paint. There were dragon symbols sprayed everywhere, including across the stained glass windows. Meena, looking up at the church’s thirty-foot ceiling, saw that the choir loft had been equally decimated and was also strewn with graffiti. “Wow,” she said. “You’ve really done wonders with the place. Who’s your decorator?”

She heard a tinkly laugh and then an all-too-familiar female voice behind her said, “Me. I am.”

Meena whirled around, her heart exploding in her chest.

“Hey,” Shoshona said with a great big smile. “Surprise!”

Meena felt as if she’d been run over by a steamroller.

Then again, she thought, why was she so surprised? She’d always known something was going to kill Shoshona at the gym.

Why shouldn’t it have been a vampire? Specifically, Dimitri Antonescu’s son, Stefan, who’d only this morning been ramming a gun into Meena’s ribs.

Still, Meena couldn’t stop herself from staring. Shoshona looked fantastic. Her hair had never been shinier…or straighter.

I guess you don’t need a flat-iron when you’re dead, Meena thought.

“Yeah,” Shoshona said, strolling up to her. “It’s me. Hey…thanks for the bag.”

Meena lowered her gaze and saw that Shoshona was holding a Marc Jacobs jewel-encrusted dragon tote.

In ruby.

Meena’s ruby red Marc Jacobs jewel-encrusted dragon tote, to be exact. The one Lucien had given her.

Meena didn’t know what to say. A thousand different retorts popped into her head.

But she was too stunned to say any of them out loud.

“By the way,” Shoshona said, leaning in close to lay a long, manicured fingernail in the opening of Meena’s white-collared shirt, just where her pulse was leaping in her throat. “Guess who’s just been appointed the new cochairs of entertainment at Affiliated Broadcast Network?”

Shoshona pointed over her shoulder at a middle-aged couple in business attire, who waved enthusiastically in Meena’s direction.

Shoshona’s aunt and uncle.

Meena’s heart sank. Not Fran and Stan, too.

Everyone Meena knew really was turning out to be a vampire.

But cochairs of entertainment at ABN? How was that even possible? All they’d ever done was create a soap opera.

“Oh,” Shoshona said, tossing her long black silky hair. “And guess who they made president of programming at the network?” She pointed proudly at herself. “And as my first official duty in that capacity, I’m firing you, Meena. Sorry about that.”

“What?” Meena cried. She knew she had a few more important things in her life to worry about than her job.

But her job was, in a way, her life. “What can I say?” Shoshona asked with a shrug. “We don’t really appreciate people who are prejudiced against our species. Nor do we need them making disparaging remarks about our so-called misogynistic tendencies.”

“Your species?” Meena felt a spurt of white-hot anger dart through her. “Your species? Let me tell you something about your species and what I’ve seen you do to women-”

“That’s enough, Shoshona,” Dimitri said in the tone of a disapproving father as he reached out to lay a hand on Meena’s shoulder and steer her away from the other girl. “I have better uses for Miss Harper’s time now, I think. For instance…”

That’s when Meena finally saw the apse at the front of the church. The sanctuary, debased with graffiti. The altar, up on the dais, broken into pieces. A statue of St. George, pushed to the floor and missing its head.

And Leisha, sitting in the only pew that had been left upright, with her hands tied in front of her and resting in her lap.

“Leish,” Meena cried, relief rushing over her. She jerked her shoulder out from beneath Dimitri’s grip and raced to her friend’s side. “Are you all right?” Meena asked, kneeling down beside her. “Did they hurt you?”

Leisha shook her head. Her cheeks were tear-stained, her eye makeup smudged. But otherwise, she looked fine.

“I just want,” she whispered to Meena, “to get the hell out of here. I hate these people. They’re freaks. That girl, Shoshona, from your office? You always told me she was a total bitch, but I never knew how much of a bitch until tonight. And I still really have to pee.”

Meena choked back a sob. Leisha. Oh, Leisha.

“Okay,” Meena said. She reached for the cords that held Leisha’s wrists and began untying them. “We’ll get you out of here.”

“What are they?” Leisha asked, eyeing Dimitri suspiciously over the top of Meena’s head. “Like meth heads or something? You know that Gregory Bane guy from Lust bit Adam, don’t you? He bit him.”

Leisha, with her usual common sense, had apparently chosen to ignore the explanation Meena had given her over the phone about what was going on and come up with her own, one that she could process and understand.

“Yes,” Meena said. “Yes, they’re meth heads.” She dropped her head to the knot that was holding her friend’s hands tied together, trying to bite it apart with her teeth. She couldn’t get it undone otherwise.

“Hey,” she said finally, raising her head, realizing the futility of what she was doing. “Could someone give me a hand here and help me untie her? I fulfilled my part of the bargain. I’m here. You said you’d let her go if I showed up. So could someone help me?”

She glanced up at Dimitri, only to find him grinning down at her with an expression on his face that she didn’t like at all.

“Oh,” he said, “I can see why my brother likes you. You’re so…trusting.”

On the word trusting, he reached down, grabbed her by the arm, and yanked her back up to her feet, almost in a single motion. The gesture was so violent and jarring, Meena saw stars for a second or two.

“But I think we’re going to keep your little friend here for a while longer,” he said to her. “Because having her around will make you more accommodating to my needs. And I still need a few things from you, some of which I’d like to hurry up and get to before my brother comes along and tries to spoil things, which he’s always had an unfortunate tendency to do.”

Dimitri hauled her, none too gently, into the sanctuary and up onto the dais, beside the altar. Meena did not like the way the Dracul-including Shoshona and her aunt and uncle-had gathered around, as if eager for a show that was about to start.

Nor did she like what she suddenly recognized sitting on the still upright part of the altar.