Insatiable

“Absolutely.” Dimitri gri

Lucien frowned. “Dimitri,” he said in a warning tone, “we don’t have a brand.”

“Actually, members of both the financial and the entertainment community,” Dimitri said, “are quite impressed by the Dracula name and eager to experience immortality, it turns out. And consumers…well, their fear of death is what drives the beauty industry. By the year 2013 they’re set to spend at least forty billion dollars on cosmetic surgery services alone. Well, who wouldn’t want to live forever, if they could? You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Miss Harper, in your line of work?”

Meena felt as if a cold shadow had passed over her soul.

Revenant Wrinkle Cream.

Of course. Revenant meant animated corpse.

“It’s you,” she cried in disgust, trying to break away from Dimitri’s grip. “You’re the one behind the new products they want us to feature on Insatiable.”

“Of course,” he said with a smile, easily defeating her attempts to free herself from him. “But you needn’t look that way, my dear. We’re no different from your former sponsor, really. We too only want to help your viewers find products that help improve their lives.”

“Like the Regenerative Spa for Youthful Awakening?” Meena demanded.

“I’ve visited one of those,” Lucien said in a voice as cold as January. “In the basement of Concubine.”

“Nonsense,” Dimitri said. “That was merely a prototype. You were never supposed to see it in that state, Lucien. We have plans to upgrade and expand our spas worldwide-”

“No,” Lucien said, cutting him off. “Because this ends. Now.”

Dimitri shrugged. “This may not be how you envisioned the family enterprise, Lucien, but I can assure you I’ve seen the financials, and the potential for growth is astrono-”

“There is no family enterprise,” Lucien said, taking a step toward Dimitri. “And I believe the potential for growth of your enterprise is going to significantly decrease if you keep feeding defenseless girls to your newborns. Although they may enjoy the idea of looking young forever, one thing you seem never to have learned about humans over the years, Dimitri, is that they tend to dislike murder.”

Meena, looking from the face of one brother to the other, was too stu

Not because she was standing in a deconsecrated church with a dagger at her throat, in front of a ravenous horde of vampires.

But because she’d realized that Dimitri was right:

She did know all about wanting to live forever.

Not only had she spent over half her life protecting everyone she’d ever met from an untimely death, but it was what she wrote about: the insatiable thirst for life (and love) of Victoria Worthington Stone and her daughter Tabby.

But were Victoria and Tabby really so insatiable? All they’d ever wanted was someone to love and care for them.

Wasn’t that very human need exactly what corporations like Dimitri’s were taking advantage of when they hinted that women would never find that special someone unless they purchased their products in order to look a certain way? They preyed upon human insecurity the way the Dracul preyed on human life.

Suddenly, Meena realized just how twisted Lucien’s brother really was. And who the truly insatiable ones had been all along. “If you’re so eager to expand the Dracul brand but still so frightened of the Palatine that you’d go to all the trouble to form a Swiss company just so they couldn’t seize your funds, why not at least hide the dead girls’ bodies, Dimitri?” Lucien was asking in wonder, shaking his head. “That’s what I can’t understand. Exposing the bodies meant exposing everything.”

Bait.

That’s what Alaric had meant.

“Because he wanted to lure you here, Lucien,” Meena said. It was all so clear to her now. “He was never worried about the Palatine. The dead girls were just to bring you to New York, so he could get you here and do this.”

The coronation was just the final phase in Dimitri’s master plan to turn all of America-and soon the world-into a vampire smorgasbord. The only thing standing in his way was…

Lucien’s glance shifted away from his brother and toward her.

And when their gazes met, Meena felt something like an explosive charge go off inside her head.

She could see in his eyes how much he loved her.

And how hard it was for him not to kill his brother then and there, with his bare hands, for what Dimitri had done to her.

But he couldn’t.

Not while Dimitri stood so close to her, with one arm still wrapped around her, a dagger at her neck, his fangs within such easy snapping distance.

Meena nodded. She understood. It was all right. The important thing was that she had to keep Dimitri and the Dracul from doing what they were there to do:

Kill the one impediment to their master plan. Lucien.

It was right then that a stake went whizzing from a crossbow somewhere near the doors of the church and plunged directly into the center of Lucien’s back.

“Yes!” Meena heard her brother scream. “Did you see that? I got him!”

Chapter Fifty-seven

12:00 A.M. EST, Sunday, April 18

St. George’s Cathedral

180 East Seventy-eighth Street

New York, New York

Meena was never exactly sure what happened after that, because it all seemed to take place in a sort of blur, like it was underwater or in a nightmare.

Or at least, that’s how it seemed to her.

Lucien fell to his knees.

That she knew for certain, because she was standing only a foot or two away from him. She tried to catch him as he swayed, to keep him from pitching to the hard marble floor of the dais.

But Dimitri yanked her back.

She thought she heard someone say, “No,” softly.

Then realized that someone was herself.

Then something whizzed past her head. Dracul and humans began screaming. Dimitri yanked her sore arm very hard again and shouted in her ear, “Get down!”

Then he shoved her roughly to the floor of the dais.

Meena could hear someone-it sounded like Alaric-shouting something. It sounded like, “Stop, you fool! What are you doing?”

Meena knew she should feel frightened. She knew she should feel something, anyway.

But she felt nothing. Nothing at all. She just lay with her cheek pressed to the cool marble, staring in the direction where she’d last seen Lucien.

She could see nothing there at all now. Not even the dust he must have crumbled into.

He’s dead, she thought in the part of her brain that was still working. He’s dead, and I never got the chance to warn him that he was going to die…because I never got the chance to know him when he was alive in the first place. I only knew him when he was already dead.

And now he’s really, really dead.

Then she thought, Why did I ever think that he was going to kill Alaric and Jon? He would never do something like that. He’s the sweetest, most wonderful person I’ve ever known.

And now he’s dead.

Then she thought, I wish I were dead, too.

And then she was wrenched abruptly to her feet by Dimitri Antonescu.

And Meena realized that her wish was about to be granted.

“You’re coming with me,” Dimitri said. His face was a twisted mask of greed and hatred and something else. Something Meena had never seen before.

Evil, she thought in that part of her brain that had taken over for the rest of her mind, which seemed to have stopped working since she’d seen Lucien die.

Why, Lucien’s brother is nothing but pure evil.

And then Dimitri scooped her up over his shoulder by the hips, as easily as if she were made of straw.