Insatiable

Now the world was suddenly turned upside down.

Not that Meena particularly cared.

But she found it interesting, as she dangled there like a limp doll, to observe that Father Bernard and Sister Gertrude and the rest of the people she’d known from St. Clare’s were suddenly there among the Dracul in the apse of St. George’s, fighting them with stakes and crucifixes and holy water…and, in the case of Abraham Holtzman, with a crossbow and a gleaming Star of David.

Interesting, but not much beyond that. Meena hoped no one would die.

But she knew they would. She’d tried to warn them that they would. They all would.

But none of them had listened. No one ever listened.

And now look at what was happening.

Oh, well. Everyone was going to die eventually. Even her.

It might as well be tonight.

“Meena!”

She heard someone call her name through all the smoke and chaos. She thought it might be Alaric.

She didn’t care.

Dimitri was taking her somewhere. She didn’t know where. He was probably going to bite her-and not in a pleasant way, like Lucien had-and then suck out all her blood.

Then he’d be the one to know when everyone was going to die.

Better him than her.

“Meena!”

Why wouldn’t Alaric leave her alone? He really was the most a

Dimitri appeared to be taking her up the steps to the choir loft. He was probably going to rape her, too, when they got up there. Wouldn’t that just be the perfect end to a perfect day?

“Meena!”

Alaric was so irritating. He had never let her alone when she was alive, and now he wouldn’t leave her alone when she was about to die.

Reluctantly, she lifted her head. Alaric was struggling to reach them-no doubt in order to stop Dimitri, not realizing that Meena wanted this to happen; she wanted to die. What did she have to live for? No job. No apartment. No Lucien-but Alaric had a vampire hanging off either arm, holding him back. It actually looked a bit comical, the way the Dracul were trying to snap at Alaric’s throat.

Warding off their hissing mouths and pointed, saliva-dripping fangs, Alaric had a hand wrapped around the neck of each of them. He threw Meena a furious glance. He looked enraged with her.

“Stop being an idiot,” he roared at her. “He’s not dead. Look.”

Meena looked in the direction Alaric had tipped his head. The sanctuary.

And then she saw it.

It was true.

Lucien wasn’t dead. He was getting up.

Slowly. Painfully.

But he was getting up.

Meena saw more than just that in her glance, though.

She saw that the warriors from the Shrine of St. Clare were getting soundly beaten by the Dracul, who outnumbered them almost three to one. Jon may have gotten off a single lucky shot into the back of the prince of darkness, but the rest of his shots wouldn’t have hit the side of a barn if he were standing next to it. Gregory Bane was giving her brother’s face a pummeling, and seeming to enjoy it, if the movie-star grin he was wearing was any indication. Stefan Dominic had Sister Gertrude in a head-lock. And Emil Antonescu had three or four men-who were dressed, oddly, like the kind of guys Jon had used to work with at Webber and Stern-shredding his suit jacket with their fangs, while Mary Lou tried to hold them off with a wrought iron candle sconce.

Meena flung out both arms-even the sore one-against the sides of the stairwell up which Dimitri was carrying her, grabbing the stone walls.

Dimitri wasn’t expecting his formerly semicomatose victim to suddenly come to life. That was the only way Meena managed to propel herself out of his powerful grip and down from his broad shoulders, a physical maneuver that required both the element of surprise and a complete lack of fear of pain on her part…especially since it ended with her falling down the last few steps and landing on her tailbone.

Dimitri spun around, looking flabbergasted. She’d gone from completely limp to human projectile in a matter of seconds.

“Get away from me,” Meena warned him, crab-walking as fast as she could from the bottom of the steps.

But Dimitri was already thundering down the stairs after her, his eyes glowing red as twin stoplights. Meena scrambled to her feet and whirled around to make a run for it…

…only to careen directly into Alaric Wulf’s wide, solid chest. He’d managed to shake off his new vampire buddies and had come ru

“You’re very popular with the Dracula boys,” Alaric remarked drily. “They all seem to want to have you for di

“Less joking,” she said. Dimitri had his dagger out, the blade gleaming in the candlelight. “More head chopping. And please don’t miss this time.”

“Isn’t this nice?” Dimitri asked Alaric as he tossed the dagger from hand to hand. “We finally get to finish what we started in Berlin. You ran off with your partner that day before we were done. It wasn’t at all sporting.”

“Yes,” Alaric said. “Well, I had more important things to do than stick around to kill you. My partner was bleeding to death, as you might recall.”

Dimitri’s grin broadened.

“I know,” he said. “He was delicious. I’m looking forward to another bite someday.”

Alaric, his face darkening, lifted his sword.

Uh-oh, Meena thought. This isn’t good. Should he be fighting angry? “Alaric,” she said urgently. “Don’t-”

That’s when they all heard it: a sound like no other-certainly nothing human. But it wasn’t anything vampire, either.

It came from the apse at the front of the church, where the altar sat. It was so loud it shook the building to the foundations. So loud dust floated down from the choir loft and the low ceiling that hung over Alaric’s and Meena’s heads.

Turning slowly, Meena was afraid of what she was about to see-but knew full well what it was. Of course it was. She was in St. George’s. All her visions had been of fire. And there were crude drawings of it all over the walls.

She still couldn’t believe her eyes.

But there it was.

A dragon.

On the Upper East Side.

Chapter Fifty-eight

12:15 A.M. EST, Sunday, April 18

St. George’s Cathedral

180 East Seventy-eighth Street

New York, New York

It was crouched in the apse, its huge body and enormous wingspan filling the entire space, while its serpentine head perched on a neck that was stretched nearly the height of the thirty-foot ceiling.

Its claws made obscene scratching noises on the marble floor.

Its scales were ruby red.

Smoke poured from its nostrils.

Out of one of its shoulders poked a tiny wooden stake.

Lucien, Meena thought, feeling as if her heart had turned to ice in her chest. My God. Lucien.

What’s happened to you? What have they done to you?

“Oh…my God,” said Dimitri, dropping the dagger he held when he saw it.

Hearing Dimitri’s voice-and then the noisy clatter of the falling knife-the dragon’s head whipped in their direction…then dipped low to peer at them where they stood beneath the choir loft.

Meena’s frozen heart gave a convulsive double beat. Oh, God. Oh, God. The dragon was looking at them.

A mixture of steam and what smelled like sulfur shot straight at them as the beast exhaled hot air with enough force to douse all the candles in their area.

Suddenly they were plunged into semidarkness.

But Meena could still see, thanks to the fiery glow coming from the dragon’s nostrils, which loomed closer and closer to them…and from which she could hear a strange snuffling sound.

“Whatever you do,” Alaric whispered in the dark, startling her, as he slowly reached out to lay a warm, steadying hand on the back of Meena’s neck, “don’t move.”