Insatiable

“I wasn’t going to,” Meena whispered back. “But what’s…happening?”

It wasn’t what she wanted to ask. What she wanted to ask was, Where is Lucien? Can he really be in there, beneath all those scales? Is that really him?

“I don’t know,” Alaric replied. “I’ve never seen this before. But I think he’s-”

Suddenly, the dragon’s head reared up right next to Meena. She froze, every muscle in her body tensing. She couldn’t remember ever being that paralyzed with fear in her life-not even when she’d realized Lucien was actually a vampire-as she found herself being examined by a huge, double-lidded, foot-wide eye, its many facets, each the color of a blood-red sun, casting her own terrified reflection back at her.

Calm down, she tried to tell herself. This is Lucien’s eye. It’s going to be all right.

But she wasn’t sure that was really true since she could see no hint at all of the man she had known and loved in there. What she found herself gazing at wasn’t a man at all. It was completely, entirely beast.

A giant lid slid sideways over the pupil staring at her, then opened again as the dragon peered at her-and then at Alaric, standing behind her.

Then came that huge snuffling sound again, so loud that Meena would have jumped out of her skin entirely if Alaric hadn’t been keeping such a firm grip on the back of her neck.

Did he just… smell me? Meena asked herself, stu

Alaric squeezed the back of her neck.

She got the message. Don’t talk. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.

It was good advice.

Too bad Dimitri couldn’t seem to follow it.

He’d found the knife somehow where he’d dropped it.

And now he made a ru

This, it turned out, was a mistake. A big mistake.

“…pissed,” Alaric said, finishing his thought about Lucien’s state of mind. He shoved Meena to the floor, then threw himself on top of her. “Stay down.”

The fire that came bellowing out of the dragon’s nose and throat in Dimitri’s direction was white-hot.

It was the searing heat of the sun. It was the brimstone-filled heat from the fiery pits of hell, and it was aimed at a single target. It went shooting over their heads and bodies.

Meena had never felt heat like that before in her life and hoped she never would again.

Meena wasn’t sure if Dimitri ever even knew what hit him. One minute he was there, and the next, there was only fire…

And then there was only thick black smoke.

Where Dimitri had been standing was a charred, smoldering spot.

“Oh, my God,” Meena heard someone saying. And then she realized it was herself. She was saying it, over and over. “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”

“Stay down.” She heard Alaric’s deep voice in her ear. “Just stay down.”

Meena caught her breath as the dragon’s head dipped toward them once more. Lucien swept his gleaming red snout just inches above them, making that snuffling sound again.

He was smelling them. She was certain of it.

Then the head disappeared.

Lucien was turning his attention-and his breath of fire-to the people and vampires in the rest of the church.

Alaric must have realized it, too. That’s why he sprang up from Meena and ran after Lucien’s departing head.

She knew instantly where he was going.

And why. “No!” she screamed.

And she tore off after him.

She lost him in the chaos that was ensuing outside of the sheltering roof of the choir loft.

Yes, there might have been a seventy-foot-long dragon breathing fire in one part of the church.

But in the rest of the building, there was still a vampire-versus-human war being waged. She saw the Dracul sinking their fangs into the necks of novices…Sister Gertrude stabbing a Dracul with a piece of pew…Jon firing his crossbow at point-blank range at a Dracul (and missing). Fran and Stan flipping friars over with a superhuman strength amazing for people Meena had never before seen lift anything heavier than a knish. Abraham Holtzman and Emil and Mary Lou Antonescu had formed some kind of bizarre partnership and seemed to be trying to kill as many Dracul as they could with whatever they could…which appeared to be not many with very little.

Meena, appalled, knew she couldn’t just stand there. She had to do something to help…even if there was a dragon lumbering around, incinerating people with its breath.

Scooping up a jagged chunk of crushed pew, she grabbed the hair of the nearest vampire, who happened to be trying to sink its teeth into the throat of a hapless novice…

…and was shocked to find herself face-to-face again with Shoshona.

“Oh, right,” Shoshona said, smirking at her and at the pointed chunk of wood Meena held in her fist. “Like you have the guts.”

“Oh,” Meena assured her, “I have the guts.”

There was no way she had the guts.

This was Shoshona. Sure, Meena had never liked her very much. She had told herself, nearly every day for a year, that today was the day she was finally going to warn her coworker that if she didn’t stop working out so much, she was going to die.

Now Meena realized that it was never the gym Shoshona had to fear.

It was Stefan Dominic, the man she’d met in it.

Still, Meena had always had every intention of saving Shoshona’s life.

So was she really going to put a stake through her heart and end it? Here, now?

No. Of course not.

“Yeah.” Shoshona smirked some more. “I knew it. By the way, I took something else from your apartment, besides this bag.”

Shoshona unzipped the top of the red Marc Jacobs bag she still wore slung across her chest and showed Meena a glimpse of something inside.

“Thanks for all the great story ideas,” she said, smirking. “Have a nice time on unemployment.”

Then she turned around to look for the novice, who’d run off, crying.

Meena stared at Shoshona’s slender back.

Her laptop? Shoshona had stolen her laptop?

Meena didn’t have backup files of anything she’d kept on that laptop. Not on her work computer. Not online. Not anywhere.

Meena stalked forward, grabbed the back of Shoshona’s two-hundred-dollar shirt, and spun her around to face her…

…then plunged the broken piece of pew into her chest.

Shoshona turned into a pile of dust before Meena’s eyes.

On top of the dust lay the ruby red jewel-encrusted dragon tote Lucien had given to her, tangled in Shoshona’s clothes. Meena picked it up, dusted it off, and slung it across her own chest.

The weight of her laptop inside it felt reassuring.

When Meena lifted her gaze again, it was to see the last person she’d ever expected: Leisha, carefully holding her belly and picking her way toward Meena through the smoke and rubble.

“Oh, my God,” Meena cried. “Leish?”

All of Meena’s worst nightmares seemed suddenly to be coming true. Her boyfriend was a vampire. She’d just killed her own boss.

And her pregnant best friend was wandering around a live battlefield with no regard for her own safety or that of her unborn child.

Meena rushed to Leisha’s side.

“What are you still doing here?” Meena demanded anxiously. “I thought Mary Lou Antonescu got you out!”

“Oh, was that who that was?” Leisha looked dazed. “Well, yeah, she did. But then after she broke Adam out of those handcuffs and told him what was going on, he decided he wanted to stay to see the end of the play.”

Meena raised her eyebrows. “Play?”

“Yeah,” Leisha said. “I was kind of cool with it at first, but now I don’t know, there’s that thing-”

She pointed over Meena’s shoulder. Meena turned around and there, behind her, was Lucien, his dragon head weaving back and forth as if he were looking for something-or someone-his long serpent’s tongue darting in and out of his mouth. Every once in a while he opened his mouth and let out an eardrum-splitting roar.