Insatiable

“Now see? That just seems like overkill to me,” Leisha said.

Meena’s gaze slid back toward her friend. Leisha, she was pretty certain, had had her mind scrambled by a combination of shock and some kind of Dracul brainwashing. Her normally alert brown eyes looked glazed over.

“I realize it’s all in good fun,” Leisha complained, “but I’m pretty sure the smoke isn’t good for the baby. I’m actually not feeling so hot-”

Meena reached out and grabbed her friend by both arms.

“Leisha, this isn’t a play,” she said, urgently. “You have to get out of here. The baby is coming early. And it’s not a boy. It’s a girl. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I knew, but-”

“What?” Leisha cried, flinging both her hands away. Whatever they had done to Leisha’s memory, it hadn’t affected her concern for her unborn child. “You knew and you didn’t tell me? Meena, what’s wrong with you? How early?”

“Early enough that Adam should have started on that baby room a long time ago,” Meena said. Suddenly spying her brother over Leisha’s shoulder, she cried, “Jon! Jon! Get over here.”

Jon staggered over. Blood was streaming from a cut on his forehead; Gregory Bane had split it open with a fist. Jon was dirty and sweaty and looked like he was having the time of his life.

“What?” he demanded. “Oh, my God. Leisha, what are you still doing here?”

Over in the sanctuary, the dragon let out another roar.

The walls shook.

Outside the church, sirens were wailing. The NYFD and New York City police were on their way. It had only taken a vampire war and a seventy-foot dragon to get some of St. George’s neighbors to call 911.

“Oh, thank God,” Leisha said when she heard the sirens. “Someone needs to shoot that thing.”

“No!” Meena cried. Then, seeing the expressions on the faces of her brother and friend, she said, more calmly, “Jon, I think Leisha is in labor. You need to find Adam and get them both out of here.”

“What?” Leisha and Jon exclaimed together.

“Yes,” Meena said firmly. “Leisha, I think you’re having your baby now. Jon, you’ve got to get her and Adam into the first ambulance you see and get her away from here. Far away from here. Do it now, Jon. I want you to go with them. It’s all your fault they’re even here in the first place.”

“How is it my fault?” Jon demanded indignantly.

“Remember that note I left down at St. Clare’s?” Meena asked. “The one in which I specifically stated that anyone who followed me up here was going to die tonight?”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Oh, right. Yeah, we all saw that. But what were we supposed to do, Meen? Just let you come up here and fight these guys on your own? It looked like you were doing a real terrific job when we got here.”

“You shot my boyfriend,” Meena reminded him. “He was handling it fine, and then you shot him. And now look what’s happening. The police are here, and the fire department, and i

The dragon let out another one of its roars. It sounded much closer than the previous one. Jon jumped and seemed to realize Meena was right: Lucien was coming for him. Those huge, blood-red eyes seemed to be searching the apse for someone…

Jon hastily surrendered his cocked and loaded crossbow to Meena.

“Yeah,” he said guiltily. “I really am sorry about that. I was actually aiming for his brother.” He took Leisha by the arm. “Relax, Leish,” he said to her. “I’ll have you out of here in no time. I’m pretty sure I saw Adam over by the doors. He must have been looking for you.”

Leisha threw a frantic look over her shoulder at Meena as Jon led her away.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” she asked.

Meena smiled and waved at her. “I want to stay to see the end of the play,” she said. “Call me later and let me know where you are.” She held an imaginary cell phone to her face.

Leisha nodded, then looked concerned. “The baby’s really a girl? We never even talked about any girls’ names.”

“I’ve always been partial to the name Joan,” Meena called after her…

…just as a Dracul spotted her standing there and began racing her way. While Jon hurried to get Leisha to safety, Meena spun to face the vampire…

…who turned out to be none other than Gregory Bane.

“Hello, Meena Harper,” he said, giving her the same slow, deliberate smile that had sent so many thousands of women in the eighteen-to-forty-nine demographic into screaming fits.

Meena rolled her eyes, lifted Jon’s crossbow, and shot him directly in the chest.

Then she stepped through the crumbling dust of his remains. That’s when yet another projectile went hissing through the air, missing Meena’s cheek by mere inches.

A second later, the dragon let out a bellow-this one of pain-that was loud enough to shake the building’s foundation. Meena, confused, looked up to see a stake sticking out of its long neck.

A stake. Another stake.

Someone else, other than her brother, was shooting at Lucien. Meena spun around, trying to see who it was.

She spotted Abraham Holtzman in the center of the smoke-filled apse, a crossbow to one shoulder, reloading.

She threw down her own crossbow and flew toward him.

“Stop,” she yelled at him. “You’ve got to stop. You’re hurting him!”

“Of course I’m hurting him, Miss Harper,” Abraham said matter-of-factly. “That would be the point, wouldn’t it? I’m trying to distract him while Alaric-”

“But Lucien is on our side,” Meena cried. “He’s trying to help us! He killed Dimitri.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Harper. He killed his brother in order to preserve his grip on the throne,” Abraham said with measured patience. “He’s the prince of darkness, Satan’s chosen son on earth to rule over all demon beings. I know you think you love him, my dear, but he must be destroyed in order for goodness and light to stand a chance-”

“But he’s part of goodness and light,” Meena insisted. “His mother was-”

“Miss Harper,” Abraham said. “You surely can’t be telling me that there’s any part of that that isn’t evil.”

On the word that, he gestured toward the dragon, which was loosing a stream of its white fire at the bankers Meena had previously seen attacking Sister Gertrude. One minute they were there.

The next, they were gone.

“Oh, dear,” Meena heard a voice close to her say. She turned her head and saw Emil and Mary Lou Antonescu standing beside her.

But they didn’t look anything like they ever had when she’d seen them around their apartment building. They were both covered in soot and blood, their designer clothing torn and Mary Lou’s hair in complete disarray. She was clinging to her husband, watching in utter terror as Lucien breathed fire onto the Dracul.

“Did you know about this?” Meena demanded of them. “Did you know Lucien”-she didn’t even know what to say, exactly-“could…could…”

Emil turned to look down at her. His expression was grave. And a little bit sad.

And left absolutely no doubt, in Meena’s mind at least, that he’d known. Oh, he’d known all along.

“The prince has always had a very bad temper,” was all he said, however.

“A bad temper?” Meena cried. She gestured toward the dragon, which had dipped its long, slender neck to pick up Stefan Dominic in its mouth and was now ripping him apart, limb from limb. Meena had to cover her eyes with her hands. “You call that a bad temper?” she asked, with a moan.

“It’s never a good idea,” Emil said, “to make the prince angry. Dimitri really ought to have known better.”

Meena, careful not to look in Lucien’s direction, lowered her hands and asked, “Well, how do we stop it? How do we make him turn back?”

“Oh,” Emil said, tightening his arm around his wife. “We can’t.”

Meena’s jaw dropped. “What? You mean-”

This was exactly what Meena had feared when she’d stood so close to that giant eye and seen nothing in it of the man she loved…that Lucien would never go back to being himself again.