Kitabı oku: «Overbite», sayfa 2
As he said the name Dracula, another wind swept the street, this time from a different direction, sending all the leaves and plastic bags that had been stirred up before whipping the other way. Meena shivered and held her cardigan closed with one hand. David seemed to notice her for the first time since waking up.
“Oh,” he said, in a slightly less truculent voice. He began to lean away from Lucien and toward her. “I remember now. I think someone did mention you. But they said you were dead—”
“As you can see,” Lucien said, reaching out to grab the front of David’s shirt and pull him closer, “they were misinformed. Now who is they?”
David’s gaze darted back toward Meena. “Hey,” he said to her. “Aren’t you going to help me out here?”
She used the piece of wood Lucien had handed her to point at the handkerchief wrapped around her neck.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Remember this? You did this. Among other things I could mention but won’t.”
David, to her surprise, burst into tears.
“I’m sorry,” he cried. “I didn’t want to. I swear I didn’t. I couldn’t stop myself. I don’t know what’s come over me lately. I think I’m sick or something. Meena, could you feel my head? I think I’m running a fever.”
Meena raised her eyebrows. “Uh,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it’s not a fever.”
Lucien wasn’t tolerating any of David’s theatrics. He lifted the smaller man by his shirtfront from the hood of his car.
“Tell me who turned you,” he said, “and who sent you to this girl, or this time, I’ll rip your head off.”
“I don’t know,” David insisted with a sob. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please put me down. I’m sorry for what I did to Meena. I told you I couldn’t help it—”
Lucien squeezed David’s throat, choking off the rest of his words. Though of course vampires couldn’t breathe, the noises David began to make were unbearable to Meena. He was obviously suffering terribly.
“Lucien,” she said, her heart aching. “Stop it. You’re hurting him. He said he doesn’t know anything.”
“He’s lying,” Lucien said emotionlessly. He didn’t even glance in her direction. “He’s a vicious, evil fiend.”
“There are people I know who’d say the same thing about you,” she said. “How am I going to convince them they’re mistaken, and to give you a second chance, when you won’t do the slightest thing to prove them wrong?”
Lucien hurled a startled glance at her over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
“I know there’s good in you, Lucien,” she said. “And I’m trying to persuade the people I work with that I’m right. But you make it really hard when you go around torturing people. Even people who might deserve it.”
He stared at her as if she were insane.
“How can you, of all people, ask me to show him mercy?” he asked. “Especially after what he tried to do to you? How can you possibly pity him? There is no vestige of humanity left in him.”
“That might be true of David,” Meena said. “But I refuse to believe it about you. How can I, after what we’ve been through together? But if that’s what you really believe,” she went on, reaching into her pocket, “fine.”
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking astonished as she pulled out her cell phone.
“My job,” she said. She didn’t know any other way to make him understand. “You’re a vicious, evil fiend. So is he. I’m calling the Palatine to report having spotted you both.”
Their gazes met as she brought the phone to her ear.
And for a moment, it all seemed to disappear … the dark, deserted street; the whimpering vampire; the shattered windshield; the broken car. Everything. It was just the two of them, the way it had been before—before she’d discovered he was a vampire, before he had discovered she was cursed with her horrible gift—when they had been so in love, and filled with so much hope for the future.
A future that had been dashed when Alaric Wulf had arrived at Meena’s door with the news of Lucien’s true identity.
It was at that exact moment—when she and Lucien were distracted, lost in each other’s dark-eyed gaze—that David proved he really was without any vestige of humanity, and the demon inside him had completely taken over. He lashed out at Lucien, striking him so forcefully that Lucien staggered back a few steps in surprise, releasing his hold on him entirely.
Which gave David just enough time … not to get away, as any other demon might have, but to lunge directly toward Meena, his face contorted in a mask of rage and hate, his mouth spread wide open, razor-sharp fangs ready to sink into her throat.
Lucien sprang after him, but it was too late. Unfortunately for David.
Because Meena was more than ready for him this time. She merely held out the jagged piece of chair leg Lucien had given to her. It was David’s own momentum—and her steady hold—that drove it into the center of his chest.
He looked down at it in wonder.
“Meena,” he said, in a slightly wounded voice.
A second later, he was gone, in a cloud of exploding bone and dust.
Chapter Four
Meena stared at the space where, a second before, David had stood.
Then she looked down at the wooden stake she held in one hand, and the cell phone she held in the other. She hadn’t actually pressed send.
She glanced at Lucien. He was standing just a few feet away from her, an expression she didn’t recognize on his face … or at least wasn’t sure she remembered ever having seen him wear before, anyway. What was it? Alarm, certainly. Concern for her, yes.
But there was something else there, too. What was it? Was it … pain?
But it couldn’t possibly be. Because he was the prince of darkness. He wasn’t capable of feeling pain.
That’s what everyone back at the Palatine, especially Alaric Wulf, kept telling her, anyway.
“Are you all right?” he asked her. “I’m sorry, he surprised me. I’m not … I shouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”
She opened her mouth to reply …
But before she had a chance, she became aware of sounds—footsteps, approaching rapidly—behind them.
People were coming. But who? She hadn’t dialed.
And David hadn’t made a sound as he’d imploded.
She squinted into the darkness, trying to see. But some of the bulbs in the streetlights overhead were burned out, leaving large sections of the block in darkness. She hadn’t known this when she’d chosen this address as a meeting spot, or noticed it when she arrived.
Now she wondered if someone—or something—had broken the bulbs on purpose, knowing she was coming.
“Meena,” Lucien said, his tone anxious. He’d heard the footsteps, too.
Meena wasn’t normally called upon to make lightning-fast decisions in her new position at the Palatine. This was her first time in the field, since she was considered too valuable an asset to be allowed anywhere near actual demon activity. She’d always been confined to Palatine headquarters during working hours, where she stuck to determining who among her colleagues was most likely to run into fatal danger while on assignment.
And when demon activity was slow in North America, Meena spent her days Skyping with units overseas … or researching the online sections of the incredibly large Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, to which she had unlimited access as an employee of the Palatine, the military branch of the Vatican. This meant she was allowed to enter the Vatican Library’s secret archives, as well, which were restricted to members of the public. She was supposed to be looking for anything that might help in the Palatine’s battle against paranormal beings.
But of course what she was actually looking for was much more personal. Recently, she thought she’d found it.
Now, her heart hammering against the back of her ribs, she realized she had to act fast, or everything for which she’d been working so hard these past six months—especially the last two—would be ruined.
So she dropped her cell phone back into the pocket of her cardigan, where earlier, she’d slipped David’s car keys. Then instinctively, she dropped the stake …
But before it could strike the pavement, Lucien snatched it in midair. He slipped it into the pocket of his suit jacket.
“Let’s go,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders and spinning her toward the closest busy street.
“Why—” Then comprehension dawned. “Oh, of course,” she said. She’d killed vampires before, but never quite like that. “Evidence. My fingerprints are all over it.” But there was no body. She would never get used to any of this.
She kept walking, panic mounting as the footsteps behind them seemed to increase in speed. Who could it be? Surely not the Palatine, since she hadn’t called them … although her cell phone had a built-in GPS tracker. But who could have alerted them? Surely not the police, or there’d be sirens …
“It’s all right,” Lucien was saying. He, too, seemed concerned about the footsteps. She saw him glance behind them several times.
He possessed strength and powers considered by the Palatine to be superior to those of any other paranormal entity. She herself had witnessed him do things that no living being ought to have been able to do, including transform himself into a creature twelve times the size of a normal man. That breathed fire. Just a quarter of an hour earlier, he’d ripped the locked door off a Volvo station wagon and hurled a man so far into the air, he hadn’t fallen back to earth until many seconds later.
But maybe these things, coupled with David’s sucker punch, had taken more out of him than he’d realized, since for some reason Lucien didn’t snatch her up and fly off, or dissipate into thin air, both of which she knew he was perfectly capable of doing. He didn’t even pick up the pace, really, though she could tell he was as anxious as she was to get out of there.
What was wrong with him? she wondered He almost seemed …
“Are you all right?” she asked, putting an arm around him. “Here, lean on me.”
“Meena,” he growled. “I’m fine.”
“Of course you are,” she said. “We both are.”
She didn’t sound convincing even to herself.
They turned onto a better-lighted, much more highly trafficked street. There were couples out walking their dogs, and families standing at every corner, waiting for the light to turn so they could cross, eager to get to the Feast of San Gennaro, which had recently started in Little Italy, a few blocks away. Everyone was laughing, enjoying the late-summer air.
No one paid the slightest bit of attention to the man with his arm around the shoulders of the girl with the white kerchief encircling her neck. No one seemed to notice that her arm was around his waist beneath the jacket of his suit, or that they were possibly being pursued.
“Are they still behind us?” he asked her tersely.
She peeked over her shoulder.
“I can’t tell,” she said. “I didn’t get a good look at them. Did you?”
He shook his head. “It was probably whoever turned your friend, then sent him after you.”
“Then …” she said, looking around at all the smiling people, enjoying the first night of their weekend, “Vampires.”
It seemed hard to believe that on such a warm, pretty evening, something so evil could exist.
But she had just killed one. And she had her arm around the waist of another.
“It isn’t anyone from my clan, I can tell you that much,” he said. “Your friends at your new job have done excellent work annihilating almost every single one of them.”
“You told David you rule over all demon life on this side of hell,” Meena said, ignoring his sarcasm. “So how can any of them do something like this without your knowing about it?”
Lucien’s dark eyes flashed menacingly.
“I haven’t been very … available lately,” he replied.
She wasn’t sure if his curtness was due to her having touched upon a sensitive subject, or to their having reached an intersection, and the light was warning them to wait. A bus roared by, followed by a dozen taxis, making it impossible to cross.
She could feel the tension in Lucien’s body, and saw the way he was scanning the crowds of weekend revelers around them.
She also saw, for the first time, the faint purple shadows beneath those dark eyes of his, now easily visible in the much brighter lights along this street.
Meena wasn’t quite sure what it meant for a vampire to have shadows beneath his eyes. At no time during her training with the Palatine had this subject ever come up.
But she was beginning to suspect that despite the impeccable suit and lustrous hair, Lucien had not spent the months since she’d last seen him in some kind of vampire resort, relaxing in a lounge chair in the shade. He had obviously been suffering in some way.
“Lucien, are you all right?” she asked him. “I mean … are you sick, or something?”
He looked down at her, clearly offended by the question. “I told you,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“Well,” she said, “it’s just that you don’t seem like your old self … not in a bad way,” she hastened to add.
“How unfortunate,” he said. “I try so hard to be bad.”
He smiled down at her then. She instantly wished he hadn’t.
Because Lucien Antonescu’s smile did things to her, things that the smile of a vampire had no business doing to a girl who had joined an organization dedicated to eradicating his kind.
But there was still a part of him that was human. Or maybe—as she’d recently begun trying to prove—even better than human.
“You shouldn’t joke about that,” she said, nervously pushing some of her hair from her eyes. “I was serious when I said before that I think—”
That’s when someone—a kid, walking shoulder to shoulder with a group of his college friends down the sidewalk—slammed right into Meena, as if he hadn’t seen her at all.
“Oof,” she said as Lucien pulled her protectively against him.
The kid spun, then landed on the sidewalk. “What the hell?” he complained good-naturedly as his friends laughed at him. He obviously wasn’t hurt, just a little buzzed on beer, and confused.
“I’m so sorry,” Meena said to him, even though technically, he’d been the one who’d walked into her.
The kid said nothing, just continued to laugh as his friends pulled him back to his feet, calling him rude names. Lucien, meanwhile, had already steered Meena away from the group, navigating her quickly back down the crowded sidewalk.
“That was weird,” Meena said. “It was like he didn’t even see me.”
“He couldn’t see you,” Lucien said.
“Couldn’t see me?” Meena looked up at him in shock. “What do you mean? How could he not see me?”
“No one can see us right now,” Lucien said, his face devoid of expression. “It’s called a glamour. I’m afraid I can’t keep it up for long. But it should last us until I can get you back to your apartment. You should be safe there, providing you’ve taken the usual precautions against unwanted demon entry.”
She stared up at him, feeling a sudden mix of emotions. Especially when she realized they were turning onto her street.
“Lucien,” she said, freezing suddenly in her tracks. “How do you know where I live?”
She had been so careful, leaving the rectory at the Shrine of St. Clare’s—where she’d moved after his minions had gutted her last apartment—as soon as she’d realized he knew she was there. She’d had all her mail forwarded to a post office box, canceled her old cell phone, her gym membership, even her library card. She’d sold her old apartment and now shared a sublet with her brother in which even the cable bill was under the original owner’s name.
How could he possibly have known?
Then again … how could he not have?
She wasn’t afraid, necessarily. Not as afraid as she’d been just minutes before. And she certainly wasn’t afraid for her life. All she had to do was press a button on her phone, and the entire Manhattan unit of the Palatine would be there within a few minutes.
Of course, by that time, she could easily be dead.
But dying wasn’t what she was most afraid of. Not anymore.
“Meena,” he said. The smile was long gone. “What you were saying, about my not seeming like my old self …”
The effort it was causing him to form the words was obvious. And now she recognized what it was she hadn’t been able to identify in his face before. It was pain. It was deeply etched in the hollows beneath his eyes.
“I suppose,” he said, “that’s part of my problem.”
She cocked her head, confused.
“What is?” she asked.
He took another step, but this time it was more of a stumble. Only not a drunken one, like the boy they’d seen down the block. His body weight began to sag against hers.
“That in spite of your choice last spring,” he said, his voice a ragged whisper, “my feelings for you are unchanged. I’m still as in love with you as ever.”
Chapter Five
Everything was a disaster.
Now, in one night, Meena had not only slain one ex-boyfriend who’d turned out to be a vampire, but she had another one in her bed.
She couldn’t imagine how things could possibly get worse, unless her brother walked into the apartment, found Lucien Antonescu there, and called Alaric Wulf, who would undoubtedly launch an all-out military assault on the place that would include smoke grenades and possibly tear gas.
But she’d already phoned Jon and learned that he was working his normal Friday-night shift at the Beanery, where he’d found employment as a barista. He wasn’t planning to be home until after eleven.
This gave Meena exactly one hour to get Lucien out of the apartment.
The question was, how was she going to do this?
She had no idea what was wrong with Lucien. But his announcing that he was still in love with her certainly hadn’t made things any better. The admission had, in fact, only seemed to cause him to grow weaker. She’d had to half support him as she staggered the rest of the way to her building.
She hadn’t wanted to bring him inside. But he seemed so ill, she didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t leave him outside, even though this was what he asked of her.
But that was ludicrous. He’d already admitted he was so weak, he couldn’t maintain his glamour, or whatever it was, much longer. She certainly wasn’t going to abandon him in this condition, defenseless. She wasn’t just concerned about whoever—or whatever—had been following them, but about anyone who might happen to stumble across him. Alaric Wulf, for instance. True, Alaric lived in a completely different neighborhood, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
Fortunately, her building had an elevator, even though it was ancient, barely had room for two people and a laundry basket, and was so slow it was usually simpler to take the stairs. She was able to prop Lucien up inside, though, and get him safely to her floor.
From there things got more complicated. She’d grown so used to them, she’d forgotten the radical lengths to which she and the Palatine had gone to vampire-proof the apartment. There was a crucifix hanging over every window and doorway. Strands of garlic hung across her bed. Father Bernard, who led the parish of the Shrine of St. Clare’s, had blessed the place when she’d moved in, sprinkling every corner of it with holy water. Sister Gertrude had lately taken to dropping by with patron-saint devotional candles.
Lucien had groaned upon entering.
“It’s not that bad,” Meena had said defensively.
“That’s your opinion,” he replied.
But then there was her dog. Even before she’d known they existed, Meena had had a secret weapon in the fight against vampires. Because somehow she’d managed to pick the one Pomeranian mix in the entire Manhattan animal-shelter system that was particularly sensitive to—and infuriated by—the scent of the undead. Or perhaps the dog had picked her. One of them, in any case, had picked the other, maybe with some idea of what the future held in store.
Jack Bauer—so named because his anxiety level was exceeded only by his determination to save the world from all evil—leaped from his basket the minute Lucien entered the apartment, curled back his lips, and began to snarl as if the Apocalypse were occurring in the living room right in front of him.
Which was why Meena had had to pick him up and lock him in the bathroom, with a bowl of water and his favorite chew toy. He immediately began to whimper, sad to be missing out on all the fun.
When she returned to her bedroom, where Lucien had retreated to escape the vicious mini-assault, she saw that he had collapsed onto her light blue duvet. He had one arm over his eyes to shield them from the garlic overhead. The rest of her walls—also light blue—were bare, because Meena had been so busy, she still had not gotten around to decorating, beyond what Sister Gertrude had dropped by and the apartment’s owner had chosen, which was the minimum of furnishings.
She took a deep breath and sank down onto the bed beside him. The flouncy red skirt of her dress, now looking a little worse for wear after her battle with David, swirled out around them both.
“Lucien, you’ve got to tell me. What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you hurt? Is there anything I can bring you?”
It was a stupid question. She didn’t have any spare pints of blood lying around the apartment. And she wasn’t about to offer up her own neck.
But she didn’t have the slightest idea what else to say.
“I don’t believe so,” he said. He lowered his arm. His dark-eyed gaze latched onto hers, and he managed another one of those heart-wrenching smiles. “Being this close to you again is enough. For now. Although I’ll admit in my weaker moments I question the wisdom of being in love with a woman who chooses to work for an organization intent on exterminating my people. Believe me, if I could, I would prefer not to be.”
She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She’d forgotten what it was like to have a man say that he loved her.
Oh, sure, guys occasionally indicated that they wanted to sleep with her. And sometimes—like with David—it even seemed like the relationship might actually go somewhere.
But it never did. Take her relationship with Alaric Wulf. He had kissed her—quite passionately—once.
But he had been semiconscious from blood loss at the time. Since then, he had not tried to kiss her again. He had, in fact, been seriously standoffish, except for asking her to dinner once, in his apartment.
Which had so obviously been an invitation for casual sex, Meena had been insulted. She’d thought she’d meant a little more to him than that. He could get that from any silly girl he met at any nightclub in Manhattan. If he wasn’t going to do anything to indicate that she meant something more to him than that, she wasn’t going to bother with him.
On the other hand, it was Alaric Wulf who’d more or less raised himself. So it was possible he hadn’t known any better. Instead of telling him to go to hell, she’d just politely refused the invitation.
But with Lucien, everything was different. Because Lucien had always gotten the love thing down perfectly.
True, he had no soul. True, he was the five-hundred-year-old son of one of the most prolific serial killers in history, who had made an unholy pact with Satan in order to achieve immortality, and so needed to consume human blood to survive.
And true, their relationship had gone from amazing to unmitigated disaster in record time because he’d kept biting her. And then the members of his family kept trying to do the same. And now vampires all over the world seemed to think of Meena’s blood as a refreshing pick-me-up, like Dr Pepper.
Still. He’d never stopped loving her.
“I really don’t think,” Meena said, aware that the lighting in the room was far too low—it could almost have been called romantic—because she had no overhead light, just a small bedside lamp, “this is the time or place to be talking about this.” Even though, truthfully, she never wanted to stop talking about it. “There’s obviously something really wrong with you. I think you should tell me what it is so I can try to help you.”
But Lucien just shook his head.
“I told you I would love you until the end of time,” he said, the corners of that irresistible mouth of his turned up. But not like he actually thought the situation was funny. More like he was sad … but in an amused way. “Coming from someone who, in all likelihood, will live until then, those aren’t words to be spoken lightly. I’ve been in love with you ever since that horrible dinner party at my cousin’s apartment, and we went to the Metropolitan Museum afterward, and you showed me the painting you love, the one of Joan of Arc. You look even more like her now, with your hair like that. Although I’m not entirely sure what color that’s supposed to be …”
She reached up instinctively to tug on a lock of her hair. Her best friend, Leisha, the highest-paid stylist at the B.A.O. (By Appointment Only) Salon, had given her permission to grow out her pixie cut, on the condition that Leisha be allowed to experiment with color. Meena now had different-colored hair each month.
But underneath it, she was still the exact same person she’d been the day she’d met Lucien.
She knew that no one else believed he could possibly have changed his colors as easily.
No one but her. Because she’d always been able to see his true colors.
“You’re not like any other woman I’ve ever met,” he was saying, his gaze intent on hers. “I didn’t think you did, but you seemed really to mean it when you said you were going to save mankind from creatures like myself. Nothing was going to stand in your way. And nothing has. You’re amazing. You know that, don’t you?”
Amazing? She was amazing? No one had ever called her amazing before. Weird, yes. A flake, often. Crazy, lots of times.
But never amazing. She couldn’t believe Lucien even remembered that conversation at the museum in front of the Joan of Arc painting … her favorite painting, because Joan of Arc, like her, made predictions that at first no one believed. But soon she convinced enough people that she was telling the truth that she was given an audience with the king, and eventually her own army to command.
Still, this was hardly the kind of discussion you’d expect someone who’d been around for half a millennium to remember.
But he had.
Lucien seemed to realize she’d been rendered speechless by his revelation, and laid a hand over hers.
“You have every reason to despise me,” he said. He was still smiling ruefully to himself. “As you’ve so aptly pointed out, I didn’t just endanger your life—and the lives of all the people you love—when I came into it, I ruined it. Not a moment goes by that I’m not still fully aware of this fact. More than anything in this world, I wish I could take that back—even more than I wish I could bring back the lives my father and half brother took before they were eventually stopped. But I can’t. And the last thing I want to do now is put you in jeopardy again. But I feel like I already have. So all I can do instead is take this opportunity to make sure you know how I feel …” The strong hand tightened over hers. “How I’ll always feel. Not that I expect you to feel the same way, or that I have any hope at all that it will make a difference.”
“Lucien …”
If she could have thrown herself into his arms and started kissing him wildly then and there, she would have.
If she could have said, “I love you, too,” forgotten all about the vampire thing—the fact that he was dead and she was alive and she had family and friends and, oh yes, an entire species who was depending on her—she would have.
But she couldn’t.
Because considering his weakness—and what she’d been dreaming lately—it seemed more vital than ever that one of them, at least, keep their head.
“Lucien,” she said again. “Remember that night we were in the museum, and you showed me the woodcut of the castle where you grew up, and told me about your mother?”
His grip on her hand loosened slightly.
“I remember,” he said, flinching a little. “But it’s hardly a good idea to bring up a man’s mother at moments like this, Meena …”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it can’t be helped. You told me she was your father’s first wife, and that she was very beautiful and innocent, and that he loved her very much. You said after her death, people used to whisper that she might have been an angel …”
Now he pulled his hand from hers entirely.
“And now definitely,” he said, sitting up, “isn’t the time to be bringing up angels.” He threw a speculative glance at the window, which was nailed shut, and had the largest crucifix of all hanging over it. “Although I could see how it might be difficult for you not to around here.”
“Lucien, you have to listen to this,” Meena said urgently. “I keep having this dream. It’s been the same one every night. And I think it’s about you and your mother. I don’t know who else it could be. It takes place in that castle in the woodcut. I went online to research where you grew up—Poenari Castle—and it looks like the same place. In the dream, this woman is sitting on a seat by a window, reading a book with a little boy. The little boy looks exactly like you, and so does the woman. She has long black hair and big dark eyes and is wearing a blue dress—”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this.” Lucien’s voice was curt. “So you keep having this dream. So what? I thought your gift was that you could see into the future, not the past.”
“It is,” Meena said, a little hurt by his harsh tone. “I mean, it was. It always has been. But lately, I don’t know. I think it’s been changing. Getting stronger, or something. Because, Lucien, in this dream, the part from this book that the woman is reading to this little boy—who I think is you—is about good and evil. I don’t know how I can understand what she’s saying, because she’s speaking in a language I’ve never heard before. But somehow I can. She’s talking about how none of us is completely good or completely evil, and all of God’s creatures—she stresses this part, all of them—have the ability to choose. How evil can’t exist without good, and how even some of God’s angels—”
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