by Meg Cabot
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—w
ho 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—”
Lucien started to get up from the bed, clearly eager to get away from her.
Only he couldn’t, because whatever was wrong with him, it seemed to knock him back, and off his feet. He sank down again onto the mattress, kneading his forehead and muttering a curse.
“Lucien.” Meena crawled toward him and laid her hands upon his shoulders. “What? What is it? What is the matter with you?”
“Nothing.” He barked the word with such surprising savagery, she dropped her hands.
Now, finally, she felt afraid.
Of him.
What had she done? What had she said? She’d thought he’d be glad to hear about her dream. It wasn’t a sad dream. To her, it was a hopeful dream . . . even if no one else in the Palatine agreed with her that it meant demons had within them the capacity to be good.
At the very least, she’d argued—particularly with Alaric Wulf, who disliked her mentioning the dream so much, he almost always left the room in a rage whenever she brought it up—it meant that whatever his father might have done, Lucien Antonescu had had a mother who’d loved him, and taught him right from wrong . . . at least until she’d killed herself by throwing herself into the river that ran beneath Poenari Castle . . . the river that came to be known, forever after, as the Princess River.
Maybe it was this painful memory of his mother that caused Lucien to swing suddenly in her direction, seize her by both shoulders, and bring her roughly toward him.
There was no sign of weakness in him now. Whatever it was Meena had said to upset him, it seemed to have rid him of that, at least.
“What?” she cried, her heart jackhammering. “What is it?”
He didn’t say a word. He just looked down at her, his dark-eyed gaze seeming to rake her with a need she couldn’t understand. For a moment, she could see in the lamplight that there was a muscle or a nerve twitching in his cheekbone, just above his jaw. It was almost as if he was trying to keep something contained, and not quite mastering it. She stared at that muscle fearfully, watching it jump, asking herself what it was he so badly wanted to do or say that he couldn’t quite seem to bring himself to. She wondered if she needed to run for her cell phone, which she’d left in the next room. . .
But before she had a chance, he’d lowered his mouth to hers.
And then nothing else seemed to matter. All that mattered was the roughness of his slight five o’clock shadow as it grazed her and the way his arms slid around her, cradling her as gently as if he were afraid she might break if he held her as tightly as he wished to . . .
. . . then the growing urgency with which he deepened the kiss, the fierceness with which he grasped her to his long-dead heart when he realized she wasn’t going to crumble beneath his touch.
She lifted her arms to wrap them around his neck, even as he was crushing her against him, making her feel things just with his lips and tongue that she hadn’t felt since . . . well, since the last time he’d held her in his arms this way.
It couldn’t last, of course.
Because a second later he broke the kiss—literally tore his face from hers just as certain parts of herself had started to turn to liquid—and let go of her, so suddenly that her eyelids fluttered open and she actually had to put a hand out to catch herself from falling back against the mattress without his arms to support her anymore. Because, suddenly, he’d disappeared.
She was so taken aback by the abrupt end to their kiss, she wanted to ask him what he thought he was doing, and drag his mouth back down to hers again.
But then she saw that he’d flung himself a few feet away, and was in a darkened corner of her room, just looking at her from the shadows, his eyes no longer deep pools of ebony, but twin spots of red . . .
The same red his eyes had always turned when he was at his angriest.
Or hungriest.
Oh God.
She stared back at him. It had never occurred to her to ask what he was living on these days.
Now, as she looked into those bloodred eyes, it was all she could think about.
“The Palatine have frozen all your financial assets,” she said quietly.
“The ones they could trace back to the name I used to use,” he replied, his voice like liquid smoke, drifting from the shadows and curling around her in burning tendrils.
“Still,” Meena said, shivering. She felt as if she were sitting in a cool, dense fog. “It must be difficult to find human blood to purchase on such restricted resources.” She gripped her duvet, white-knuckled, as she waited for his reply.
“Are you worried I’m not eating enough, Meena?” She heard a hint of mockery in his tone. “Or worried I’m resorting to murder for my meals? Let me put your mind at rest on both counts.” She heard a rustle of cloth. He was reaching into his coat pocket. “Here.” He tossed something onto the bed. She reached instinctively to catch it.
It was the impromptu stake he’d given her, and that she’d used to kill David.
“You have my permission to kill me if I ever try to bite you again,” he said. “Against your will, anyway. I should hope there’s still enough man in me to keep me from ever hurting you. But should an occasion ever arise to prove otherwise . . . well, you’ve more than amply proved this evening that you know what to do with one of those.”
Meena stared down at the chair leg. She had to swallow before she felt able to speak.
“Lucien,” she said. “I told you six months ago: I don’t ever want to hurt you. I’ll always do everything in my power to try to help you . . . even help you despite yourself. That’s why I told you about the dream. I think I can prove—”
He stepped from the shadows then. His eyes had gone back to their normal color, but a million different emotions played upon his face.
“You know what I want from you, Meena,” he said, in a rasping voice. “As soon as you’re ready to give it—and admit that’s what you want, as well—come find me. You won’t have to look far. I’ll be close. I always have been.”
Then he opened the bedroom door and walked out. A second later, she heard the apartment door slam.
Chapter Six
Alaric Wulf was not having a good day. Technically, he wasn’t having a good week.
This streak of misfortune had started when his supervisor, Abraham Holtzman, called him into his office, saying he had something he wished to discuss in private.
“I already know,” Alaric announced the minute he arrived.
“You do?” Holtzman looked up from his computer screen, surprised. “How?”
Alaric shrugged. “You’re kidding, right? She told me. She’s been telling anyone who’ll listen. You should hear her in the commissary at lunch. ‘What if there is good in Lucien Antonescu, and in all demons? And our job isn’t to destroy them, but to restore the good in them?’ ”
He felt like his imitation of Meena Harper was dead-on. Sometimes he found himself mimicking her when he was alone. Not on purpose, which was faintly disheartening. He couldn’t seem to get her voice out of his head.
“Oh.” Holtzman lowered his scraggly gray eyebrows. “That.”
“Yes, that,” Alaric said, annoyed. “What else? I certainly hope you put a freeze on that request she made to the Secret Archives.”
Now Holtzman’s eyebrows went up. “I did no such thing,” he said, looking offended. “If any of my staff members wants to request material the Vatican Library might have on file—even material from the Secret Archives—that might in any way help us in ou
r efforts to better understand our enemies, why on earth would I stand in their way?”
“You must be joking.” Alaric could hardly believe what he was hearing. “You don’t believe this dream she’s been having has any sort of merit, do you?”
“I don’t know that it doesn’t,” Holtzman said. “And I don’t see why you feel it doesn’t. In any case, Meena Harper is not why I asked you in here today.”
Alaric’s frown deepened. “Are you saying you actually believe that there’s a chance that Lucien Antonescu—the anointed one, listed in the Palatine Guide to Otherworldly Creatures as he who performs the devil’s work on earth—may have a choice in whether or not he commits good or evil?”
“I’m saying,” Holtzman said, “I like to keep myself open to all possibilities.” When Alaric openly balked at this, Holtzman lifted a hand and said, “I understand that certain prejudices exist about Antonescu, and rightly so. Sometimes old memories die hard, and the fact that so many of us, including yourself, are still recovering from injuries sustained fighting him and the Dracul last spring certainly hasn’t exactly fostered a spirit of goodwill toward Meena’s theory. I, however, am willing to give it a chance . . . if she can prove it, which is a big if. Now, if I may get to the reason I asked you to step in here this evening, which, as I said, has nothing to do with Meena Harper . . . I know you aren’t going to like this, but there’s no getting around it. I’m sure you’re aware of the Church’s efforts to . . .”
Alaric instantly switched off his attention and turned to stare out of one of Holtzman’s office—formerly a principal’s office—windows facing Mulberry Street. The moment he heard the words church and efforts to, he knew that whatever was being discussed was going to bore him. It might possibly have something to do with his being in trouble for killing something in too public or violent a manner.
But that, too, was boring.
He reflected, instead, on Meena Harper, and her theory.
“Saint Thomas said it,” she insisted almost daily in the commissary. “Not me. He believed there is no positive source of evil, or even evil beings, but rather an absence of good in some beings.”
