by Meg Cabot
“You can turn to mist?” she asked faintly.
His red-eyed gaze focused on her. “Yes,” he said. “I can turn to mist. I can turn into a wolf, too. And you’re not going to kill me, Meena. Not with a knitting needle. You’re not going to jump, and you’re not even going to scream for that Palatine Guard to come out here, even disgusting as you find me.” Now his dark eyebrows knit. “Why is that?”
He could read her thoughts. He could.
Almost, anyway.
Suddenly the world seemed to tilt crazily in front of her.
Lucien reached out and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her body against his. The feel of his hard muscles through the thin material of her nightgown caused her swaying universe to right itself.
But only a little.
Now his voice was a soothing tether. “I can understand why you’re upset…”
“No.” She craned her neck to look up at him. She was ashamed of the tears that were swimming in her eyes, but there wasn’t anything she could do to stop them. “I don’t think you can. A few hours ago I thought you were the best thing that ever happened to me. And now I just found out I never knew you at all.” Her conscience pricked her.
“And all right, you don’t really know me at all, either…but you aren’t even human.”
The sky lit up with a single brilliant streak of lightning and then gave a heaving shudder of thunder.
Then it began to rain. Fat, stinging drops that struck her head and shoulders.
Lucien said, “Meena.” He didn’t sound detached anymore. Now his voice, like the thunder, sounded angry and desperate. “I was human…once.” He’d turned so that his body blocked Meena’s from the rain, holding her in what dubious shelter the doorway to her bedroom offered from the downpour while the world continued to pitch sicken-ingly around her. Her dog, seeing them so close together, flew into a frenzy of snarls but didn’t seem to dare approach.
“Don’t you think I long to feel those things again?” Lucien asked her.
His voice was raw. He knew what he was-and clearly hated it.
But he had come to accept it…the exact same way, Meena knew in a moment of clarity, that she had come to accept what she was.
“Do you think I like what my father made me?” he asked her desperately. “No. But do you think I had any choice? I don’t know what unholy pact he made or who it was with…demons, witches, or the devil himself. All I know is that one night I died and woke to find myself…like this. He did the same to my brother Dimitri. He told us not to worry, because now we’d live forever. Unlike my mother…her death was what drove him to seek this grotesque half life for all of us.”
Meena stared up at him in horror from the shelter of his arms as behind him, the rain streamed down in a heavy curtain and thunder rolled relentlessly. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to hear any of it.
“Of course,” Lucien said with a wry smile, “it wasn’t as simple as that. There were…urges. I tried not to give in to them. But they were so strong. Father did nothing but encourage us, bring us…gifts. Dimitri, who had always been weak willed, didn’t care about letting the fever take over and allowing his baser instincts to rule him, slaughtering innocents and becoming more monster than man. But I…I don’t know. Maybe because I had the benefit of having been born of my mother, who, as you know, was rumored to have been part angel-”
“Lucien.”
She pitied him. She did. She raised a hand…she didn’t know why. Maybe to stroke his cheek.
She knew what he was. And she hated it.
But he was suffering.
He flinched before she could touch him and looked away, toward the rain.
“I’m not saying I’m a better man than my brother,” he said. “Or that my mother was a better woman than his. And I’m not saying that I couldn’t have done more to try to stop him and my father. I could have. I should have. Eventually I…did.”
He looked back at her, and his eyes were burning coals. Meena lowered her hand as hastily as if it had been burned.
“When my father was finally destroyed, and I became prince,” he said, “I told them all the killing had to stop.”
Meena didn’t want to hear it. The photos Alaric Wulf had shown her were fresh in her mind.
But she couldn’t just stand there while he broke down in shame in front of her, either. Especially as the storm lashed at his back, pelting them with a hurricane-like downpour.
Like he’d said-he might be a vampire now.
But he’d been human once.
“Come inside,” she whispered. “You’re getting soaked.”
He looked down at her, as if startled to see he was still holding her in his arms. Then his gaze focused with a laserlike intensity that she wasn’t sure she liked at all.
Was he seeing her finally as Meena, the woman he loved…or as his next meal?
She knew it might be the worst mistake she’d ever made in her life.
But she still opened the door to her bedroom.
Lucien followed her into the darkness.
“You think I’m a monster,” he said.
She couldn’t deny it.
So she feigned hospitality.
“I have a towel here somewhere,” she said as she lifted Jack Bauer, who’d followed them, still snarling, into the room. She deposited him inside the closet, grabbing a towel from there as well. Jack Bauer looked around confusedly at all of Meena’s shoes, then yipped, just once, as she closed the door. He’d be all right, she knew, in there. Safer than she was.
More important, no one would hear him, especially over the sound of the storm outside and the movie she could still hear blaring away in the living room.
“You did something to me.” Lucien accused her in a choked voice as she handed him the towel, then helped him shed his wet coat.
“What? I did something to you? I’m not the one who did anything,” Meena whispered incredulously, sinking to face him on the bed. “All I did was make the really big mistake of falling in love with you. Which, believe me, I am putting up there with my deepest, darkest regrets, like that perm I got in the eighth grade because I didn’t listen to Leisha, and going to the senior prom with Peter Delmonico. Okay? So just let’s chalk this whole thing up to one really bad decision and end it now. When it stops raining, you have to go. Trust me, I’m doing you a really big favor. Because one scream, and that guard in my living room will be in here like a shot to stake you.”
She saw that red-eyed gaze flick past her and toward her bedroom door.
She shook her head and, reaching up to grab twin handfuls of his white shirtfront, pulled him down beside her onto the bed.
“You know I can’t go,” Lucien said, still looking toward the bedroom door.
“Yes, you can,” Meena said, shaking her head. She continued to cling to his shirtfront. “Why can’t you?”
His gaze turned back toward her, the red dying down a little, thankfully. “You know why, Meena.”
What was he talking about? He couldn’t possibly mean…there wasn’t any way he could-
“I can’t go because I’m in love with you, Meena,” he said in his deep voice. He reached up to curl his hands around hers. “I told you. You have slain the dragon.”
He was in love with her? Lucien Antonescu was in love with her?
Just a few hours earlier, this news would have made her the happiest girl in the world.
But now…
Now she knew he wasn’t just Lucien Antonescu, professor of Eastern European history.
He was the prince of darkness.
He went on in the same deep, ragged voice, still holding her hands. “But you’re hiding something from me, Meena. And it’s not just a Palatine guard in your living room. I’ve known since the moment I met you. Something that you hide from everyone-”
“I’m hiding something?” She knew exactly what he was talking about, of course. But she lied automatically. Because she always did.
�
��Yes, you,” he said. Now his hands moved to grip her shoulders. “I know. I should never have thought I could deceive you, of all people. But you know I was as honest with you as I could be without…terrifying you. But you…you weren’t honest with me, either. There’s something about you. Ever since we…were together-I…I…”
“You what?” Meena asked. Her heart was thumping. She knew she was taking an enormous risk letting him into her room-let alone into her heart. At any moment, Alaric might come bursting in, bringing Jon running after him. After that, if the worst happened, it would all be her fault…
By letting him into her room, she was essentially doing what he’d just confessed to doing, all those years with his father and brother…committing murder.
What was she doing?
“Ever since I left you this morning,” Lucien said, “I’ve had the oddest sensation that I know how almost every human I’ve come into contact with is…is going to die. And not, whatever you might think of me, by my own hands.”
Meena stared up at him. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I’m sure the man in your living room told you some very colorful things about me.” Lucien went on. “A good many of them might even be true. I’ve been what I am for a very long time.” He was obviously choosing his words with care. “But I’ve never, ever experienced anything like this. Not until…well, being with you. Would you care to tell me what, exactly, is going on? I think it has something to do with this secret of yours. The thing that you’re hiding. What makes it impossible for me to read your mind fully. And what makes you identify so strongly with Joan of Arc, who heard voices. Because that’s what I feel like I’m doing. Hearing voices.”
In the next room, she heard a stereophonic car crash. The Fast and the Furious was pounding its way to a metal-crunching crescendo.
“It’s me,” she said. She heaved a tearful sigh.
His grip on her tightened.
Not very gently, either.
“What are you talking about?” he rasped.
“You drank my blood,” she reminded him.
“Not a lot, so it’ll probably go away after your next feeding. This should teach you to be more careful. You are what you eat, you know.”
Chapter Forty-three
2:00 A.M. EST, Saturday, April 17
910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B
New York, New York
Lucien stared down at her. Her face was a pale, resolute moon beneath his.
How must his own look to her? he wondered. A mask of shock.
“You can tell,” he murmured, trying to make sure he understood her correctly, “how everyone is going to die?”
“Well, not everyone,” Meena said. “Obviously not you. Since you’re already dead.”
He had hold of both her arms, and he didn’t let go or loosen his grip on her. He just kept staring down at her.
“That’s why you have to go,” Meena said in her husky voice. “I know you’re going to kill the guard. The one from the Vatican. And also Jon.”
On the word Jon, her voice broke.
Lucien felt as if the roll of thunder that sounded just then had come from somewhere deep within him. He shook his head, trying to shake the truth of her words from his mind, like the tiny rain droplets that were still clinging to the ends of his hair.
“No,” he said. “Meena, I wouldn’t. I haven’t killed a human in centuries, and you have to know, I would never kill your brother or anyone you loved.”
Despite the darkness in her bedroom, he saw the tears at the corners of her eyes, shining like diamonds. “Except that you’re going to,” she said simply.
“Meena,” he said. His heart, which for so many years he’d suspected had died within him, along with his soul, was finally coming back to life. “What you see…your visions…they don’t always come true. Do they?” He thought of the boy whose keys he’d taken away earlier in the evening.
“No.” Meena lifted a wrist and scrubbed at her streaming eyes. “Not if I warn people. And they do something about it. But you’re a vampire, Lucien. You’re not just any vampire. Apparently, you’re the ruler of all vampires, the prince of darkness. I’m really supposed to just…trust that you’re not going to do anything to this guy? Or to my brother? Not even in self-defense? Because they both really want to kill you. Alaric Wulf’s got a really big sword, and-”
Lucien released his hold on her shoulders then. But only to pull her close and rest his cheek against her hair.
“Shhh…,” he said. “Then what you saw is just one possible future.”
“Unless something changes,” Meena said, pushing him away.
“And what needs to change is your being here. And you should probably tell Mary Lou and Emil to go, as well. Because the Palatine is onto them, too. And I’m really not trying to be prejudiced against…well, what you are. Because God knows I have my own problems with people thinking I’m this awful person just because I have this sort of…obsession with death. But they do call you the prince of darkness. And that tends to suggest that you’re evil and so not very trustwor-”
“I’m not evil,” he ground out. Then he reconsidered. “Well, not anymore.”
“I believe the words anointer of all that is unholy were used in reference to you,” Meena said. “Maybe I’m wrong, but to me, that doesn’t suggest anything good.”
“The Palatine are hardly unbiased where I’m concerned,” Lucien said wryly. “But I’ve worked hard since rising to my position to bring about a new, enlightened age to my people, to protect both their interests and those of humanity.”
“I saw a photo,” Meena said, “of a Palatine guard with half his face eaten off. Alaric”-she nodded her head toward the bedroom wall-
“said it was from a vampire attack.”
Lucien nodded, his shoulders drooping. Alaric. Alaric Wulf.
“Yes. I know of this man. And,” he added, unable to keep his shock that all of this was happening from showing, “his partner. That was the Dracul who attacked them.”
“Was it the…Dracul”-she said the word like it was distasteful to her-“who attacked us outside St. George’s the other night?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Not us, though. Me. They were after me. You were never in any danger.”
Meena let out a small, mirthless laugh. “Well, you weren’t in any danger while I was there,” Lucien said, amending his statement.
“And is it the Dracul who are murdering those girls?” Meena asked.
He looked down at her. How could such a forceful personality be wrapped into such an impossibly small body? “Yes,” he admitted. “I’m fairly certain so.”
“So…the new enlightened age isn’t really working out, is it?” Meena asked.
He had never felt such despair. Why was all of this happening now, when he had finally come so close to grasping a little happiness?
The bargain his father had sealed had achieved immortality for himself and his family.
But what was the point of eternal life if one was destined to spend it alone?
“It’s complicated,” he said. “Blood-lust is strong, especially in the newly turned, so they long to feed…but I won’t allow them to kill. They know there will be repercussions if they disobey. But there are so many more of them now than there used to be. I can’t manage them all. I’ve tried delegating, but…I think my brother is the one behind the rise against me. He’s done it before. He always wanted the throne.”
Meena reached for the towel he’d abandoned, lifting it to wipe his hair and the back of his neck. “Like dialogue writers,” she murmured, gently kissing the places where she’d pressed the towel just seconds before, “always wanting to be head writer.”
He glanced at her in surprise. The touch of her warm mouth against his skin had sent an electric shock through him. He didn’t know how to react. He wasn’t sure if the kiss had meant anything…
Or everything.
�
�I’m sorry?” he asked, stunned.
Her eyes were wide. She looked as surprised by what she’d just done as he was.
“The fact remains, you’re still going to kill my brother,” she said.
“I’m not,” he insisted, taking her hand and pulling her toward him, then dropping his face into the warm curve where her neck met her collarbone. He was careful not to kiss her there, though. He’d seen the copy of Dracula on the floor in one corner of her room, as if flung there with some violence. “Meena, I told you, I love you. I would never-”
“I know you wouldn’t want to,” she whispered into his crisply damp hair. Her voice was unsteady with unshed tears. “But I also know my brother doesn’t know you like I do. And he’s going to try to kill you. He wants to join them.”
“Join who?” Lucien’s mind felt woolly. Was this the result of her nearness or the remnants of her blood still fizzing through his veins?
“The Palatine,” she said.
Lucien barely heard her. Somehow his shirt had come open, and she was kissing his shoulders as if she couldn’t stop herself, her lips soft as flower petals. All he could think about was the smoothness of her skin-like a newly poured Montrachet-and the fact that he could hear her pulse racing in her veins, in his veins, an echo of the heartbeat he once used to have.
So he said only, “I don’t think we need to worry about that happening. Any more than we need to worry about my killing Jon.”
While he spoke, he lifted her snowy white nightgown over her head, not entirely certain whether she was even aware of what he was doing.
Now she knelt beside him, fully unclothed, her dark-eyed gaze searching his face. Even shadowy as the room was, he could see one tip-tilted breast trembling with every throb of her heart.
The wave of desire that slammed into him was stronger than anything he could ever remember feeling in his lifetime. Which had been half a millennium long.
“Meena,” he said. His voice was an open wound, his need was so great. He stretched out a callused hand to capture that quivering breast.
Then, his final reserves of control broken by the feel of her satiny skin under his fingers, he found himself dragging her toward him, marveling at the quick hot litheness of her body, and lowering his mouth over hers, overwhelmed with an urge to consume her…devour her…engulf her.
