by Meg Cabot
“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.
Not that it mattered. Meena was still going to do everything in her power to keep him from being obliterated by a combination of the NYFD, the NYPD, the Palatine, and the Dracul, whatever he was, man or beast. Or vampire.
“Oh, he’ll turn back eventually, when he stops being so angry,” Emil said. “In the meantime”-he glanced over his shoulder at the police officer who was now shouting into the church on a megaphone for them to put down their weapons and come out with their hands on the back of their heads-“Mary Lou and I are leaving. I would suggest you do the same, Miss Harper.”
And with that, both of them disappeared before Meena’s eyes. One minute they were there, and the next, there was nothing at all where they’d been standing, except twin wisps of mist.
Stunned, Meena looked back at Abraham, who was reloading his crossbow. He seemed to take what had just happened in stride. He didn’t even care about having missed his opportunity to stake the Antonescus.
He was after much bigger game.
She was going to wake up soon, Meena decided. Because this all had to be a nightmare. She was going to wake up in her own room, with Jack Bauer in her arms, and it would be morning, and the sun would be shining, and everything would be okay. None of this would have happened. She would get up and go to work, and-
“Meena!” She heard Alaric calling to her from somewhere across the church. “Meena!”
Then she saw him. He was standing directly behind the dragon.
“Move!” he shouted at her, and made a get-out-of-the-way gesture with his arms, indicating that he wanted her to step away from Abraham.
And right then-in that moment-she knew exactly what he and his boss were planning to do:
Abraham would shoot at Lucien, distracting him with another stake to the neck.
Then, while Lucien was roaring over the pain of that, Alaric would run up onto the dragon’s back…
…then slice off its head.
Alaric, Meena concluded, was crazy. Especially if he thought Meena was ever going to let this happen.
“You’d better do as he says, Miss Harper,” Abraham said, lifting the crossbow to his shoulder and taking aim. “I know this is painful for you. But trust me, it’s the best way. I promise you’ll feel much better when it’s all over.”
As Abraham was speaking, the dragon, which had finished its latest meal, looked around. It had been weaving its head back and forth on its long, serpentine neck as if searching the apse for its next victim. But now it finally froze…and squared both Meena and Abraham in its sights.
Those gigantic, crystalline eyes focused directly on them, unblinkingly, like a snake’s. All the hairs on the back of Meena’s neck stood up as the dragon stared at her. She saw a stream of smoke release from its nostrils. The noxious odor of sulfur engulfed them a second later.
“Oh, dear,” Abraham said, freezing with his finger on the crossbow’s trigger. “I think-”
Meena reached up to undo one of the hooks on the messenger strap of the dragon tote. It slid down from her shoulder. Then, clasping the strap in both hands, she swung the bag as hard as she could at Abraham, the weight of her laptop inside catching him full across the back.
“What-?” he cried as he stumbled.
He didn’t go down, though. He was too heavy and had far too much experience.
His shot, however, did go wild.
What happened next wasn’t part of Meena’s plan.
Chapter Fifty-nine
12:30 A.M. EST, Sunday, April 18
St. George’s Cathedral
180 East Seventy-eighth Street
New York, New York
The tip of the dragon’s long red tail shot forward, wrapped around Meena’s waist, and lifted her bodily into the air.
Meena would have screamed if she could have. But she was being squeezed so tightly, she couldn’t breathe.
Plus, she was too terrified to scream.
Sailing over the heads of everyone left in the apse, Meena had a dizzying view of shattered pews, smoldering walls, her dragon tote and laptop sailing off into oblivion, and finally, Alaric’s stunned face…until she was flung back into the area where the dragon had apparently first recognized her scent-by the stairwell to the choir loft-and where he seemed to want her to stay put.
Because that’s where he released her, with what she supposed a dragon might consider gentle consideration but that in actuality was a landing that caused her to go spinning back against the same wall where there was only a burned spot to show any proof that Dimitri Antonescu had ever once existed on this planet.
Too stunned to move, she lay slumped there, seeing only blackness.
“Meena!” she thought she heard someone yelling from far away.
But she felt too sick from her violent ride through the air-combined with the force with which she’d hit the wall-to respond.
Then Alaric was there, trying to pry first one, then another of her eyes open, checking her pupils, asking if she was all right.
“Go away,” she said. She wanted to throw up. Her head hurt. Her arm hurt. She just wanted to go home.
She didn’t have a home anymore.
“Meena, look at me.”
She looked at
him. She could barely see him in the smoky darkness.
But his face looked tight with concern.
“I thought you had a dragon to kill,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “I guess I missed my opportunity. How many fingers am I holding up?” he asked, holding up two.
“Nine,” she said.
And then the worst happened. The tail returned. Meena sucked in her breath when she saw it, causing Alaric to turn and see it, too. It flashed dangerously red through the smoke, seemingly searching for something. Meena froze the minute she saw it, thinking, Oh, no. Not again.
It was nice that Lucien loved her so much.
But he really needed to work on his landings.
Alaric seemed to be thinking along the same lines, since he raised his sword, as if he was ready to chop Lucien’s tail off at the tip if it came too close…
Only this time, it turned out it wasn’t Meena whom Lucien was looking for. The tail found one of the supporting pillars that held up the choir loft. It wrapped around it…
…and pulled.
“Shit,” Alaric said, throwing his arms over Meena.
There wasn’t time to do anything else.
Maybe if St. George’s Cathedral hadn’t been quite as old as it was. Maybe if it hadn’t been so badly in need of renovation. Maybe if it hadn’t endured so many shocks from a thirty-ton dragon roaring and breathing fire in it for the past half hour.
Maybe then its structural integrity might have held up a little better.
In any case, taking out that single pillar caused a huge section of the choir loft to come falling down.
Not on them. Just all around them.
Enough to effectively seal them off from everything that was happening out in the nave and apse, entombing them in a sort of dragon-made cave of wood and plaster.
Which, Meena was certain, had been Lucien’s plan all along. He was tired of worrying about her getting hurt. Which was sweet, she supposed, in its way.
But she wasn’t sure how much longer she was going to be able to survive the way dragons expressed their affection.
“Oh, my God.” She coughed. There was a lot of dust.
And Alaric Wulf, on top of her, weighed a ton. As usual.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
He didn’t say anything at first. This was a little alarming.
“Alaric?”
The force of the cave-in had caused some plywood to shift, popping the wood off a previously boarded-up window, which now let in some dirty gray light from the street. In it, Meena could see that Alaric’s face, above her, was covered in ash and plaster dust. He looked…odd. She couldn’t figure out how.
“Alaric? Are you hurt?” she asked him.
“No,” he said in a slow, somewhat thoughtful way. “I do not think so.”
What was wrong with him? Why did he look that way?
Well, he was probably disappointed. He’d missed his big chance to kill Lucien, and now he’d probably never get another one. Thanks to her boyfriend’s affection for her, they were stuck there until someone dug them out. It was Alaric’s own fault for rushing over to see if she was all right. If he’d just stayed out in the apse…
“Meena,” he said, looking down at her. His eyes were still as bright blue as ever. But now, she thought, they looked…
“Am I still going to die?” he asked.
“What?” He was so heavy. Why did he have to be so big? And why was he acting so strangely?
“Am I still going to die?” he asked. “Now. Tonight.”
“Oh, Alaric,” she said with a sigh.
And then her heart gave a heave. He was still going to die.
Except…that wasn’t possible.
Lucien had thrown her in there to keep her safe. Alaric should have been safe, too. Everything should have been fine now.
But for some reason, Alaric was still going to die.
How could this be happening? It made no sense.
He must have read the truth in her horrified expression, since he said, “That’s what I thought. That’s why I’m going to do this now.”
Then he lowered his head and began kissing her.
While this development was alarming-it startled her almost more than anything else that had happened to her in the past few days, and that was saying quite a lot-it wasn’t nearly as alarming as the fact that Meena found that being kissed by Alaric Wulf was not unpleasurable.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
It had been a while since she’d been kissed by a man who actually had a heartbeat and blood pounding in his veins…two things Alaric Wulf had in abundance. She could feel both pulsing hard against her as he kissed her with slow deliberation…a kiss he seemed to be in no hurry to end, a kiss he seemed, if she wasn’t mistaken, to have given some thought to beforehand…a lot of thought to. Alaric Wulf was kissing her like this was the last kiss he was ever going to give anyone in his life.
And when she opened her eyes and looked down, wondering just what was coursing through his body and making her feel so warm, and saw the massive gouge in his right calf, from which blood was gushing at an alarming rate, she could see why he felt like kissing her might be the last thing he’d ever do before he died. A nail or something must have sliced him there while the choir loft was collapsing, and he’d gallantly rolled over on top of her. In order to save her life. Yet again.
Talk about having a hero complex.
Why was he always trying to do that? Didn’t he know it was only going to get him killed?
Meena swore, unceremoniously pushed him off her and onto the floor, then scrambled to stop the bleeding with her hands.
“Alaric,” she said, trying to stay calm. There was so much blood. “You’ve been cut. You’re bleeding.”
“I know,” he said. He didn’t sound like he particularly cared. He kept staring up at her face. He seemed perfectly happy.
He’d already lost a lot of blood. It was pooling on the floor beneath them. It covered her. And him.
“We have to stop the bleeding,” Meena said. “I think you nicked an artery or something.” She tried to think back to all the first-aid courses she’d taken in school. Why couldn’t she remember any of them now, when she needed them? “I think I need to make a tourniquet.”
“You told me I was going to die,” he said with a shrug. “You said it would be dark and that there would be fire. And now it’s happening. You were right.”
“No,” she said. Her heart seemed to be racing a mile a minute. Please, it seemed to thump out. Let me be wrong. Just this once. Back away from the precipice. “I was wrong. I need your belt or something.”
“No one takes Señor Sticky from me,” Alaric said, grasping his sword hilt.
“Oh, my God,” Meena said. “I don’t want your stupid sword. I-”
Then she remembered.
“My scarf,” she said. “The one I gave you. Are you still wearing it?”
He lifted his wrist and pulled back his sleeve. She was relieved to see that the red scarf she’d given him at the rectory was still there. “You mean this?” he asked. “But you gave it to me.”
“Well, I need it back,” she said. “Take it off. Give it to me.”
His big fingers, so skilled at so many things, proved clumsy with this, fumbled with the tiny knot she’d made. “I’m very surprised at you, Meena Harper,” he said, sounding childishly disappointed. “I thought you gave it to me as a present. It isn’t very polite of you to take something back after you’ve given it to someone, you know.”
Beyond the thick pile of rubble around them, Meena heard a roar-Lucien. Then the building shook. Meena closed her eyes. What was Lucien doing?
Please, she prayed. No more death. There’d already been so much death that night. Too much. She couldn’t take any more.
Alaric heard it, too. He shook his head as he continued to fumble at the knot.
“This is why,” he said, “you need to come work for the Palatine.”
“What?” Her hands were wrist-deep in his blood as she pressed on his wound. “What are you talking about?”
“You,” he said. “Don’t you see, Meena? If you came to work for the Palatine Guard, you could keep things like this from happening. The demons…they wouldn’t stand a chance if you were on our side instead of theirs.”
“I’m not on the demons’ side,” Meena snapped. She knew it wasn’t his fault. He was obviously delusional from all the blood loss. It was why he’d kissed her. He’d never have done that if he’d been in his right mind. He hated her. “I just don’t see why everyone wants to kill Lucien. He-”
“Like that day when Martin and I went into that warehouse outside of Berlin,” Alaric said, ignoring her, “we had no idea we were walking into a trap. But if you were working for the Palatine, you might have said, ‘Hey, Alaric. Hey, Martin. There’s danger there. Be careful.’ And we would have been more careful. And maybe now, Martin would still be able to chew.”
He held the scarf out to her, having managed to untie it.
Meena stared at him for a second.
Was he serious? Or was this part of the delusion, brought on by the massive blood loss?
Come work for the Palatine Guard? Her?
No. That was her brother’s dream, not hers. She didn’t want to be a demon hunter. She was in love with a demon.
Wouldn’t that be a slight conflict of interest?
“I wish you would come work with us, Meena,” Alaric said, his gaze fixed on hers. “I don’t want to die. A heads-up from you about when to expect it would be very nice. I know everyone else would appreciate it, too.”
She took the scarf from him. His eyes, even in the semi-darkness, were very blue. “I’ll…think about it,” she said.
Then she bent to concentrate on making a tourniquet with the scarf and a piece of wood she’d found in the rubble. Fortunately, she’d written the dialogue for the episode of Insatiable where Victoria Worthington Stone had been forced to put a tourniquet on the leg of her half brother when that plane they’d been on had gone down in the jungle of South America. Victoria had radioed a local medical clinic for instructions, and Meena had been scrupulous about getting the details exactly right, just in case any of their viewers ever happened to be in the same situation…
