should I expect to have a normal life, considering what I am?”
Lucien looked at her, his expression remorseful.
“Meena,” he said, apparently regretting his harsh words. “I didn’t mean—”
“No.” She cut him off with a shrug. “It’s true. Except for one thing.” There were no tears in her eyes as she lifted her gaze to look back at him. “You’re not a god, Lucien.”
“No.” His mouth twisted painfully. “I know I’m not. If I were, I’d—”
But he didn’t have a chance to finish, because it was at this point that David, his head pushed back into something like its normal position, sat up and looked at them. “Who are you?” he demanded of Lucien.
The sky, which had been cloudless, grew dark. The moon disappeared behind a bank of storm clouds. The music playing in the nearby window had long since gone dead. A cool wind stirred, whipping up dead leaves and abandoned plastic bags, and ruffling Meena’s hair and the hem of her skirt.
“You should know me.” Lucien’s voice was so deep and commanding, it seemed to reverberate through her chest. It also held an undercurrent of ice that caused goose bumps to rise on the back of her arms. “I am the unholy one, ruler of all demon life on the mortal side of hell, evil in human form. I am, in fact, the dark prince, son of Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula.”
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.
