Overbite (9 page)

Chapter Eleven

W
e are
not
going in there,” Meena said firmly.

“No,” Alaric said. “
We
aren’t. You and I are going back to the city. We’re just dropping Abraham off.”

“What?”
Meena grasped the back of Abraham’s headrest as he unbuckled his seat belt. “You’re not going in there. Are you?”

“Of course I am,” Abraham said, chuckling a little. “Alaric’s temperament, as we all know, isn’t particularly suited to missions that require the subject to be taken alive. Why?” Abraham smiled at Meena. “Is that a problem?”

“Yes,” Meena said. Only she couldn’t say which was causing her heart to pound more: the idea of leaving an old man to hunt a vampire in such a sinister-looking house, or having to spend time alone in a car with Alaric Wulf. “Sort of. I just think it would make more sense, since Alaric has so much experience in the field, for him to—”

“Ms. Harper,” Abraham interrupted gently. “I’ve been doing this a great many more years than Alaric. Despite outward appearances, I do know my way around a demon infestation. But I’m touched by your concern. Now, tell the truth. Is this a roundabout way of telling me you’ve had one of your visions?”

Meena, flushing, said, “Something like that. It’s just that . . . well, I know Brianna looked very sweet in the photos. But you just said New Jersey is a hellmouth. And last night, David was like someone I’d never met—”

“Of course he was,” Abraham said to her consolingly. “He’d lost his humanity. He was a creature of darkness, without a soul, incapable of compassion or pity. You did well to put him out of his misery. When we discover what clan he was from—after we interrogate his wife—it will help explain a little about his behavior, I hope.”

Meena nibbled worriedly on a thumbnail. She knew the Palatine considered all vampires exactly that—soulless creatures.

And David
had
been like that. No doubt about it.

Of course, she’d never gotten that feeling from Lucien, who was also—allegedly—without a soul. Her old neighbors, his cousins, the Antonescus, hadn’t been that way either. They’d once saved her dog from being murdered by the same group of rampaging Dracul that had destroyed her apartment.

Alaric knew it, too.

But he didn’t say anything in their defense. Instead, he unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car. Now that he was going to have a chance behind the wheel, he looked relaxed and happy, despite the fact that the car was a hybrid and not the kind of gas-guzzling sports vehicle he preferred.

“I do appreciate your anxiety on my behalf, Meena,” Abraham went on. He had reached into the back of the car, pulled his briefcase up from the floor, and opened it to reveal a secret compartment, from which he removed a pistol, several extremely lethal-looking stakes, a vial of holy water, and a large crucifix, all of which he began tucking into various pockets of his suit.

“But while I may seem to you like an old man who has spent too much time behind a desk, I assure you I can handle myself in the face of evil,” he said. “You might recall I took out a good many of your previous ex-boyfriend’s clan that night at St. George’s. This little outing is not going to be much of a challenge in comparison.”

“I don’t know,” Meena murmured. She looked anxiously at the house. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“I do, too,” Alaric leaned in the window to say. “Abraham’s about to do battle with a housewife from New Jersey, and there’s no reality television crew here to film it.”

“It’s not funny,” Meena said. “I think we should stay here to help. What if the Delmonicos show up? I could—”

Abraham opened his car door. “Alaric is attending the opening of the Vatican Treasures show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a show I know he’s anxious not to miss.” Alaric rolled his eyes as Abraham stepped from the car. “And in light of recent events, it would make sense for you to attend with him, Meena, since I must say, I’m uneasy at the idea at your being left alone after what happened last evening . . . ”

Meena said quickly, “I think I’ve already proved I’m more than capable of taking care of myself, Dr. Holtzman.”

“Yes,” Abraham said. “You certainly did. But let’s not press our luck. And there’s been a request—” Abraham broke off as his phone chirped. He looked down at the screen, then said, “Oh. They got a late start, apparently, then ran into some traffic. But they should be here in a few minutes.”

“I think I’ll wait here,” Meena began to say. She started to open the back door of the car. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to—”

But Alaric was already behind the wheel and pulling away from the curb.

“When you’re finally ready to admit there’s a paranormal connection to all those missing tourists,” he yelled to Abraham, “call me.”

“I won’t,” Abraham said, waving. “Because there’s no proof that there is.”

“Right,” Alaric muttered sarcastically under his breath, and pressed more heavily on the gas. “We’ll see.”

“Wait,” Meena said. She’d barely managed to pull her foot back into the car and close the door before Alaric took off. “What’s the matter with you? We can’t just leave him there. He could be killed. What missing tourists?” She clambered from the backseat into the front. “Alaric, what is going on? What are you not telling me?”

“A hell of a lot less than you’re not telling me,” he snapped.

“I’ve told you everything.” Meena twisted around in the seat and watched as Abraham trudged up David Delmonico’s impeccably groomed front lawn, then disappeared around the corner of the house. The bad feeling she’d had about all of this—not just getting attacked by David, or picking up the phone and hearing Mrs. Delmonico’s voice, or getting out of the cab and seeing Alaric Wulf—was definitely getting worse, not better. “When something horrible happens to Abraham because we just abandoned him at a hellmouth, I’m telling everyone it was your fault.”

“My fault.” He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “I like that.”

“It certainly wasn’t
my
fault,” she said. “I tried to warn you—”

“Oh yes,” Alaric said. “Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about how open and communicative you’ve been about all of this, shall we?”

“Well, I have been,” Meena said, although she did feel a flash of guilt. Though only a slight one. She couldn’t tell Alaric the whole truth, for obvious reasons. But Lucien’s part in the story didn’t matter. She’d been up front about all the important things. “What tourists were you talking about?”

“Oh no,” he said. “If you won’t do me the courtesy, after everything we’ve been through together, of telling me what’s really going on, why should I tell you?”

Meena stared out the windshield with a dumbfounded expression that wasn’t entirely feigned. “What are you talking about? I
did
tell you what’s really going on. Maybe Abraham was right and I should have called last night, but—”

“You were not sitting alone inside that vehicle when its door got ripped off,” Alaric said. He pulled his arm inside the car and pushed the power button to close the window. This revealed to Meena how deeply serious he was. He hated driving with the windows closed. “You couldn’t have been, because there’s no conceivable way a vampire would have gotten out of a car while his prey was still inside it.”

Meena kept her gaze straight ahead, stubbornly saying nothing.

But the feeling of dread that had been growing inside her seemed to wrap around her heart like roots from a particularly fast-growing and poisonous plant.

“Therefore, I’m thinking there was a third person at the scene,” Alaric went on. “Someone whose name you’ve conspicuously left out of your little tale, someone who, as Abraham so aptly put it, rained down some pretty serious retribution upon all those minions of his who last dared to hurt you. Someone who has gone by a number of names over the five hundred years he’s been active, but lately has been going by Lucien Antones—”

“Stop it!” Meena whirled in her seat to face him. “Just stop it. If you knew all along he was there, why didn’t you just say so? And that’s still no reason to have left Abraham. Can we
please
go back? I really do have a horrible feeling about him, and that place—”

“For God’s sake, Meena,” Alaric said. “Abraham can take care of himself. It’s
you
I’m worried about. And you know as well as I do that I am not letting you out of this car until you tell me the truth. All of it, this time. So start at the beginning. Because I have all day.”

Something in his voice—the seriousness of his expression—the fact that she knew he meant every word . . . he really
wouldn’t
let her out of the car until she told him what he wanted to know—caused her to give up. It was pointless. He would wear her down, one way or another.

“Fine,” she said. “David was trying to kill me. Lucien showed up out of nowhere . . . and I’m lucky he did, because he saved my life. But I swear last night is the first time I’ve seen him since last spring—”

Alaric’s knuckles went white on the steering wheel. “God
dammit,
Meena,” he said, refusing even to look at her.

“That’s the truth, Alaric,” she said, desperate to make him understand. “I swear. And Lucien didn’t bite me, and he didn’t turn David, and whatever is going on back in Freewell, I’m positive Lucien doesn’t know anything about it—”

“How can that be?” Alaric demanded. “He’s the
prince of darkness,
Meena. He has to know. He knows everything every demonic entity is doing. That’s his
job
. That’s why he exists.”

“It isn’t like that, Alaric,” she said. “I know that’s how it’s supposed to be, but it isn’t. He didn’t know last time, when his own brother—”

“Is that what he told you?” Alaric asked. “What else did he tell you last night? That his love for you still burns like a flame that will never be extinguished and that every moment apart is like an open stabbing flesh wound? Lines, by the way, he’s given scores of women just like you. Just because they’re all dead now and there’s no one left to remember them and he thinks your love has redeemed him doesn’t mean he can be allowed to get away with their murders.”

Meena glared at him. “Actually, that wasn’t what he said at all.” Not in so many words, anyway. “And you don’t need to give me ‘the speech,’ Alaric. I’m not one of those silly teenage girls you’re always having to perform interventions on in order to convince them to stop being passive feed bags to their user vampire boyfriends and go home to their parents. I actually work for the organization that does that, remember? I helped write the latest round of speeches.”

“Then why are you so quick to believe everything he says?” he asked. “You’re aware there’s no such thing as a vegetarian vampire, right? He has to drink human blood in order to stay alive.”

“Lucien gave up human blood a long time ago. Well, I mean, he drinks it, but not from live humans. Only from blood banks.”

“Is that what he told you?” Alaric asked again, this time with cynical laughter in his voice. “That’s a very cute story. And just where do you think he is getting that blood now, Meena? The accounting department has found and frozen all of his assets. He doesn’t have a cent to his name. Black-market human blood isn’t cheap, you know. Use your head instead of your heart.
Where is he getting the blood?
”

Meena had lain awake all night, worrying about this very problem. How was Lucien—penniless now that the Palatine, with brutal ruthlessness, had stripped him not just of his latest identity, but of his substantial fortune as well—purchasing the blood he needed to survive? How could Lucien go on without money, and still remain true to his promise never to take a human life?

She’d felt the cloth of his suit beneath her fingers the night before. It had been as soft as Jack Bauer’s underbelly.

Lucien seemed to be living well.

Then she remembered the red heat that had flamed up in his eyes after he’d kissed her, and how weak and ill he seemed.

Maybe he wasn’t living quite that well after all.

She tried to push this thought from her head.

“Someone must be helping him,” she said. It was more a hope than a real conviction. “He must have friends . . . ” She thought of her former neighbors, Mary Lou and Emil Antonescu. They had gotten away in the fight at St. George’s. The Palatine had yet to trace their current whereabouts—or financial accounts. Surely they wouldn’t have left their prince bereft . . .

“Doubtful,” Alaric said. “Demons don’t have friends. And have you met those pencil pushers in accounting? They leave no stone unturned when it comes to finding funds that might be flowing toward the undead. More likely he’s stealing. That would be typical of his kind.”

She sucked in her breath.

“Why do you hate him so much?” she asked. “You’re always calling him a soulless monster. And yet that night at St. George’s, he didn’t kill you when he had the chance. In fact, he protected you. And Father Bernard, and Sister Gertrude, and me, and even those firefighters who came to dig us out. Instead, he killed his own kind. Was that the act of a soulless monster? When are you going to admit that not every demon is one hundred percent evil, just like not every human is one hundred percent good? When, Alaric?
When?
”

He tore his gaze from the road to look at her. The bright blue of his eyes never failed to startle her. Occasionally, while they were attending boring staff meetings, their gazes met across the room. Sometimes he raised one of those blond eyebrows—particularly if it was Abraham speaking, delivering one of his sometime pedantic speeches—and she had to stifle a laugh, because he looked exactly like a mischievous schoolboy.

It was always hard to believe on those occasions that he’d ruthlessly whacked off the heads of as many of Lucien’s relatives as he actually had.

But she’d seen him do it, and knew that his boyish expression could turn deadly serious in a split second.

It did so as she stared at him in the car on their way back from Freewell.

“I think I know how your boyfriend has been keeping himself alive since the last time we saw him,” he said.