Читать книгу Overbite - Meg Cabot, Мэг Кэбот - Страница 7

I’m fine,” she said automatically.

She unlocked and opened the door, then climbed—a little shakily, but with all the dignity she could muster—from the car. Lucien held the door open for her, because he was the kind of man who always remembered to hold the door open for women.

He was also the kind of man who had, before Meena’s eyes, once destroyed a church and nearly killed her, along with a number of her friends. So, there was that to be considered.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” he asked her again.

Truthfully, she felt as if she were going to pass out, but she lied and repeated, “I’m fine.” It wasn’t quite a lie. Now that she was out of the car, the night air—delightfully fresh smelling after the inside of David’s Volvo, despite the garbage piled in the cans along the street nearby—had revived her a little.

“Is he …?” She looked over at David, who was still sprawled across his own car’s hood with his head tilted in a most unnatural position. She looked quickly away. “Is he …?”

Lucien was frowning. “Technically, he was dead before I arrived. But no, he’s merely recovering from a broken neck at the moment. Here. You’re bleeding.”

He handed her a handkerchief. Meena, startled, looked down at herself. There were drops of blood splashed across the front of her dress.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Where …?”

Lucien gestured in the general vicinity of his throat.

“He bit me?” Too late, she remembered how David had pressed his lips to her neck, and how relieved she’d been that she hadn’t had to taste his rank-smelling breath anymore. “But I didn’t feel anything—”

She broke off. She hadn’t felt anything the other times she’d been bitten in the past either.

By the man standing beside her.

“No. You aren’t meant to feel it.” It was apparent Lucien was remembering those times, as well. But he looked discreetly away from her and toward David. “Who is he? A friend of yours?”

He said the word friend with distaste, though he was tactfully trying not to show it.

“He’s just someone I used to go out with,” she said. She pressed the handkerchief to her throat, staring at Lucien, thinking the exact same thing could be said about him.

He, however, appeared to be in considerably better shape than David was at the moment. Intimidatingly tall and broad-shouldered, his dark hair thick and lustrous, Lucien appeared as handsome and put together in his dark Brioni suit and crisp white shirt as always. It was as if no time at all had passed since she’d last seen him.

But it had actually been six months.

Six months during which the people with whom she worked—Alaric Wulf in particular—had combed every inch of the city as well as its outer boroughs, looking for him, without success.

And yet here he was, standing right in front of her as if he’d never left.

“I’ve been having bad dreams about him,” Meena went on slowly. She still felt a little bit dazed. “I wanted to let him know he was in danger …”

“Of course you did,” Lucien said. The corners of his mouth curled up a little, as if he found something amusing. “I assume he’s the one who chose the location for your rendezvous?”

“No. I did. But …” She stood there, her wrists still throbbing from where David had gripped them with such fierce violence. “How could this have happened?”

“Apparently he’s been keeping different company since you knew him,” Lucien said. He’d stopped smiling. “Very few people can resist immortality when offered, you know. Vampirism is an extremely tempting and exciting lifestyle choice.”

Meena looked at the ground. She was one of the “very few people” who’d resisted the lifestyle “choice” of vampirism when offered. It was why she and Lucien were no longer together.

Well, one of the reasons.

“I just can’t believe he’d be one of those people,” she said. “He had a wife. And a baby.”

“Well, he hasn’t got anything now,” Lucien said. “Except a ravenous appetite for blood. Oh, and alcohol, apparently. He smells like a distillery.”

“I took his keys away,” Meena said, holding them up. “I thought I’d be protecting him from drinking and driving. I didn’t think it was safe for him to be out on the roads in his condition.”

“It isn’t safe for him to be out on the roads in his condition,” Lucien agreed. “But not because of his driving.”

Meena felt depressed, and not just because of David. This wasn’t how she’d pictured running into Lucien again.

And she had pictured running into him again, more times than she’d like to admit.

But she knew this was wrong, and not just because he was the most wanted man in the entire demon-fighting world—black-and-white photos of him papered nearly every wall of Palatine headquarters. She had to pass them every day in the hallways at work—but because of the other dreams she’d been having. The ones that she’d been having ever since she and Lucien had parted—long before the ones she’d started having lately about David.

These were the dreams that had driven her to make an unorthodox request from a highly restricted area—to the public, anyway—belonging to her employer.

Meena wasn’t even a hundred percent certain what she wanted was there. But if it was, it could hold the key to everything.

The answer, so far, had been a resounding No Response.

“How could I have not noticed right away that he was already dead?” she asked bleakly, staring at David’s body. If this was how things were going to go from now on, she might as well just quit. It was possible she’d be better off working back in scriptwriting.

Then again, no one she knew in that field could find jobs anymore, thanks to the success of reality shows, like the one about the housewives of New York City.

“I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” Lucien said, smiling again. “He’s very freshly turned, no more than a day or two at the most. And not handling it well, judging by the alcohol intake. And of course, had he gone home, he’d have killed the baby and its mother. So you did save two lives tonight.”

“You saved two lives tonight,” she said, glancing at him. This was definitely something she was going to tell Alaric Wulf, who often swore that Lucien Antonescu was evil incarnate. But why would someone evil be interested in saving lives? And, of course, she couldn’t tell Alaric, because he’d just hunt Lucien down and decapitate him. “Three, if you include mine.”

“I don’t think so,” Lucien said coolly. “He didn’t want to kill you.” He waved a hand, indicating her throat. “Would you mind? I’m finding that a bit … distracting.”

“Oh.” Flushing, she pressed his handkerchief against the wound in her neck. “Sorry.”

This, she thought grimly, didn’t exactly help bolster her theory that Lucien wasn’t like other vampires. He obviously wasn’t immune to the sight of blood.

Not even her blood.

“Might I ask,” Lucien was saying as he abruptly crossed the street toward some old furniture piled by the garbage cans near a front stoop, “why you agreed to meet with him in his vehicle? I would have thought you’d know by now to be more cautious than that.”

Meena tied the handkerchief around her neck. She watched as he tipped over an abandoned armchair and gave a vicious kick to one of its legs.

“Especially”—he took the jagged piece of chair and handed it to her, then approached David, who was starting to come around, despite his hideously contorted neck—“considering your new place of employment. Or haven’t they trained you better?”

She stuck out her chin indignantly.

“Certainly,” she said. “They have. But this was different. I know him.”

“Knew him,” Lucien corrected her.

“I meant that we’re old friends,” Meena said. “We used to live together. Even so, I was careful. It wasn’t like I told him where I live, or anything.”

He looked wry. “No. You do a good job of keeping that information private.”

She glanced at him sharply. What did he mean by that? Had he been looking for her, the same way the Palatine had been looking for him?

Well, he’d obviously found her. Probably some time ago, too. She wondered why he’d waited until someone was attacking her before attempting to speak to her.

“I guess it just never occurred to me,” she said dejectedly as David began to rub his neck and moan, “that someone I once loved might actually want to kill me.”

Although Lucien had once tried to do precisely the same thing … for slightly different reasons.

“But he didn’t want to kill you, did he?” Lucien asked. “I thought you understood that. What was it you once told me about the daughter of the Trojan king?”

Meena’s eyes suddenly filled with tears … not at the reproach, but at the fact that he remembered. It had been a conversation during a happier time. She was fairly certain now that she’d never know such happiness again. Not unless she was able somehow to prove to everyone—including Lucien himself—that he was not the monster he seemed.

“That she was given the gift of prophecy,” she said, keeping her gaze on the ground in the hope that Lucien wouldn’t notice her brimming eyelids. “And because she did not return a god’s love, that gift was turned by that god into a curse, so that her prophecies, though true, would never be believed.”

“Well,” Lucien said, “your prophecies are believed. By them.” His tone was bitter as he thrust his chin in David’s direction. “As you know, any demon who drinks your blood temporarily possesses your gift of prophecy. That’s an irresistible temptation to most of them. And they’re apparently not above resorting to turning your friends and family members into one of themselves in order to lure you out into the open to get it. I once offered you protection from this, but you turned it down.”

Meena lifted a wrist to swipe at her moist eyes.

“You’re right,” she said, looking at David as he twisted on the hood of the car, trying to get his head back into a normal position. “I did turn down your offer of protection, because it came with a price that was too high for me. And I should never have agreed to meet him. I should never have come out of my apartment, except to go to work. Why 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.