Meena looked over at Alaric. “Then I don’t get exactly what you people do all day. I thought you hunted down demons and killed them. You never mentioned anything about a trial.”
“Oh, there’s always a trial,” Alaric assured her, pausing with the milk bottle halfway to his lips. “I find demons very trying. That’s why I always kill them whenever I find them.”
Meena glanced at Abraham Holtzman, who explained quickly, “In the heat of battle, if a demon tries to kill one of our hunters, of course it’s permissible for them to defend themselves.”
“Well, did either of you find out what’s going on?” she asked Alaric and Jon impatiently. She didn’t want a lecture from the Palatine Guard Human Resources Handbook. And she could tell from Alaric’s pained expression that he wasn’t enjoying it much, either.
“He didn’t say anything,” Jon said. “And we poured that holy water on his-”
“I said don’t want to know,” Meena said, giving him her outstretched palm. Stop.
Jon didn’t pay any attention, however. “They have these super healing powers, you know? It’s really amazing, Meen. As soon as you do anything to them, they heal right back up, as long as you don’t stake them in the heart or cut off their heads. They barely even feel it. Except for maybe a few seconds. So you don’t need to worry about it. Stefan Dominic’s face will be fine in time for filming. Right, Alaric?”
Alaric shrugged his heavy shoulders, clearly not wanting to be a part of this conversation, and turned his attention back to his milk bottle and a Pious League calendar on the rectory kitchen wall.
Jon continued. “Although you might want to warn Fran and Stan that they’ve hired a real vampire.” He seemed to have recovered enough from whatever had gone on downstairs to give a sarcastic laugh. “Taylor might have a problem getting all up-close-and-personal with a walking corpse. But what do I know? I’m just an unemployed systems analyst-”
“What,” Meena interrupted, “did you mean when you said you forgot about my dog, Alaric?”
Alaric took his time turning away from the wall calendar and opening the refrigerator to put the half-drunk milk bottle back where he’d found it. She noticed that he was careful not to glance in Meena’s direction.
“Tell her, Holtzman,” he said after he’d straightened.
Meena felt something cold trickle down her back. She didn’t like Alaric Wulf’s tone. She couldn’t describe it, but she didn’t like it.
“Now, Alaric,” Abraham said. “Let’s not jump to rash conclusions.”
Alaric’s voice lashed like a whip. “When the facts are staring us in the face?”
“It’s too soon,” Abraham said, “to be sure of anything without proper-”
“Why,” Alaric demanded, “would vampires attack Meena Harper?”
Only then did his gaze shift toward her-and when it did, she was struck, once again, by how piercing and bright blue his pupils were…the color of the sky. The color of the ocean.
The color of a blue flame.
The cold trickle of fear Meena had felt down her spine turned to a gush.
“She should be the safest woman in all of this city,” Alaric said. “She’s the chosen one. The lover of the prince of darkness. No one should dare to lay a finger on her, to touch her, for fear of his wrath. What happened today should never have happened in a million years. And yet…it did happen. I’ve gone over and over it in my head. Why? And I think there is only one answer.”
Abraham Holtzman made a sound. It was a whimper of protest.
Both Meena and Jon whipped their heads around to look at him.
He’d lowered the Palatine Guard Human Resources Handbook to stare at Alaric.
“No, Wulf,” Abraham said. “It isn’t possible.”
“Isn’t it?” Alaric asked. “What other explanation is there, then?”
“The obvious one,” Abraham said. “If it wasn’t the prince himself, then a few of the Dracul have gone rogue. It happens, you know, from time to time. Like when you and Martin were attacked in that warehouse-”
“Then why is he so afraid to tell us?” Alaric demanded sharply.
Meena jumped at the curtness of his tone.
Whatever it was they were talking about, Alaric believed in what he was saying.
And he believed in it passionately enough that he wanted to disabuse his boss of any other notion he might be harboring.
“If he isn’t answering to a higher authority, why was he so afraid to open his mouth and give us the name of whoever told him to put that gun in Meena’s back?” Alaric thundered, his voice so loud, Meena almost imagined the pots hanging above the stove had tinkled slightly. “Tell me that, Holtzman. I used everything I had on that boy down there, and I got nothing. Nothing! It’s happening, Holtzman. You might as well admit it.”
Meena glanced quickly at Abraham to see how he took this news. He looked ashen faced.
The chill of fear along her spine went glacial.
“Oh, dear,” the older man said. “I suppose…I suppose in that case, I’d better call the office.”
“What are you both talking about?” Meena demanded. The glacier creeping up her spine had turned into a polar ice cap. “And what does any of this have to do with my going back to my apartment to walk my dog?”
Alaric blinked at her as if only just realizing she was still standing there.
“You?” he said. “You’re never going back to that apartment again.”
Chapter Forty-nine
8:00 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17
Shrine of St. Clare
154 Sullivan Street
New York, New York
What?” Meena cried. The single word ricocheted around the highly polished kitchen like a bullet.
“Hey.” Jon held up a hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I mean, I think we should be able to decide for ourselves if we want to risk-”
“You want to decide for yourselves? Fine.”
Alaric opened his jacket pocket and pulled out the photo of his partner, the one who was missing half his face, holding it out for all of them to see.
“Remember this?” he asked brutally. “This is what’s going to happen to you if you go back to that apartment. Because they’re going to be there waiting for you. And this is probably the least they’re going to do to you.”
“What?” Meena cried again, though more softly this time. “But…why?”
“War,” Abraham Holtzman explained. “Alaric thinks we’ve stumbled into the middle of a vampire war. And I’m sorry to say that, given the evidence, I have to agree with him.”
“A…vampire war?” Meena looked from one man to the other. She remembered Lucien’s strange reaction to those very words when she’d said them herself on the countess’s balcony a few nights earlier.
“That’s right,” Alaric said. He, unlike his boss, didn’t attempt to soften his tone. There was no sugarcoating anything where Alaric Wulf was concerned. He added matter-of-factly, “And you, Meena Harper, are the flag everybody wants to capture. That’s why you can never go back to your apartment.”
Meena, her knees suddenly turning to water, fumbled her way toward a nearby chair.
“But…,” she said. “War? With who? Between who?” Then she added, “And what about Jack? My dog is in that apartment. What’s going to happen to my dog?”
She knew it made no sense to be worrying about her dog. He was, after all, only a dog.
But he was all she had.
She thought she saw Alaric Wulf fling another glance at the kitchen window. Then he frowned.
What was going on with the windows? Why was everyone so obsessed with windows?
“Wait,” Jon was saying. “Vampire war? Excuse me? What is all this about, exactly? And what does it have to do with my sister?”
Abraham Holtzman explained patiently. “Alaric’s talking about a battle for the throne of the prince of darkness. When Dracula originally made his pact with the dark forces in order to attain life eternal in exchange for his immortal soul, he was anointed as the unholy one, the heir to the Dark Lord, the overseer of all of Satan’s dealings on earth, or the mortal plane. When we dispatched Dracula, that mantle passed to his eldest son, Prince Lucien, your sister’s lover.”