Overbite (23 page)

Chapter Thirty-nine

I
’m not sure that’s the best idea.

Abraham’s words echoed through Meena’s head. Even before she’d heard them, she’d known.

She couldn’t trust Lucien. A part of her would always love him, but she knew she could never trust him . . . not with something that mattered to her as much as Alaric’s life. Especially not now, with all Lucien’s talk about the Mannette. There was something about that place that had made her feel the
opposite
of the way her dream about Lucien and his mother did.

And so she raced up the steps after him, despite everyone’s cries to stop.

It didn’t matter, though. First because, in her haste, she’d forgotten her purse, complete with stakes, holy water, and SuperStaker inside. She’d left it on the bench with Abraham.

And second because, before Lucien even had a chance to set foot inside the building, Alaric and Father Henrique appeared in the doorway, in as bizarre a manner as Meena had ever seen.

Alaric was shirtless as well as shoeless, with a crossbow strapped to his back. Another crossbow was in his arms. Father Henrique, in flowing priest’s robes that had once been white, was grappling with him, trying to take this crossbow away. Like Abraham, they were both covered in soot and grime. Neither seemed to notice that they were standing in a doorway, being observed.

Meena froze, gasping. Not just because there were four arrows sticking out of Father Henrique’s chest, but because the priest was snarling, and the fangs protruding from his jaw were clearly visible, even from a distance.

Meena was not the only one who was completely shocked to see that Father Henrique was a vampire whom not even wooden stakes to the heart would kill. She heard the deli owner’s son drop his box of water bottles and umbrellas . . . and he did not even know the priest.

The sound of the box hitting the ground startled Alaric, who seemed to have reached the end of his endurance. He turned his head and looked shocked to see them all standing there . . . particularly Meena. For an agonizing second, their gazes locked.

And she read all the pain, heartache, and loneliness that he’d been going through for the past twenty-four hours, right there in those ice-blue eyes . . . but also the hope and joy he was experiencing, seeing her there now.

That was her mistake.

Because Alaric, bone-tired, allowed himself to be distracted by her gaze, and loosened his hold on the crossbow for a fraction of a second.

And Father Henrique snatched the weapon from his hands, spun around, seized Meena by the arm, then pointed the crossbow . . .

At Meena’s head.

Stunned silence fell across the courtyard. Except for the hiss of the rain, not a single sound could be heard. Even the sirens in the distance had fallen still. All traffic in any nearby streets was blocked, and so the city was, for once, completely without noise.

Which might be why Lucien’s voice, when he spoke, sounded as loud as a crack of thunder.

“Release her now,” he said to Father Henrique, “or die.”

Alaric, who’d fallen back against the door frame—he seemed no longer able to support his own weight—shook his head. He looked defeated, spent, and more bitter than Meena had ever seen him. Her heart twisted for him.

“He can’t be killed,” Alaric said to Lucien. “Believe me, I’ve already tried.”

“Well,” Sister Gertrude said, and whipped her twin set of Berettas from beneath her habit, “I haven’t met a bloodsucker yet who hasn’t turned to dust after meeting my pretty silver betties.”

The vampires standing around her began to back away, snarling.

“Don’t,” Alaric warned Sister Gertrude. “You might hit Meena.”

The nun looked offended. “I happened to have qualified as the most distinguished expert out of all the seniors at last year’s finals.”

“Bullets can’t kill me,” Father Henrique informed them all loudly. “Neither can stakes, immersion in holy water, sunlight, crosses, or fire. My lord”—this was directed to Lucien—“I know what this might look like, but I promise you I have no intention whatsoever of harming this girl . . . so long as you’ll hear me out. Everything that I have done, I have done in service to you.”

“I’m finding that a bit hard to believe,” Lucien said, exchanging glances with Emil. “But release her, and we can discuss it.”

“Gladly, sire,” Father Henrique said. He made no move to loosen his hold on Meena, however. “I’m fully aware of how this must appear, but if you’re thinking about that net and the holy water, I can assure you that
wasn’t
me, my lord. That was the archbishops. They felt the Palatine wasn’t doing enough to flush you out, and decided it was time to take matters into their own hands . . .”

Even from where she was standing, Meena could hear Abraham, wounded to the quick by this slight against his division, inhale sharply.

“When I learned of their scheme,” Father Henrique went on, “of course I argued strenuously against it. The old men wouldn’t listen. So I offered instead to step in and supervise, knowing I could help your lordship by making sure their methods were ineffective—”

“So you infected my ex-boyfriend and sent him after me to kill me?” Meena demanded incredulously. “That was one of the methods you made sure was
ineffective
?”

“That was another of the archbishops’ suggestions,” Father Henrique said defensively. “And though I had no choice but to follow through with it, I made certain his lordship
wasn’t
captured. I am sorry that you were injured, Miss Harper. And that the wife of the gentleman in question was turned, and slipped from our grasp. That was all an unfortunate mistake—”

“Mistake?”
Abraham seemed unable to keep silent a second longer. “Do you expect us to believe that the archbishops
mistakenly
permitted a vampire to be sent after Meena? Were the bodies we found in the Barrens put there by mistake
as well
?”

Father Henrique only smiled. “That’s a matter you’ll have to take up with your superiors,” he said. “All I did was make sure their orders got followed, while at the same time doing nothing that might endanger my own superior . . .” He made a slight bow to Lucien.

“What bodies?” Meena murmured.

Alaric answered tiredly, “Of all the dead tourists. He took them out to the Pine Barrens. There’s a hellmouth there. That’s where Abraham and the others were . . . that’s why you couldn’t sense them. Hellmouths are dead zones. Nothing can exist there but evil.”

Meena remembered Abraham describing hellmouths to her in the car the day before—what seemed like a thousand years ago.

“I don’t ask for any sort of reward, my lord,” Father Henrique was saying to Lucien. “I did nothing out of the ordinary . . . merely took advantage of the opportunity as it presented itself. If I’ve done well, it was only because of your inspiration. The best way to avoid defeat by the enemy is to infiltrate its ranks and then rise up through them, slowly replacing their troops with your own.”

Meena, shivering, looked out across the courtyard at all the Palatine Guards she didn’t recognize. They were staring up at Father Henrique with unblinking loyalty.

Lucien had been right all along: her own employer had been behind the attacks against her.

The demons she could forgive . . . sort of. They couldn’t help it. But the humans who’d allowed this to happen, blindly promoting Father Henrique while he’d been a vampire all along? How could it have happened? How could it be that no one—except Alaric, who’d always hated him—had noticed?

Finally, Lucien spoke. His voice wasn’t thunderous anymore.

“You’ve done well,” he said to Father Henrique. “Just give me the girl, and I’ll leave you to your . . . activities.”

“What?”
Meena could not believe what she’d just heard.

And she wasn’t the only one. The ripple of indignation that went across the courtyard—from the humans, anyway—was unmistakable.

“Thank you, my lord,” Father Henrique said, bowing again. He beamed with pleasure. “I knew you would approve, once you learned the truth.”

“This,” Carolina burst out, from where she stood next to Abraham, “is
bullshit
!”

Some of the vampires near her took a step closer, but Carolina had discovered the vials of holy water in Meena’s purse and was holding them threateningly over her head. Sister Gertrude was brandishing her Berettas, while Abraham had found the SuperStaker and soon discovered what happened when the trigger was pressed. They were managing to keep a wide circle around them . . . but how long it would last after they ran out of ammunition was anyone’s guess.

“Lucien,” Meena said, anxiously scanning his face through the rain for some sign that he was bluffing. Lucien couldn’t possibly intend to allow this . . .
thing
to get away with what he had done.

But as he leaned across the steps, holding his hand toward her, she didn’t see the slightest indication on his face that Lucien hadn’t meant a word he’d said to Father Henrique.

“Come, Meena,” he said, with an impatient wave of his hand.

“But,” she said as the rain fell between them, “he’ll kill them. He’ll kill them all.”

Lucien’s voice was hard. “Meena,” he said, “they were willing to let you die. Are you going to give your life trying to save people like that? I don’t think so. Let’s go.”

Meena glanced at Alaric. He had slid down the door frame, unable to remain standing anymore. He sat with his back against the doorway, clearly doing everything he could just to stay conscious. Still, he managed to summon the strength to lift his head and say, “Meena. Just go.”

“You heard the man,” Father Henrique said to her. His dark brown eyes gazed into hers with an expression that she couldn’t read. It reminded her of the look she’d seen him wear during his TV interview with Genevieve Fox.

It took her a moment before she realized what the expression meant.

It was triumph. He had won.

“He wants you to go,” Father Henrique said, smiling.

“No,” Meena said, shaking her head.
“No.”

“Meena.” Lucien’s voice cracked like a whip. “Come to me.
Now
.”

She felt frozen where she stood. What did Father Henrique think he had won? And what had happened to Lucien that had turned him into the
opposite
of the man with whom she’d fallen in love? A man drawn to darkness instead of light, a man who lived beneath the streets in tunnels carved out by the waters of a forgotten stream?

And suddenly she remembered what had been bothering her about the Mannette . . . a snippet of information she’d read during her long-ago research:

When Dutch colonists settled in Manhattan during the 1620s, they learned from local Native Americans about a small brook the Lenape called Mannette. Translated, this meant “Devil’s Water.”

There were places, Abraham had told her, to which creatures of a malevolent nature were drawn, because they were thought to have direct links to the devil.

Meena turned toward Lucien, tears streaming down her face along with the rain.

“Is that what you were doing down by the Minetta Stream all this time, Lucien?” she asked, her voice catching. “Drawing the energy you needed from
your master
to do
this
to me . . . and my friends?”

As soon as she saw the furious look on his face, she knew that she was right. Her desperate hope that there was some other explanation for his behavior—anything other than what she suspected—was just that: desperate.

In a flash, he was up the steps, seizing her arm with fingers that sank deeply into her skin. He didn’t care anymore that a crossbow was trained on her skull. Why should he care that he was causing her pain?

“Meena,” he said, in a voice that was as brutal as his grip on her, “we’re going.
It’s over
.”

She knew precisely what he meant by those words
.
Not only was the conversation over, but so were her struggles to bring him back to her side . . . the side of humanity. The demon inside of him had won, and finally taken over. Lucien had
allowed
it to take over, had fed and nurtured it beside the waters of the Mannette. There was nothing she could do now to get through to him, because concepts like good and evil—and life and death—meant nothing to him anymore. It was all the same, as long as he had what he wanted.

More frightened than she had ever felt in her life, she looked down at Alaric, so beaten and exhausted that he seemed to have given up . . .

. . . except that in that moment, as Lucien pulled her away from Father Henrique, Alaric lifted his head. As their gazes met, an image burst into her mind with such startling clarity, it was as if Alaric had physically shoved it there.

“What about the book?” Meena heard herself blurting.

Father Henrique’s hands, which had lowered the crossbow, suddenly swung it back up. Lucien’s fingers tightened on Meena’s arm.

“What book?” the priest asked, with unmistakable nervousness.

“The book,” Meena said. “Lucien’s book, the one his mother left him.” She looked up at Lucien. “Didn’t you want it back?”

Lucien’s expression changed. Before, he’d looked furiously angry, and seemingly intent on a single purpose: getting Meena back.

Now his focus shifted slightly.

Overhead, thunder rumbled. Some of the non-Palatine humans who’d been standing in the courtyard turned around and tried to leave, but the Lamir swiftly blocked their paths.

“Of course.” Father Henrique smiled weakly at Lucien. “I’m so sorry about that, my lord. That was another of the schemes they came up with to capture you. But I—”

“Didn’t you tell me that we needed to keep the book from falling into Lucien’s possession at all costs?” Meena asked innocently. “Because it would make him all-powerful?”

Father Henrique’s eyes widened. “I did,” he said. “But I said those things only to be convincing in the role I was playing as one of—”

“Where is the book?” Lucien snapped. The tension in his voice wasn’t the only signal that he was getting impatient. The lightning and sudden increase in wind velocity said their piece, as well.