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