Now he climbed to his feet, his calm demeanor gone. “Fine,” he said. His large hands were fisted. There was a muscle twitching in his jaw. It was obvious he’d known exactly what she’d been talking about all along. “So what? Admit that it would make things simpler, Meena.”

“Simpler?” She laughed out loud, though without humor. “If I were dead?”

“If you were one of us,” he said, putting it in a way that he obviously found more palatable. “Then you and I could truly be together. All this talk of going to Thailand-”

“Yeah, FYI,” Meena interrupted sarcastically, “I knew that was never going to happen, because you’d go up like a roman candle on the beach.”

“-doesn’t mean anything if you’re just going to grow old before my eyes while I-”

“Oh, that’s very nice,” Meena said, interrupting again. “So you’re just going to dump me for someone younger when I get old, like every other guy? Are you suggesting I try some Revenant Wrinkle Cream or that I check into one of Dimitri’s spas-”

He reached out then and cupped her face in both his hands, looking deeply into her eyes.

“I will love you, Meena,” he said fiercely, “until the end of time. I will never stop loving you. My life, before I met you, was nothing. Can you understand that? My life was nothing, meant nothing, even if I may not have known it. And then you came along, and suddenly, everything I knew, or thought I knew, was turned upside down. I will never be the same again. How could I be? You have shown me what it is to love, to feel and laugh and, yes, even to feel alive again. So whether you choose to be one with me or not, I will go on loving you, Meena, even after you are a rotting corpse in the ground. But, Meena, I would like to do whatever I can to prevent you from turning into a corpse. I think I mentioned that before.”

She stared up at him, shaken.

“Yes, but, Lucien,” she said, reaching up to grasp his wrists and gazing into his dark eyes, in which she thought she saw flickers of flame, “tricking me into turning into a vampire so that I won’t grow old and die before your eyes? What if I don’t want to be a vampire? Which I don’t, by the way. I have a dog that hates vampires, remember? I have friends and family here in New York City who I’d like to be able to visit…during the day. Also, I’ve seen death. I really, really don’t like going there. Even to visit. Even for a short while. And, Lucien.” She took his hands from her face and flipped them over so that she could hold them, instead, in hers. “I have a special thing that I can do. I think you experienced it, at least on a small scale, when you drank my blood. I can tell when people are going to die…lately, I can tell when they’re just in danger. And that means I can warn them, give them a fighting chance against death…or at least put it off. If you killed me and turned me into a vampire…I don’t know if I’d have that ability anymore. I’m pretty sure my blood drying up in my veins would end that. And-”

She drew a shuddering breath.

“That, I just don’t think I could live without,” she said. “Because those unspeakable horrors you mentioned before, the likes of which you don’t think I can imagine and that I’m pretty sure you rule over?”

He stared down at her, uncomprehending. “Yes? What about them?”

“I think they’re what I’m supposed to be helping protect people from,” she said. She hoped the tears that had begun to stream down her face again didn’t make him think she was regretting what she was saying.

Because she wasn’t. Not at all.

“I don’t know for certain,” she went on. “But I do know that whenever I don’t help people…well, bad things happen. So…that’s what I’m going to go do.”

He shook his head. Now she was sure that there were flickers of flame in those dark eyes, twin embers, burning bright. Outside the apartment building, the rain, which had been falling gently before, suddenly began to pour. Thunder rumbled off in the not-so-far distance.

“Meena,” he said. The embers were glowing a deep, steady red, exactly the way the dragon’s eyes had. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” she said, unable to hold back a sob, “that I’m going to go work for the Palatine.”

He stared down at her for a second or two.

Then he threw back his head and laughed.

When he looked at her again, the embers had turned to flames, flaring high.

“Oh, Meena,” he said. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not joking,” she said. She reached up and wiped her tears with her uninjured wrist. “The Palatine offered me a job. And I’ve decided that I’m taking it.”

His eyes were entirely red now. The brown was gone. The dragon was taking over.

“It’s not like I would ever do anything to help them go after you, Lucien.” She rushed to explain. “You know that. I’ll always try to do everything I can to help you. Because I love you, too. I always will. But I just can’t be with you. Not if it means my friends are going to get hurt. And this job…it means I can finally do what I think I’ve always been meant to do.”

“You don’t need a job,” he said with sudden savagery. He reached out and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her hard against him. Outside, lightning flared as thunder caused the building to shudder. The storm was directly overhead. “I told you that I’d take care of you.”

Meena lifted her chin to look him in the eye. Those fierce dragon eyes.

“But not without killing me,” she said quietly.

He looked down at her as the rain and wind outside lashed the balcony, his volatile gaze smoldering in its intensity. She thought it might consume her in its wrath and wipe her off the face of the planet entirely, the way his dragon fire had wiped out the Dracul that night.

And no one would know. No one would ever know what had become of Meena Harper.

He could do it. There was nothing to stop him.

Except her courage.

“You know,” she said, swallowing hard, “when you told me the story of St. George and the dragon that night we were in the museum, Lucien, there was one thing you left out.”

“What is that?”

He was keeping himself under control with an effort. She could feel his arms shaking almost as badly as her knees were as he tried valiantly not to drop his lips to her neck and do what he so badly wanted to.

“You never told me that you were the dragon,” she whispered. Thunder-or maybe it was his voice-rocked the walls of the apartment, so hard that Meena would have clapped her hands over her ears if she hadn’t already thrown them defensively over her face, certain the next thing she was going to see were his fangs coming at her throat.

“I’m the prince of darkness.” His voice was like a sonic boom in her ears. “What did you think that meant, Meena? Did you think that meant that…I…was…a…saint?”

And, just as she thought that it was going to be all over for her…

…he let her go.

She lowered her arms and stood there, shaking, just staring at him.

She had never seen such sadness in anyone’s eyes.

“No, Meena,” he said in his normal voice. “You’re the saint.”

What did this mean? Why had he let go of her?

“Go,” he said curtly, nodding toward the bedroom door.

She jumped.

“If you’re going to go,” he said, his voice rising, “go now. Before I change my mind. I think you know what will happen then.”

She turned and ran from the apartment, not stopping to lock the door behind her. She ignored the elevator, not willing to wait for it, and ran down all eleven flights of stairs, unable to believe he wasn’t coming after her-in bat or dragon or even man form.

She didn’t slow down. Like he’d said, he could still change his mind.

She tore through the lobby, not stopping to say good-bye to Pradip. She ran out into the rain, which immediately soaked her, flagging down the first available taxi that she saw. She fell into the backseat, gasping out the address to St. Clare’s to the driver.