What was happening to her? What was she turning into?

She was just as much a monster as they were.

Then again, she supposed being nearly murdered tended to bring out the monster in everyone.

“Never mind about that,” she said to Lucien. “They’ll be all right again in a few minutes.” Her brother had been right about vampiric healing powers. They were amazing. Nothing killed these things. Well, except a stake to the heart, apparently, but Meena, up on the rectory roof, hadn’t been close enough to one to test this theory. Yet.

“Meena.” Lucien’s deep voice sounded like heaven to her ears. Especially when he said her name like that, so filled with pure, masculine love…and longing. “What are you talking about? Who’ll be all right?”

“No one,” she said. She didn’t want to spoil things by having to admit that she’d just spent the past quarter of an hour dousing his kind with holy water so she could get a few minutes alone to call him. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“It’s good to hear you, too,” he said. “You can’t know what I’ve been going through, not knowing where you’ve been all this time. I’ve been torturing myself, thinking of all the things that might have happened to you and how I haven’t been there to protect you.”

“Oh,” Meena said, flattening a hand to her chest. Tears filled her eyes. “Lucien, you have to stop saying that kind of stuff. You know we can’t be together. It’s impossible.”

“You keep saying it’s impossible,” Lucien said. “But if there’s anything I’ve learned in my five centuries on earth, Meena, it’s that nothing is impossible. Especially to a man as much in love as I am with you.”

A hand appeared over the edge of the rooftop beside Meena’s foot-a vampire, trying to claw his way up the building toward her. Stifling a startled gasp, Meena pulled a squirt gun from the back pocket of her jeans, aimed, and launched a steady stream of holy water at him. He shrieked as his fingers caught fire, lost his footing, and fell fifty feet to the pavement below. Horrified, Meena turned away.

“Meena,” Lucien said. “What was that?”

“That? Oh, nothing. Look, I want you to know I did get your messages. I would have called sooner, but I had to steal my phone back from my brother. He doesn’t know I have it-”

As if right on cue, she heard her brother shouting from a second-story window below, “You want a piece of this? You want a piece of this? Well, then come and get it, you sick vampire pusswad!” This was followed by a small explosion.

“Meena,” Lucien said. There was renewed urgency in his tone. He’d definitely, she realized, heard the explosion. “Where are you?”

“Oh,” she said, “it doesn’t matter.”

A part of her just wanted to keep hearing him tell her how much he loved and missed her. Which was wrong, because she knew he was still going to kill Jon and Alaric.

“It does matter.” He insisted. “Meena, you’ve got to listen to me. I think you’re in serious danger.”

“Really?” She tried to ignore the smell of smoke still drifting up from the rectory kitchen. Father Bernard had already called the fire department and assured them (in case any of St. Clare’s neighbors happened to dial 911, he didn’t want to worry about the NYFD being attacked by vampires) that the only trouble was the “broken water pipe” that had caused them to cancel evening mass in the first place. The smoke? Oh, the smoke was just from a batch of Sister Gertrude’s cookies that had been left in the oven too long.

“It’s funny,” Meena said over the phone, “because I think you’re in very grave danger.”

“I’m serious, Meena,” Lucien said. She could hear him moving on the other end of the line. It sounded, oddly enough, like he was pouring something. “I’d prefer to have this discussion in person, but with things the way they are right now…well, I’m just going to say it: let’s go away together.”

“What? You mean like…on a trip?”

“Yes,” he said with an odd hesitancy. “Exactly. Like on a trip. Well, maybe a bit longer than the average trip. And I know what you’re going to say about my killing your brother and the guard. But I won’t be able to do that if we’re nowhere near them, will I?”

“No.” Meena had to agree. “That’s true.”

“And I know how you feel about your job. But surely you have some vacation time coming to you.”

“Well,” Meena said. She chewed her lower lip, thinking about Stefan Dominic, still tied up in the basement. The Dracul had already managed to infiltrate where she worked and, according to Alaric, where she lived, as well. Taking a vacation until things died down a little wouldn’t be such a bad idea. “A couple weeks off might not hurt, now that I think about it…”

“Well,” he said, sounding surprised. And a lot more cheerful. “That was easy. I thought you’d be more resistant to the idea, to be honest. Can you leave now, tonight, Meena? I can be uptown in a few minutes. Do you think you can get away from the Palatine Guard? And meet me out on your little balcony? You needn’t be afraid. I’ll help you get across, onto Emil’s terrace. Then we can leave from there.”

He sounded so sure of himself. That was one of the things she loved about him. He always seemed to know exactly what he was doing, and on the few occasions when he didn’t, well, that vulnerability only made her love him all the more fiercely.

“Um,” she said, “meeting you on my balcony might be a bit of a problem, actually, Lucien.”

“Why?”

She hadn’t wanted to tell him this way. But now she had no choice. “Well, because right now I’m actually on the roof of the rectory of the Shrine of St. Clare on Sullivan Street in downtown Manhattan, just off Houston,” she said into the phone. “We’re not totally sure what’s going on, but it seems like your brother got Stefan Dominic-the guy we hired to play the vampire on Insatiable, only it turns out he really is a vampire-to kidnap me-”

“Did he hurt you?” Lucien demanded in a voice as hard as stone.

“What?” Meena asked. “No. Well, I mean, he tried. He had a gun. But Alaric stopped him. Now we’re keeping him hostage here and currently experiencing just a little bit of difficulty because a few dozen Dracul really seem to want to come inside and kill us or something-”

“What?”

She winced and had to hold the phone away from her face.

That’s how loudly he’d erupted into her ear.

“Lucien,” she said when the volume of what she supposed was his swearing-it was in Romanian, so she couldn’t understand a word of it-got back to a decibel level she could bear, “I knew you were going to freak out like this, which is why I didn’t-”

“Meena,” he thundered. She had to hold the phone away from her face again. “Stay exactly where you are. I’ll be right there to get you.”

“No,” she yelled into the phone before he could hang up. “Think about it, Lucien. It’s a trap. Alaric says they’ll be waiting for you at the apartment, too.” Which was why she wasn’t going to say a word to him about Jack Bauer. She didn’t need two men risking their lives over her dog. “It’s all just a trap to lure you out so your brother can kill you-”

“Oh, Alaric says that, does he?” Lucien roared. “Well, I don’t care what Alaric says. Do you know who Stefan Dominic is, Meena? He’s my nephew. He’s Dimitri’s son.”

“Oh,” Meena said, taken aback. “So…you’re saying you think we should let him go?”

“I’m saying I’m coming down there to get you, and you and I are leaving-”

“You mean running away,” she said quietly. “Don’t you?”

Lucien’s voice was like ice. “We’re not running away, Meena,” he said. “I’m going to keep you safe. That is my first-my only-priority.”

“Well,” she said, lifting a hand and running it raggedly through her hair. Her voice caught on a sob she hadn’t been expecting.

She thought she’d been doing a pretty good job of keeping it together. At least for the past half hour or so.