Meena sank to the gravel-strewn rooftop, the ground having suddenly pitched out from under her.

“Meena, what is it?” Jon asked, hurrying to kneel by her side. “What’s going on?”

Wordlessly-she couldn’t have spoken if she’d wanted to; her tongue had turned to lead in her mouth-she laid the cell phone down between them and turned on the speakerphone so that he, too, could listen to their friends being killed.

“No, she’s not,” Leisha was saying loudly. “I don’t know anyone named Meena Harper.”

“I think you do,” the stranger said. He had an oddly mellifluous voice, soothing, almost…hypnotic. Was that what he was doing to get Adam to admit all these things? Hypnotizing him? “I think you know Meena Harper very well.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “Of course we do.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jon exclaimed, looking down at Meena with a stunned expression on his face. “Who is that guy? How is he doing that? Adam hates everyone. He thinks everyone in the whole world is a potential serial killer. Adam!” he shouted into the phone. “Adam! Don’t listen to him!”

Meena just shook her head. Tears were streaming down her face. She murmured, “It’s no use. He can’t hear you. It’s already done.”

“What do you mean?” Jon said. He looked angry. “Did you…did you know about this?”

“I told you,” she said, reaching up to wipe away some of her tears. “The baby…”

Jon’s face blanched. “This is what you saw happening?”

“No, of course not.” Meena covered her face with her hands. “How was I supposed to know it was going to have to do with vampires?”

“Maybe because you started sleeping with one?” Jon shouted down into the phone. “Adam! Adam!”

But Adam wasn’t listening.

“Hey…aren’t you that guy?” they could hear him saying in an unnaturally-for Adam-enthusiastic voice. “That guy from that soap opera? Gregory Bane. That’s it! Look, Leish. It’s Gregory Bane.”

A wave of nausea rolled over Meena. Gregory Bane.

Of course. Of course Gregory Bane was a Dracul.

“Yes,” the mellifluous voice said. “I’m Gregory Bane. Thanks for watching.”

“What are you doing?” they heard Leisha cry. “Don’t touch me. Get your hands off me. Get away from me!”

“Hey,” Adam said. He sounded dazed. “That’s my wife…”

“Adam!” Jon shouted into the phone. “Adam! Go for his eyes! His eyes, Adam!” He whipped his head around to look at Meena. “What’s wrong with him?”

“They can control people’s minds,” Meena said, dropping her hands away from her face and her head down onto her knees. Her tears made damp spots on the denim of her jeans. “It’s not Adam’s fault.”

Jon was searching his pockets.

“I’m calling Alaric,” he said. “I have his number. If he’s still there getting Jack, maybe he can stop this-”

“It’s too late,” Meena whispered. She’d begun to rock herself, clutching her knees to her chest. “It’s too late.”

There was a scuffling sound from the cell phone, shoes on pavement. Then a sound that pierced Meena’s heart:

Leisha screamed.

Then a clatter, as if the phone had fallen to the ground.

Then…nothing. Meena lifted the cell phone and pressed it to her ear, straining to hear a sound, any sound.

But she heard only the faint, familiar churn of traffic on Park Avenue.

“Hey,” Jon said. He was still going through his pockets. “Where’s your cell phone?”

Meena reached into her own pocket, keeping his phone glued to her ear, and passed her phone to her brother.

“I should have known,” Jon said tensely, pressing numbers into her keypad from a slip of paper he’d fished from the pocket of his jeans. “Who’ve you been calling, huh? Him?”

“Shut up, Jon,” Meena said, still pressing his phone to her ear.

“That’s just great,” Jon said sarcastically. “That’s exactly what we need right now, your boyfriend to show up and-”

Meena held up a hand to silence him. Something was happening on the other end of Adam’s phone: a scraping noise like…

The phone was being picked up.

Then beeps, like someone was pressing numbers on the keypad.

“Ow,” Meena cried, jerking the phone away from her face. “Hello? Hello? Who’s there?”

Then Adam’s voice, still sounding dazed, came on. “Meena?” He seemed confused. “Is that you? I was just trying to call you.”

Jon lowered the phone he was holding.

“Adam,” Meena shouted. “Oh my God, Adam, are you all right?”

“Dude,” Jon yelled into the phone. “Where’s your wife? Where’s Leisha?”

“They…they took her,” Adam said. His voice seemed small. And it wasn’t, Meena knew, because he was on a mobile phone.

He wasn’t crying. Not yet.

But he would be. And soon. “I tried to stop them,” he said.

“I tried, but they…they…bit me. I’m bleeding.” Adam seemed dumbfounded by this fact. “There’s blood everywhere.”

Meena and Jon exchanged panicked glances.

Call Alaric, Meena mouthed to her brother. Now. “Adam,” Meena said into Jon’s phone, “where are you? Are you still outside our building?”

“Yeah,” Adam said vaguely, like he was surprised to discover this.

“Well, get inside,” Meena said. She tried to sound authoritative, which wasn’t easy, since she was shaking so badly. But she wanted Adam to do as she said. “Go see the doorman, Pradip. He has a first-aid kit at the desk. He’ll call 911 and help you until the EMTs arrive. Go see Pradip, Adam.”

“But I have to find my wife,” Adam said. “They took her.”

“I know they took her,” Meena said, reaching up to pull at her hair in frustration. “Do you know where they took her, Adam?”

“They told me to tell you,” Adam said slowly, speaking like a man under a spell or in profound shock. “They gave me a message for you…”

Meena glanced at her brother, who was speaking rapidly into her phone. She was relieved to see that he’d evidently managed to reach Alaric.

“What?” she asked Adam desperately. “What’s the message they gave you for me, Adam?”

“They said told me to tell you that if you ever want to see Leisha again, you have to come to the church,” Adam said.

“Church?” Meena shook her head, not understanding. “But I’m already at the church!”

“St. George’s,” Adam said. “They said to go to St. George’s. That’s where the coronation is going to be.”

“Coronation?” Meena stared down at the cell phone. Now she was completely confused. “Coronation of who?”

“The new prince of darkness.”

Chapter Fifty-three

9:45 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B

New York, New York

Alaric stared at the disaster area that had once been Meena Harper’s apartment.

The Dracul had been thorough, if not downright imaginative, in their destruction of it. There wasn’t a piece of furniture in 11B that hadn’t been smashed, slashed, or otherwise torn apart or ruined. The sofa cushions had been slit open with knives, the stuffing strewn about the place with colorful abandon. The exposed wooden sofa frame had been chopped to bits. Same with Meena’s easy chair and the rest of the upholstered furniture.

The coffee table lay smashed into pieces, as did all the lamps and every bit of dishware in the kitchen. The legs from the dining room table had been stuffed through the television screen. All of Meena’s books from the built-ins in the living room lay piled into the bathtub, where they’d been left to soak with the shower still running.

That had taken some true inspiration on the part of the Dracul. He couldn’t help wondering which one of them had thought that one up. Destroying the beloved books of a writer?

It could only have been Dimitri. The gesture bore all the signs of his old-school, Hun-style viciousness.

Meena’s bed had seen a particularly savage assault, having been attacked with what looked to have been a chain saw. On the wall above it, someone had spray-painted the word whore in black. The dragon symbol of the Dracul had likewise been spray-painted on walls throughout the apartment, wherever other various euphemisms for the word prostitute hadn’t been used instead, usually spelled incorrectly.