“No,” he said in a slow, somewhat thoughtful way. “I do not think so.”

What was wrong with him? Why did he look that way?

Well, he was probably disappointed. He’d missed his big chance to kill Lucien, and now he’d probably never get another one. Thanks to her boyfriend’s affection for her, they were stuck there until someone dug them out. It was Alaric’s own fault for rushing over to see if she was all right. If he’d just stayed out in the apse…

“Meena,” he said, looking down at her. His eyes were still as bright blue as ever. But now, she thought, they looked…

“Am I still going to die?” he asked.

“What?” He was so heavy. Why did he have to be so big? And why was he acting so strangely?

“Am I still going to die?” he asked. “Now. Tonight.”

“Oh, Alaric,” she said with a sigh.

And then her heart gave a heave. He was still going to die.

Except…that wasn’t possible.

Lucien had thrown her in there to keep her safe. Alaric should have been safe, too. Everything should have been fine now.

But for some reason, Alaric was still going to die.

How could this be happening? It made no sense.

He must have read the truth in her horrified expression, since he said, “That’s what I thought. That’s why I’m going to do this now.”

Then he lowered his head and began kissing her.

While this development was alarming-it startled her almost more than anything else that had happened to her in the past few days, and that was saying quite a lot-it wasn’t nearly as alarming as the fact that Meena found that being kissed by Alaric Wulf was not unpleasurable.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

It had been a while since she’d been kissed by a man who actually had a heartbeat and blood pounding in his veins…two things Alaric Wulf had in abundance. She could feel both pulsing hard against her as he kissed her with slow deliberation…a kiss he seemed to be in no hurry to end, a kiss he seemed, if she wasn’t mistaken, to have given some thought to beforehand…a lot of thought to. Alaric Wulf was kissing her like this was the last kiss he was ever going to give anyone in his life.

And when she opened her eyes and looked down, wondering just what was coursing through his body and making her feel so warm, and saw the massive gouge in his right calf, from which blood was gushing at an alarming rate, she could see why he felt like kissing her might be the last thing he’d ever do before he died. A nail or something must have sliced him there while the choir loft was collapsing, and he’d gallantly rolled over on top of her. In order to save her life. Yet again.

Talk about having a hero complex.

Why was he always trying to do that? Didn’t he know it was only going to get him killed?

Meena swore, unceremoniously pushed him off her and onto the floor, then scrambled to stop the bleeding with her hands.

“Alaric,” she said, trying to stay calm. There was so much blood. “You’ve been cut. You’re bleeding.”

“I know,” he said. He didn’t sound like he particularly cared. He kept staring up at her face. He seemed perfectly happy.

He’d already lost a lot of blood. It was pooling on the floor beneath them. It covered her. And him.

“We have to stop the bleeding,” Meena said. “I think you nicked an artery or something.” She tried to think back to all the first-aid courses she’d taken in school. Why couldn’t she remember any of them now, when she needed them? “I think I need to make a tourniquet.”

“You told me I was going to die,” he said with a shrug. “You said it would be dark and that there would be fire. And now it’s happening. You were right.”

“No,” she said. Her heart seemed to be racing a mile a minute. Please, it seemed to thump out. Let me be wrong. Just this once. Back away from the precipice. “I was wrong. I need your belt or something.”

“No one takes Señor Sticky from me,” Alaric said, grasping his sword hilt.

“Oh, my God,” Meena said. “I don’t want your stupid sword. I-”

Then she remembered.

“My scarf,” she said. “The one I gave you. Are you still wearing it?”

He lifted his wrist and pulled back his sleeve. She was relieved to see that the red scarf she’d given him at the rectory was still there. “You mean this?” he asked. “But you gave it to me.”

“Well, I need it back,” she said. “Take it off. Give it to me.”

His big fingers, so skilled at so many things, proved clumsy with this, fumbled with the tiny knot she’d made. “I’m very surprised at you, Meena Harper,” he said, sounding childishly disappointed. “I thought you gave it to me as a present. It isn’t very polite of you to take something back after you’ve given it to someone, you know.”

Beyond the thick pile of rubble around them, Meena heard a roar-Lucien. Then the building shook. Meena closed her eyes. What was Lucien doing?

Please, she prayed. No more death. There’d already been so much death that night. Too much. She couldn’t take any more.

Alaric heard it, too. He shook his head as he continued to fumble at the knot.

“This is why,” he said, “you need to come work for the Palatine.”

“What?” Her hands were wrist-deep in his blood as she pressed on his wound. “What are you talking about?”

“You,” he said. “Don’t you see, Meena? If you came to work for the Palatine Guard, you could keep things like this from happening. The demons…they wouldn’t stand a chance if you were on our side instead of theirs.”

“I’m not on the demons’ side,” Meena snapped. She knew it wasn’t his fault. He was obviously delusional from all the blood loss. It was why he’d kissed her. He’d never have done that if he’d been in his right mind. He hated her. “I just don’t see why everyone wants to kill Lucien. He-”

“Like that day when Martin and I went into that warehouse outside of Berlin,” Alaric said, ignoring her, “we had no idea we were walking into a trap. But if you were working for the Palatine, you might have said, ‘Hey, Alaric. Hey, Martin. There’s danger there. Be careful.’ And we would have been more careful. And maybe now, Martin would still be able to chew.”

He held the scarf out to her, having managed to untie it.

Meena stared at him for a second.

Was he serious? Or was this part of the delusion, brought on by the massive blood loss?

Come work for the Palatine Guard? Her?

No. That was her brother’s dream, not hers. She didn’t want to be a demon hunter. She was in love with a demon.

Wouldn’t that be a slight conflict of interest?

“I wish you would come work with us, Meena,” Alaric said, his gaze fixed on hers. “I don’t want to die. A heads-up from you about when to expect it would be very nice. I know everyone else would appreciate it, too.”

She took the scarf from him. His eyes, even in the semi-darkness, were very blue. “I’ll…think about it,” she said.

Then she bent to concentrate on making a tourniquet with the scarf and a piece of wood she’d found in the rubble. Fortunately, she’d written the dialogue for the episode of Insatiable where Victoria Worthington Stone had been forced to put a tourniquet on the leg of her half brother when that plane they’d been on had gone down in the jungle of South America. Victoria had radioed a local medical clinic for instructions, and Meena had been scrupulous about getting the details exactly right, just in case any of their viewers ever happened to be in the same situation…

She had never in a million years imagined she might be one of them.

But the tourniquet worked. The blood stopped gushing from his leg.

Either that, or the blood flow had stopped because Alaric was dead.

But when she looked down at his face, she saw that he was still gazing up at her, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“So?” he asked.

“The bad news is, you’re a terrible kisser,” she informed him with mock gravity. Better to use humor to make him think the situation wasn’t as grave as it was than let him know the truth. “The good news is, you have time to work on your technique. You’re going to live.”