the site of that battle.
It was a belief every guard—but especially one who had put in as many years as Alaric had on the force—shared, honed from sheer experience:
True evil did indeed exist, and it was out there, waiting.
Like the quiet just before a storm, they could feel it. It had the hairs on the back of all their necks standing up. Maybe they couldn’t see the clouds rolling in, and maybe they couldn’t hear the thunder …
But that didn’t mean there wasn’t something on its way.
Maybe that something wasn’t Lucien Antonescu. Meena swore up and down that he hadn’t been in contact with her in months.
And there was no reason not to believe her. While they’d had plenty of reports of other paranormal phenomena—succubi, werewolves, and more ghosts than he could count—there’d been no reports from anywhere in the tristate area of attacks by members of Antonescu’s clan, the Dracul. In fact, there’d been no reports of any attacks at all that could be attributed to vampires.
This was frustrating, because the entire reason the Manhattan unit had been created was to root out and destroy the prince of darkness. If they killed him, it was theorized, the demonic beings over which he ruled would be weakened. Demoralized and disorganized without their leader, they’d be that much easier to slay.
Alaric wasn’t certain how much credence he put into this theory. But he did know Antonescu had to be close by. Because what kind of man—even a half man, half beast like that bloodsucking son of all that was evil, Antonescu—would simply fade into the night with a girl like Meena around? Every time Alaric glanced at her, he felt an almost magnetic pull in her direction.
And he hadn’t risked half a millennium of anonymity to be with her, the way Antonescu had.
It didn’t make sense to believe that the vampire would give up now, even if she’d rejected him. He was only biding his time, Alaric knew. Biding it a little too well, unfortunately.
Because everything between Alaric and Meena had gone wrong as well. Not as spectacularly wrong as it had between her and the vampire because, well, for one thing, he wasn’t a vampire. And for another, he and Meena had never actually gone out.
But he’d at least considered them friends. Now he wasn’t sure they were even that anymore.
It seemed to have started not long after he’d been released from the hospital for the wound he’d sustained protecting her from what undoubtedly would have been certain death at St. George’s Cathedral, when he’d asked Meena if she’d like to have dinner with him.
When she’d looked up at him with those big dark eyes and asked, “Where would you like to eat?” he’d replied, “Well, my apartment, of course. I’ll cook for you.” His culinary skills were excellent.
And why should they go to a stuck-up Manhattan restaurant where some customer was bound to do something to annoy him—such as talk too loudly on a cell phone, Alaric’s number one pet peeve—causing him to have to get into a fight, when he could make something just as good in his own apartment, where no one would annoy him?
She’d instantly looked wary. He had no idea why.
“Do you really think that’s such a good idea?” she’d asked.
“Why would that be a problem?” he’d inquired, genuinely confused.
“Maybe we should just keep it professional,” she’d said, giving him what he supposed she considered a “professional” pat on the shoulder.
That had been weeks and weeks ago, and she was still treating him like he had the plague and leprosy combined. He couldn’t understand it. What had he done that was so wrong? He’d asked Carolina de Silva, a fellow guard with whom Meena had become friendly, and she’d only smiled and told him he should have gone for the restaurant after all.
This information only made him more confused.
Now she wouldn’t shut up about her damned dream.
Why did he get “Maybe we should just keep it professional” when that soulless creature of the night got to be in her dreams?
“Wulf!” Holtzman barked the name. It echoed throughout the high-ceilinged room. The new headquarters for the Manhattan unit of the Palatine Guard had, just six months earlier, been a Catholic elementary school.
A cataclysmic decline in enrollment—no one who could afford to live in such a trendy neighborhood of Manhattan had children … or if they did, they were certainly not choosing to send them to Catholic school—and the building’s general state of disrepair had caused the Church to shut down St. Bernadette’s, with zero protest from the community, at exactly the same time as the Palatine had put in their request for a similar-size space in New York City.
Abraham Holtzman had been pleased … until he’d stepped inside and seen its dismal state, and the tiny desks still littering its hallways. It had taken weeks to clear them all out. The fountain in the courtyard—of Saint Bernadette kneeling before the Virgin Mary at Lourdes—still didn’t work. Apparently, it had been dry for almost a hundred years.
“What?” Alaric blurted, startled from his private thoughts.
“I was saying,” Holtzman snapped, “since I’m aware of your previous, er, dealings with Father Henrique Mauricio from the archdiocese of São Sebastio do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, that I thought I ought to mention to you privately, before you heard it from anyone else, that the Vatican has been very impressed with him, and the way he handled himself during the outbreaks of the Lamir in the favelas, and he’s being transferred to America …”
Alaric sank backward into the seat closest to Holtzman’s desk. Unfortunately, it turned out to be some kind of secretarial chair dating from World War II. It squeaked in what sounded like terror and protest as Alaric’s muscular weight hit it. Apparently it was used to the significantly softer backsides of nuns.
“Tell me you’re joking.” Alaric tried to keep his tone neutral and failed.
“Honestly, Alaric, I’ve never understood what your problem is with the man. He’s had, after all, close to a hundred kills. And considering his age—he’s just a bit younger than you, barely thirty-three or -four, I believe—and profession—he’s a priest, after all, not a Vatican-trained demon hunter—that’s thoroughly impressive.”
Alaric stared at his boss. “Is it?” he asked impassively.
“Yes,” Holtzman cried. “It is! You know the Lamir are the most mysterious vampire clan in the entire world. We know very little about them because they’re relatively new, and they come from the heart of the Amazon. Really, Alaric, I know he may not be your favorite person in the world—I’ll never understand what happened between the two of you during that exorcism in Vidigal a few years back—but can’t you give Father Henrique a second chance?”
“No,” Alaric said, leaning precariously back in the office chair. As he did so, he casually lifted some files that were lying on top of a still-unpacked box near his boss’s desk. The files were marked Missing Persons. “I don’t think I can, actually.”
“Well,” Holtzman said drily, “you’d better try. There’s a gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow night for the opening of the new exhibit of Vatican treasures, and all the high-ups from the archdiocese are expected to attend, which means we’ll be pulling security. Since he’s been appointed the new pastor at St. George’s Cathedral, Father Henrique will be a guest of honor, so I don’t want you—”
Alaric was so startled he would have fallen out of the chair if he hadn’t dropped his feet with a crash to the wood floor in order to regain his balance. The stack of files toppled over.
“What?” he cried. “Padre Caliente? Here?”
“I’ve asked you before,”