Overbite by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online Page A

devil’s work on earth—may have a choice in whether or not he commits good or evil?”
    “I’m saying,” Holtzman said, “I like to keep myself open to all possibilities.” When Alaric openly balked at this, Holtzman lifted a hand and said, “I understand that certain prejudices exist about Antonescu, and rightly so. Sometimes old memories die hard, and the fact that so many of us, including yourself, are still recovering from injuries sustained fighting him and the Dracul last spring certainly hasn’t exactly fostered a spirit of goodwill toward Meena’s theory. I, however, am willing to give it a chance . . . if she can prove it, which is a big if. Now, if I may get to the reason I asked you to step in here this evening, which, as I said, has nothing to do with Meena Harper . . . I know you aren’t going to like this, but there’s no getting around it. I’m sure you’re aware of the Church’s efforts to . . .”
    Alaric instantly switched off his attention and turned to stare out of one of Holtzman’s office—formerly a principal’s office—windows facing Mulberry Street. The moment he heard the words church and efforts to, he knew that whatever was being discussed was going to bore him. It might possibly have something to do with his being in trouble for killing something in too public or violent a manner.
    But that, too, was boring.
    He reflected, instead, on Meena Harper, and her theory.
    “Saint Thomas said it,” she insisted almost daily in the commissary. “Not me. He believed there is no positive source of evil, or even evil beings, but rather an absence of good in some beings.”
    “Which,” Alaric had pointed out, “is why we are employed, and will continue to be so for many years to come.”
    This always provoked a great deal of laughter from his fellow guards.
    But then Meena would come in with some quote from Saint Thomas like, “ ‘Fire could not exist without the corruption of what it consumes; the lion must slay the ass in order to live. And if there were no wrongdoing, there would be no sphere for patience and justice.’ True,” she’d go on, “without evil we’d be out of a job. But maybe our job is to provide better fireproofing and protection for the asses, rather than kill all the lions.”
    None of this made Alaric feel any better about this book Meena had requested from the Vatican Secret Archives, which she swore—if it was the book from her dream, and what were the chances of that?—was going to prove her theory correct. The still-healing scars that he and many of his fellow guards bore from their battle last spring with Lucien Antonescu and his clan was all the proof Alaric needed of just how wrong she was . . .
    . . . as was the feeling he and so many of them had in their guts since the fire that had ripped through and destroyed St. George’s Cathedral, 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