The Vampire's Betrayal

Book 4: Savannah Vampire

by Raven Hart

Genres: Romantic Fantasy; Urban Fantasy; Vampires

Synopsis

Blood ties can be deadly

The most powerful blood drinker in Savannah, southern aristocrat William Cuyler Thorne has spent centuries satiating his lust and his thirst while fiercely protecting the city's human population against real evil. He's got social cachet, voodoo magic, and the enviable savvy that comes with being undead. But now even William is uneasy. 

An ancient prophecy of apocalyptic proportions is poised to resurrect a powerful Mayan goddess who will destroy all vampires. Worse, William's beloved sidekick, sexy neck nibbler Jack McShane, is madly in love with Connie, the police detective unwittingly about to morph into this doomsday vampire slayer. Worse still, William's wicked ex-lover, now twice dead and doubly nasty, is plotting payback by opening the gates of the underworld and letting the demons out to feast. For William, Jack, and the otherworldly bunch, things are getting hotter than hell.

Praise for The Vampire's Betrayal

“Absolutely stunning prose. Raven Hart is an extraordinary writer, telling a dark and delicious tale that sucks you right in.”—Sunny, New York Times bestselling author of Mona Lisa Craving

“Fans of the early Anita Blake books will love this series!”—New York TImes bestselling author Deborah Smith

Release date: April 29, 2008

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

One

William

I stood in the basement vault of my home and stared at the lifeless bodies of Jack McShane and Connie Jones. They were lying peacefully. Little altars surrounded them, bearing flickering candles and strewn with fragrant herbs.

Melaphia, the foremost voodoo mambo in this hemisphere and my adopted daughter, teetered on the brink of madness. The confusion in her eyes made me want to take her in my arms and comfort her, but first I had to find out what had happened to Jack and his lady friend. Jack still had his corporeal form, so he might not be truly lost, and Connie had the blush of life on her cheeks. Whatever was wrong, it might not be too late for them, but I knew I must act quickly.

I had just arrived home with Melaphia’s nine-year-old daughter, Renee, after rescuing her from kidnappers. When Renee was stolen Melaphia had gone catatonic. I had hoped that the child’s return would restore Melaphia’s sanity, but I could see now that I’d been foolish in thinking it would be that simple. Whatever had happened in this room only served to further traumatize her. The only thing she’d said since we’d reached the vault was Everything is fine. I have much to tell you. Clearly, whatever she had to tell me, everything was not fine.

“What has happened here?” I asked, willing the panic from my voice. “Tell me all of it. Focus, my dear. You must, for Jack’s sake.”

Melaphia licked her lips and squinted at me. “She wanted to see her son.”

I glanced at Connie, who was dressed in a flowing white gown. “Connie has a son? Where is he?”

“Dead,” Melaphia whispered.

My heart sank. “The underworld?”

“Yes.”

My mind raced ahead of Melaphia’s explanation, and I didn’t like where it was going. I knew Jack had discovered that Connie possessed some extrahuman powers and Melaphia had been helping to investigate the specifics. No matter what Connie turned out to be, I found it hard to believe she could have crossed over from the world of the living to the world of the dead by herself.

Melaphia, on the other hand . . . She was a voodoo practitioner of the highest order, and the ways of the dead and the land they inhabited was her birthright.

“Melaphia, did you help Connie cross over?” I put my hands gently on her shoulders and turned her to face me when she tried to turn away. She met my gaze again and nodded. “Why?” I demanded.

“Because I know what it is like to lose a child,” she said. “My baby was gone. I would have done anything to be at Renee’s side, even if she’d been in hell. Connie begged me, William.”

There was more she wasn’t telling me. Much more. “You have to tell me everything.”

“Uncle Jack . . .” Melaphia said, kneeling to touch his alabaster cheek. He was as still as a statue. Indeed, the pallor of his skin and his exquisite masculine bone structure made him look as if he had been rendered in marble by some master sculptor. The only thing that looked lifelike about him now was the blue-black sheen of his wavy hair.

I felt as if my emotions were being whipped this way and that by an epic storm. No sooner had I gotten Renee to safety than I’d discovered Jack, my firstborn and best-loved offspring, in this gruesome tableau à la the ending of Romeo and Juliet. It grieved me to see this powerful bear of a man so helpless.

Jack had remained more in touch with his own humanity than any other blood drinker I had ever known. He moved in and out of the human world effortlessly and maintained a bevy of human friendships. He had risked his immortal well-being for his mortal friends more than once.

Hanging on to his erstwhile humanity was a trait I had unconsciously encouraged, never objecting to his relationships beyond a casual warning to be careful. Not that I could have stopped him from doing as he damned well pleased anyway. I couldn’t help but think that my inattention to his dalliances with humans might now have contributed to his destruction.

“Help me,” I said. “Help me to help Jack. We have to get him back before he wanders too far for us to reach.”

Melaphia straightened up and appeared to be making an earnest effort to focus her attention on me. “Yes. We have to get him back. But not her. She must stay.”

Jack

Damn, it was dark. And worse, I didn’t sense Connie anywhere. While I waited for my super-duper vamp vision to adjust to the unnatural blackness, I breathed in deeply, hoping to catch the scent she always wore. She smelled like lilacs. My sense of smell, as sharp as my vision, didn’t pick up anything as sweet as flowers. Instead, it smelled like . . . hell. The stench of decay, and nastiness I couldn’t even identify, made my nose twitch.

I tried to remind myself that there were good places to be in this land of the dead as well. Heaven, if you want to put it like that. I remember William telling me about helping Shari—a poor girl who wanted to be a vampire but didn’t make it—into one of those better places. That’s where Connie was headed. She wanted to see that her little boy was fine. That his soul was at peace, you might say. How in the world would she find her way? And how was I going to find her so I could make sure she got back home?

It occurred to me that I should have thought of these questions before I’d gone off half-cocked and used voodoo to get myself into this pit. These souls in eternal torment produced noises that ranged from piteous whining to ferocious snarling. It was enough to make my hair stand on end. There’s not much that scares a vampire. I’m pretty much the scariest dude you could ever run across topside. Hey, if it’s true it ain’t bragging, as they say. But I had a feeling that here there was a whole slew of creatures that could kick my behind.

My eyes were as accustomed to this infernal darkness as they were going to get, but I could still only make out shapes. The slithering, scaly, slimy sliding sounds of ghoulies in motion made me almost glad I couldn’t see. If I was scared and grossed out, how must Connie feel? My first instinct was to call out for her, but I hesitated because I didn’t think many of the denizens of this dark place had noticed me yet, so they might not have noticed her either. If I started yelling, they might figure out that we were both down here.

But what if something else found her first? Connie is a tough lady. That’s one of the zillion or so things that makes her so awesome, but for all her experience catching bad guys, nothing in her background would help her with what she now faced.

As I stood and wondered which way to go and what to do, it struck me how great things had been just a few hours ago. Connie and I had just had sex for the first time. The earthmoving, toe-curling, eyes-rolling-back-in-your-head variety of sex as a matter of fact. And I was as close as a bloodsucker can come to cloud nine. Then I’d realized that the lovemaking was Connie’s way of saying good-bye. By the time I figured out what she’d done and where she’d gone, it was almost too late to follow.

Oh, hell. If I was going to find Connie before she got too far away from me in this darkness there was no way around making enough noise to let her know where I was—and wake the dead at the same time, no doubt. “Connie,” I called. Immediately I sensed that I had the full attention of the other citizens of the underworld. They thought I was calling them. To me.

Oh. My. God.

I suddenly remembered my little gift, as William liked to call it. I was so focused on getting to Connie I’d forgotten the effect I have on dead people. Dead people other than myself, that is. Ghosts, zombies, and everything in between. It’s like they’re attracted to me. Hell, they love me. Jack McShane, corpse whisperer.

Savannah’s full of dead people, and not just in the cemeteries. The city’s history is full of wars, piracy, great fires, epidemics, you name it. In battle, people were buried where they fell. In the fires and yellow fever epidemics, their bodies were burned and their ashes scattered to the four winds. Brigands and cutthroats robbed and killed men unlucky enough to cross their paths and the bodies were stashed in the tunnels under the city and in hidey holes along the riverbanks.

Those spirits reach out to me as I go about my business by night. They reach out for solace, for confession, for someone to talk to. This doesn’t happen to other vampires, and I don’t know why it happens to me. What can I say? I’m a popular guy.