The Vampire's Betrayal
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Authors: Raven Hart
Raven Hart
Contents
Letter from William, a Vampire
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I dedicate this book to everyone in Georgia Romance Writers. Thank you all for your advice, support, and friendship.
Letter from Jack, a Vampire
My name is Jack McShane, and I am a vampire in a world of hurt. First, I hear that the love of my life, a lady cop named Connie Jones, is a vampire slayer. And if that’s not enough of a kick in the fangs, next I find out that she’s talked a voodoo queen into opening the door to the underworld so she can dole out some vigilante justice to the ex-husband from hell. Or rather, the ex-husband
in
hell.
Now, you might think that a person in hell was suffering enough. But that’s not the way Connie sees it. She’s out to personally kick his ass. Sounds like overkill to me, if you’ll pardon the expression, but whatever cranks your tractor.
Problem is, once you get to the underworld, whether you belong there or not, it’s a little bit tricky to get yourself back out. Vampires like me can travel to there, but since we did a U-turn out the first time around, our cosmic get-out-of-hell-free ticket’s already been punched. If the man in charge down there catches me, he might just decide to keep me forever.
See, my sire, William, once voluntarily went to hell to save somebody he loved, and he almost didn’t make it back. Now I’ve gone and done the same thing, and it seems like I might be stuck down here. I aim to bring Connie back if it’s the last thing I do. But I don’t know whether I’ll be able to find my way home again like William did. He has a lot more experience dealing with hellish dilemmas than I do.
My friend Melaphia—that’s the voodoo queen—says that if I don’t let Connie go, my Latin lovely will slay me someday. There will be no escape for me. All I can say is: if my destiny on this earth is to be staked by a vampire slayer named Connie Jones, so be it.
For now, all I’m going to think about is getting my woman and flying out of here like a vampire bat out of hell. As far as the Slayer business is concerned, I’ll think about that tomorrow, as Scarlett O’Hara used to say.
One problem at a time.
Letter from William, a Vampire
I, William Cuyler Thorne, am already dead, a blood drinker for some five hundred years. I have suffered losses that would make most mortals beg for death. They say that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but I will not be blessed with more strength. My strength arose from an infernal source, not from the supreme being who gives both suffering and salvation to the living. I am a vampire. I’m on my own.
My comfortable world, carefully built over many human lifetimes, is falling apart like the proverbial house of straw. My loved ones are in the deepest peril. In order to save the child of my heart, Melaphia’s daughter, I was forced to slay one of my own. I had made my offspring Eleanor for myself, thinking that she would be my loving mate through all eternity. To kill her felt as if I’d had my soul ripped from me all over again.
I loved her. Contrary to popular belief, vampires can love. Passionately. I hungered for her, and her absence cuts me like cold steel. The whisper of her final breath as I drained the last of her blood will haunt me until I am returned to dust.
Now my first offspring, Jack—more a son to me than the male child of my own flesh—is in mortal danger. As I did, he has gone to save the woman he loves—a woman whose very nature is poison to him, and to me as well.
If I have to, I will descend into hell to get him back. Only the devil knows if either of us can return.
Even if we do make it back to our Savannah home, our problems will have only just begun. For powers vastly greater than those wielded by my little Savannah family are bearing down on us like hellhounds unleashed by Satan himself.
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 first-born 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.