The Vampire's Betrayal (31 page)

“Nothing,” I muttered. I took hold of her shoulders and gently pushed her away from me, breaking the suction lock she had on my neck. “Remember our agreement. I help you with the demon killing and you don’t eat me.”

“You’re going to get a nice, bloodred hicky,” she teased, ignoring me.

I rubbed at the spot on my neck. It was difficult getting used to the new Connie. Before, she had been a no-nonsense woman. Oh, she had a great sense of humor and could be as playful and fun-loving as anyone, but when it came to matters of life and death—which it came to all the time because she’s a cop—she was as serious as a heart attack and always in control. But the way she went about catching demons as a slayer was altogether different from the way she went about catching regular bad guys as a detective.

When she was activated as the Slayer, she’d turned wild, unpredictable, and vicious. Travis Rubio, her father and the only vampire who had faced down slayers and lived to tell the tale, said she would achieve more self-control as she matured. Right now, to her way of thinking, the only good vampire was a dead vampire. She saw those of us who refused to do harm in the same light as those who preyed on humans. I hoped that as time went on, she would develop some discrimination. I longed to be able to reason with her, to convince her to fight at our side against the evil ones. I only hoped I could keep her from killing me for that long.

And I also hoped I could keep my beloved Melaphia, the voodoo queen, from killing Connie to avenge her adoptive father’s death. What was done was done. William was the first vampire that Connie had slain, and nothing could bring him back now.

William would have been the first to approve of the strategy of trying to convince Connie to come over to our side. And he would be the first to forgive her. An evil vampire named Damien, with the help of Eleanor and Reedrek, had manipulated the time and place of Connie’s official switchover into Slayer mode, and William had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As I studied the predatory gleam in Connie’s eye and the way she licked the last drop of my blood from her ruby lips, I figured my efforts to keep her from killing me had at best a fifty-fifty chance. She made a little feint toward my neck, and I dodged away.

“You’re no fun,” she said, thrusting out her bottom lip in that pretty pout that still drove me to distraction. “And you’re not much help either. The only demons we’ve killed are the ones I could have identified myself because they have scales and stuff. I thought you were going to help me sniff out the ones who weren’t so obvious, the ones who chose to take over human bodies.”

“Oh, yeah, that,” I began as if I’d forgotten our deal. “I’ll be doing plenty of that. But we have to get rid of the obvious ones first so the humans won’t panic.” I pointed to the pile of dirt that used to be the monster. “I mean, if this guy had decided to wander into Clary’s, sit down at the lunch counter, and order up a plate of humans on the half shell, it would have made the national news, and we can’t have that, can we?”

“No, I guess not,” Connie agreed reasonably. I wondered if her fellow cops had noticed the change in her. Maybe she went back to acting normal when she wasn’t in the presence of vampires.

“And don’t forget that Saint Patrick’s Day is in two days. Tourists are already flocking here from all over the country. Humans drunk on green beer and staggering around unfamiliar streets in the dark are going to be easy pickings for the demons. On the other hand, maybe you and the other cops can write off any demon sightings as the ravings of knee-walking drunk tourists. Either way, we’ve got to work fast.”

“Is this fast enough for you?” In a move too quick for me to see, she grabbed the collar of my demin shirt and brought my face close to hers again. “Just make sure you’re ready to step up when the time is right. And be fast yourself, or I’ll send you back to the underworld so quick your head will spin faster than that monster’s did,
loverboy.
”

I winced at her sarcastic tone, but I could hardly blame her. When she found out I’d tried to kill her, she didn’t take it well. Drinking Connie’s blood was the most horrifying thing I’d ever had to do, but I loved her enough to let her go because it meant eternal paradise instead of enduring life as a monster like me. She didn’t know my motivation, though, and she never would. She only knew I had wanted her dead, and I let her think that so she would be willing to let me go. Technically, my heart stopped beating the night William made me a vampire on a Civil War battlefield, but it truly died the night Connie stopped loving me.

The police radio on her hip squawked and distracted her enough for me to slip out of her grasp. I don’t do cop-speak, but the code the dispatcher announced made Connie frown. “I’m on duty, so I’ve got to take the call,” she said. “We’ll pick this up later. Keep your cell phone on or you’ll have to deal with me.”

“Yes, ma’am.” This whole situation might be a lot easier if I wasn’t so damned turned on by authoritative women. The closer Connie came to killing me, the hotter I was for her. When she turned to walk away, the sight of her handcuffs jingling against her hip from the back of her belt gave me a thrill all the way down to my toes. Man, oh man.

It was harder to stick with
the Plan
every day that passed, and a major part of it was to keep my hands—not to mention the rest of me—off Connie Jones. Because the Plan was the only thing that might save her, the good vamps, my human family, and my unborn child. It was a good plan. Except for the fact that it depended on elements that I couldn’t control as closely as I needed to.

That thought reminded me that I needed to check on the status of Seth Walker, because even though I was the man
with
the Plan, Seth was the key to its success.

Seth was the werewolf I hoped would take Connie and my baby away to safety—and as far from me as he could get them. Every time I thought about that my chest felt like someone was twisting a stake in it. I guess you could say Seth Walker was both my best friend and my worst enemy.

Also by Raven Hart

THE VAMPIRE’S SEDUCTION

THE VAMPIRE’S SECRET

THE VAMPIRE’S KISS

Praise for Raven Hart’s Savannah Vampire series

“Raven Hart’s
The Vampire’s Seduction
and its sequel,
The Vampire’s Secret,
held me captive from the very first page! I love the world she’s created and the incredible characters who live there. I can’t wait for the next installment!”

—A
LEXIS
M
ORGAN,
author of the Paladins of Darkness series

“Suspenseful…Sexy…This foray into fangoria is atmospheric and occasionally funny.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“An excellent treat…An excellent read!”

—Fresh Fiction

“An exotic, exciting thriller.”

—Futures MYSTERY Anthology Magazine

“One can almost feel the heat rising from the pages…A stimulating read.”

—Curled Up with a Good Book

“Dark, seductive, disturbingly erotic, Raven Hart drives a stake in this masterful tale.”

—L. A. B
ANKS,
author of the Vampire Huntress Legend series

The Vampire’s Betrayal
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, 

a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book contains an excerpt from Raven Hart’s forthcoming novel. 

This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eISBN: 978-0-345-50779-2

www.ballantinebooks.com

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