The Vampire's Betrayal (5 page)

“Oof,” Jack managed, as Melaphia clasped him to her chest. In fact, she had him in a headlock so severe I almost feared for his survival all over again.

I crossed to where Connie lay and saw that she was still motionless. Jack had extricated himself from Melaphia’s embrace by that time and joined me at Connie’s side. He looked at me hopefully and I simply shook my head. Werm and I stood by Melaphia, giving Jack more space.

“Why didn’t she come back with me?” He searched our faces for answers. I, for one, had none, but as I looked at Melaphia, I knew that she did. Jack evidently took the shrug she offered him at face value, but it spoke volumes to me.

He scooped Connie into his arms and urgently patted her cheek. “Connie, wake up!” he pleaded. “It’s me, Jack. It’s time to come back now.” He issued a strangled sob when she didn’t respond and stared frantically up at Melaphia again.

“There’s nothing more I can do,” she said firmly.

“There has to be!”

“No,” I said. “There’s not. The portal has closed.”

“Then I’ve got to return to the underworld until I can figure out how to bring her back with me.”

“No, you will not,” I said. “It is too dangerous. It was a miracle Melaphia was able to get you back once.”

He looked at Melaphia. “But I wasn’t ready.
She
wasn’t ready.”

“You tried your best,” I said gently. “It’s over. You have to let her go.”

His blue eyes flashed in defiance. “I’ll pray to Loa Legba again.”

“No, you will not,” I repeated. “Melaphia has cast a spell. You will not be able to reach him if your purpose is to open the portal again.” I was bluffing, but Jack’s wounded look proved he believed me.

Jack swore, his eyes welling with tears. Melaphia and I exchanged glances in wordless solidarity. If she returned, Connie would eventually discover that her purpose on this earth was to destroy all vampires, most likely starting with Jack and me since we were close at hand. The loss of Connie was tragic, especially for Jack, but I hadn’t fended off all manner of threats to generations of my family to see it shattered now for the sake of one mortal life.

Besides, with its innate divinity, Connie’s soul would surely find its way to paradise to be with her son for eternity. What fate could be better than that? If anyone had cause to envy that outcome, it was surely I. Both the son of my blood and the son of my heart had already lost their souls and were doomed to eternal damnation should they someday wind up at the wrong end of a stake.

Connie was the fortunate one. Perhaps when he got over his grief, Jack would come to see that. As it was, I’d never seen him as bereft as right now.

“Let us give him some time with her,” I said gently. Melaphia murmured to the dogs and they followed her upstairs. Werm hung his head on the way past Jack and joined the others. I replaced the skull box carefully, making sure the latch on the hidden drawer was secure.

I squeezed Jack’s shoulder as I passed him and paused on the stairs to look back briefly, still not quite believing he was really here. He clasped Connie’s body to his chest and wept as I had wept for Eleanor.

I sighed. Jack and I had come full circle and wound up in the same sad place.

Jack

I pressed Connie to myself and tried to will the warmth back into her cheek as it lay against mine. How could a dead man bring the life back into her body? She was always the one who made
me
feel alive again.

I knew how Romeo must have felt when he entered the tomb and saw Juliet lying dead. If I’d had some poison on me I would have drunk it. As if that would do any harm to me.

William and Melaphia told me nothing could be done and surely that was so. They would have helped her if they could. I guess the powers of good decided to keep her. She was in a place I could only see through squinted eyes, like someone looking at a total eclipse.

Why, oh why did she have to be taken away from me now, just as we’d truly found each other? I thought about the night we’d spent together, and I yelled out in pain. I held her apart from me and gazed into her face, searching again for some sign of life, but there was none.

I studied her lips, her eyelids, her cheekbones, chin, memorizing her while I could. As painful as it would be, I wanted to remember the lines of her perfect face if I lived to be a thousand.

But I didn’t have to live to be a thousand. I didn’t have to live at all.

The vault had no windows, but I sensed it was daylight outside. I didn’t need poison like Romeo. All it would take to end this pain would be to step out the back door and feel the sun on my face one last time. It would all be over.

With Connie in my arms, I stood. “We’re going now,” I told her. “I love you. Good-bye.” One last kiss, I thought. One last kiss.

I lowered her feet to the floor and held her tightly to my chest. I put my lips on hers, for once as cool as mine, and kissed her long and hard, pressing her body deeper to mine. She still smelled like lilacs, and I pretended that she was there with me, alive and well again.

I brushed one thumb across the soft skin of her throat and stroked her long ebony hair. I gathered some of the silky mass into my fist and rubbed it against my cheek, savoring the softness. Her every curve and texture was all a woman should be. She was a goddess indeed.

I thought about how we had slow-danced at Werm’s club and began to sway with her, playing over and over again in my head the Elvis Presley song we danced to.
Wise men say, only fools rush in.
I’d been a fool to think that falling in love with a mortal would lead to anything but disaster.

I’d had too many relationships with human women to count, but only this one had led me to forget myself and to become reckless. I’d never loved any woman the way I loved Connie, and never would.

I should have left her alone. She’d still be alive if it hadn’t been for me. But true to my nature as a demon, I only thought about myself and what I wanted. And, my god, had I wanted her. I saw my red-tinged tears fall onto her gown, staining it, spoiling its pure whiteness, and I cried harder.

I cried for myself and I cried for Connie. My body shook with sobs. The music in my head stopped and I stood still, hugged her, and gave in to my emotions. I thought I’d stopped dancing.

But Connie had other ideas.

I thought I felt an intake of breath against my chest and knew that in my grief I was imagining things, becoming delusional. Then I saw Connie’s head move. In another moment she was looking up at me.

“Jack,” she whispered.

I covered her cheeks, her eyes with kisses, pausing just long enough to cup her face in my hands and stare into her eyes to reassure myself that I wasn’t dreaming. Then I kissed her some more, her nose, her brows. “Thank god,” I said. “You’re really alive.”

“I know I’ve been on a long journey but I can’t remember what it was all about. Wherever I was, you brought me back, though, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes. Everything’s going to be fine now.”

“But I can’t remember what happened. I think I had a job to do. Something important. Did I do what I…set out to do?”

“Yes,” I told her. “Everything’s all right. You can put all your sorrow behind you.” I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a squeeze. “Pinch me so I can believe we’re both really back.”

Laughing, she reached around me and pinched my butt, and I laughed with her. Then we looked into each other’s eyes again and the laughter died on our lips. It was as if I was seeing her for the first time. I saw the same wonder and awe I was feeling mirrored in her face. She flung her arms around my neck and I kissed her again like I’d never kissed anyone before—or been kissed in return.

I carried her to the chaise lounge and sat her down, kneeling in front of her. She cupped my face in her hands and then lowered them to my shoulders and chest, stroking her way to my waist where she grasped my shirt and pulled it out of my jeans and over my head. I reached beneath the white dress and swept it up and off in one smooth motion. She was naked underneath, glorious and perfect. If I hadn’t already known for sure that she was a goddess, I would have felt it in my bones. She lay back and I began my worship of her.

Still kneeling at the end of the chaise, I lifted one of her feet and kissed the sensitive arch, making her shiver. I planted kisses up and around her ankle, then along her shapely calf, easing her leg over my shoulder as I did so. I licked the tender little crease at the back of her knee, shuddering with anticipation as my lips moved along to the smooth skin of her inner thigh.

I kissed and nipped, letting my fangs brush her flesh as lightly as the wings of a butterfly. She reached down to weave her fingers into the waves of my hair, massaging my scalp and urging my mouth higher until my lips found the triangle of crisp dark curls that fringed her most feminine place.

I closed my eyes, reveling in the fragrance of her desire for me and let the curls tickle my nose before she spread her legs wider and blossomed for me. Reverently I lowered my head to her rosy flesh, swollen with need. I could feel her pulse beating beneath my mouth as her blood rushed to her blessed womanly parts, making them plump and ready for that splendid dance as old as time. The vampire in me responded to the blood as if I could see it rushing, and my fangs lengthened involuntarily. Mentally, I tamped down my response to the life-giving red nectar and concentrated on my devotion to my goddess.

My tongue teased the dewy petals it found on the way to the little bud at her center. I stroked it again and again with my tongue, lips, and chin until Connie reached down to grasp my shoulders.

She urged me upward until I was braced above her and she went about relieving me of my jeans. “I want you now,” she said simply.

My erection sprang to meet her hands and she wasted no time putting me inside her. I felt like I melted into her, onto her, became one with her. As I moved inside her, I braced on one elbow and cupped her breast, massaging upward from her rib cage to the nipple, teasing its tip with my thumb before starting again.

In my unnaturally lengthy life I had made love to more women than I could count, and thought myself
in
love with quite a few of them. I thought I’d known when it was real. And I’d even grieved with the loss of a special relationship when things fell apart, as they always did. Being a creature of the night meant always having to say you’re sorry. And always having to say good-bye.

But it wasn’t until this woman came into my world that I felt more alive than I had when I was a living, breathing human. She was the only woman who’d ever known what I was. And still she could look past the abominable circumstances that accounted for my existence and love me for the man I still was inside. Or at least the man I tried to be.

And as for the sex—the way we fit together, the way we moved when we found our rhythm felt like something preordained. It was as if this woman who came along so many generations after my death was made especially for me. As I thought this, I remembered the truth. She
was
made for me in a very real way.

She was made to kill me.

That was why I caught fire the first time we touched. She had learned a spell that cured that bit of sexual dysfunction, but the purpose behind it was clear now. I pushed that thought out of my mind, because as surely as Connie and I had passed through hell in the last few hours, we were in heaven now and I wasn’t going to let anything spoil that for either of us. We came in a shuddering climax while looking deep into each other’s eyes.

“My Consuela, my goddess,” I heard myself whisper.

William

I instructed Werm and the dogs to go upstairs and check on Renee. She wasn’t expected at her private school—when she’d been kidnapped I’d called the headmistress and told her that we were going to homeschool Renee for the foreseeable future. It’s a shame we must go to such ends sometimes to protect our secrets.

“I’ll see that Connie is buried in consecrated ground,” Melaphia said.

“Yes. Do,” I agreed, thinking that Melaphia was now acting entirely too calm for what she’d just gone through. “Are you sure you’re all right, my dear?”

She lifted her chin, and I saw a series of differing emotions play across her face. I’d known those various expressions for thirty years now. This child I’d helped to raise had grown into an exceptional woman, a woman who had never used her considerable powers for any cause that wasn’t noble and just. She’d never been as conflicted as she was at this moment, and she was hurting.

Finally her reserve crumbled and she hid her face in her hands. “She was my friend.” She choked out the words with difficulty. “And I didn’t even try to bring her back with Jack. I wanted her to stay.”

I was tempted to gather her into my arms again, but I knew that would not help her regain control. Instead I spoke soothingly to her. “Do you remember how we helped Shari to a better place when she was confined to the underworld?”

“Yes. I remember.”

“Do you think that Connie is in a lesser place? Consider this. While she was reckless in crossing the portal to the underworld, she lost her life through no real fault of her own, no sin in any case. Would not her divinity ensure that she reached a place of peace with her son?”

“Yes, I suppose it does make sense when you think about it like that.” Melaphia wiped her eyes.

“If Renee was…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word
dead.
“…wouldn’t you want to be with her even if it meant leaving this world?”

“Of course I would.”

“Then promise me you won’t dwell on this. What’s done is done. It’s out of our hands.”

“And you and Jack are out of danger.”

I started to say,
From the Slayer at least,
but bit my tongue. Later I would catch her and Jack up on what had happened in Europe. The old lords had been a gathering threat when I’d left for the United Kingdom, but to Jack they were also a vague and shadowy one. I know it was difficult for him to appreciate the menace they posed to us since they seemed to him so far away. What I had learned while in London would
flesh out
the situation, as Jack himself would say.