The Vampire's Secret.

Savannah Vampire.

by Raven Hart.

Acknowledgments.

I'd like to thank everyone who helped with this book, especially my editor, Chris Schluep, and everyone at Ballantine, and my agent, Claudia Cross. Thanks to everyone in Georgia Romance Writers and my friends in Southern Magic for their encouragement and support. Thanks also to Donna Sterling, Jennifer LaBrecque, Berta Platas, and Rita Herron for the cheerleading, brainstorming, and occasional, much-needed kicks in the behind. Special thanks to Richard Tuft for the draft reading, future location scouting, and other input. I couldn't have done it without you guys. Thanks, too, to my mom and dad for their unwavering support.

Letter from William, a Vampire My name is William Cuyler Thorne, lately of Savannah. Once, a very, very long time ago, I was a husband...a father. A mortal who lived and loved without thought of the evil creatures abroad in the world.

Now I am one of those evil beings. A blood drinker.

A vampire.

Just recently, after these many centuries, I've been required to make good on my life's promise of revenge. "Put up or shut up,"

as my offspring Jack would say. Presented with the opportunity to kill my villainous sire, Reedrek, once and for all and to end my immortal existence in the bargain, I embraced the chance. In our world, however, just as in the mortal version, things don't always go as planned. In my dash to annihilation I approached the finish line only to be pulled back to the unliving by Jack 's inscrutable logic.

He needed me.

Now I have discovered a name in an ancient book. A name etched into my overfull memory like a ragged scar. A name that will forever conjure love in my unbeating heart, existing next to the hatred there for the monster who took her from me.

The book is a genealogy of Strigori-of vampires.

The entry is Diana, England, 1528.

My wife's image-Diana's lovely face-fills my thoughts and for a moment I feel the tiniest hope that I might find her again. I've set Olivia to the task of tracking this undead Diana. Yet the thought of Reedrek making my guiltless love into a bereft creature like me twists my gut. He would have had to mate with her to complete the transformation. The very possibility brings a surge of nausea to my otherwise cast-iron const.i.tution. I would have torn her tormentor limb from limb before allowing him to ravage her soul. It had been hard enough to watch him kill her.

It could not be so. By G.o.d, Reedrek couldn't have so complete a victory over me and mine.

Of course, if it were true, G.o.d had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Letter from Jack, a Vampire My name is Jack McShane and I'm a master mechanic, a ladies' man, a NASCAR fan, and a vampire-not necessarily in that order. Show me a car and I can fix it. Show me a woman, and I can seduce her. Show me a creature, human or not, that threatens my existence or the safety of my loved ones, and I will make sure it never leaves Savannah in one piece, at least not without that piece being chewed up and spit out. Literally.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but this dog's been kicking since the War Between the States and I've learned more about myself and my kind in the last few weeks than in all the time since I was made immortal. For example, all vampires are not created equal. Not all are peace-loving types like me and my sire, William Thorne. Mind you, I'd seen-and killed-my share of roving rogue vampires here and there, just to keep the peace. But I'd no idea there were whole packs of evil ones in Europe, and that some of them would be coming for us one day.

But it all came out in the wash, as they say, and my sire no longer tries to keep me in the dark about such matters to protect me.

He can't afford to. He needs me armed with the truth and ready to fight at his side if need be.

On the personal side, my love life was just getting interesting before all h.e.l.l broke loose. I was smitten by a Mexican American beauty with eyes as black as onyx, hair like a skein of fine black silk, and a face that came to me in my dreams. I was on my way to cooking up something with her when I was given a task that would halfway break my heart. I tried to make a woman vampire and she died in the process, died "in the act," as they say.

That event shattered me, not just for the loss of the young lady involved but because of what it could mean for me and my Latin lovely, Connie. See, she doesn't know it, but Connie's special. Really special. Like, not-so-human special. How do I know? I can feel it. I can feel her power from across a room, and when I'm holding her in my arms I can feel the vibrations of it. She thrums with the power of goodness and light. I don't know where her power comes from, but it's from a better and more wholesome place than the dark and unholy pit from which my own power slithers.

And since Connie isn't human, I don't know what would happen if or when we did the deed. I don't know if I'm more afraid that she would be harmed like the woman I tried to make into a vampire, or if I just can't stand the thought of the evil of my own nature tarnishing her.

But I want her. Make no mistake about that. I want her with every undead cell in my body. So I'm d.a.m.ned if I do and d.a.m.ned if I don't.

In any case, I'm d.a.m.ned. But you knew that much already.

One.

Savannah, Georgia January 2007 William Eleanor whimpered from pleasure-not pain-as I tore away the leather laces of her corset. The smooth black material was warm from her skin. I unlaced the front and watched as the tight leather opened before me like a ripe pomegranate, spilling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into my nimble hands. Any other night I would have suckled them, rolling the nipples with my tongue and nipping with my unnaturally sharp teeth. I would have followed the sinuous curve of the snake tattoo from b.r.e.a.s.t.s to belly with my thirsty mouth, then quenched my l.u.s.t between her thighs. But on this night, rather than the sweet nectar of s.e.x, I would be sucking blood. All her blood.

Tonight Eleanor would become a vampire, or die in the trying.

Ghostly voices whispered around us, alternately urging me on and begging me to stop. I could not stop. I 'd given my word.

Humans thought little enough of honor. The ability to follow through on promises or threats meant more to a vampire. At least it did to me. Broken promises had a tenacious way of following one around. Centuries ago, I was educated by my treacherous sire in the art of swearing without the intention or the means to follow through. Of course, becoming a blood drinker left little I could not do.

Except perhaps defend the ones I loved.

Diana, my heart. If there had been some way to save you...

I'd set a task for Olivia, Alger's precocious offspring, to further investigate the woman-the vampire-listed in her ancient book.

Olivia had sworn on her honor she would not fail.

She had not failed. Not the one you seek...I swear it.

So I'd put away the horror and the hope that somehow, as Reedrek had claimed, my wife still lived, in a manner of speaking, as one of the undead. As one of us. Olivia's p.r.o.nouncement sent me back into reality. Lovely Diana died centuries ago and I had avenged her death. It was time to stop thinking about her and concentrate on Eleanor.

And just now...Eleanor needed saving from me, although she thought not. In this vampire -making business, all my beautiful consort needed to hear was that she would live forever and be bound to me for the next two hundred years-bound to her teacher, her lover, her maker. Not in a marriage, or even a "relationship" in the human sense. Either of us could choose to have others. But she would always be my blood kin, could call on me in need, would defer to my wishes. In the time I'd known her, she'd accepted little advice, including warnings from Jack, Melaphia, or even me. She had her own plans for the future, and I had promised...and I needed her.

We were set to begin. Melaphia had prepared Eleanor, removing her street clothes, taking a sample of her un -tainted blood, cutting a lock of her long black hair.

I rested my cool hand over Eleanor's living, beating heart. She arched her back and sighed, holding my gaze with her own. "Are you sure?" I asked one final time.

"I am."

I took up one of her hands, kissed it, then slid a loop made from the leather laces over her wrist. She sucked in a breath as I tied her right hand above her head. After capturing her left and repeating the process, I doubled the laces and secured her ankles. I did not want her thrashing about; I was determined to do her as little physical damage as possible.

I drew in the smell of her excitement. She didn't know enough yet to be afraid. We'd played these kinds of games before, never going beyond symbolic bloodletting and good furious f.u.c.king. Thinking of those times, I lowered my hand between her spread thighs and teased her open. She was slick with desire.

I was hard with bad intention.

I would give her what she wanted but first she had to see me, truly see me for what I was, and see what she would become.

Closing my eyes, I allowed my hunger to rise. Bloodl.u.s.t tightened my jaw, made my hands tremble. The invisible voices around us gathered and babbled louder as I felt my savage teeth extend. I needed every thread of control to open my eyes and smile.

Eleanor gasped, her dark gypsy eyes going wide at the sight of me.

"Do you see your killer angel now?" I rasped in a voice I barely recognized.

Her "yes" came out on a puff of warm breath. Her voice shook. "Save me or kill me. I don't care."

At that point, neither did I.

Oh, how my sire Reedrek would have loved this. I could almost hear the echo of laughter from his silent, earth-bound tomb. His self-righteous offspring doing the abominable to an innocent human, out of love. On some level Reedrek would feel the change caused by the making of Eleanor, the tweak of his power. But he was buried too deep to enjoy the new energy source. It would give his maggoty mind something delicious to contemplate. We'd determined that a righteous killing was too good for my notorious sire. Better to have him completely powerless and alone in the constant dark-exactly what he'd planned for Alger, the closest I'd ever had to a brother, before Reedrek had been forced to kill him instead. Reedrek would remain awake but dead to this world.

Buried under a constant supply of uncoerced blood-the new state-of-the-art blood bank we'd built with charitable contributions.

Just thinking of his impotence sent a warm feeling through my otherwise hate-frozen heart.

And now, here was my Eleanor to think of, she who must be obeyed. It took a special kind of person to know what she wanted, and then to go about getting it. Eleanor wanted me. And as a woman used to giving orders, she also wanted absolute power over the men she'd had to please through the years. She was willing to face death for the opportunity to have both. My honor rested on not disappointing her. The future of my bloodline depended on increasing our number.

"Close your eyes," I whispered, knowing somewhere in my blood-crazed mind that she would never forget this moment. Better to have merely pain to remember rather than betrayal by one she loved.

As though we were already connected, she did as I asked but answered my whisper with her own. "I love you."

I sang a silent, dulcet song to her mind, calming, arousing, mesmerizing, as I lowered my face to within millimeters of her skin to draw in a long breath of her. She smelled of all things human: sun, heat, blood. I would miss those parts of her, but there were other things I would gain. My cool lips touched her fragrant skin in a farewell kiss. Then I bit down hard, like a lion taking down a gazelle.

The sound of her gurgling scream echoed through the room, accompanied by pitying voices of lost spirits. She was closer to them now than to me. Her spirit blinking in the dark, while her body writhed in my deadly embrace. As her hot heart 's blood rushed into my mouth I began to lose focus. It had been so long since I had been filled. In one last act of love I shoved my hand down between her thighs and felt her body buck in o.r.g.a.s.m. Pleasure for the pain. For my sweet Eleanor...whose valiant heartbeat grew fainter, slower, until it stopped altogether. Dead.

I kissed her pale cool lips before picking up a gold knife and cutting a vein in my wrist, using my own-our mingled-blood to make the sign of the four winds.

Eleanor...

Dear one, come back to me...now.

After an interminable few moments, she made a fearful, mewling sound. Something I would wager she had not done in waking life since childhood. I fought off a choking a.s.sault of guilt. She wanted this, had begged for this...

Wake up, Eleanor. You are mine now. Come back.

With a shudder, her body rose from the table, levitating upward, then floated before me. I grasped a handful of her dark fall of hair as it swung free and brought it to my face.

Eleanor, sweet. Wake up.

She moaned, my name on her lips. I pressed her downward until her back touched the table, then replaced her sigh of surprise with my b.l.o.o.d.y wrist.

Drink.

She opened her eyes wide, then ran a parched tongue along her lower lip before licking at the blood. Her lips and mouth knew what to do. The oh-so-familiar sound of her sucking sent waves of greedy hunger under my skin, transporting me back to other nights, other...pleasures. My c.o.c.k stiffened to rock-hard attention and in another moment I was locked in my own unexpected, jaw-clenching o.r.g.a.s.m. The sucking continued along with the pleasure as I strained to remain standing. We were both gasping by the time I managed to pull away before sliding to the floor.

I opened my eyes to darkness, silence, and cold stone at my back. Melaphia's familiar dark face floated above me lit by the candle in her hand. She looked concerned.

"Are you all right, Captain?"

I felt much better than all right. My skin seemed hot enough to burst into flame. Then I remembered. Eleanor. I was filled with her blood, her life. The long forgotten ecstasy of being what I was created to be, a killer of humans, caused me to rise off the stone floor. Without effort I was standing.

"I'm well," I answered, momentarily wondering how I must look to others-well fed, at the very least. Melaphia watched me with adoring eyes but made no further comment. I took the candle from her hand and approached the new coffin I'd had delivered.

Eleanor lay inside, naked but less pale. She was sleeping. The snake tattoo undulated slightly as I touched the marks over her heart made by my teeth. Healing from the inside, the skin had already closed. Melaphia had cleaned away the blood I'd spilled.

"Jack helped me move her. He's upstairs."

I reached out to Jack's mind briefly with my own and found worry. Not about Eleanor-about me.

"Thank you," I said to Melaphia. "Please tell him to wait. I'll be up in a few moments."

Melaphia nodded before moving away. I heard her footsteps echo, then stop in the pa.s.sageway, probably to attend her altars.

There would be nothing more the orishas or anyone could do until Eleanor suffered through and, hopefully, survived her darkest night. I gently closed the coffin and locked it.

As for me, I felt hot and restless. There would be no sleep, yet very little suffering on my part-unless you count listening to one you...love endure being destroyed cell by cell and reborn. It couldn't be helped or stopped at this point. Now I needed to clean up, to wash away Eleanor's blood and the evidence of her strong s.e.xual pull on my psyche. Perhaps I'd walk the streets or haunt the tunnels until she called me back.

With her screams.

Jack William walked right by me, ignoring my h.e.l.lo.

"Let's go," he commanded.

I followed him out of the house and into the dark, my eyes dilating like the good night creature I was. The moonless night was just about as bright as I remember daylight being, only more shadowy around the edges. I still wasn't used to the enhanced power of my senses. Of course I'd had my acute vampire senses ever since William had made me on a night much like this one in the middle of a b.l.o.o.d.y battlefield during the War Between the States. But it was only since I drank the older -than-dirt blood of the mambo priestess named Lalee that I felt like I had superpowers, even for a vampire.

And so much had happened to rock my world in the last couple of months that I felt I needed superpowers to take it all in. The eaglelike vision and the sense of smell a bloodhound would envy were the least of it. I'd come as near to being destroyed as I ever had in the century and a half of my existence, and that'll get a boy's attention. Not to mention the worldwide vampire politics I was about to get embroiled in. Hard to believe not long ago all I had to worry about was running my all -night garage and trying to remember not to call a girl by the wrong name at the wrong time, if you get my drift. Now my concerns were on a grander scale, much like my powers.

"Thanks in advance for handling this," William said as we set off for River Street. "Since many of the details need to be taken care of during daylight hours, you can delegate some of the work to your friends at the garage as you see fit. And don't forget to consult Eleanor often. I want her place to be built back exactly as she wants it. d.a.m.n the cost."

"Sure, no problem. I know you've got a lot on your mind."

"You're the master of the understatement, Jack. As always."

I wanted to ask him what else besides the obvious was bothering him, not that the obvious wasn't enough. In the month or so since the famous Halloween retro-party-a party that had ended with a real bang, as William and his sire, Reedrek, faced off against each other-he'd been busy organizing scattered clans of North American vampires into a federation that could withstand an a.s.sault from a vicious band of European bloodsuckers. There was a good chance that Reedrek, who'd nearly killed us and had burned down Eleanor's home and business in the bargain, had set us up for extermination.

Eleanor herself-who I suspected was the only woman William had loved in the last five hundred years-was teetering between death and living death even as William and I walked the few blocks to the site of her house. Locked in a coffin, she was about to enter a phase of her making so agonizing that most humans didn't survive it. Especially female humans. If she did survive, she and William could spend eternity side by side. Or not. If she didn't "make," as we say in the vampire biz, she got a one-way E ticket to the everlasting flames of h.e.l.l.

Yeah, you could say William had a lot on his mind.

But besides all this there was something else. My knack for reading William had improved along with my other senses, but he could still block my mind to a great extent, and he was doing it right now. I could tell, though, that the problem was serious, whatever it was. William and I were about as stubborn as a well-matched team of mules. He wouldn't tell me what was wrong until he was good and ready. We reached the site of the burned house and inspected how the demolition company I 'd hired had cleared the site and the builder had poured concrete for the foundation of the new construction. William seemed pleased, always a good thing. After our recent...misunderstandings, I'd returned to my role as his right-hand man. It didn't bother me as much as it used to. William was almost treating me as an equal. I tried to remember the last time he'd thanked me "in advance." I couldn't. It was a start.

"I thought we'd get some of the SCAD people to work on the design, at least for the exterior," I said, taking a seat on one of the benches that lined the square. The students at the Savannah College of Art and Design are experts on restoring old buildings-or building new ones from scratch that strictly follow the authentic architecture of Savannah's history. William was a big supporter of protecting the character, as he called it, of his city.

William sat on the other end of the bench and stared at nothing.