"Not fornication," Werm corrected, "formication. That's when a meth addict feels like there's spiders and snakes crawling under his skin." "So they scratch themselves until they've got sores all over, like Sally's done." Ginger said, understanding.

"How do you know so much about meth addiction?" I asked Werm.

"A guy I worked with at the mall was a tweaker," he said. "He was messed up."

"Ginger, are you absolutely sure?" I asked. This was serious. One of the things William had told me to do before he left was to take care of Eleanor's girls, and I didn't want to let him down. Much less Eleanor herself.

"I'm pretty sure. But that might not be her only problem. Some guy has been following her," she said. "We think he's a stalker or something."

"Why hasn't somebody told me about this before?"

Ginger shrugged. "She just told us this morning at breakfast. She says it's been going on a few days now."

"Maybe he's a pusher," Werm offered.

Ginger shook her head. "She swears she's never seen him before. He's tall and skinny and has these parallel scars down one side of his face. Like something with huge claws got hold of him."

"Meth users get paranoid a lot," I said. "Maybe it's her imagination. But just in case, I'll check out her source. Do you know where she's getting the ice?" I asked. I could really get off on draining anybody who would sell that poison to people, especially an innocent like Sally.

It seemed strange to think of a prost.i.tute as innocent, but there was something naive and vulnerable about her that made me afraid for her even before I heard this disturbing news. She seemed to need somebody to take care of her. I guess Eleanor as her madam filled that role.

"She gets it from a gang of cookers that live down by the marsh. There's a whole family of them. Their name's, um, Thrasher."

"Oh, c.r.a.p," I muttered.

"Do you know them?" Werm asked.

"You could say that."

I first met up with that clan in the twenties when they made illegal whiskey and I ran it-that is, delivered it-for them. They tried to shortchange me a time or two, but I could forgive them for that. What really chafed me was when they poisoned a bunch of my friends with some 'shine. They knew it was a bad batch but were too stingy to throw it out. Killing your customers is bad for business any day of the week, but I was particularly sore because I gave that jug of rotgut to those old boys whose lives it took.

We were playing cards one night in a speakeasy out by the river. We all pa.s.sed out. I was the only one who woke up. That one was tough to explain to the authorities. They didn't exactly buy my "cast-iron stomach" explanation, but they couldn't prove I brought in the 'shine since all the witnesses had gone toes-up.

It seemed that the Thrashers hadn't learned a thing in eighty-something years. Nowadays the contraband was methamphetamine, hillbilly heroin, the drug of choice in the rural South. And they were still just as willing to ruin somebody's life for the almighty dollar as their granddaddies had been.

Maybe the worst part was, the stuff couldn't hurt them. See, they're werewolves. And any kind of shape-shifter is almost as hard to kill as a vampire. So they could take the stuff no harm done, but their regular steady customers were in for a world of hurt.

I said good night to Werm and Ginger and left them to go over their wallpaper samples. I went out into the frosty night. I had figured this day was coming since the day William left for Europe. I was going to have to take on the monsters who lived in dark places in and around this city to prove I was large and in charge. It was time to kick some werewolf a.s.s.

Praise for The Vampire's Seduction "Suspenseful...and s.e.xy...This foray into fangoria is atmospheric and occasionally funny."

-Publishers Weekly "A real treat...an excellent read!"

-Freshfiction "An exotic, exciting thriller."

-Futures MYSTERY Anthology Magazine "One can almost feel the heat rising from the pages.... A stimulating read."

-Curledup "Dark, seductive, disturbingly erotic, Raven Hart drives a stake in this masterful tale."

-L. A. BANKS, author of the Vampire Huntress Legend series Also by Raven Hart THE VAMPIRE'S SEDUCTION.

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

A Ballantine Books Ma.s.s Market Original

Copyright 2007 by Raven Hart Excerpt from The Vampire's Kiss by Raven Hart copyright 2007 by Raven Hart

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.

BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book The Vampire's Kiss by Raven Hart. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eISBN: 978-0-345-49722-2

www.delreybooks.com

v1.0