"At least I am vampire enough to come before you again," he said. "I hear Damien is in hiding for his life."

"True enough," said the first vampire. "We'll hear your proposal if you have one. And it had better be good, or you'll wish you were in hiding as well."

Ulrich nudged Diana, who was frozen in place. He urged her forward until she took a step toward the old lords. Finally she found her tongue. "S-sirs, the vampire who is in charge of Savannah now, Jack McShane, can animate the dead."

The old sires murmured among themselves. The leader said, "Do you swear this?"

"Yes," Diana said. "I have seen it. He reanimated a legion of the dead to guard us on our arrival in Savannah. And it was through his power that Eleanor was raised from the underworld. He even found his way back from there himself."

"And that was without the aid of an earthquake," Ulrich put in.

"He hadn't even intended to raise her," Diana continued. "Think of what he could accomplish if he really tried."

Ulrich nodded. "We propose to force McShane to raise selected...characters from the dead."

"What kind of characters?" asked a Council member with an oozing sore in the middle of its chest. "A sorcerer of one of the old religions seems to have fixed it so that no blood drinker can ever rise again." "No blood drinkers, perhaps, but there are plenty of others who have proven their ability to wreak havoc on humanity," Diana offered.

"Serial killers, ma.s.s murderers, terrorists. That variety of human," Ulrich added casually.

"And what makes you so sure this McShane blood drinker, this offspring of Thorne, can be influenced to resurrect these characters?" the leader asked.

Diana and Ulrich exchanged glances. They knew better than to bluff an audience of ancient and bloodthirsty master vampires.

"We believe that without his sire, he will be easily led. The loss of Thorne leaves a vacuum in his life that we will step in and fill,"

Ulrich said.

Diana shook her mane of golden hair, tilted her head downward, and looked up, fixing her wide blue eyes upon her audience, gestures she had practiced on men for hundreds of years. "We can be very persuasive," she purred.

"Very well," the leader said. "Go to the New World. Make haste. Do your worst."

"Yes, my lord," Diana promised, relief flooding her. Emboldened by the knowledge that she would soon be thousands of miles away from the h.e.l.lhole in which she now found herself, she curtsied and added, "I give you my vow, your excellencies, I know exactly how to make Jack McShane bow to my will."

Acknowledgments.

Thanks to my critique partner, author Jennifer LaBrecque, for helping make this a better book and for keeping Jack honest.

For a sneak peek at Raven Hart's next novel in the Savannah Vampires Chronicles read on.

Letter from Jack My so-called life has become a nightmare. Each time I climb into my coffin at sunrise and the deep death-sleep claims me, I think I'll wake up and things will be normal again. As normal as a vampire's existence can be anyway.

In my dreams I'm in my old, ordinary life. My maker and mentor, William Thorne, is back again and whole. Connie, the woman I love, is a regular human being, coping with nothing more complicated than being a cop and the girlfriend of a vampire-as if that wasn't tough enough. Melaphia and Renee, my human family, are as untroubled by their own nightmares and as secure and happy as any young mother and daughter have a right to be.

But when the moon rises and the shadows lengthen to hide the monsters that exist on the fringe of human consciousness, my sweet dreams of normality implode under the weight of the here and now. When I wake, the real nightmare begins.

William, my sire and the friend who had my back for more than a hundred years, is dead, slain by the very woman I'd give my own life for. That leaves me alone to protect Melaphia and Renee, already tortured and traumatized by the most evil of my kind before the crowning blows of William's death and the revelation of their most deadly secret. As the most powerful mambos of this hemisphere, the daughters of my heart might not be as vulnerable as ordinary humans, but because they bear the priceless voodoo blood that gives vampires otherworldly powers, they are now hunted for their life force by the most evil and determined of fiends.

If that weren't enough trouble, there's a whole menagerie of monsters out to challenge the chief enforcer role I inherited from William. I have to ride herd on all things nonhuman that would otherwise be free to threaten the mortal population of Savannah, one of the most haunted places in the world. And for the first time I have to do it without William and his formidable power at my side.

Oh, and let's not forget the worst enemy of all, a council of the most evil vampires in history who are trying to harness the elemental powers of the universe to enslave peace-loving bloodsuckers like me and turn us into killing machines. Their most recent show of force produced an earthquake that briefly opened a Portal from the underworld, through which dozens of dead but reanimated vampires clawed their way topside in every demonic form imaginable. The only way I was able to convince Connie to let me live was to promise to help her track down and destroy these double-dead demons before they can wreak enough havoc to send the human world into a full-scale panic.

You see, the moment Connie murdered William, she turned into a creature that I barely recognized, part demon, part avenging angel. As a vampire slayer sworn to kill me and my kind wherever she finds us, Connie is the new favorite target for every evil blood drinker on the planet. So I have to try to protect her from them while I protect myself from her and hope to G.o.d it'll be a while before she figures out that she doesn't really need me to help her kill those demons. She's lethal enough on her own.

Oh, and incidentally, Connie's pregnant with my child but doesn't know it yet. A child that is an abomination of nature and has no right to exist, but whom I love with a ferocity that frightens me. I would do anything to insure the survival of Connie and my baby, even if it means giving them over to the care of another kind of monster altogether. Probably just as well that she hates me now, don't you think? At least that's what my rational brain tells my shattered heart.

So as you can see, reality bites. Even worse than I do.

Welcome to the new normal. Welcome to my nightmare.

Chapter One.

"Hey! Watch where you're swinging that axe!" I yelled as the blade whistled through the air, grazing my cheek. "I'm trying to help you bring that demon down, you know. The least you could do is try not to lop off my head."

The demon, a nasty little number covered with slimy brown scales, ducked but not before Connie's axe connected with its shoulder. It howled in pain and outrage from the bricked-in corner of the alley we had backed it into.

"Is head-lopping one of the ways you can kill a vampire?" Connie asked. She never took her gaze off the demon, but her eyes lit up with a deadly fervor that made me cringe because I knew it was meant for me.

"Well, yes," I admitted. "One of the few." The demon made a break for it, but I caught him in the jaw-if that hump below its mouth was a jaw-with my fist and spun him back into the corner.

Connie sighed. "I have so much to learn. So many vampires; so little time." She raised the weapon again and swung with almost as much speed and strength as I myself could muster. The demon's head left its shoulders with a spray of blood, and its body fell forward onto the pavement and turned into a pile of dirt. The smell of it mixed with the sickening-sweet stench of the nearby Dumpster and made my nose twitch with disgust.

"Another one bites the dust, uh, uh," Connie sang with a little victory dance. I watched her shimmy her shapely booty in awe, not quite sure whether I should be grossed out by her blood l.u.s.t or turned on by it. I seemed to be a little of both. Maybe I'd inherited William's death wish along with all his responsibilities.

Connie turned her attention to me, noticing the trickle of blood running down my cheek. Her eyes dilated, the pupils turning into slits, the irises bloodred. She grabbed me by the neck and pulled my face next to hers so quickly it startled me. I searched her eyes for the spark that was my old Connie and didn't see it. Would it-would she-ever be back? Or was she lost and gone forever in the sh.e.l.l of this vicious, half-human killer standing in front of me now?

When she pressed her lips to my cheek, I felt myself go weak in the knees. She hadn't shown me any affection since...the night I tried to kill her. For her own good, of course.I quickly realized it wasn't the hots for me that caused her to move her lovely lips along my skin, sending a shiver down my spine and a throb of desire everywhere else. As a dhampir, she was part vampire, part human, part G.o.ddess. She was savoring my blood for its flavor and its power. She was a predator now, and I was her prey of choice. She flicked out her tongue and lapped away the dribble of my blood.

"Mmm. Good to the last drop," she murmured in a throaty whisper.

Even as I glanced down to see her pull back her lips and reveal her baby fangs, I felt more yearning than terror. She was born to kill me after all, and I swear if it weren't for Mel and Renee, I would let her. As long as she made love to me one last time.

I closed my eyes, relishing the serrated rasp of those fangs across my skin, and nearly swooned. I know, I know. Kick-a.s.s vampires with superpowers like me don't swoon. But you don't know Connie. Her hot breath burned a line from my cheek to my neck.

"Please," I heard myself beg.

"Please what?" Her tongue probed the hollow of my throat, searing my cold, dead flesh.

I bit my tongue to keep myself from murmuring "Kill me." It was tempting, but too many innocent people depended on me for their safety. I couldn't take the easy way out as much as I might want to die in Connie's arms, at the point of her fangs, and be done with it.

"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 sh.e.l.l, 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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed, 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!"

-ALEXIS MORGAN, author of the Paladins of Darkness series "Suspenseful...s.e.xy...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. BANKS, 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 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 2008 by Raven Hart Excerpt from Raven Hart's next novel copyright 2008 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 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 v1.0