The Vampire's Betrayal (19 page)

“And so now William expects you to kill her, just like that.” A murderous look came across Seth’s face. He stalked the length of the small kitchen and back again, flexing his fists as if he would welcome the chance to destroy something with his bare hands.

“And if I don’t do it—
when
I don’t do it—one of the other vampires will.” That last part was true, anyway.

“So you want me to take her away?”

“It’s the only thing I can think of. I mean, do you have any other ideas?”

“Yeah. I could kill me half a dozen vampires,” he said.

He was big, powerful, and lethal, but he couldn’t take on all of us. “Even if you could—”

“Oh, I could.”

“Even if you could,” I insisted, “it’s already too late for that. By this time all the European vampires know from Olivia that the Slayer is a Savannah cop named Consuela Jones. I even caught a vampire hanging around outside her apartment the other night. Who knows how that guy found out? I’m telling you, she might as well have a bull’s-eye on her back.”

“Jesus,” Seth muttered. “So when are you going to tell her?”

“Tomorrow night I’ll tell her she’s the Slayer.”

“And how are you going to make her leave town with me?”

“Have you gone soft in the head or have you never tried to explain Connie why she
has
to do a thing?”

Seth looked at me dumbly and sighed. “Oh. Yeah,” he said. “I forgot how stubborn she can be. And how incapable she is of backing down from a fight. We had a helluva time keeping her out of the dominance fight with the werewolves that night.”

“Yeah. She was ready to wade right in. Connie’s got to have a good reason for leaving Savannah or there’s no way in hell she’s going to go,” I said, giving Seth a meaningful look that he could not mistake.

“Dude,” he said. “She has her own feelings. You can’t just
give
her to me, no matter how much you want to. No matter how much
I
wish you could.”

There it was. The confirmation that he still loved her. As if I’d had any doubt. For an instant I hated him a little. “I’m going to break up with her,” I heard myself say. “And then I want you to convince her that the reasons she came to Savannah in the first place are gone now.”

“What do you mean exactly?” he asked, pouring a cup of coffee.

“It was you who told me she left Atlanta because of the murder-suicide, because everyone she knew, including you—
especially
you—pitied her. And she couldn’t deal with people’s pity. In the first place, you can take her back to Podunk County or wherever the hell it is you’re from, where nobody knows her. In the second place, she told me that what happened in the underworld—seeing her son in heaven and all—has helped her come to a kind of closure about what happened. So her head’s in a better place about all that now. She’s not running from it anymore. That’s why I think you can get her to take you back when I’m out of the picture. She won’t care that you know about what happened.”

Seth handed me the coffee and poured a cup for himself. “That makes sense, I guess. So how are you going to break up with her?”

“Just leave that to me.”

“Don’t hurt her.”

I gave him a murderous look. If only he knew what I’d been through in the last couple of days. “I’m going to do this the best way I know how.”

“And what way is that?”

“Never you mind.” We glared at each other over the coffee cups, resentment on my part and mistrust on his, simmering like redeye gravy that’s about to boil over.

“When are you going to do this?”

“Tomorrow night. Be ready to…do your thing.” The coffee tasted like battery acid in my mouth.

Seth regarded me soberly. “Seduce Connie, you mean?”

“Well, just,
damn.
Did you have to say it out loud?” My nerves were stretched to the breaking point. I had to calm down. Maybe I should switch to decaf.

Seth stopped glaring and started looking all sorry for me. I don’t know which was worse. “This must be killing you, Jack. I’m really sorry,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” I said miserably. “You always wanted her back.”

“Yeah, but not this way.”

I looked at the ceiling. “Yeah, well, this is the way it is. You take her, make her fall for you again, change her name to Connie Walker, and hide her up there in the wilds of the north Georgia mountains so the vampires can’t find her. Have a whole litter of fuzzy half-werewolf puppies or whatever you call them and live happily ever after.”

“I should probably be insulted by part of that spiel, but I’ll let it slide since you’re in such bad shape.”

“I’ll live.” I sighed.

He gave me a skeptical look.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but how
are
you going to convince her that you’re not the man for her?” he asked.

I rubbed my chin, thinking about what I’d said just a minute ago. Then I snapped my fingers. “That’s it. Why haven’t I thought of that before?”

“Thought of what?”

“The puppies.”

“Seriously, man. That’s a slur. Don’t make me come over there and—”

I ignored him. “Has Connie ever mentioned wanting to have more children?”

“Not to me. Remember, she cut me out of her life right after the tragedy.”

“But you just know she does, right? I mean, women are like that. They always want to have kids.”

“I’m not following you.”

“I can’t have kids.” I didn’t make eye contact with him when I said this. I hoped like hell he would never find out I was lying.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot that about vampires. You guys are shooting blanks.”

“Talk about a slur.” I sniffed.

“Sorry. So you think that if you tell Connie you can’t give her a child, that will put her off the idea of a future with you?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“I don’t think that will work.”

“Why not?”

“For starters, she could just get artificially inseminated or something. There’s all kinds of ways around that sort of thing nowadays.”

“Okay. What do you suggest I tell her so that she’ll fall out of love with me? I mean, I’m a hard man for a woman to get out of her system.”

“Uh-huh. Gee, I don’t know. You could start with being an evil, bloodsucking demon, that you’ll never grow old while she will, that you’ll never be able to go out in the daylight, that you’ll never—”

“Oh-
kay.
I get it.”

“But the best of those is the blood thing. It’s just gross.”

“She’s already seen me go all fang-face on somebody.”

“Yeah, but that was to defend
her
when Will killed Sullivan. How about in the Beauty and the Beast story? Not the Disney version, the real one. Where Beauty sees the Beast eating some animal that he’s run down and killed and gets really grossed out.”

I looked at him for a second. “Beauty and the Beast? How gay are you?”

“I’m just saying. And Beauty and the Beast is not gay. By God, we’re about to have to settle all this outside.”

“The sun’s up by now.”

“I know. Why do you think I want to go outside?” After a moment, Seth broke into one of his broad grins, and even though our talk had been about life-and-death matters, I found myself laughing as if I’d never laugh again.

And considering what I had to do tomorrow night, I probably wouldn’t ever
want
to laugh again.

I stopped laughing and rested my head on the cool countertop, suddenly so weary I couldn’t sit up straight.

I believed in Connie’s love for me. Deep down, I knew there was only one way to make her hate me enough to let me go.

She had been the victim of domestic violence in the most cruel way and had spent most of her adult life helping other woman battle it. There was something I could tell her that would set off a firestorm of raw and deep-seated emotions in her gut and make her curse my name forever.

I had to tell Connie I tried to kill her.

Twelve

William

I watched Tobey and Iban circulate through the crowd. They mixed easily with the patrons, not having to resort to glamour. Travis, on the other hand, stood apart from the throng. Evidently, the young ladies thought his striking looks went a long way toward canceling out any perceived aloofness. All the vampires were accomplishing their stated goal for this evening: meeting attractive women.

My own chances for procuring sex tonight were better than even, what with Ginger taking care to brush against me with her ample bosom or squeeze my thigh each time she passed me with her tray of drinks balanced with one hand on her shoulder. Not to say that I was in the mood for games, sexual or otherwise.

The events of the previous night were disturbing on levels the others, even Melaphia, couldn’t even guess at. Lalee had forbidden us to kill our sworn enemy, the Slayer, and I knew that at least part of the reason was because I had broken my vow. Did that mean she had abandoned my bloodline altogether? No, I thought not. By her words I could tell that she still had some affection for Jack. Thank heaven for that measure of goodwill at least.

Her negativity toward me shouldn’t have come as a surprise, even though not a fortnight earlier she had aided me in saving Renee from a terrible fate. But after reflecting upon the incident I realized that she had done her work through Melaphia, not through me. And her goal was to save Renee, not to do any particular good turn for me.

I felt myself sinking into a mire of melancholia and foreboding. Just a few hours ago, I thought the threat the Slayer posed to us was over. Now Jack was forbidden to kill her, and I knew he would not allow anyone else to do so either.

I had been worried about Jack. I supposed he was overwhelmed, and I only hoped that whatever scheme he was plotting to save Connie was one he felt he could share with me. In his younger days particularly, Jack had a penchant for not thinking things through.

As if on cue, Jack walked into the nightclub, looking almost as grim as he had when he’d left us the night before. When he saw me at the bar, he sat down next to me.

Werm approached him with something very like awe, as I had filled him in on the revelations of the previous night. The fledgling was learning discretion, however. He refrained from mentioning anything to Jack about his current situation, but only asked him for his drink order.

“I’m sorry I ran out last night,” Jack said, accepting a draft beer from Werm.

“Things were getting rather intense, and you had already been through hell in the last twenty-four hours,” I said. “I don’t blame you in the slightest.”

“Really?” He seemed to relax a little and took a healthy drink of the beer before looking over his shoulder at Travis, who was conversing with two pretty coeds. “What got decided after I left?”

“About how to proceed where the Slayer’s concerned?”

“Yeah. It was looking like everybody was going to be cool with letting Connie live except Travis.”

“I had a talk with him,” I said. “I told him that we were going to do as Lalee instructed. I further told him that you would inform Connie that she was the Slayer and fill her in on everything we know about what that entails. Perhaps he’s wrong when he says she’ll lose her reason when she activates. If not, at least we will have tried to appeal to her to fight at our side. Travis seemed to accept my decision.”

“Do you think he’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure. For now I’ve decided to give Connie the benefit of the doubt.”

“Man, that’s a load off my mind. But I have to warn you, Connie might not be anxious to throw in with us after I tell her the rest of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hang on—I’ll explain in a second. Hey, Werm, where is Seth tonight? Is he going to be tending bar with you?”

“Yeah, I sent him for a couple of cases of liquor from the supplier. He’ll be here later.” Werm then walked away to serve some customers at the other end of the bar.

“Why are you inquiring about Seth?”

“Because he can’t hear what I’m planning with Connie. I’m going to tell her I tried to kill her last night.”

“Why in the name of heaven would you do that? There is no need.”

“Yes, there is.”

Jack went on to make his case. He outlined his plan for at least temporarily removing the threat that Connie faced for us. That’s the interpretation he put on it, at any rate. I knew that his plan was primarily to protect Connie and his unborn child, but it happened to serve our interests as well. However, it hinged on Connie’s being willing to let Jack go and return to the arms of Seth.

“What do you think?” he asked when he’d finished.

“I think the plan is good for everyone.” And although I didn’t say it, I was glad that he’d chosen to trust me and seek out my counsel.

“Really?” he asked me again.

“Yes. Really. I’m not going to fight you on this, Jack.” He opened his mouth and a stern glance from me stopped him from saying
Really
again. “I presume that Seth was amenable to your proposal.”

“You presume right. I didn’t tell him that I tried to kill Connie, though.”

“I don’t blame you. I do have one question, though. What do you presume is going to happen when Connie realizes she’s with child?”

Jack drained his beer and refrained from meeting my eyes. “It’s so early in the pregnancy, I figure if she and Seth get together quick enough, they can both just assume it’s his.” He looked down at the polished wood of the bar as if, after all these years as a blood drinker, he were looking for his reflection and put out by its absence.

“I see.” I could only imagine what the forfeiture of his child, not to mention the woman he loved, was costing Jack. I had never been more proud of his selflessness. So I chose not to point out the obvious flaw in his scheme, and in any case it would be years before anyone would have cause to wonder how a
dhampir
and a werewolf produced another
dhampir.
Perhaps by that time, it wouldn’t matter for any number of reasons. “I’m sorry you have to bear this, Jack. But I do believe you’re doing the right thing.”

“I guess,” Jack muttered, and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked like he hadn’t slept in an age.