Empire of the Vampire Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for buying this

  St. Martin’s Press ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Take hold of my hand,

  For you are no longer alone.

  Walk with me in hell.

  —MARK MORTON

  And in sight of God and his Seven Martyrs, I do here vow;

  Let the dark know my name and despair.

  So long as it burns, I am the flame.

  So long as it bleeds, I am the blade.

  So long as it sins, I am the saint.

  And I am silver.

  —THE VOW OF SAN MICHON

  ASK ME NOT if God exists, but why he’s such a prick.

  Even the greatest of fools can’t deny the existence of evil. We dwell in its shadow every day. The best of us rise above it, the worst of us swallow it whole, but we all of us wade hip-deep through it, every moment of our lives. Curses and blessings fall on the cruel and just alike. For every prayer heeded, ten thousand go unanswered. And saints suffer alongside the sinners, prey for monsters spat straight from the belly of hell.

  But if there is a hell, mustn’t there also be a heaven?

  And if there is a heaven, then can’t we ask it why?

  Because if the Almighty is willing to put an end to all this wickedness, but somehow unable to do so, then he’s not as almighty as the priests would have you believe. If he’s both willing and able to put paid to it all, how can this evil exist in the first place? And if he’s neither willing nor able to lay it to rest, then he’s no god at all.

  The only possibility remaining is that he can stop it. He simply chooses not to.

  The children snatched from parents’ arms. The endless plains of unmarked graves. The deathless Dead who hunt us in the light of a blackened sun.

  We are prey now, mon ami.

  We are food.

  And he never lifted a fucking finger to stop it.

  He could have.

  He just didn’t.

  Do you ever wonder what we did, to make him hate us so?

  SUNSET

  IT WAS THE twenty-seventh year of daysdeath in the realm of the Forever King, and his murderer was waiting to die.

  The killer stood watch at a thin window, impatient for his end to arrive. Tattooed hands were clasped at his back, stained with dried blood and ashes pale as starlight. His room stood high in the reaches of a lonely tower, kissed by sleepless mountain winds. The door was ironclad, heavy, locked like a secret. From his vantage, the killer watched the sun sink toward an unearned rest and wondered how hell might taste.

  The cobbles in the courtyard below promised him a short flight into a dreamless dark. But the window was too narrow to squeeze through, and his jailors had left nothing else to see him off to sleep. Just straw to lie on and a bucket to shit in and a view of the frail sunset to serve as torture ’til the real torture arrived. He wore a heavy coat, old boots, leather britches stained by long roads and soot. His pale skin was damp with sweat, but his breath hung chill in the air, and no fire burned in the hearth behind him. The coldbloods wouldn’t risk a flame, even in their prison cells.

  They’d be coming for him soon.

  The château below him was waking now. Monsters rising from beds of cold earth and slipping on the façade that they were something close to human. The air outside was thick with the hymn of bats’ wings. Thrall soldiers clad in dark steel patrolled the battlements below, twin wolves and twin moons emblazoned on black cloaks. The killer’s lip curled as he watched them; men standing guard where no dog would abase itself.

  The sky above was dark as sin.

  The horizon, red as his lady’s lips the last time he kissed her.

  He ran one thumb across his fingers, the letters inked below his knuckles.

  “Patience,” he whispered.

  “May I come in?”

  The killer didn’t let himself flinch—he knew the coldblood would’ve relished that. Instead, he kept staring out the window at the broken knuckles of the mountains beyond, capped by ash-grey snow. He could feel the thing standing behind him now, its gaze roaming the back of his neck. He knew what it wanted, why it was here. Hoping it’d be quick and knowing, deep down, that they’d savor every scream.

  He finally turned, feeling fire swell inside him at the sight of it. The anger was an old friend, welcome and warm. Making him forget the ache in his veins, the tug of his scars, the years on his bones. Looking at the monster before him, he felt positively young again. Borne toward forever on the wings of a pure and perfect hate.

  “Good evening, Chevalier,” the coldblood said.

  It had been only a boy when it died. Fifteen or sixteen, perhaps, still possessed of that slim androgyny found on manhood’s cusp. But God only knew how old it was, really. A hint of color graced its cheeks, large brown eyes framed by thick golden locks, a tiny curl arranged artfully on its brow. Its skin was poreless and alabaster pale, but its lips were obscenely red, the whites of its eyes flushed just the same. Fresh fed.

  If the killer didn’t know better, he’d have said it looked almost alive.

  Its frockcoat was dark velvet, embroidered with golden curlicues. A mantle of raven’s feathers was draped over its shoulders, the collar upturned like a row of glossy black blades. The crest of its bloodline was stitched at its breast; twin wolves rampant against the twin moons. Dark breeches, a silken cravat and stockings, and polished shoes completed the portrait. A monster, wearing an aristocrat’s skin.

  It stood in the center of his cell, though the door was still locked like a secret. A thick book was pressed between its bone-white palms, and its voice was lullaby sweet.

  “I am Marquis Jean-François of the Blood Chastain, Historian of Her Grace Margot Chastain, First and Last of Her Name, Undying Empress of Wolves and Men.”

  The killer said nothing.

  “You are Gabriel de León, Last of the Silversaints.”

  Still, the killer named Gabriel made not a sound. The thing’s eyes burned like candlelight in the silence; the air felt sticky-black and lush. It seemed for a moment that Gabriel stood at the edge of a cliff, and that only the cold press of those ruby lips to his throat might save him. He felt his skin prickling, an involuntary stirring of his blood as he imagined it. The want of moth for flame, begging to burn.

  “May I come in?” the monster repeated.

  “You’re already in, coldblood,” Gabriel replied.

  The thing glanced below Gabriel’s belt and gifted him a knowing smile. “It is always polite to ask, Chevalier.”

  It snapped its fingers, and the ironclad door swung wide. A pretty thrall in a long black dress and corset slipped inside. Her gown was a crushed velvet damask, wasp-waisted, a choker of dark lace about her throat. Her long red hair was bound into braids, looped across her eyes like chains of burnished copper. She was perhaps mid-thirty, old as Gabriel was. Old enough to be the monster’s mother, if it had been just an ordinary boy and she just an ordinary woman. But she carried a leather armchair as heavy as she was, eyes downturned as she
placed it effortlessly at the coldblood’s side.

  The monster’s gaze didn’t stray from Gabriel. Nor his from it.

  The woman brought in another armchair and a small oaken table. Placing the chair beside Gabriel, the table between, she stood with hands clasped like a prioress at prayer.

  Gabriel could see scars at her throat now; telltale punctures under that choker she wore. He felt contempt, crawling on his skin. She’d carried the chair as if it weighed nothing, but standing now in the coldblood’s presence, the woman was almost breathless, her pale bosom heaving above her corset like a maiden on her wedding night.

  “Merci,” Jean-François of the Blood Chastain said.

  “I am your servant, Master,” the woman murmured.

  “Leave us now, love.”

  The thrall met the monster’s eyes. She ran slow fingertips up the arc of her breast to the milk-white curve of her neck and—

  “Soon,” the coldblood said.

  The woman’s lips parted. Gabriel could see her pulse quickening at the thought.

  “Your will be done, Master,” she whispered.

  And without even a glance to Gabriel, she curtseyed and slipped from the room, leaving the killer alone with the monster.

  “Shall we sit?” it asked.

  “I’ll die standing, if it’s all the same,” Gabriel replied.

  “I am not here to kill you, Chevalier.”

  “Then what do you want, coldblood?”

  The dark whispered. The monster moved without seeming to move at all; one moment standing beside the armchair, the next, seated upon it. Gabriel watched it brush an imaginary speck of dust from its frockcoat’s brocade, place its book upon its lap. It was the smallest display of power—a demonstration of potency to warn him against any acts of desperate courage. But Gabriel de León had been killing this thing’s kind since he was sixteen years old, and he knew full well when he was outmatched.

  He was unarmed. Three nights tired. Starving and surrounded and sweating with withdrawal. He heard Greyhand’s voice echoing across the years, the tread of his old master’s silver-heeled boots upon the flagstones of San Michon.

  Law the First: The dead cannot kill the Dead.

  “You must be thirsty.”

  The monster produced a crystal flask from within its coat, dim light glittering on the facets. Gabriel narrowed his eyes.

  “It is only water, Chevalier. Drink.”

  Gabriel knew this game; kindness offered as a prelude to temptation. Still, his tongue felt like sandpaper against his teeth. And though no water could truly quench the thirst inside him, he snatched the flask from the monster’s ghost-pale hand, poured a swig into his palm. Crystal clear. Scentless. Not a trace of blood.

  He drank, ashamed at his relief, but still shaking out every drop. To the part of him that was human, that water was sweeter than any wine or woman he’d ever tasted.

  “Please.” The coldblood’s eyes were sharp as broken glass. “Sit.”

  Gabriel remained where he stood.

  “Sit,” it commanded.

  Gabriel felt the monster’s will pressed upon him, those dark eyes swelling in his vision until they were all he could see. There was a sweetness to it. The lure of bloom to bumblebee, the taste of bare young petals damp with dew. Again, Gabriel felt his blood stir southward. But again, he heard Greyhand’s voice in his mind.

  Law the Second: Dead tongues heeded are Dead tongues tasted.

  And so, Gabriel stayed where he stood. Standing tall on colt’s legs. The ghost of a smile graced the monster’s lips. Tapered fingertips smoothed a golden curl back from those bloody chocolat eyes, drummed on the book in its lap.

  “Impressive,” it said.

  “Would that I could say the same,” Gabriel replied.

  “Have a care, Chevalier. You may hurt my feelings.”

  “The Dead feel as beasts, look as men, die as devils.”

  “Ah.” The coldblood smiled, a hint of razors at the edge. “Law the Fourth.”

  Gabriel tried to hide his surprise, but he still felt his belly roll.

  “Oui,” the coldblood nodded. “I am familiar with the principles of your Order, de León. Those who do not learn from the past suffer the future. And as you might imagine, future nights hold quite an interest for the undying.”

  “Give me back my sword, leech. I’ll teach you how undying you really are.”

  “How quaint.” The monster studied its long fingernails. “A threat.”

  “A vow.”

  “And in sight of God and his Seven Martyrs,” the monster quoted, “I do here vow; Let the dark know my name and despair. So long as it burns, I am the flame. So long as it bleeds, I am the blade. So long as it sins, I am the saint. And I am silver.”

  Gabriel felt a wave of soft and poisonous nostalgia. It seemed a lifetime had passed since he’d last heard those words, ringing in the stained-glass light of San Michon. A prayer for vengeance and violence. A promise to a god who’d never truly listened. But to hear them repeated in a place like this, from the lips of one of them …

  “For the love of the Almighty, sit,” the coldblood sighed. “Before you fall.”

  Gabriel could feel the monster’s will pressing on him, all light in the room now gathered in its eyes. He could almost hear its whisper, teeth tickling his ear, promising sleep after the longest road, cool water to wash the blood from his hands, and a warm, quiet dark to make him forget the shape of all he’d given and lost.

  But he thought of his lady’s face. The color of her lips the last time he kissed her.

  And he stood.

  “What do you want, coldblood?”

  The last breath of sunset had fled the sky, the scent of long-dead leaves kissed Gabriel’s tongue. The want had arrived in earnest, and the need was on its way. The thirst traced cold fingers up his spine, spread black wings about his shoulders. How long had it been since he smoked? Two days? Three?

  God in heaven, he’d kill his own fucking mother for a taste …

  “As I told you,” the coldblood replied, “I am Her Grace’s historian. Keeper of her lineage and master of her library. Fabién Voss is dead, thanks to your tender ministrations. Now that the other Courts of the Blood have begun bending the knee, my mistress has turned her mind toward preservation. And so, before the Last Silversaint dies, before all knowledge of your order is swept into an unmarked grave, my pale Empress Margot has, in her infinite generosity, offered opportunity for you to speak.”

  Jean-François smiled with wine-stain lips.

  “She wishes to hear your story, Chevalier.”

  “Your kind never really hold the knack for jesting, do you?” Gabriel asked. “You leave it in the dirt the night you die. Along with whatever passed for your fucking soul.”

  “Why would I jest, de León?”

  “Animals often sport with their food.”

  “If my Empress wished sport, they would hear your screams all the way to Alethe.”

  “How quaint.” Gabriel studied his broken fingernails. “A threat.”

  The monster inclined its head. “Touché.”

  “Why would I waste my last hours on earth telling a story nobody on earth gives a shit about? I’m no one to you. Nothing.”

  “Oh, come.” The thing raised one eyebrow. “The Black Lion? The man who survived the crimson snows of Augustin? Who burned a thousand kith to ashes and pressed the Mad Blade to the throat of the Forever King himself?” Jean-François tutted like a school madam with an unruly student. “You were the greatest of your order. The only one who yet lives. Those oh so broad shoulders are ill-suited for the mantle of modesty, Chevalier.”

  Gabriel watched the coldblood stalking between lies and flattery like a wolf on the pin-bright scent of blood. All the while, he pondered the question of what it truly wanted, and why he wasn’t already dead. And finally …

  “This is about the Grail,” Gabriel realized.

  The monster’s face was so still, it actually seemed
carved of marble. But Gabriel supposed he saw a ripple in that dark stare.

  “The Grail is destroyed,” it replied. “What care we for the cup now?”

  Gabriel tilted his head and spoke by rote:

  “From holy cup comes holy light;

  “The faithful hand sets world aright.

  “And in the Seven Martyrs’ sight,

  “Mere man shall end this endless night.”

  A cold chuckle rang on bare stone walls. “I am a chronicler, de León. History is of interest to me, not mythology. Save your callow superstitions for the cattle.”

  “You’re lying, coldblood. Dead tongues heeded are Dead tongues tasted. And if you believe for one moment that I’ll betray…”

  His voice faded, then failed entirely. Though the monster never seemed to move at all, it now held one hand outstretched. And there, on the snow-white plane of its upturned palm, lay a glass phial of reddish-brown dust. Like a powder of chocolat and crushed rose petals. The temptation he’d known was coming.

  “A gift,” the monster said, removing the stopper.

  Gabriel could smell the powdered blood from where he stood. Thick and rich and copper sweet. His skin tingled at the scent. His lips parted in a sigh.

  He knew what the monsters wanted. He knew one taste would only make him thirsty for more. Still, he heard himself speak as if from far away. And if all the years and all the blood had not long ago broken his heart, it surely would have broken then.

  “I lost my pipe … In the Charbourg, I…”

  The coldblood produced a fine bone pipe from within its frockcoat, placed it and the phial on the small table. And glowering, it gestured to the chair opposite.

  “Sit.”

  And finally, wretch that he was, Gabriel de León obeyed.

  “Help yourself, Chevalier.”

  The pipe was in his hand before he knew it, and he poured a helping of the sticky powder into the bowl, trembling so fiercely he almost dropped his prize. The coldblood’s eyes were fixed upon Gabriel’s hands as he worked; the scars and calluses and beautiful tattoos. A wreath of skulls was inked atop the silversaint’s right hand, a weave of roses upon his left. The word P A T I E N C E was etched across his fingers below his knuckles. The ink was dark against his pale skin, edged with a metallic sheen.