Empire of the Vampire

by Jay Kristoff

  “‘I feel thee!’ Danton roared out in the dark. ‘I feel thee in their minds, girl! Shall their lives pay the forfeit of thy courage? Shall their blood stain thy hands like thy Saoirse? Thy Bellamy? Thy Rafa? I shall take thee anyway, girl! I am a Prince of Forever, and forever shall I hunt thee! Ask thy dear Gabriel what in the end that means!’

  “I drew Ashdrinker from her sheath, roaring into the wind.

  “‘You don’t get to bleat about courage and threaten children in the same breath, coward! And you set one foot inside this city, I’ll teach you how short forever can be!’

  “Danton looked along the walls, shaking his head sadly.

  “‘Oh, de León. I will not need to set foot in there at all.’

  “He raised his voice, calling over the clawing wind.

  “‘One night I gift thee, Aveléne! Let it not be said Danton Voss is without mercy. Amorrow shall I return with all hell’s fury in my wake! If thou wouldst still deny me my prize, I shall make red slaughter of thee all! And those who rise thereafter? Dogs shalt thou be! Fed only the dregs of carcasses long rotten, lower than worms, for all eternity!’

  “He looked to me, black eyes like yawning pits in his skull.

  “‘For now, behold what becomes of those who defy me.’

  “One of the highbloods came forth—the tall Nordlund brute with thick dark hair, carrying a figure over his shoulder. It was wrapped in homespun cloth, bound in chains, bloodstained and filthy. I knew who it was before the sackcloth was torn from his face, before his body was thrown into the snow, still wrapped in irons, tongue blackened and long fangs glinting as he opened his rotten mouth and moaned.

  “‘Rafa…’ I whispered.

  “The old priest lay in the grey, gabbling nonsense as Danton pressed his boot to the back of his head and forced it down into the snow. ‘In one night shall I return, Aveléne. Consider carefully, if thou wouldst live to see nights thereafter.’

  “He stepped back, back into the shadows at the torchlight’s shivering edge. The dark seemed to swell, reaching out and swallowing him whole. The highbloods slunk back after him, hungry eyes fixed upon the walls. I heard the multitude of wretched retreating with their masters, leaving only one behind, wrapped in chains, staring up with soulless eyes at the folk on the walls and screaming in mindless hunger.

  “‘Oh, God…’

  “I turned and saw Dior behind me, looking with horror at the fallen priest.

  “‘Oh, Rafa…’

  “The old man howled, thrashing against the chains they’d wrapped him in. It had been a day or two before he Became, by the look of him—the intellect, the wit, the will, gone the way of all flesh. Only the hunger remained now. The hunger and the hate, shining in his gaze as it roamed the walls, falling at last on Dior and me. He roared again, too weak and starving to break his bonds. But I knew, and she knew it, too—if there were no chains or steel or walls between us, he’d drink us both to dying.

  “‘We can’t leave him like that,’ Dior whispered.

  “She looked down to the old man, twisting and howling in the snow. Tears shone on her cheeks as she turned to me, a silent plea in her eyes. And unable to stand it any longer, I snatched a bow from the watchman beside me, lit one of his tallow arrows in the brazier, drew the string back to my lips. Poor Rafa looked to me, and beyond the madness and murder in his eyes, I like to think that whatever was left of him inside might have nodded, might have begged me, do it, do it.

  “‘Better to be a bastard than a fool,’ I whispered.

  “The arrow flew true. The flames spread on those bloodstained robes, the undying flesh beyond. I gave the bow back to its owner, took Dior’s hand to draw her away from the sight. But she forced herself to stay, to watch, to breathe the smoke and bear witness to Rafa’s end. And when it was over, when naught but ashes remained, she looked to the folk around her. Every man and woman on those walls, gazing now to her, weighing her in their minds. They knew nothing of what she was, what she could be, only that she and I had brought this peril to their door.

  “Aaron caught my eye, glanced back up the hill.

  “‘Perhaps you two had best await us in the keep, brother.’

  “I nodded. ‘Come along, Dior.’

  “She looked at me as I squeezed her hand, tears for poor Rafa shining in her eyes. And together, we walked through the murmuring crowd, back up to that old château and whatever safety now lay within. Behind us, the priest’s remains smoldered in the snow, the smoke rising slow toward the sky. But, as always, heaven was silent.

  “And beyond the scent of char and ashes, I caught it then.

  “Just a whisper on the wind that set my heart racing.

  “The scent of death.

  “Death and silverbell.”

  XVII

  A SHOULDER TO CRY ON

  “‘YOUR HEAD IS so far up your arse, that lump in your throat must be your fucking nose.’

  “‘You can’t leave, Dior.’

  “‘Well, I sure as hell can’t stay, Gabriel!’

  “We were stood in my bedchamber, glowering at each other. A fire was blazing in the hearth, the curtains open to the night outside. Through the window, I could see the chapel in the courtyard where I’d been wed, and beyond, braziers burning on the walls of Aveléne, illuminating the brave souls standing watch. But every now and then, one would cast their gaze up toward the keep, scowling black or muttering to a comrade. I knew the words they spoke. The fear they fought. But I didn’t care.

  “‘You leave the shelter of these walls, you’re giving that sonofabitch exactly what he wants. You might as well tie a bow around your throat and deliver yourself to the Forever King!’

  “‘I can’t ask these people to die for me, Gabe!’

  “‘You’re not asking! Aaron’s commanding! They’re soldiers, that’s what they do!’

  “‘They’re not soldiers!’ she shouted. ‘They’re fathers and mothers! Sons and daughters! You heard what Danton will to do to them if they stand against him!’

  “‘He’s saying that to get inside their heads. The Beast won’t fight a battle when he can have you handed over without him risking his skin! I’ve been killing vampires half my life, and I tell you now, there is no one more afraid of dying than things who live forever!’

  “‘Tell that to the people who are going to die on those walls.’

  “‘Mighty fucking Redeemer, will you listen to me? You’ve seen the defenses Aaron and Baptiste have built. Every single one of those deathless bastards is shitting blood at the thought of hitting these walls. Danton wants you to blink! He wants someone to break!’

  “‘And who says someone won’t? You think I matter more to those people than their own children? Who says they’re not gearing up right now to give me over?’

  “‘Let them try,’ I growled, hand on Ashdrinker’s hilt. ‘Let them fucking try.’

  “‘I am not going to hide up here like a rabbit while strangers risk their lives for me!’

  “‘So where will you go, then?’ I demanded. ‘Out into the snow on foot? San Michon is two hundred miles up the Mère, and they’d run you down before you got twenty!’

  “‘I don’t know, I didn’t kill these things for a living!’

  “‘That’s right, I did! And I say the safest place for you is exactly where you are!’

  “‘I won’t have it! Enough blood has been spilled on my account! Saoirse, Chloe, Bel, Rafa.’ Her voice broke then, and Dior turned away from me, eyes on the flames. ‘Sweet Mothermaid … didn’t you see what they d-did to him?’

  “My voice fell, my temper with it. ‘… Of course I did.’

  “I looked out beyond the window, and saw a pale shadow moving in the dark. The scent of rosewater and silverbell hung in the air with my whisper.

  “‘It’s what they do, Dior. They hurt you through the people you care about.’

  “I saw her outside now, waiting for me. Floating, as if submerged beneath black water, arms open wide as she
trailed her fingernails across the glass. Pale as moonlight. Cold as death. No breath on the window as she drifted closer.

  “‘My lion.’

  “I turned my back, looking instead to the girl by the fire. ‘I can’t have more blood on my hands, Gabriel,’ she declared. ‘I can’t ask these people to die for me. I won’t.’

  “‘This is war, Dior. Peasants starve so soldiers can eat. Soldiers bleed so generals can win. Generals fall so emperors can keep their thrones. It’s the way it’s always been.’

  “‘I’m not a soldier, or a general, or an emperor.’

  “‘You’re the Holy Grail of San Michon.’

  “‘You don’t even believe that! That’s not what this is about, Gabe, and you know it!’

  “‘I know you need to grow the fuck up!’ I roared. ‘Because if you are what Chloe believed, this is only the start of it! And it may not be just, it may not be right, but some pieces on the board just count for more than others! It’s no matter how many pawns were lost when the game is done! All that matters is who fucking won!’

  “Dior looked at me hard, firelight gleaming in her eyes.

  “‘I’m sure that’s poor solace for the pawn’s wife. Or husband.’

  “She glanced down at the ink on my hands, swallowing hard.

  “‘… Or father.’

  “I scowled at that. ‘What are you—’

  “‘I heard you and Aaron talking in the chapel.’ She’d stopped her pacing now, standing etched against the dancing firelight. ‘And I know what Danton was trying to say to you when he found out I was a girl…’ She shook her head, tears shining in her eyes. ‘Oh, Gabriel, you’re not destined to lose another?’

  “‘Dead tongues heeded are Dead tongues tasted,’ I growled.

  “‘You told Aaron they were at home. Astrid and Patience.’

  “‘They are.’

  “‘Then why would you leave them?’

  “‘If you were eavesdropping, you already know.’

  “‘You’re going to kill the Forever King.’

  “‘That’s right.’

  “‘But why? You left this war behind half a lifetime ago.’ She clenched her teeth, lips trembling. ‘I’m sorry, Gabriel. I truly am. But what you’re doing isn’t fair.’

  “‘Fair, what’s not f—’

  “‘I know why you want to protect me now, when you never gave a damn about me before. I know why you treat me different now you know I’m a girl.’ The tears were falling now, streaming down her face as she glanced to the ink below my knuckles. ‘And I’m sorry, but you can’t ask me to do this. I’m not her. I’m not them. I can’t fill that hole. I never will.’

  “My hands were fists at my sides. Her pale shadow pressed against the glass behind me. Her soft whisper inside my head.

  “‘Don’t listen, love…’

  “‘I don’t—’

  “‘You lied to Aaron,’ Dior said, her voice breaking. ‘I know what happened to them.’

  “‘Don’t go someplace I can’t follow…’

  “I turned back to the window, the shadow floating in the night beyond. Her skin was pale as the stars in a yesterday sky, her beauty of edgeless winters and lightless dawns, and my heart hurt to see her—that fearful kind of hurt you couldn’t hope to bear, save for the emptiness it would leave if you put it behind you.

  “‘Tell me you love me,’ she begged.

  “I turned to look at the girl, jaw clenched. ‘You stop this now.’

  “‘The Worst Day,’ she insisted. ‘The day he found you. That’s why you left home, why you’ve come all this way. Why you drink. Why you don’t believe anymore. All of it. This isn’t about me, none of it is. It’s about them, Gabe. Astrid and Patience.’

  “‘Promise you’ll never leave me.’

  “‘Astrid and Patience are at home, Dior.’

  “‘I know. I know they are.’

  “She breathed deep, tears spilling down her cheeks. Eyes that saw the hurts of the world, and a heart that wanted to fix them. But she couldn’t fix this. No one could.

  “‘That’s where you buried them, Gabriel.’

  “The words were a knife to my chest. I felt my teeth clench so hard I feared they’d crack. A war drum beat in my temples, heart rushing as I turned to that shadow watching me from beyond the glass. She looked at me with pleading eyes, long hair floating about her like ribbons of silk, tearing now between my fingertips.

  “‘Don’t,’ she begged me. ‘Don’t let me go, love…’

  “The taste of betrayal was venom in my mouth, my fury white-hot in my chest. I looked down to the blade at my waist, that silver dame on the crossguard. And I tore Ashdrinker from her sheath, starsteel glittering in the firelight.

  “‘You told her?’

  “Gabriel, n-never.

  “‘You talk about them in the past tense, Gabe,’ Dior whispered. ‘You talk in your sleep. All the time. About that day. The Worst Day.’

  “‘Shut up,’ I whispered.

  “Gabriel, p-put me down. Ye are upset, upset.

  “‘Gabe, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you…’

  “‘My lion … please…’

  “‘Shut up.’

  “Think now, what ye do. Think of what she—

  “‘I hear you talking to her sometimes. I know it hel—’

  “‘You promised you’d never leave me. You—’

  “‘SHUT UP!’

  “I roared at the top of my lungs, turning and hurling the blade through the window. The glass blew outward, a million glittering pieces falling like snow as the sword sailed through the empty black outside. The wind blew through the shattered panes, and I slipped to my knees. Looking into the dark where she’d never been.

  “Because she was at home.

  “Where else would she be?

  “I felt it rising inside me, pressing the walls of the dam I’d built. The denial, the drink, the smoke—all of it, anything to keep it at bay. But still, I stared out that broken window, that hole they’d left behind. I felt Dior kneel beside me, heedless of the broken glass as her fingers slipped into mine. My fangs had torn my lips, blood in my mouth, hair about my face as I bent double and tried to hold it inside.

  “‘I don’t want to hurt you, Gabriel,’ Dior whispered. ‘I know what they meant to you. I can’t let other people die for me because you’re afraid to lose someone else you care about. I can’t be what you want me to be. But I am your friend. And I can be more than just a hill to die on.’

  “‘What else is there?’ I whispered.

  “‘A shoulder to cry on.’

  “She shrugged as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

  “‘If you want. I’ll not judge you ill for it.’

  “I felt the words behind my teeth. Trying in vain to swallow them.

  “To speak it would make it real.

  “To speak it would be to live it again.

  “But still …

  “But still.

  “I spoke.”

  XVIII

  THE WORST DAY

  “IT WAS AN ordinary day. I’d spent it working in the loft of the lighthouse. The brick was warm under my bare feet. The sweat cool on my skin. I could see our house below, the spire of stone it was built upon, falling down into the ocean. Patience and Astrid were feeding the chickens together. The water was almost blue. That’s the awful part about it: the worst days of your life start out just like any other.

  “It’d been fifteen years since the Battle of the Twins. My service in San Michon felt a lifetime ago. The war was creeping closer, year by year, but we’d gone as far south as we could. I hadn’t smoked the sacrament in ten years. Despite all they’d warned me of—the thirst within, my father’s curse—all of it was held in check by the bliss Astrid nightly gifted me from her veins, and in the simple joy of her arms. The Forever King’s war, the things I’d been and done—it was almost far enough away to forget, and in truth, I was happy to let myself. And that’s the thing th
at wakes me up at night, see. I should’ve known there’d come a reckoning.

  “He told me he had forever, after all.

  “I don’t know how he found us. Nor how long ago he’d learned where we hid. Maybe he’d always known—allowing me a few years to taste happy, to delude myself into thinking he might forget. I know only that it was springtime when he came. The breeze off the ocean was soft and cool. The silverbell trying to bloom among the stones.

  “We had a rule to always be inside by dark. Always. But Patience loved the scent; Astrid, too. And while my wife finished in the kitchen and I set the table for supper, Patience had gone outside to gather flowers for the centerpiece. Just for a minute. That’s all it takes for your world to turn upside down, you know. A second’s distraction. A single moment that haunts you every moment for the rest of your life.

  “The waves were crashing on the rocks, but there were no gulls singing in the air. That was what crept on me first; a small silence, a tiny note of wrongness that planted a sliver of ice in my gut. Astrid was singing in the kitchen, and what was left of the sun was pressing dark red lips to the horizon, and I fell slowly still, listening. And that splinter of ice became a stone, sitting cold in the pit of my belly as Astrid called over the song of the sea.

  “‘Patience, dinner!’

  “Not a sound, save shushing waves and whispering wind and the silence where the gull song should’ve been. And I felt it then; the dread I should’ve cherished all those waking years. The tiny part of me that had known, that had always known, bid me walk to the fireplace, to reach to the dark wooden plaque above it, to the blade I’d hung there so many years before with a prayer I’d never need draw her again.

  “But as my hand closed on Ashdrinker’s hilt, I heard it, quiet on the breeze. A voice soft as silverbell blooms, laced with a brittle note of fear. ‘Mama?’

  “Astrid turned to the door. ‘Patience?’

  “‘Mama?’

  “And there came a knocking, gentle as feathers upon the door. Three raps on the wood—I remember that clear as daylight: One. Two. Three. And I felt a heat then, like I’d not felt in years; a fire long dormant now flaring like a phoenix in the ashes of what I’d been. I looked to the ink on my hands, and the icy stone in my belly became a knife as my aegis began to glow. And our eyes met, my love’s and mine, across the flagstones of the home we’d built, and in that moment, I think a part of us both knew.