Empire of the Vampire

by Jay Kristoff

  The Last Silversaint stretched his legs out, glanced at the vampire’s sketch.

  “Funny thing was, my papa was broad and stocky, and I was already tall by then. His skin was tanned, and mine was pale as ghosts. I could see Mama in the curve of my lips and the grey of my eyes. But truth was, Papa and I looked nothing alike.

  “She took off her ring—the only treasure she’d brought from her father’s home. It was silver, cast with the crest of the House de León; two lions flanking a shield and two crossed swords. And she slipped it onto my finger and squeezed my hand tight.

  “‘The blood of lions flows in your veins,’ she told me that day. ‘And one day as a lion is worth ten thousand as a lamb. Never forget that you are my son. But there is a hunger in you. One you must beware, my sweet Gabriel. Lest it devour you whole.’”

  “She sounds a formidable woman,” Jean-François said.

  “She was. She walked the muddy streets of Lorson like a highborn lady through the gold-gilt halls of the Emperor’s court. Even though I was bastard born, she told me to wear my noble name like a crown. To spit pure venom at anyone who claimed I’d no right to it. My mama knew herself, and there’s a fearsome power in that. Knowing exactly who you are and exactly what you’re capable of. Most folk would call it arrogance, I suppose. But most folk are fucking fools.”

  “Do your priests not preach from their pulpits of the grace that lies in humility?” Jean-François asked. “Do they not promise the meek shall inherit the earth?”

  “I’ve lived thirty-five years with the name my mother gave me, coldblood, and never once have I seen the meek inherit anything but the table scraps of the strong.”

  Gabriel glanced out the window to the mountains beyond. The dark, sinking like a sinner to its knees. The horrors that roamed it unchecked. The tiny sparks of humanity, guttering like candles in a hungry wind, soon to be extinguished forever.

  “Besides, who the fuck would want to inherit an earth like this?”

  II

  THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  SILENCE CREPT INTO the room on slippered feet. Gabriel stared, lost in thought and the memory of choirsong and silverbell and black cloth parting to reveal smooth, pale curves, until the soft tapping of quill to page broke his reverie.

  “Perhaps we should begin with daysdeath,” the monster said. “You must have been only a child when the shadow first covered the sun.”

  “Oui. Just a boy.”

  “Tell me of it.”

  Gabriel shrugged. “It was a day like any other. A few nights prior, I remember being woken by a trembling in the ground. As if the earth were stirring in her sleep. But that day seemed nothing special. I was working the forge with Papa when it began; that shadow rising into the sky like molasses, turning shining blue to sullen grey and the sun as dark as coal. The whole village gathered in the square and watched as the air grew chill and the daylight failed. We feared witchery, of course. Fae magik. Devilry. But like all things, we thought it would pass.

  “You can imagine the terror that set in as the weeks and months went by and the darkness wasn’t abating. We called it by many names at first: the Blackening, the Veiling, the First Revelation. But the astrologers and philosophers in the court of Emperor Alexandre III named it ‘Daysdeath,’ and in the end, so did we. On his pulpit at mass, Père Louis would preach that all we needed was faith in the Almighty to see us through. But it’s hard to believe in the Almighty’s light when the sun is no brighter than a dying candle, and the spring is as cold as wintersdeep.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Eight. Almost nine.”

  “And when you realized we kith had begun walking during the day?”

  “I was thirteen when I laid eyes on my first wretched.”

  The historian tilted his head. “We prefer the term foulblood.”

  “Apologies, vampire,” the silversaint smiled. “Have I somehow given impression that I give a solitary speck of shit for what you prefer?”

  Jean-François simply stared. Again, Gabriel was struck with the notion that the monster was marble, not flesh. He could feel the black radiance of the vampire’s will, the horror of what he was, and the lie of what he appeared—beautiful, young, sensuous—all at war in his head. In some candle-dim corner of his mind, Gabriel was aware just how easily they could hurt him. How swiftly they could dispel his illusion that he was in control here.

  But that’s the problem with taking away all a man has, isn’t it?

  When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.

  “You were thirteen,” Jean-François said.

  “When I saw my first wretched,” Gabriel nodded. “It’d been five years since daysdeath. At its brightest, the sun was still only a dark smudge behind the stain on the sky. The snows fell grey instead of white now, and smelled like brimstone. Famine swept the land like a scythe—we lost half our village to hunger or cold in those years. I was still a boy, and I’d already seen more corpses than I could count. Our noons were dim as dusk, and our dusks as dark as midnights, and every meal was mushrooms or fucking potato, and no one, not priests nor philosophers nor madmen scrawling in shit, could explain how long it must last. Père Louis preached this was a test of our faith. Fools we were, we believed him.

  “And then Amélie and Julieta went missing.”

  Gabriel paused a moment, lost to the dark within. Echoes of laughter in his head, a pretty smile and long black hair and eyes just as grey as his own.

  “Amélie?” Jean-François asked. “Julieta?”

  “Amélie was my middle sister. My baby sister Celene the youngest, me the eldest. And I loved them both, as dear and close to me as my sweet mama. Ami had long dark hair and pale skin like me, but in temperament, we were as far apart as dawn and dusk. She’d lick her thumb and rub it on the crease between my brows, warn me not to frown so much. Sometimes I’d see her dancing, as if to music only she could hear. She’d tell us stories of an eve, when Celene and I lay down to sleep. Ami liked the frightening ones best. Wicked faelings and dark witchery and doomed princesses.

  “Julieta’s famille lived next door. Twelve years old she was, same as Amélie. She and my sister teased me fierce when they were together. But one day when we were in the wood picking white buttons alone, I stubbed my toe and took the Almighty’s name in vain, and Julieta threatened to tell Père Louis of my blasphemy unless I kissed her.

  “I protested, of course. Girls were terrifying to me back then. But Père Louis stood at his pulpit every prièdi and spat of hell and damnation, and a little kiss seemed preferable to the punishment I’d suffer if Julieta told him of my sin.

  “She was taller than me. I had to stand on tiptoe to reach. I remember our noses getting entirely in the way, but finally, I pressed my lips to hers, warm as the long-lost sun. Soft and sighing. She smiled at me afterward. Said I should blaspheme more often. That was my first kiss, coldblood. Stolen beneath dying trees for fear of the Almighty.

  “It was late summer when the pair disappeared. Vanished one day while out gathering chanterelles. It wasn’t unusual for Amélie to be away longer than she said. Mama would warn her about waltzing through life with her head in the clouds, and my sister would reply, ‘At least I can feel the sun up there.’ But when dusk fell, we knew something was wrong.

  “I searched with the men of the village. My baby sister Celene came too—she was fierce as lions, even at eleven years old, and nobody dared tell her no. After a week, Papa’s voice was broken from shouting. Mama wouldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. We never found their bodies. But ten days later, they found us.”

  Gabriel traced the curve of his eyelid, feeling the motion of every single lash beneath his fingertip. Chill wind shifted the long hair about his shoulders.

  “I was stacking fuel for the forge with Celene when Amélie and Julieta came home. The coldblood that killed them threw their corpses in a bog after it was done, and they were filthy from the water, their dresses sodden with mud. They stood in the street o
utside our cottage, fingers entwined. Julieta’s eyes had gone death-white, and those lips that’d been warm as the sun were black, peeling back from sharp little teeth as she smiled at me.

  “Julieta’s mother ran out from their house, weeping for joy. She gathered her girl in her arms and praised God and all Seven Martyrs for bringing her home. And Julieta tore out her throat right in front of us. Just … fucking peeled it open like ripe fruit. Ami fell on the body too, pawing and hissing with a voice that wasn’t hers.” Gabriel swallowed thickly. “I’ve never forgot the sounds she made as she began to drink.

  “The men of the village toasted my valor for what came next. And I wish I could say it was courage I felt as my sister pushed her face into that flood, painting her cheeks and lips dark red. But I look back now, and I know what truly made me stand my ground as little Celene ran screaming.”

  “Love?” the coldblood asked.

  The Last Silversaint shook his head, entranced by the lantern flame.

  “Hate,” he finally said. “Hate for what my sister and Julieta had become. For the thing that had done it to them. But more and most, hate for the thought that this moment was how I’d always remember those girls. Not Julieta’s stolen kiss beneath those dying trees. Not Amélie telling us stories at night. But this. The pair on all fours, lapping blood from the mud like starving dogs. Hate was all I knew at that moment. All its promise and all its power. It took root in me on that chill summer day, and in truth, I don’t think it’s ever let me go.”

  Jean-François turned his eyes to the moth, still beating in vain upon the lantern glass. “Too much hate will burn a man to cinders, Chevalier.”

  “Oui. But at least he’ll die warm.”

  The Last Silversaint’s eyes flickered to his tattooed hands, fingers curling closed.

  “I couldn’t have hurt my sister. I loved her even then. And so, I picked up the wood axe and I brought it down, right on Julieta’s neck. The blow was solid enough. But I was only thirteen, and even a full-grown man will struggle severing a human head, let alone a coldblood’s. The thing that had been Julieta fell into the mud, pawing at the axe in its skull. And Amélie lifted her head, bloody drool hanging from her chin. I looked into her eyes, and it was like staring into the face of hell. Not the fire and brimstone Père Louis promised from his pulpit, just … emptiness.

  “Fucking nothingness.

  “My sister opened her mouth, and I saw her teeth were long and knife-bright. And the girl who told me stories every night before we slept, who danced to music only she could hear, she stood and she hit me.

  “God in heaven, she was strong. I felt nothing until I struck the mud. And then she was straddling my chest, and I could smell rot and fresh blood on her breath, and as her fangs brushed my throat, I knew I was about to die. Looking up into those empty eyes, even as I hated and feared it, I wanted it.

  “I welcomed it.

  “But something in me stirred then. Like a bear waking hungry after winter’s slumber. And as my sister opened her rotten mouth, I seized hold of her throat. God, she was strong enough to grind bone to powder, but still, I pushed her back. And as she pawed my face with bloody fingertips, I felt a heat flood up my arm, tingling across every inch of skin. Something dark. Something deep. And with a shriek that turned my belly to water, Amélie reared back, clutching the bubbling flesh of her throat.

  “Red steam rose off her skin, as if the blood in her veins was boiling. Red tears spilled down her cheeks as she screamed. But by then, Celene’s cries had brought the whole village running. Strong hands grabbed Amélie, threw her back as the alderman pressed a torch to her dress, and she went up like a Firstmas bonfire. Julieta was crawling about with my axe still stuck in her curls as they lit her too, and the sound she made as she burned … God, it was … unholy. And I sat in the mud with Celene crouched beside me, and we watched our sister twirl and spin like a living torch. One last, awful dance. Papa had to hold Mama back from throwing herself onto the blaze. Her screams were louder than Amélie’s.

  “They checked my throat a dozen times, but I’d not a scratch. Celene squeezed my hand, asked if I was well. Some folk looked at me strangely, wondering how I’d survived. But Père Louis proclaimed it a miracle. Declaring God had spared me for greater things.

  “Still, he refused a burial for the girls, the bastard. They’d died unshriven, he said. Their remains were taken to the crossroads and scattered, so they’d never be able to find their way home again. My sister’s grave was to stand forever empty on unhallowed ground, her soul damned for all eternity. For all his praise, I fucking hated Louis for that.

  “I smelled Amélie’s ashes on me for days afterward. I dreamed about her for years. Sometimes Julieta would come with her. The two of them sitting atop me and kissing me all over with black, black lips. But though I’d no idea what had happened to me, or how in God’s name I’d survived, I knew one thing for sure and true.”

  “That the kith were real,” Jean-François said.

  “No. In our hearts, I think we already believed, coldblood. Oh, the powdered lords of Augustin and Coste and Asheve would have thought us backward. But fireside tales in Lorson were always of vampyr. Of duskdancers and faekin and other witchery. Out in the Nordlund provinces, monsters were as real as God and his angels.

  “But the chapel bells had just struck noon when Amélie and Julieta came home. And the day seemed not to bother them at all. We all knew the banes of the Dead. The weapons that kept us safe: fire, silver, but most of all, sunlight.”

  Gabriel paused a moment, lost in thought, eyes of clouded grey.

  “It was the daysdeath, you see? Even years later, in the monastery at San Michon, no silversaint could explain why it happened. Abbot Khalid said a great star had fallen in the east across the sea, and its fires raised a smoke so thick, it blackened the sun. Master Greyhand told us there’d been another war in heaven, and that God had thrown down the rebellious angels with such rancor the earth had been blasted skyward, and hung now in a curtain between his kingdom and hell. But nobody really knew why that veil had covered the sky. Not then, and perhaps not even now.

  “All the folk of my village knew was that our days had become almost dark as night, and the creatures of the night now walked freely in the so-called day. Standing at the crossroads outside Lorson as they scattered my sister’s ashes, holding Celene’s hand as our mother screamed and fucking screamed, I knew. I think some part of us all knew.”

  “Knew what?” Jean-François asked.

  “That this was the beginning of the end.”

  “Take comfort, Chevalier. All things end.”

  Gabriel looked up at that, blood-red eyes glittering.

  “Oui, vampire. All things.”

  III

  THE COLOR OF WANT

  “WHAT CAME NEXT?” Jean-François asked.

  Gabriel took a deep breath. “Mama was never the same after my sister died. I never saw my parents kiss after that. It was as if Amélie’s ghost had finally killed whatever remained between them. Sorrow turned to blame, and blame to anger. I looked after Celene as best I could, but she was growing up a hellion, always looking for trouble and simply making it if she couldn’t find it. Mama was scarred by her grief, hollowed and furious. Papa sought refuge in the bottle, and his fists fell heavier than ever. Split lips and broken fingers.

  “There’s no misery so deep as one you face by yourself. No nights darker than ones you spend alone. But you can learn to live with any weight. Your scars grow thick enough, they become armor. I could feel something building in me, like a seed waiting in cold earth. I thought this was what it felt like to become a man. In truth, I’d no fucking idea what I was becoming.

  “But still, I was growing. I’d sprung up tall, and working the forge had turned me hard as steel. I began noticing the village lasses looking at me that way young girls do, whispering among themselves as I passed by. I didn’t know why at the time, but something about me drew them in. I learned how to turn those
whispers into smiles, and those smiles into something sweeter still. Instead of having kisses stolen, I found them given to me.

  “In my fifteenth winter, I started trysting with a girl named Ilsa, daughter of the alderman, niece of Père Louis himself. Turned out I could be a sneaky little bastard when I chose to be, and I’d steal my way to the alderman’s house at night, climb the dying oak outside Ilsa’s window. I’d whisper to the glass, and she’d invite me in, sinking into desperate, hungry kisses and those clumsy first fumblings that set a young man’s blood afire.

  “But my mama didn’t approve. We didn’t quarrel often, but when it came to Ilsa, God Almighty, we shook the fucking sky. She warned me away from that girl, time and time again. One night we were at table, Papa quietly drowning in his vodka and Celene poking her potato stew while Mama and I raged. Again, she warned of the hunger inside me. To beware, lest it devour me whole.

  “But I was tired of my parents’ fear that I’d make the same mistakes they had. And furious, out of patience, I pointed at Papa and shouted, ‘I’m not him! I am nothing like him!’

  “And Papa looked up at me then, once so handsome, now sodden and soft with drink. ‘Damn right you’re not, you little bastard.’

  “‘Raphael!’ Mama shouted. ‘Do not speak so!’

  “He looked at her, and a bitter, secret smile twisted his lips. And it might have ended there if the lion in me hadn’t been too enraged to let it lie.

  “‘I thank God I am a bastard. Better no father at all than one so worthless as you.’

  “‘Worthless, am I?’ Papa glowered, sliding to his feet. ‘If only you knew the worth I’ve shown, boy. Fifteen years, and I’ve breathed not a word, raising such a sin as you.’

  “‘If I’m a sin, then I’m yours to own. And just because you were fool enough to seed a son in the girl you plowed out of wedlock, doesn’t m—’

  “I got no further. His fist flew as it had hundreds of nights before. Mama screaming as she’d always done. But that night, Papa’s fist never found its mark. Instead, I caught it but a few inches from my face. I was taller than him, but he had arms thick as a baker’s wife. He should’ve been able to swat me like a fly. Instead, I shoved him backward, his eyes wide with shock. My blood was pounding, and as my papa’s skull struck the hearth, that pulse began roaring in the shadows behind my eyes. As he fell, I saw he’d split his scalp upon the mantel. And from the gash spilled a slick of bright and gleaming red.