Empire of the Vampire (Empire of the Vampire, #1)

by Jay Kristoff

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.”

But that’s the problem with taking away all a man has, isn’t it? When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.

“Too much hate will burn a man to cinders, Chevalier.” “Oui. But at least he’ll die warm.”

He built things, and he broke things, my papa. And I realized that perhaps one of the things he’d broken had been me.

I was being swept up in a river, yet even then, I was old enough to know; there’s a difference between those who swim with the flood and those who drown fighting it. And its name is Wisdom.

I have no secrets.’ “‘Then you’re not trying hard enough,’ he chuckled.

“Glory,” Gabriel scoffed. “Tell me something, vampire. If death is so glorious, how is it meted so cheaply and so often by the most worthless of men?”

“The graveyards of the world are full of fools who thought of fear as anything but a friend.”

It’s only in storybooks some little bastard picks up a sword and wields it like he was born to it. The rest of us? We have to work our arses off. And we might not ever taste triumph, but at least we dared to fail.

There are three ways men view the women of the world, Gabriel. Enemies to be overcome. Prizes to be won. Or as people. My advice is choose the latter, my love. Lest they begin considering you the former.

Lost in remembrance of an angel’s eyes, a devil’s smile. Despite the wine, the memory was sharp as broken glass. He feared he’d cut himself if he lingered in it too long. And yet he remained, holding tight as he could.

You feed a man your table scraps, he grows hungry long before he grows thin. And hunger can turn pups into wolves, and kittens into fucking lions.

It’s as Mama always said, ma chérie,’ Astrid smiled. ‘When in a storm, the wise woman prays to God. But she also rows for shore.’

“A life without books is a life not lived.

“Chloe nodded and sighed. ‘What a world this would be, were it not held wholly and solely in the grip of stubborn old men.’ “Astrid scoffed. ‘Oui.’ “‘I venture it’s less to do with the fact they’re men,’ I said. ‘More that they’re old.’

Chloe Sauvage was no lunatic. She was something twice as dangerous. Something I was too back then. But will never be again.” “And what is that, Silversaint?” Gabriel met the vampire’s eyes, a bitter smile on his lips. “A believer.”

‘I’ve known people like you all my life. No matter if it’s the bottle or the needle or the smoke, the same’s true for every one of you. Once that hook’s in your skin, it just drags out the worst in you.’

The world needs bad men, boy. We keep the monsters from the door.’ “‘But that’s the problem, hero. Bad men never realize when the monster is them.’

“All that stood between us now were two words. Strange how so much power, so much peril and promise, resides in so tiny a thing. Two little words can carry weight enough to see empires rise and kingdoms fall. Two little words can begin the end of everything. How many hearts have been made complete by words so small as I do?

It whispered at the edge of hearing, and it pressed lips smooth as silk to your aching brow and told you that though all things must have their ending, so too must then end darkness, and here, now, in this bright and blessed moment, you were alive and breathing.

But you live long enough, you look into the mundane murk of people’s souls often enough, you see Danton didn’t really become anything. He’d just had the shackles of consequence removed. Give someone the power to do anything they want, and they’ll do exactly that. That’s the horrifying part—the only thing holding some folk back from the worst atrocities they can imagine is the fear they might not get away with it.

“And I wondered then: Could goodness come of sin? “And if so, how could it be sin at all?

Your past is stone, but your future is clay. And you decide the shape of the life you’ll make.’

Better to die a man than live a monster, we say. But there are many kinds of monsters in this world, boy. A man does what he must. A monster does what he wills. A man serves his God. A monster serves only himself. And I do not ride with monsters.’

There is a time for grief, and a time for songs, and a time to recall with fondness all that has been and gone. But there is a time for killing too. There is a time for blood, and a time for rage, and a time to close your eyes and become the thing heaven wants you to be.

My wife used to tell me hearts only bruise. They never break. I don’t know if I believe that anymore. I know this world is cruel. That saints and sinners suffer one and the same. I know every time you give a piece of yourself to someone, you risk them breaking it. I know there are some wounds that never truly heal, and sometimes all that’s left of people are their scars. I know time eats us all alive.’

But doesn’t it strike you as a little morbid? Seems to me maybe they should’ve found something that celebrated the days he lived. The words he said. Instead, the symbol of his church is the thing that killed him.’ I shook my head. ‘Always struck me as strange.’

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.

Why I’ll not lose one more drop to this. Why I must see this through to the end. Because I miss them, like a piece of me is missing. And I love them, like love is all I was. And there is nothing I’d not do, no depth to which I’d not sink, no price I wouldn’t pay to have them back and here with me. Because they were my all and my everything. “‘But they’re gone.

“I felt a wave of nostalgia, that sweet poison seeping into my heart, that vain and selfish desire to dwell among glories of the past, when days were better and simpler, when all the world seemed bright, tinted rose-red in the halls of memory. But it’s a fool who looks with more fondness to the days behind than the ones ahead. And it’s a man drenched in defeat who sings that sad refrain; that things were better then.

This, too, was a strange immortality, I realized. Poems, stories, ideas, frozen forever in time. The simple wonder of books.

“It’s a fool who plays at the precipice, but only the prince of fools blames another when he falls.