‘I told you I’d make you fucking scream, leech,’ he spat.
A roar of fury rang out as the cell door was flung wide, and Meline flew into the room. She held a gleaming dagger in hand, eyes burning with the ardour of a mother for her child, a lover for her beloved, a thrall for her master, plunging her blade through Gabriel’s greatcoat and into his back once, twice, three times. The silversaint turned and slapped the woman hard enough to send her sailing across the room, slamming Jean-Fran?ois into the wall again. But as pain lanced through his chest, bubbling now into his mouth, salty red, he realized the blade she’d stabbed him with was no mere shank of pig iron.
‘S-silversteel,’ he gasped.
Jean-Fran?ois burst apart in his hands, the vampire’s body collapsing into a tumbling, jumbling mass. As Gabriel staggered backwards, pink froth at his lips, he realized he was holding only the vampire’s feathered mantle and frockcoat; dark velvet embroidered with golden curlicues. A horde of rats was swarming about his feet now, spilling from the legs of the historian’s britches, the sleeves of his fine coat, rushing in a flood from the cell. Meline had rolled to her feet, clutching the historie to her bosom as she dashed from the room and slammed the door, a few rats chittering and squealing as they squeezed below the jamb. And wheezing, drooling blood, Gabriel found himself alone in the cell once more.
The Last Silversaint limped to the fallen table, took up the bone pipe, the glittering sanctus phial. Loading the bowl with a healthy serving of the sacrament, Gabriel sat cross-legged among the upturned furniture and broken bottles, long hair draped about his face, leaning towards the puddle of burning lantern oil. His belly thrilled as it began: that sublime alchemy, that dark chymistrie, the powdered blood bubbling now, colour melting to scent, the aroma of hollyroot and copper filling the cell. And Gabriel pressed his lips to that pipe with more passion than he’d ever kissed a lover, and oh sweet God in heaven, breathed it down.
The hatch across the barred window in the door slammed aside. Glancing up, Gabriel saw a pair of chocolat brown eyes, bloodshot with pain and rage and stained by bloody tears.
He raised his pipe and gifted Jean-Fran?ois a grim smile.
‘Can’t blame a man for trying.’
The historian narrowed his eyes and hissed.
Gabriel breathed a plume of bloody smoke into the air.
‘Until tomorrow, vampire.’
DAWN
IT WAS THE twenty-seventh year of daysdeath in the realm of the Forever King, and his murderer was still waiting to die.
The killer stood watch at a thin window, hands stained with new blood and ashes pale as starlight. The floor was scattered with broken glass, splintered furniture, the stone under his feet marked by soot and spilled ink. The door was iron-clad, heavy, still locked like a secret. The killer watched the sun rise from its unearned rest, and pressing a thin bone pipe to his lips, he remembered how good hell tastes.
The ch?teau below him was sleeping now. Monsters slinking back to beds of cold earth and slipping off the fa?ade that they were anything close to human. The air outside was pale with flurries of falling snow, with the chill of winter unending. Thrall soldiers clad in dark steel still patrolled the battlements below, and the killer’s lip still curled as he watched them. But in truth, he knew who was truly the slave.
He looked down at his hands. Hands that had slain things monstrous. Hands that had saved an empire. Hands that had allowed the last hope for his species to slip and shatter like glass upon the stone.
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.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks and bloody kisses to the following: Peter, Lily, Joe, Sarah, Jeff, Paul, Tom, Young, Jennifer, Lisa, Andy, George, Tracey, Rafal, Lena and all at St. Martin’s Press, Natasha, Vicky, Jack, Micaela, Claire, Sarah, Jaime, Fleur, Isabel, Alice, Fionnuala, Robyn, and all at HarperVoyager UK, Michael, Thomas, and all at HarperCollins Australia, the amazing Marco, Sam, and all my foreign publishers, Bonnieeee, Jason, Kerby, Virginia, Orrsome, Cat, Lindsay, Ursula, Piéra, Fiona, Laure, Josh, Tracey, Samantha, Steven, Toves, Catriona, Tiffany, Clarissa, Sara, Minh, Morgana, Ash, Bill, George, Anne, Stephen, Ray, Robin, China, William, George, Pat, Anne, Nic, Cary, Neil, Amie, Anthony, Joe, Laini, Mark, Steve, Stewart, Tim, Chris, Stefan, Chris, Brad, Marc, Beej, Rafe, Weez, Paris, Jim, Eli, Tom, Joel, Astrid, Ludovico, Mark, Randy, Elliot, CJ, Mitch, Pete （RIP）， Tom （RIP）， Dan, Sam, Marcus, Chris, Winston, Matt, Robb, Oli, Robert, Maynard, Ronnie, Corey, Chris （RIP）， Anthony, Dez, Chino, Jonathan, Ian, Briton, Trent, Phil, Sam, Tony, Kath, Kylie, Nicole, Kurt, Ross, Jack, Max, Poppy, Leila and Indy, my readers for the love, my enemies for the fuel, the baristas of Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, Lyon, London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Roma, Milano, Venezia, and most importantly Praha.
Finally and especially, Amanda, my blood and fire.