The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith;Clay Griffith;Susan Griffith

an imprint of Prometheus Books
Amherst, NY

Published 2010 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books The Greyfriar. Copyright © 2010 by Clay Griffith and Susan Griffith. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover illustration © Chris McGrath. Inquiries should be addressed to Pyr 59 John Glenn Drive Amherst, New York 14228-2119 VOICE: 716-691-0133 FAX: 716-691-0137 WWW.PYRSF.COM

14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Griffith, Clay. The Greyfriar I by Clay Griffith and Susan Griffth. p. cm. -(Vampire Empire ; bk. 1) ISBN 978-1-61614-247-6 (pbk.) 1. Queens-Fiction. 2. Kings and rulers-Fiction. 3. Steampunk fiction. 1. Griffith, Susan, 1963- II. Title. PS3607.R5486G74 2010 823'.6-dc22 2010029653 Printed in the United States of America

0 OUR PARENTS, Melida & Larry and Anne & Motte, who
always believed and supported.

Tremendous gratitude to our initial audience who provided valuable
insight: Vivian, June, Sean, and Victor. May we all fondly remember 01'
Thomas. Also, thanks to Ann Collette of the Helen Rees Agency and
Lou Anders of Pyr Books.

OUR HIGHNESS WOULD be safer below. It's getting
dark. Vampires are very unpredictable."

"Thank you, Colonel. I believe I'll stay on deck a bit yet. It's quite
warm. That should keep the beasties quiet. Yes?"

Princess Adele noticed a slight smile on the dark, chiseled face of
Colonel Mehmet Anhalt, who stood close to her, as was his habit. Under
her gaze, the short but powerfully built Gurkha officer covered his
bemusement by clearing his throat and offering his brass telescope. "In
that case, Your Highness, would you care to have a look?"

"Yes, I should. Thank you, Colonel Anhalt." Adele crossed the quarterdeck of HMS Ptolemy and leapt with girlish pleasure down three steps
to the ship's waist. A crowd of redjackets from her household guard
parted to make a path to the port rail. A stiff breeze rolled the heavy
skirt around her calves and whipped the ends of the scarf that struggled
to restrain her long auburn curls.

Adele snapped open the telescope and steadied her booted feet
expertly against the airship's sway. The distant clouds were turning brilliant orange and bruise purple in the darkening eastern sky. Five miles
off the port beam Adele spotted two figures floating silhouetted in
midair.

Vampires.

The young princess felt a delicious thrill spread through her. Vampire cadavers were displayed occasionally in the streets of her home,
Alexandria, and she had even viewed the purported preserved head of the
clan chief of Vienna, but she had seen only a few living specimens in her
days. These two lay spread-eagle on the air, vibrating in the drafts that
buffeted their nearly weightless frames.

Adele felt a tingle of horror when one turned its head and, she
thought, stared at her, looking in her eye with its cold glare. She closed
the glass with a sharp breath, going pale. Frustration swept through her
that the creature should startle her so. It was not as if the beast had truly
been looking at her. It merely had looked toward the ship. Struggling to
regain her composure in front of her guardsmen, she resumed strolling
the quarterdeck.

A young boy suddenly exploded up out of the main hatch. His face
was red from the exertion of racing up the companionways, as indeed he
raced everywhere he went. He was barely twelve years old and still
round-faced as a baby, with darker hair than Adele's, cropped short. A
flowing striped cotton Bedouin robe over breeches and sandals made
him look like a ragamuffin from the alleys of Cairo.

He scampered to Adele's side, shouting, "I heard there are two of
them out there!"

Princess Adele cut a very different figure from her wild younger
brother, Simon. She was the heir, the future empress, and her very proper
traveling garb was chosen for reasons of state. Today she wore a heavy
cotton shirt, a leather jacket with a Persian sash, and a long velveteen
skirt covering high leather boots. In the sash, she had her prized weapon,
a jewel-hilted khukri, a broad-bladed dagger that had been a gift from
her mother. More, it was a Fahrenheit blade, with chemical additives in
the scabbard that gave the steel an intense chemical heat when exposed
to air, making it more destructive than a normal blade.

The blade was not all Adele had received from her Persian mother.
A light veil wrapped her head and shoulders to protect her against the
sun and wind. Unlike her brother's red-cheeked visage that he got from
their father, Emperor Constantine II, Adele had olive skin and the dis tinctive nose of the late empress. Her appearance was a subject of murmured derision among the northern-featured courtiers who dominated
the imperial court in Alexandria.

"They're very far away, Simon." Adele put an arm around her
brother's shoulders. While two lone vampires posed little threat to a
heavily armed Ptolemy, she still would have preferred her brother locked
safely below.

Prince Simon looked disappointed. "Can I look at the vampires,
Colonel Anhalt?"

"May I look at the vampires," Princess Adele corrected with a light
cuff to the boy's shoulder.

Anhalt was perspiring in his tightly buttoned uniform. "Unfortunately it's grown too dark for observation, Prince Simon. And Khartoum
has blocked our view." He bowed stiffly to the eager prince, indicating
a thirty-two-gun frigate maneuvering through the gathering clouds four
miles off the port quarter. HMS Cape Town, Mandalay, and Giza were
putting on or taking off sail, struggling to answer the signals to form
the nightly cordon around the flagship.

"And you've seen vampires before," Adele argued to Simon.

"So?" The boy craned his neck, straining to peer into the east
through the billowing sails of Khartoum. "It's probably the most interesting thing that will happen on this trip."