Melika Dannese Lux

“Thirteen years of friendship had bonded us together more thoroughly than if we had been born of the same mother. Even at this late stage, I was unwilling to let him go.”

“His character is like an emerald—multifaceted and enhanced by inclusions.”

“Affronts to her reputation pierced her to the heart, though I couldn’t understand why, since she had very little character left to defend.”

“Death stalked toward us on padded feet.       And it was not alone.”

“Tell me, Eric,” he said, licking a droplet from the corner of his mouth. “Have you ever tasted blood?”       My mouth was so dry I could barely find the voice to answer him. “What an odd question...”       “But a valid one. Well, have you?”       “I’ve cut my lip before, so yes, I suppose I have tasted blood, but...”       “Not your own, you foolish boy.” He let out a short, derisive laugh and leaned in so that he was only a few inches from my face. “I mean the blood of another.”       “Good God, Stefan, of course not!”       “Pity...”

“With Stefan, the line between good and evil, right and wrong, becomes increasingly blurred.”

“A lot of things should have been, Zigmund, but they aren’t. Are you going to be miserable about the things you cannot change, or do something about the things you can?”

“There was something in her eyes that made me trust her. Maybe it was because they held the same cynicism, the same world-weariness I saw in my own every morning when I looked at myself in the mirror.”

“I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was no dream at all.       I was still fighting against the awful truth, not wanting to give in, searching my mind for a logical explanation—but there was none. And the most horrible realization of all was that I had known, somewhere deep inside, ever since the day I first set eyes on Vladec Salei.       Plague carrier.       Living death.       Drainer of life.       The phrasing did not matter. No euphemism could strike fear into the hearts of men the way that single word”