Valentine's Exile

“Compelling pulp-adventure. . . . The sympathetic hero, fast-paced action, and an intricately detailed milieu set in various well-imagined regions of twenty-first-century North America make for an entertaining read.”

â
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“
Valentine's Exile
isn't an average vampire novel. The vampires and their soul-sucking Lovecraftian masters are like Dr. Moreau on steroids. This is nicely drawn horror: not gross, not psychologically terrifying, but very creepy. . . . E. E. Knight is a master of his craft. His prose is controlled but interesting, and his characters are fully formed and come to life. The point of view is tight and rigidly maintained, and the transitions are beautifully handled from scene to scene. The novel maintains a sense of place, with touches of sound and taste keeping each setting vivid and acute. Consistent tone and voice and excellent pacing keep the reader glued to the action and adventure. Even the futuristic touches are drawn with just the right tweaks of reality: never overdone, no R2-D2 types, no
Trek
guys. E. E. Knight's work is creative and the voice is his own.”

âScience Fiction Weekly

“Knight gives us a thrill ride through a world ruled by the vampiric Kurians and filled with engaging characters and grand schemes, and promises more to come.” â
Booklist

“The Valentine series is still going strong. Each book reveals new secrets concerning the world that expose new levels of complexity....I'm looking forward to more.”

âSFRevu

“The latest addition to Knight's popular alternate-earth series maintains the high quality of its predecessors, combining fast-paced action/adventure with the ever popular vampiric threat.” â
Library Journal

"The Vampire Earth series just keeps getting better and better . . . a fantastic work of science fiction in the vein of Wells'
War of the Worlds
.” â
Midwest Book Review

Praise for the novels of
The Vampire Earth

“I have no doubt that E. E. Knight is going to be a household name in the genre.”
â
Silver Oak

“A winner. If you're going to read only one more post-apocalyptic novel, make it this one.”

âFred Saberhagen, author of the Berserker series

“Knight is a master of description and tension. . . . Character-driven speculative fiction adventure at its very best.” â
Black Gate

“David Valentine is a true hero.” âSF Site

“An entertaining romp rife with plausible characters; powerful, frightening villains; suspense; romance; and monsters. Everything good fantasy and science fiction should have.” âSFF World

“I dare you to try to stop reading this exciting tale.”

âSF Reviews

“An impressive follow-up sure to delight all fans of dark fantasy and hair-raising heroic adventure . . . unique and wonderfully entertaining.” âRambles

“Powerful.... Readers will want to finish the tale in one sitting because it is so enthralling.” â
Midwest Book Review

“If
The Red Badge of Courage
had been written by H. P. Lovecraft.” âPaul Witcover, author of
Waking Beauty

“Knight's book of dark wonders is a marvelâsimultaneously hip and classy, pulpy and profound. Evocative of Richard Matheson as well as Howard Hawks, Knight's terrifying future world is an epic canvas on which he paints a tale of human courage, heroism, and, yes, even love.”

âJay Bonansinga, author of
The Killer's Game

“This is one of the best books I've read in years. If you like action books (or horror or military or suspense . . .), just buy it.” âScott Sigler, author of
Earthcore

“E. E. Knight has managed to create a compelling new world out of the ruins of our existing one. It's a major undertaking for a new author. . . . He does it with style and grace, and I would highly recommend checking out the book as soon as you can.” âCreature Corner

“Valentine is a complex and interesting character, mixing innocence with a coldhearted willingness to kill. . . . Knight brought the setting to vivid life. . . . His world is well constructed and holds together in a believable fashion . . . compelling. ” âSFReader

ROC
Published by New American Library, a division of
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First Roc Mass Market Printing, July 2007

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To the readers,
who carried me and my baby this far.

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

âWilla Cather SHADOWS ON THE ROCK

CHAPTER ONE

Dallas, March, the fiftieth year of the Kurian Order: Four square miles of concrete and structural steel smoke and pop and sputter as the city dies from the stranglehold of a siege.

Save for the sounds of streetfighting, hard to locate thanks to reflections from the skyscrapers, this city at war seems strangely empty. Scavenging black crows and wary, tail-tucking dogs catch the eye here and there, but human activity is nil. Vague stormlike rumbles mutter in the distance, and sudden eruptions of machine-gun fire from a few blocks away might be jackhammers breaking holes in a sidewalk in a more peaceful time. When men move they move in a rush, pouring from doorways and crossing streets in a quick wave before the whine of shellfire can catch them in the open.

Viewed from above, or on a headquarters map in one of the command bunkers, Big D is now a network of opposing circles.

The largest circle encompasses the great towers of the city center. Linked above the twentieth floor by spiderweb-like cables that allow the sure-tentacled Kurians interbuilding access without mixing with their human herds at street level, they show new holes and pits and hollows from the besiegers' guns and rockets. At street level mounds of debris and rubble stand in concentric rings, defended by batteries of guns manned by everyone from professional soldiers to minor functionaries in what until last year had been the affluent and sprawling North Texas Cooperative.

Surrounding that central axis are an assortment of smaller circles, ringing the central battlements like the chambers in a revolver's cylinder. The closest to the front lines are Texas regulars out of the Pinewoods and the Rio Grande belt; others to the north and east fly the tricolor of the Ozarks, and a few smaller ones filling gaps to the rear are clusters of militias made up of men and women freed from the heavy hand of the Cooperative.

Northwest of the city rests one of these smaller circles, surrounding an airstrip once called Love Field. The soldiers there are not placed to assault the city. The ad hoc unit occupying the airport grew out of the rising in Little Rock that opened Operation Archangel. They participate in the siege both as a sentimental gesture of gratitude to the Texans who plunged down the Arkansas River to rescue them and as being part of the gun-bristling ring that prevents an organized breakout. Their airfield joins the extreme left of the Ozark troops and the extreme right of the Texans.

Their regimental flag, a black-and-blue silhouette of an Arkansas razorback set under the joined Texas and Ozark flags, reads DON'T FEED ON ME. Judged from a distance, the forces in this particular encampment, called Valentine's Razors by the veterans, aren't in shape to serve as anything but a supporting unit. Only a few mortars and machine-gun pits fill their lines, more for defense of the camp than for battering those within the city. Instead, rolls of concertina wire on the open ground near the airstrip enclose cattle awaiting slaughter for the daily ration, and the airport's garages hum with the sounds of generators and power tools. On the march southwest from the Ozarks the Razors proved invaluable in getting captured Kurian vehicles operational again, and in turning cattle, wheat, pigs, and corn into grist for various regimental kitchens. Their aptitudes reflect the rear-area nature of many of the soldiers in the Razors, united by chance during the uprising in Little Rock.

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