They were Chinese vampires. They were discovered during renovation work at the Bok Kai Temple in Old Sacramento. One of the priests there told his brother about them. The brother's whatever the Chinese version of mobbed up is. Alex here thinks he's u...
So if I asked you to wear my skirt and juggle my high heels, you would?” I joked. I could only see Andrew's face in profile, but a grin overtook his earlier grim expression, and he laughed. “I draw the line at wearing women’s clothing.” “Ar...
The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness ...
Would to God we were all Christians who profess to be Christians, and that we lived up to what we profess. Then would the Christian shine forth “clear as the sun, fair as the moon,” and what besides—why, “amazing as an army with banners”! A...
Firen didn’t waste any time setting up the meeting with Egnatious. The following day she was in such a rush to tell me about it that she burst into my room without knocking and found Andrew and me in an intimate and compromising position reminiscen...
The Emperor, you see, protects... He protects mankind, through the Legions, through the Martial corps, through the war machines of the Mechanicum. He understands the dangers. The inconsistencies. He uses you, and all the instruments like you, to prot...
Seeking more information, I walked through the market listening to the gossip and discovered that our new general, the man sent to quell the unrest in the east, was the second son of a provincial tax collector whose only claims to recognition were th...
Then little Gerda said the Lord's Prayer; the cold was so intense that she could see her own breath; it came out of her mouth like smoke. Her breath became thicker and thicker, and took the form of little angels who grew larger and larger as soon as ...
There were icons of the Magdalen on the walls and paintings in the Western manner, all kitsch, trash. Mary M., Lucas thought, half hypnotized by the chanting in the room beside him; Mary Moe, Jane Doe, the girl from Migdal in Galilee turned hooker in...
What is truth? Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes. Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing. Yet if man lives...
I despised myself for my weakness. I may have dreamed all my youth of life as a horse-trader like my father; I may have railed against my conscription and loathed the legions on principle, but even so, every morning in this place I cursed my lack of ...
Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking- glass, that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at himself long and curiously. Who are you? What are you? Where do you belong? You belong by rights to girls like Lizzie Connoll...
Here’s a hand to the boy who has courage To do what he knows to be right; When he falls in the way of temptation, He has a hard battle to fight. Who strives against self and his comrade Will find a most powerful foe. All honor to him if he conquers...
Dain: Good morning. How are we all? I have a wee proposition, if you don't mind giving me a few moments of your time. Would you consider... JUST SODDING OFF! All ye, right now! Bard: Stand Fast! Gandalf: Come now, Lord Dain. Dain: Gandalf the Grey. T...
He bared thick teeth. ‘I am Zacchariah. My price will be right. You show me now?’ In that moment, ten generations of horse-traders counted for more than half a lifetime in the legions. I was my father made young again, itching to make a sale. Aba...
Suppose it was even as you think,” he went on, even more gently. “Suppose that all you say was a fact, and that our Elders were but greedy tyrants, ourselves abandoned here by their selfish will and set to fulfill a false and prideful purpose. No...
