The final battle between werewolves and vampires has an unexpected twist: love. With twenty thousand years under his belt, Remshi is the oldest vampire in existence. He is searching for the werewolf named Talulla, who haunts his dreams as a memory from his ancient past. But he is not the only one seeking Talulla: She is being hunted by the Militi Christi, a fanatical Christian cult hell-bent on wiping out werewolves and vampires alike. Inexplicably pulled toward one another, and with no other choice, Remshi and Talulla must join forces to protect their families, fulfill an ancient prophecy and - through a love that should be impossible - ensure the survival of their species. “When books are as good as Duncan’s, we can drink them in greedily.”— The New York Times Book Review    “Glen Duncan is back at the top of his game with  By Blood We Live .”  — Washington Post   “Duncan offer[s] two rarified qualities that the Gothic genre often lacks: exquisite writing and a refined literary sensibility.”— Richard Times-Dispatch   “Duncan’s writing does more than transcend genre fiction: it creeps up on it in the dead of night, rips out its heart, then eats it.”— The Guardian   “Duncan writes with caustic edge and pop-culturally relevant humor.” — Dallas Morning News    “The horror genre at its best—wildly imaginative, written with wit and intelligence, wickedly entertaining.”  — The Times  (UK)    “There are plenty of battles, blood, and sexy escapades; but the real treat continues to be Duncan’s beautifully twisted way with language and the profound thesis he poses about humanity.”— Booklist     “A page-turner with heft. . . . Storytelling to chill the blood.”— Sunday Herald  (Scotland)   “Horror fiction at its best.”— The Oregonian   “Vigorous, funny, sexy and necessary at a time when so much genre fiction is drowning in melancholy vampires and self-serious teen dystopias.”— Kirkus Glen Duncan is the author of nine previous novels. He lives in London. 1 Remshi It’s better to kill people at the end of their psychology. They have nothing left to offer themselves or the world. Not that I should have been killing anyone just then. Having fed less than twenty hours ago I should have woken slaked and mellow, indifferent to blood for at least a week. Instead I’d woken in a state of—not to put too fine a point on it—complete fucking pandemonium. Voices in the head (repeating, God only knew why, He lied in every word . . . He lied in every word . . . ), earthquake in the heart, Sartrean nausea in the soul—and thirst such as I hadn’t felt in centuries. Not the domesticated version, to be fobbed off with a half-dozen pouches from the fridge. No. This was The Lash, old school, non-negotiable, the red chorus that deafened the capillaries with its single moronic imperative: GET LIVING BLOOD NOW, OR DIE. Traumatically baffling though all this was it wasn’t the main mystery. The main mystery was the dream I’d had. Do not start with a murder. Do not start with a dream. I know. But my defence is two-pronged: One, I’m a murderer. Two, the dream was a colossal anomaly. Not the content. Just the fact of it. I don’t, you see, dream. At all. Ever. Not since Vali died. And that was a long, long time ago. No chance to consider that now, however. The thirst’s virtue is that next to the need to satisfy it everything else becomes laughably secondary. It gives you, as would a gun pointed at your head, focus. So here I was. The house of Randolf Moyser, pornographer, was, not surprisingly, the pornographer’s house: Milanese sofas in cream leather, jade side tables, cowhide rugs, chandeliers, planes of carpet the colour of Bahamian sand, mirrors it would’ve needed a crane to hang. I’d chosen it for its location, a mile northwest of Malibu Springs, high on an unoverlooked hill with pinewoods cover on the eastern side to within fifty yards of the ground floor terrace, and on the west uninhabited scrub all the way to the nearest neighbour’s tree line a quarter of a mile away. I say “chosen,” but that’s not true. The Lash applies suave guidance, finds the ether’s invisible vectors and drifts, the spaces in space that lead to fulfilment. The blood’s dialogue—yours and theirs (or rather mine and yours)—starts before you’ve quite set eyes on each other. Like a love story. Like the moments just before I first saw Vali, seventeen thousand years ago. (Yes, you read that right.) I left the car in a lay-by on the country road and walked up through the woods. Randolf, known in the industry as E. Wrecked (and known to me ever since a production company I own made a documentary about him), was at the end of his psychology. He’d just turned fifty-eight, and for more than two decades had been rich enough for it not to matter what he looked like. Letting himself go, physically, had been part of the psychology: there mustn’t be the slightest chance that the twenty-two-year-old on her knees with his cock in her mouth could possibly want to be on