Sink your teeth into something unexpected.

We’ve had sparkles. We’ve had monsters. We’ve had more questionable love stories than anyone asked for. Vampire lore has long framed our fanged friends as manipulative, controlling, lust-driven creatures obsessed with beauty and youth, even when they’re positioned as the “good” ones. We’ve recycled the reincarnated-lover trope. We’ve followed the morally conflicted immortal whose entire identity revolves around refusing to feed. And, of course, we’ve seen vampires reduced to shorthand for sin and corruption.

It’s time for something new.

Unholy Empire gives vampires something they’ve long been denied: their humanity. Not just love and loyalty, but pride, grief, tenderness, devotion, fear, jealousy, resentment, mercy, cruelty, restraint, and rage. The full, messy range of being alive, even when they technically aren’t.

In this world, good people can commit terrible acts. Those believed to be evil are still capable of restraint, grace, and love. Monsters are not always who we’re told they are, and virtue is not always as clean as it looks.

That doesn’t mean Unholy Empire forgets what makes vampire fiction good. The series delivers what the genre promises: blood, sex, and violence, anchored by genuine love stories at the heart of it. The first novel, The Burning of Saint-Gilles, opens in 12th-century France, where Count Dracula, known then as Dragomir, uncovers a truth that upends the ideas of right and wrong, virtue and sin, and who is called a monster. What follows sets the foundation for his feud with the Christian Church, a conflict that will echo for centuries and later draw the attention of the famed vampire-slayer Abraham Van Helsing.