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Character
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 | Cassandra
Palmer is the lead character in five novels: Touch the Dark,
Claimed by Shadow, Embrace
the Night, Curse the Dawn and Hunt the Moon. A powerful
seer, she was brought up by a vampire who wanted to monopolize
her
gift. She escaped him, but soon her past caught up
with her, although
not in the way she'd feared. The Pythia, the supernatural
community’s chief seer, was dying and she tapped Cassie to replace
her.
That
stuck Cassie with a lot of power she doesn't know how
to use and a
metric ton of new enemies.
To make matters worse, a war has broken out in the supernatural community and everyone is choosing
sides. Now Cassie is trying to stay alive long enough to
figure out how to use
the power of her office, and to determine what to do with it when she
does. |  | Mircea
Basarab is a bridge character, playing an important role in both the Cassandra
Palmer and Dorina Basarab novels. He's a five-hundred-year-old
master vampire and a member of the powerful Vampire
Senate. The Senate, which controls the actions of North
American vampires, competes with the
chief magical organization, the Silver Circle, for leadership of the supernatural
community.
The Senate is currently vying with the Circle for control of
the new Pythia--and of the power she commands. That puts Cassie in a
bad position (as if she's ever in anything else). She's personally
drawn to Mircea, but sometimes suspects that his interest
might have more to do with her power than with her person. Other times, she's not sure she cares. |  | John
Pritkin is from the Cassandra Palmer series. He was a war mage--a
member of the supernatural community's police force--with a
specialization in demon killing. But then his bosses sent him
on
a new mission--to kill the upstart pretender to the Pythia's throne,
one Cassie Palmer. They didn't want an unknown taking such a
powerful position and possibly interfering in their affairs. And
they didn't think a demon-hunting assassin would have a
problem
with a spot of political murder.
They thought wrong.
Now Pritkin is a former war mage and the Pythia's new bodyguard.
So
far, the move has brought him no pay, long hours, constant stress and
has almost gotten him killed at least a dozen times. He's shown here
about to embark on a demon hunt to get a little rest. |  | Claire Lachesis is from the
novella "Buying Trouble," in the On
the Prowl
anthology. She is also a supporting character in the Dorina Basarab
series of novels. Until a year ago, Claire was a poor auction
house employee, using her ability as a magical null to calm down
volatile items before they killed off all the customers. Then
one
of those customers, a handsome Fey with royal connections, swept her
off her feet and all the way to Faerie.
Now, Claire is living a fairy tale: marriage to a
handsome prince, travel to distant lands, wealth and magic.
And separation
from the only world she knows, isolation among very strange strangers
and people constantly trying to kill her and her newborn son.
Frankly, she's
beginning to think this happily-ever-after stuff is a bunch of
crap. |  | Francoise
is a character from the Cassandra Palmer series of novels.
She doesn't have a last name because she was born a poor village
girl in
seventeenth century France. She doesn't have much of anything
else,
either, after being transported to the twenty-first century through
a
series of alarming events.
Well, that's not entirely
true. She still has her magic--and while it's seriously
outdated, at least the Inquisition isn't after her anymore.
And she has a new boyfriend who would be perfect if he wasn't
possessed by an ancient demon. But Francoise has learned the
hard
way--you have to take what you can get out of life. And she's busy
taking everything she can. |  | Tomas
features in the Cassandra Palmer series of novels and also in a short
story, "The Day of the Dead," available on this website.
Like
Francoise, Tomas doesn't have a last name.
He was born in Peru during the conquest, the bastard son of a priestess
of Inti and a Spanish conquistador. His father didn't
stay around long enough to impart his surname--or much of anything
else--but Tomas could have
taken his master's name once a life-challenged Spanish nobleman
took a liking to him. But after being forcibly changed into a vampire
and treated as a slave for four hundred years, he wasn't feeling too
chummy. Now, all he wants is his hated master
dead--permanently. He'll
figure out the rest later. |  | Kit
Marlowe is
a crossover character, appearing in both the Cassandra Palmer and
Dorina Basarab series of novels. He also features in
two short stories set in Elizabethan England, "The Queen's Witch" and "The Gauntlet." "The Gauntlet" was published in the Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2, but it and its companion story are available for free on this
web site.
A spy since Elizabethan times, Marlowe
currently
employs his abilities on behalf
of the Vampire Senate. Of
course, he
isn't just any old spy; these days, he runs the Senate's spy network and he does
it very well. He's best
known for
being handsome, charming, and knowledgeable...and cunning,
sneaky
and utterly ruthless. |  | Dorina Basarab is featured in her own series of novels, which so far include Midnight's Daughter and Death's Mistress.
She's a dhampir, a cross between a human and a vampire, who makes
a tenuous living taking on mercenary jobs for the supernatural
community. Lately, her most frequent employer has been her
long-estranged father, Mircea, who needs all the help he can get with
the war tying up his usual sources of muscle. That has
brought her closer to the vampire comunity than she--or they--would
like, as has her dangerous attraction to Louis-Cesare, a master vampire
who keeps forgetting that Dorina is supposed to be his sworn
enemy. That wouldn't worry Dorina too much, except that, whenever
he's
around, she keeps forgetting it, too. |
 | Louis-Cesare
is a master vampire with a past and a problem. Of course, his
past is part of his problem, including a childhood spent largely in
jail, a reluctant (and somewhat strange) vampire Sire, an altered
time-line and a reputation as the dreaded enforcer of the European
Vampire Senate.
But he's slowly dealing with all of that. The
present is a little trickier, thanks to the regular appearance of his
family patriarch's annoying, seductive and completely maddening
daughter--who also happens to be the sworn enemy of his kind.
Dorina Basarab is a dhampir, a monster good little vampires are
warned to stay well away from. But Louis-Cesare has never
been particularly good, and he intends to get to know Dorina a
great deal better.
He just hopes she doesn't kill him first. |
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