Night Huntress

Night Huntress

Due to her mother being raped by a vampire and getting pregnant, Catherine "Cat" Crawfield has spent her entire life being different from other humans. Her half-vampire nature allows her to pursue the full blooded vampires and lead them to their death, an activity that her mother fully endorses. Cat goes out almost every night in the hopes of finding and slaying her father, only to be captured by the vampiric bounty hunter Bones. After some initial reluctance on Cat's part, the two of them form a partnership to find and capture her father and eventually fall in love with one another. Their relationship is temporarily broken when Cat is forced to join with a secretive government agency devoted to hunting supernatural creatures, run by a man later revealed to be her uncle. Cat and Bones eventually reconcile, with Bones joining the agency to be near Cat. This reconciliation is later tested when Bones's precognitive grandsire Mencheres's wife Patra uses grave magic to try to kill Bones and Cat, forcing Cat and her friends to band together to kill her. Other plot points in the series involve Cat discovering that in the past Mencheres had wiped the memory of a controlling vampire she used to love from her mind in order to ensure that she would meet and fall in love with Bones and that she would fulfill her destiny as a powerful vampire. Cat does eventually become a vampire in order to ensure that she would be with Bones forever as well as to assuage growing fears in the ghoul population that she was not intending to become a ghoul-vampire hybrid with unprecedented powers. This backfires as she becomes not a regular vampire, but one that has an occasional heartbeat and can only drink the blood of other vampires, absorbing some of their powers in the process.

Night Huntress World

In First Drop of Crimson the book follows Bones' best friend Spade and Cat's best friend Denise as she tries to find a way to search for Nathaniel, a long-lost relative of hers. Over a hundred years ago, he sold his soul to a shape-shifting demon that has killed several of Denise's family members. The demon decides that Denise could be useful to him, and brands her with his essence instead. Despite wanting nothing more than to be rid of the supernatural world forever, Denise manages to not only persuade Spade to help her but also falls in love with him. They eventually find Nathaniel, who has been held captive and used as a prostitute and for his demonically infused blood, which can be used as a narcotic for vampires, who cannot be affected by ordinary drugs. The demon takes back his essence from Nathaniel, leaving him mortal once more, and Denise and Spade manage to defeat the demon. Since the demon did not take back his essence from Denise, she is left permanently immortal, and even harder to kill than a vampire, while Nathaniel has a chance to live a normal life. Spade and Denise marry at the end of the book.

The book Eternal Kiss of Darkness follows Mencheres as he attempts to seek death in order to avoid a confrontation with the corrupt law guardian Radjedef, his uncle and old enemy. He chooses this path partly because he has stopped having visions of the future, except to show darkness coming. Kira comes across Mencheres as he waits for a pack of ghouls to tire of torturing him and kill him. She tries to help, only for him to have to rescue her from the ghouls, who attempt to eat her. Mencheres attempts to erase Kira's memories of the incident, but fails due to her having a natural immunity to vampire mind control. He keeps her prisoner for a week in the hope that she will fall under his power, and when she doesn't, lets her go after healing her sister's lung damage from cystic fibrosis in exchange for her silence on the existence of vampires. Kira decided to seek him out due to her feelings toward him, but falls afoul of a trio of vampires in an incident which ends with Radjedef sentencing Kira to death, which inflames Mencheres' animosity towards Radjedef. Mencheres carries out the sentence himself, exploiting a loophole in the law, which doesn't preclude him bringing her back as a vampire. While Kira adjusts to her new life, Radjedef kills the three vampires and arranges for a surveillance video showing Mencheres turning Kira to be found by humans, making it appear as if Mencheres had endangered the secrecy of the vampire race, for which he would be executed. While on the run, Kira and Mencheres begin a relationship, which is complicated by his belief that he is soon to die whether he seeks it or not. Kira and Mencheres eventually set up a plan to expose Radjedef's corruption and put an end to the rivalry. The book ends with the death of Radjedef and Mencheres recalling that Kira's name was Celtic for "Darkness", and realizing that she was what he saw filling his future.

Reception

Critical reception for Night Huntress has been predominantly positive, with Library Journal frequently praising the series. RT Book Reviews has also given frequent praise for the novels, with Eternal Kiss of Darkness winning its 2010 Vampire Romance Award. Publishers Weekly has mostly praised the series, but has stated that the "would-be witticisms [begin] to grate" in Once Burned.