Read The Midnight Breed Series Companion Online
Authors: Lara Adrian
The swaggering wise-ass of the group, Dante has adopted the last name of Malebranche for when he’s forced to mingle among humans. Malebranche (“evil claws”) is also what he calls his weapons of choice—a pair of curved, titanium blades that he uses in hand-to-hand combat against Rogues. Dante fights hard and plays hard, and despite his brashness, he is also fiercely loyal to those he cares about. His closest friend in the Order is Sterling Chase, although that friendship becomes strained and nearly broken when Chase begins displaying signs of Bloodlust and his actions start to jeopardize Order missions. Dante and Tess had intended to make Chase godfather to Xander Raphael, but they instead ask Gideon to take the honor. The relationship between Dante and Chase is on the mend again during the timeline of Darker After Midnight.
Hair:
black
Eyes:
whiskey-colored
Unique ability:
cursed with premonitions of death
Mate:
Tess Culver (couple has a newborn son named Xander Raphael)
Hero in:
Kiss of Crimson (Book 2)
First mention in series:
Appears in Kiss of Midnight.
~ ~ ~
Dmitri (d.)
Breed male, Nikolai’s deceased younger brother in Russia. About twenty years Nikolai’s junior, Dmitri was bright and bookish, fond of philosophy and taking things apart to see how they worked. But he adored Niko, wanted to be more like his older brother. One night Dmitri overheard one of Niko’s rivals from the Ukraine making harsh remarks about his brother. Dmitri called the Breed male out and cut him with a dagger. A lucky strike, but it infuriated the other vampire, who took Dmitri’s head in retaliation. Niko later hunted down the Breed male from Ukraine and killed him. Niko brought the prize to his parents as an apology for Dmitri’s death, but they shunned him, telling Niko it should have been him instead of Dmitri. Niko left his kin and never looked back.
First mention in series:
Referenced in Veil of Midnight.
~ ~ ~
Doctor Lewis (d.)
Human. Private medical specialist who has been treating Tavia Fairchild’s “condition” all her life. Doctor Lewis is, in fact, a Minion under Dragos’s command, along with another of Tavia’s handlers (see Aunt Sarah). Out of his private, secured clinic in rural Sherborn, Massachusetts, Doctor Lewis is also secretly treating others like Tavia—Gen One Breed females created in Dragos’s breeding labs.
Through Doctor Lewis’s records, Tavia discovers information about herself (as Subject 8, Patient “Octavia”) and others who were placed into various secret locations to live unwittingly among the humans as part of the mortal population, their Breed genetics medically suppressed, until Dragos feels the need to activate his creations for his own purposes. Tavia also discovers that Doctor Lewis was using her gift of photographic memory to supply Dragos with names and intelligence on various political officials and human government contacts while she lay in medically-enhanced debriefing sessions at the clinic. Tavia kills Doctor Lewis at the house she lives in with her “Aunt Sarah,” after the doctor arrives and attempts to drug her following her realization that she is something other than basic
Homo Sapiens
.
First mention in series:
Appears in Darker After Midnight.
~ ~ ~
Dragos, aka Gordon Fasso, aka Gerard Starkn, aka Drake Masters (d.)
Second-generation Breed male, unmated. Son of a Gen One Breed father who bears the same name (see Dragos the elder) and mother named Kassia.
Born in secret in the mid-1300s, Dragos was sent away by his mother to live with a family by the name of Odolf for her child’s protection. Kassia feared what might happen if word got out that Dragos’s Gen One father, during the war between the Order and their alien forebears, had secreted away one of the Ancients to a hidden hibernation crypt in the Bohemian mountains. Dragos’s father died at an enemy’s hand (see Marek), taking his secret to his grave, and Kassia, in danger herself, took her own life. But Dragos was too much like his duplicitous father. When he stumbled upon the secret of the Ancient’s location many years later, he decided to use the knowledge—and the sleeping Ancient’s genetics—to his own personal advantage.
Retrieving the Ancient and imprisoning him in his breeding labs, Dragos spent decades growing his own army of Hunters and experimenting to create a branch of the Breed never seen before: Gen One females, like Tavia Fairchild. Over the years, Dragos wore many masks and assumed many names. He moved in human circles as Gordon Fasso and Drake Masters, and amassed power and allies within the Breed as Gerard Starkn, director of the Enforcement Agency.
Dragos’s madness grew over time, culminating in one final, irreparable act of retaliation on the Order for all their efforts to thwart him. He freed hundreds of Rogues from captivity all over the world, turning them loose on unsuspecting human populations and exposing the Breed to mankind in the worst possible way. Dragos was finally killed by Sterling Chase, but the damage he’d done was immeasurable. The bloody aftermath of that pivotal night has come to be known as First Dawn.
First mention in series:
Referenced in Midnight Awakening; appears in Midnight Rising.
~ ~ ~
Dragos, the elder (d.)
Breed male, Gen One. Father to Dragos the second, mate of Kassia. One of the original members of the Order at its founding in mid-1300s. Committed an act of treason during the Order’s war with the Ancients when he aided the otherworlder who sired him in escaping death and instead hid the Ancient away in a mountain cave in what is now the Czech Republic. Dragos the elder made the mistake of confiding his secret in another Breed male (see Marek) and paid for that error with his head, taking the location of the Ancient with him to his grave.
First mention in series:
Referenced in Midnight Awakening.
~ ~ ~
Dylan Alexander
Breedmate of Order member Rio. Born and raised by her single mother in New York, Dylan had two half-brothers, both also named after rock musicians: Morrison and Lennon. Thirty-two during the timeline of Midnight Rising, Dylan Alexander was born with a troubling gift for seeing the dead. Fearful of being taken advantage of or shunned for this ability, she’s long tried to hide it, to deny it. As an adult, Dylan went on to make a career for herself in journalism, until she let a personal bias cloud her reporting. Demoted to a tabloid rag, she stumbles across a blockbuster story while vacationing in the mountains of the Czech Republic.
This story, exposing a mysterious crypt hidden in the caverns, brings her face-to-face with the existence of the Breed—and puts her in the middle of the Order’s war with a dangerous enemy bent on world domination. It also draws her to scarred, emotionally-closed off Rio, and into a passion for which neither of them was prepared. Dylan later learns that the man she thought to be her father (see Bobby Alexander) was actually her stepfather, and her true father is a man her mother met in Mykonos by the name of Zael. Through Jenna Tucker-Darrow’s investigation, it is revealed that Zael is a likely Atlantean immortal.
Hair:
long, curling flame-red
Eyes:
gold-flecked green
Breedmate mark:
nape of her neck
Bloodscent:
juniper and honey
Unique ability:
can see and hear the spirits of dead Breedmates, but cannot communicate with them
Mate:
Rio
Heroine in:
Midnight Rising (Book 4)
First mention in series:
Appears in Midnight Rising.
~ ~ ~
-E-
Edgar Fabien (d.)
Breed male, second generation. Around four-hundred years old, unmated, and leader of his Darkhaven in Montreal, Quebec, for a century and a half as of the timeline of Veil of Midnight. A wealthy Breed civilian, Fabien has ash-blond hair, bird-like facial features and a slender, muscular build. He is always meticulously dressed, typically in the finest custom-tailored suits. Fabien’s connections reach deeply into the Darkhaven elite and the highest tiers of the Enforcement Agency. His wealth and connections help insulate him from any fallout resulting from the sadistic, criminal bent of his personal interests, which include a fondness for young girls.
Fabien is also secretly in league with Dragos, a lieutenant in his inner circle. Alexei Yakut makes the mistake of underestimating Fabien’s power and attempts to strong-arm his way into the fold by orchestrating his father’s murder and offering up Order warrior Nikolai as the perpetrator. Fabien ends up with Niko in his custody and the child seer, Mira, as his personal prize, purchased from Alexei for the sum of two million dollars. In exchange for his efforts, Alexei is killed at his father’s lodge by Enforcement Agents, an attack arranged by Dragos and Fabien. Later on, Fabien presents Mira to Dragos as a gift at a gathering of Dragos’s followers. When the gathering is raided by the Order, Dragos blames Fabien for the botched security and shoots the Breed male between the eyes, killing him.
First mention in series:
Appears in Veil of Midnight.
~ ~ ~
Eleuterio “Rio” de la Noche Atanacio
Breed male, Order member, mate of Dylan Alexander. Born in Spain, sometime in the early 1900s. Never knew his father, a Rogue who raped Rio’s sixteen-year old mother and left her pregnant with a child she would fear and despise as a monster.
Later, orphaned as a young boy after men from the village raided his mother’s cottage and killed her, Rio was found around the age of five and raised by an area Darkhaven. They taught him what he was and how to survive. They also gave the boy who was given no name by his mother, and who thought of himself as an abomination because of his “manos del diablo”—his lethal, devil’s hands—an elegant, meaningful name: Eleuterio de la Noche Atanacio.
Despite his tragic past and a more recent betrayal by his first Breedmate (see Eva) that left him terribly scarred and nearly destroyed him, Rio remains one of the most noble, honorable members of the Order. He is mated to Dylan Alexander, whom he encountered in the Czech mountains, after Eva’s ghost led Dylan to the cave where Rio was hiding.
Hair:
dark brown, thick and wavy
Eyes:
topaz
Unique ability:
cursed with power to kill with his touch, particularly when provoked
Mate:
Eva (deceased); Dylan Alexander
Hero in:
Midnight Rising (Book 4)
First mention in series:
Appears in Kiss of Midnight.
~ ~ ~
Emma MacConn
Breedmate of James MacConn, a cousin of Conlan MacConn. Emma is a petite redhead, in her twenties. She and James live in Edinburgh, Scotland, and were both present at the holiday party in the novella, A Taste of Midnight, where Danika encounters a dangerous crime boss named Reiver and his bodyguard, Brannoc (AKA Malcolm MacBain).