Characters / Den of Shadows

Note that characters are listed by what they began the series as. If a human gets turned into a vampire, they are still listed as a human. (The one exception is Risika, because we only see her as a human in the flashbacks.)

Vampires

Rachel/Risika

Risika is a vampire who was turned about 300 years before the start of In the Forests of the Night. Her original human name was Rachel.

• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Risika kills one of Aubrey's hunters and delivers the ashes straight to Aubrey in a plastic bag... as a warning. This is probably what prompts Aubrey killing Tora.
• Animal Motifs: As a tiger. It helps that she can transform into one.
• Berserk Button: Aubrey really shouldn't have killed her tiger.
• Break the Cutie: We see it happen in the flashbacks.
• Broken Bird: Until her level in badass.
• Cats Are Mean: Tigers count as cats, right?
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As it turns out.
  • Dare to Be Badass
• Cursed with Awesome: She feels this way about being turned into a vampire.
• Dark and Troubled Past: And we get to see every second of it.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: In the Forests of the Night is about Risika gradually accepting her place in the world as a vampire.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Averted. Risika is rather indifferent to Ather and instead directs all her vampire angst and anger onto Aubrey. Turns out she was right. Word of God says that Aubrey was the one who convinced Ather to turn her.
• Oh, Crap!: She gets an internal one when she finds out that Aubrey killed Tora.

• The Stoic: Mostly.
  • Not So Stoic: When Aubrey kills Tora.
• Took a Level in Badass: At the very end of In the Forests of the Night, just in time for a Shapeshifter Showdown with Aubrey.

Aubrey

Aubrey is a rather old vampire, who was created by Ather. He's the main antagonist of In the Forests of the Night, but he switches to love interest in Demon in my View.

• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Aubrey kills Risika's tiger simply to threaten Risika herself.

• Ax-Crazy: We have no real conformation that he's crazy, but he certainly acts like it at times.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sort of. If you read Demon in my View before In the Forests of the Night, it's hard to imagine how Aubrey could possibly be a villain.

• Dark Is Evil/Dark Is Not Evil: Depending on the book.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Every time he shows up in In the Forests of the Night to antagonize Risika, it's actually him trying to help her. Confirmed by Word of God.
  • When he tricks her into drinking from her stepmother, it's to teach her not to go too long without feeding.
  • When he provokes her into fighting him, it's to get her to take her place in vampire society instead of being a loner.
  • Aubrey made a deal with Pandora to keep Risika and her brother apart (and have her believe he was dead) so that she could accept her new life as a vampire.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Aubrey has Jessica, although we don't see it until he's no longer a bad guy.
• Evil Gloating: Aubrey does this right after he kills Risika's tiger.

• Good Is Not Nice: Even when he's not evil, he's sort of a Jerkass.
• Heel–Face Turn: Played with in Demon in my View. He didn't have any particular change of heart, he just went from villain to protagonist.

• Pet the Dog: In his Big Damn Kiss with Jessica and when he shows genuine concern over Jessica's fate while talking to Caryn.

• Stalker with a Crush: To Jessica in Demon in my View, although it didn't start out this way. Could also be the case with Risika since it has been confirmed that he'd been tracking her long before Ather took notice.

• Villain Decay: He's not a villain at all anymore in Demon in my View.

Lord Daryl

Lord Daryl is Turquoise's former slave master in Midnight, and the villain of Midnight Predator.

• Jerkass: Probably the biggest example in the series.
• Karmic Death: Turquoise killed him because he put her in slavery for years. Sounds like karma to me!

• Too Powerful to Live: Lord Daryl, both in the sense of his magical powers, and in his position as an important vampire in Midnight.

Christopher/Kristopher

Christopher is a vampire that Sarah meets in a school and eventually gets into a relationship with. Kristopher refers to when he was much more destructive, and he's called Kristopher for the entirety of All Just Glass. He is Nikolas's twin brother.

• The Killer in Me: Yet another trope that only applied before the start of the series.
• Meaningful Name: Sort of. In Shattered Mirror, it really matters whether or not they refer to him as 'Christopher' or 'Kristopher'. In All Just Glass, they call him Kristopher the entire time.

• Spell My Name With An S: A rare, intentional example. For most of Shattered Mirror, Christopher's name is spelled with a 'Ch' at the beginning. However, when characters refer to him before around 50 years ago, it's spelled with a 'K' at the beginning (Kristopher).

Shevaun

Shevaun is one of two protagonists of Persistence of Memory. She is a True Neutral Anti-Hero, who is linked to Erin for unknown reasons.

• Dark Is Not Evil: Not necessarily, anyway.

• Happily Married: To Adjila, although they aren't technically married.
• Jerkass: To anyone who's not Adjila.
• Laughably Evil: She gets some criticisms of this, despite the author's attempts to make her True Neutral.

• Not So Stoic: When she almost kills Erin's mother.

Nikolas

Nikolas is a vampire and the sworn enemy of the Vida line because he killed Elizabeth Vida years and years ago. He's also Christopher's twin brother.

• Ax-Crazy: Definitely before the start of the series. During the series itself, it's debatable.

• Clear My Name: He wasn't actually guilty of a lot of the crimes the Vida line accused him of, and he was eventually forgiven.

• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: From All Just Glass on.

• Karma Houdini: In spite of the fact that he did do good things, the fact stands that Nikolas did indeed kill Elizabeth Vida, as well as a whole lot of others. But he never owns up to this, and everyone seems to forget about it.
• The Killer in Me: He goes through it a little.
• The Rival: To the Vida line in general. At least, at first.
• Supervillain Lair: Whether or not the 'supervillain' part really applies or not is debatable, but Nikolas has a really nice house.

Nissa

Nissa is Christopher and Nikolas's younger sister, and a member of SingleEarth

• Demoted to Extra: In All Just Glass.

• I Am a Monster: She struggles with it some, although not as much as Christopher.

Kaleo

Kaleo is a vampire and the real Big Bad of Shattered Mirror.

• Clear My Name: Played much the same way that it was with Nikolas, except he actually was guilty of a lot of the crimes he was accused of.

Jeshickah

Jeshickah is an important vampire in Midnight, and the plot of Midnight Predator is triggered when Turquoise and Ravyn are sent to kill her.

• A Lighter Shade of Black: She's only a secondary villain to Lord Daryl.

• Big Bad: Of Midnight Predator.
  • Subverted in that she's completely forgotten about by the end of the novel.

• The Rival: To Jaguar, who sent Turquoise and Ravyn to kill her.
• Vampires Are Rich

Jaguar

Jaguar is the vampire who runs Midnight and its slave trade. Despite this, he's not shown to be a villain, and he helps Turquoise on multiple occasions. He was also the one that sent her to kill Jeshickah in the first place.

• Animal Motifs: As a jaguar.

• Even Evil Has Standards: Jaguar is reluctant to beat his slaves or even command them to harshly.
  • There is some question as to whether or not Jaguar counts as evil. Yes, he was running Midnight, which is a command center for the slave trade, but he is much less harsh than other slave owners, and he ends up helping Turquoise more than he harms her.
• Evil Pays Better: Presumably the reason Jaguar allows the slave trade in Midnight despite not really liking it.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Guess what Jaguar can transform into?

• The Rival: To Jeshickah. He's openly antagonistic to her when they talk about business, and he sent Turquoise and Ravyn to kill her.
• Vampires Are Rich

Fala

Fala is the main villain of Demon in my View, trying to kill Jessica for writing true stories about the vampire world (despite the fact that Fala was never mentioned in In the Forests of the Night). She originally tries to make Aubrey kill Jessica, then decides to do it herself.

• Badass Boast: She does this when threatening to Aubrey that she'll kill Jessica.

• Kill It with Fire / Pyromaniac: Fala wants to do this to Ash Night (Jessica) so that she would "better fit her name."

Pandora

Pandora was Adjila's mentor in magic. She shows up in Persistence of Memory to help him sever the link between Shevaun and Erin.

• Ambiguously Evil: She's characterized a lot like the other villains in the series, but she doesn't actually do anything evil.

• Jerkass: Like Dominique, she's not really evil, she's just unpleasant.

Ather

Ather is the vampire that turned both Aubrey and Rachel. She provides a good deal of exposition for In the Forests of the Night.

• Miss Exposition

Witches

Sarah Vida

Sarah Vida is a vampire hunter, and a member of the Vida line. She's the main protagonist of Shattered Mirror and All Just Glass. She gets turned into a vampire at the end of Shattered Mirror.

• Badass in Distress: Happens in Shattered Mirror when she first meets Nikolas and he carves into her arm.
• Brought Down to Badass: When Dominique locks her magic as a punishment, she's still perfectly capable of kicking ass.

• Came Back Strong: She participated in action sequences less than twenty-four hours after being turned into a vampire.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': She can't get away with the mere suggestion that she's seen vampires without killing them, let alone being in love with one.

• Cursed with Awesome: She feels this way about both being a vampire hunter and being turned into a vampire.
• Dating What Mommy Hates: She's dating a freaking vampire. Taken further when she gets turned into one.
• Don't Tell Mama: Don't tell her that you're in a Secret Relationship with Christopher.
• Emergency Stash: Sarah, and presumably other Vida witches, are shown to keep weapons everywhere. Everywhere where people won't be suspicious, she has weapons.
• Driven to Suicide: She attempts suicide in All Just Glass by going to Dominique's house so that they'll kill her.
• Emergency Transformation: It happens to her at the end of Shattered Mirror.
• Faking the Dead: Sarah does this briefly in All Just Glass
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: She's the foolish to Adia's responsible.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: From All Just Glass on.
• Generation Xerox: Sarah falls in love with a vampire and rebels against her family to keep this romance. Turns out, so did Dominique.

• Hazy-Feel Turn: She certainly changed sides at the end of Shattered Mirror when she let Nikolas turn her into a vampire instead of killing Kristopher, but it's not clear which side was good and which side was evil.
• I Am Not My Mother: In All Just Glass. She thinks so, anyway.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Her reasoning for letting herself get turned into a vampire instead of killing Christopher.
• It Gets Easier: Killing vampires started out very hard for Sarah, but until she met Christopher and Nikolas, it got easier and easier over time.
• The Killer in Me: A lot of Shattered Mirror was about her learning how evil it was to kill vampires.
• Light Is Good: Until she gets turned into a vampire.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: The last line of Shattered Mirror has Sarah happy that she can live forever.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: She does it in All Just Glass. Perhaps it wasn't such a great idea to go into Dominique's house begging to be killed.
• Oh, Crap!: Sarah gets an internal one when she realizes that Nikolas is Christopher's twin brother.
• Our Hero Is Dead: Subverted for Sarah in All Just Glass when Adia Stabs the Salad

• Part-Time Hero: Sarah goes to school during the day and fights vampires the rest of the time.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Sarah technically died when she became a vampire, which fueled the plot of All Just Glass. Dominique insists on saying that she's dead, even though she's just a vampire.
• Reluctant Warrior: Until she gets turned into a vampire.
• Scars Are Forever: She still has the scars that Nikolas gave her.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She does this when she decides to get turned into a vampire rather than kill Nikolas.

• Vampire Hunter: Until she gets turned into one.
• Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: Even though Sarah is a vampire hunter, she still goes to school.
• Walking Spoiler: She becomes one when she gets turned into a vampire.

Dominique Vida

Dominique Vida is the head of the Vida line of witches, and one of the last remaining witch vampire hunters.

• I Did What I Had to Do: This is her internal justification for killing her husband.
• Jerkass: Even if she's not evil, she is a pretty unpleasent person a lot of the time.

• Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Dominique's reaction to Sarah dating Christopher. Gets Hilarious in Hindsight in All Just Glass when we find out that Dominique did the exact same thing.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: It's her default reaction to anything, such as Elizabeth Vida being killed two hundred years ago and Sarah getting turned into a vampire.
• Offing the Offspring: She calls on the Rites of Kin in order to do this to Sarah. But she doesn't succeed.

• Parental Marriage Veto: More like parental dating veto. In Shattered Mirror, Dominique didn't approve of Sarah being in love with Christopher, to say the very least.

Adjila

Adjila is Shevaun's husband, as well as a Triste witch. His magic accidentially linked Erin to Shevaun.

• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's entirely his fault that Shevaun and Erin are linked.
• Reminiscing About Your Victims: Subverted; Adjila says that he never gave Erin's mother a second thought until Erin showed up.

Adia Vida

Adia Vida is Sarah's big sister, and a dedicated vampire hunter. She's sent to kill Sarah after Sarah gets turned into a vampire.

• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: She's the responsible to Sarah's foolish.

• Hazy-Feel Turn: When she decides to Stab the Salad instead of killing Sarah.
• The Killer in Me: She goes through it some in All Just Glass, although not nearly as much as Sarah did in Shattered Mirror.

• Reluctant Warrior: She becomes one in All Just Glass, when the Rites of Kin force her to kill her sister.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: When she Stabs the Salad instead of killing Sarah outright.

Caryn

Caryn Smoke is a member of the smoke line, meaning she's a healer with pacifist vows. She first appeared in Demon in my View, and she's appeared several times since.

• Blessed with Suck: Her pacifist vows have made her a Badass Pacifist.
• Bystander Syndrome: To be fair, she is a Technical Pacifist, and she does try to step in any way she can.
• Friend to All Living Things: Along with the rest of SingleEarth

• Heroic Sacrifice: She attempts it in Demon in my View, but Aubrey decides not to kill her.
• Hypocrite: Despite being part of SingleEarth, an organization working to stop witches and vampires from hunting each other, she still gives medical support to the witches who hunt vampires.
  • Take into consideration that Caryn once said that if Dominique wanted to she could order the girl to go into a house full of vampires alone and with no weapons and she'd have to follow the order. Now remember how Dominique treated her own daughter for being dissident. Caryn might not really have a choice in the matter.

• Recurring Character: Caryn has never had a book focusing on her, but she made an appearance in Demon in my View, Shattered Mirror, and All Just Glass - more times than any other character in the series. (The only exception is Dominique, and she has had a book focusing on her.)

Zachary

Zachary is a vampire hunter and a witch that used to be dating Adia before the start of Shattered Mirror.

• Hazy-Feel Turn: He did one back before Shattered Mirror when he decided to let Olivia feed of him.

Jay

Jay, introduced as a minor character in All Just Glass as a vampire hunter and a witch, later went on to become the central protagonist of Promises to Keep.

• Hidden Depths: He's first introduced as a comic relief character, but this doesn't last long.

Humans

Jessica Ashley Allodola

Jessica Allodola is an author of vampire fiction. She attracts the attention of multiple vampires when they find out that her fiction is real, down to every word. It turns out that she's actually more the daughter of Siete than anything else, and she tapped directly into his memories to write her stories.

• Anti-Magic: Aubrey can't penetrate her mind because she's more Siete's child than anything else.
• Author Avatar: Much like Atwater-Rhodes, Jessica is a writer of vampire fiction. Jessica was writing her second novel in Demon in my View, which was Atwater-Rhodes's second novel.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: She manages to fend of Fala and almost kill her... but it almost costs Jessica her own life.
• Chekhov's Gunman: She got a brief mention in In the Forests of the Night.
• Curse That Cures: Jessica's becoming a vampire allowed Caryn and Aubrey to more effectively heal her.
• Damsel out of Distress: Aubrey sees her as someone who needs to be rescued. That doesn't stop her from holding her own against Fala.

• Death by Genre Savviness: Jessica gets turned into a vampire (a form of dying) due to her being so Genre Savvy that she released books accurately chronicling the lives of vampires without their permission.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Both her real parents are dead, and her adopted mother dies two thirds of the way through the book.

• Emergency Transformation: She's turned into a vampire so that Caryn and Aubrey could heal her more effectively.

• Enfante Terrible: While not what Jessica's mother thought, going unborn for two decades in a vampiric womb made Jessica more Siete's child than the child of either of her parents. Her mother gave her up because she couldn't take the reminder of that portion of her life.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: When she gets turned into a vampire.
• Genre Savvy: She's one of the best examples there is; after having written multiple novels set in the vampire world, she knows more about it than some actual vampires.
• Give Him a Normal Life: This is half of what prompts her mother to give her up, the other half being that she reminds her mother of Siete too much.
• Ghost Memory: She gets them from Siete; this is how she tells her stories.
• Good Is Boring: Jessica's favorite character in "Tiger, Tiger" (In the Forests of the Night) is Aubrey, the villain.

• I Just Want to Be Special: Although it's pretty subconscious and she already was sort of special.
• I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: There's no specific moment, Sarah just feels this way in general during Shattered Mirror.
• Loners Are Freaks: She is a loner, and she's definitely a freak, if not in the traditional sense of the term.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: When she finds out that she's more Siete's daughter than anything else.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Other than her novel getting published, she's completely normal in every way. No, really. We promise. Oh, wait, she has memories from Siete and they're channeling into what she writes. And she gets turned into a vampire. But still, completely normal!
• Parental Abandonment: Jessica's parents left her up for adoption, and Anne took her in. We find out why at the end of Demon in my View: Jessica's mother abandoned her because she looked too much like Siete. It kind of makes her sound like a Jerkass when you put it that way. Or any way.
• Weirdness Magnet: Jessica has Caryn and Aubrey both stalking her at once.

Turquoise/Catherine

Turquoise is the main protagonist of Midnight Predator, a human vampire hunter. Her family was killed by vampireswhen she was younger, and she went into slavery with Lord Daryl. After Nathaniel helped her escape, she changed her name from Catherine to Turquoise.

• Berserk Button: Her list includes bringing up her slavery, calling her by her real name, mentioning her family... really, anything having to do with her life before she became a vampire hunter.

• Dark and Troubled Past: Her family was killed, and she was enslaved by vampires.
• Despair Event Horizon: For her, it was the death of her parents and her slavery.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: It tales almost no effort whatsoever for Turquoise to kill the Big Bad of Midnight Predator, Lord Daryl.

• Heroic BSoD: She spends most of Midnight Predator with it.
• I Just Want to Be Free: In her slavery, although she had already escaped with Nathaniel by the time her book started.
• Informed Ability: Turquoise doesn't actually kill many vampires or win many fights.
• Motive Decay: Eventually, she stops caring that she was sent to kill Jeshickah and just kills Lord Daryl instead.

• Scars Are Forever: She has scars from her slavery with Lord Daryl.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: She leaves Midnight halfway through Midnight Predator.
• The Stoic: She tries, she really does. It just doesn't work very well.

Erin

Erin is one of two protagonists of Persistence of Memory. She is linked to Shevaun for unknown reasons. This gave her symptoms resembling schizophrenia, and she spent several years in a mental institution before the start of the series.

• Emergency Transformation: Sassy turns her into a hyena to save her life.

• Grand Theft Me: By way of Shevaun, although it wasn't her fault - it was Adjila's.
• Important Hair Cut: One of the times that Shevaun took over Erin, she tried to cut off Erin's long hair, due to Shevaun having shorter hair. This resulted in some pretty bad cuts on Erin's neck. Erin cut her hair to shoulder length and never wore it longer.

• Pinball Protagonist: She has no control over anything, and for the vast majority of Persistence of Memory, she has no idea what's going on.

Ravyn

Ravyn is a vampire hunter who accompanies Turquoise into Midnight to kill Jeshickah.

Alexander

Alexander is Risika's brother. He tries in vain to protect her from vampires. At the end of In the Forests of the Night, he comes Back from the Dead with no explanation, and he's appeared a couple times since then.

• Back from the Dead: Apparently. Or maybe he never even died. Nobody really knows.
• Big Brother Instinct: He really does try to protect Risika from his unexplained powers.

• Hypocrite: When he and Risika reunite at the end of In the Forests of the Night he is horrified to find that she survived by killing people and drinking blood even though he also survived by feeding off of people as a Triste.
• Unexplained Recovery: He came back to life. Or maybe he was just never dead. Nobody really knows either way.

Anne

Anne is Jessica's adopted mother.

• Adoptive Peer Parent: She adopted Jessica when she was a teenager.

• Parental Obliviousness: Exaggerated throughout Demon in my View - she has no idea about anything.
• Taking the Bullet: In one of the more touching moments of Demon in my View, Anne lets herself be killed instead of Jessica, showing that despite their dysfunctional relationship, they really did care about each other.

Nathaniel

Nathaniel is a human who helped Turquoise escape from slavery in Midnight. In the start of Midnight Predator, he helps Turquoise and Ravyn go back to Midnight to kill Jeshickah.

Robert

Robert appears in Shattered Mirror when his sister was abducted by Kaleo.

• Break the Cutie: A rather minor example, since he doesn't actually do that much.
• Nice Job Breaking It Minor Character: He almost gets his sister killed at one point.

Marissa

Marissa is one of Erin's classmates. She turns out to be a human member of SingleEarth.

• Asian and Nerdy: For the most part, although it's zigzagged in that she's not good at foreign languages.

Ryan Le Coire

Ryan is a human sorcerer and the only living descendant of the Le Coire family. He appears in Token of Darkness.

Cooper

Cooper is the protagonist of Token of Darkness.

Shapeshifters

Sassy

Sassy is a compulsive liar that Erin met before the start of Persistence of Memory in a mental institution. He's also a hyena shapeshifter.

• All There in the Manual: A lot of his backstory - and a little of Erin's - was given in a short story in the anthology 666: The Number of the Beast, to which Atwater-Rhodes contributed a story.
• Animal Motifs: As a hyena, although it's not done nearly as much as the other shapeshifters.
• Blatant Lies: His lies are actually pretty believable… until he tells a different story to explain the same phenomenon.

• The Hyena: Both in that he thinks everything is worth a laugh, and... y'know... he can turn into a hyena.

• Involuntary Shapeshifting: For his first few teen years, he had no idea why he shifted into a hyena, and how he could control it.

• Promoted to Love Interest: At the end of Persistence of Memory.
• Self-Proclaimed Liar: He openly admits to being a compulsive liar.