Midnight's Daughter by Karen Chance

Dorina Basarab- Dory, is a Dhampir, the daughter of Mircea Basarab, Dracula's brother. Dhampir tend to have very short and very violent lives because of their tendency to spontaneously erupt in deadly rages that are almost like epileptic fits, and are extremely deadly for anyone or anything that happens to be near them at the time when they go off.

Dorina has survived so long only because she channels her inner rage against evil demons and other vampires, allowing her to make a living from the circumstances of her life. But when she realizes that her roommate, Claire, a Null, has been kidnapped, she tears the world apart looking for the people that might have taken her. Dory not only misses her friend, but she also misses the pot that Claire grows her that allows her to mitigate the frequency and effect of her rages.

That is when she is approached by her father, Mircea, who offers to help Dory find Claire using all the resources of the Vampire Senate if she'll do him one little job- find and kill his brother, Dracula, for him. Now, Dory has reasons, and very good reasons, to hate Dracula herself, but even she might be overmatched by a vampire who is not only very powerful, but insane and doesn't care about being insane.

She agrees, but that isn't the only thing. To help her, Mircea assigns the vampire master named Louis-Cesare to be her partner in this mission, and Dory, who has never worked with anyone before, is seriously pissed at having to put up with the vampire, who is a real stick-in-the-mud, at least as far as she is concerned. But in addition to being a true master Vampire, he's physically as powerful or more than Dory, so despite her best efforts, she can't overpower him and push him around. That also pisses her off, but she manages to contain it.

Louis-Cesare is the Vampiric Childe of Mircea and Dracula's eldest brother, Radu. But despite his being the eldest brother in age, he doesn't come anywhere near to being as powerful or feared as the others, due to a streak of cowardice that first manifested when he and Dracula were imprisoned by the Turks as children. Radu became an enthusiastic convert to the Turks, even becoming the lover of their ruler in the region. But he was only doing it to stay alive. Because of his weakness, Dracula, who never gave in to the Turks, despises Radu and wants to kill him... along with Mircea and Dory.

But when Dory suggests using Radu as bait to trap and kill Dracula, Louis-Cesare protests. He is protective of his sire despite being abandoned by Radu for a long time after he was made, because Radu found that he was imprisoned and being killed daily by a dark mage and rescued him from his prison. However, when they are attacked by Fey at Dory's house, Louis-Cesare rescues her, and she wonders why the Fey are after her.

Attempting to stock up on the weapons that will enable her to have a chance against Dracula, Dory soon finds that the market for those have dried up because of the ongoing war between the Vampires and the Dark Mages. Both sides are desperately stockpiling all the magical weapons they can, driving most of the dealers of them out of business. Dory, having had her own weaponsdealer killed by mages, decides to deal with this by leading an assault on Dracula's own stockpile to get his own weapons to use against him.

Other demons and trolls join up with her, because the demon who was dealing weapons to her, Benny, was well-liked by the magical community. Having been kidnapped by Drac when Benny was killed, Dory has agreed to help Drac assassinate Radu and Mircea, but she really intends no such thing. During the assault, Dory falls victim to a magical trap that forces her to relive her worst moments, but she is saved by Benny's troll wife, who is having her worst day right now. Louis-Cesare also falls victim to the trap and when Dory touches him to try and snap him out of it, she gets a glimpse into his life.

Since she has already been experiencing a bit of romantic tension with Louis-Cesare, it helps her to understand him better. And her intrusion onto an auction run by Dracula's men has her almost rescuing Claire, when Dracula himself takes her roommate to make Dory live up to her promise. Out of this, she also gains a Duergar child who seems to bond with her when she rescues it. But when she goes to Radu's house to "draw him out" for Dracula, she meets a Fae named Caedmon, who seems unusually interested in bedding her.

His fae wine leads to another sharing of memories between her and Louis-Cesare, and with Caedmon as well. Perhaps she is unusually sensitive to it? While Caedmon agrees to help Dory against Drac for Claire's sake, and her own, he incites jealousy in Louis-Cesare, which pushes Dory and Louis-Cesare closer together. But when Drac crashes the party at Radu's vineyard home, can Dory, Radu, Caedmon, Louis-Cesare, Claire and her lover Heidar come together to finally end the threat of Dracula and his black mage friends, or will the only effect be to end Dory's life, along with that of Radu, the two people most hated by Dracula?

I have enjoyed Karen Chance's Cassie Palmer stories, which is about the human Clairvoyant beloved by Mircea, and the short story involving Claire that was published in one of the anthologies I read. Dory is a more problematic heroine than either of the other two characters, often seeming to have a deathwish in the way she taunts, teases and is a bitch to the characters around her. Now, usually, this wouldn't be so bad because we can see into her head, but it's hard to develop any sympathy for her at first because she delights in provoking everyone. Even if she is the viewpoint character.

It's only later, when we get glimpses into her past, that we start to feel sympathy for her and see that the hard attitude she affects is a deliberate cover to keep from feeling hurt when people reject her because of her Dhampir problems. Claire was the first person to accept Dory for herself, and because of it, Dory will do anything to help Claire, as she had never realized that kind of love and acceptance from anyone before. Everyone else seems to want something from her.

Louis-Cesare has the same kind of problem, in that he withdraws from affection because of his own abandonment, but he does it to avoid being hurt. He'd like to withdraw from Dory because of the feelings she raises in him, but at times he can't help himself and reacts to her as he would to a woman he cares for, admires and lusts after.

By the end of the novel, though the hunt for Drac has come to a successful conclusion, Louis-Cesare has withdrawn again, but Dory knows why he has done so, and Mircea wants her to work for him on a more regular basis, which will almost certainly bring her to work with Louis-Cesare again, and given that the Cassie Palmer series was a trilogy, it seems that this series might be one, too. If so, I will definitely be looking forward to more.