Nightlord Series

Eric didn't ask to be a vampire. In fact he didn't even believe in them. Biting your own tongue with your fangs does a lot of convincing. Even so, being a part-time undead isn't as easy as you might think. It can let you hold down a day job, true, but sometimes the night "life" can be more than a little difficult, what with those bloodthirsty urges and predatory instincts kicking in.

It's not easy being king. Especially when you've got an allergy to sunrise and sunset, a fire goddess for a mother-in-law, demonic adversaries, random assassins, and a basement full of insecurities to cope with. Add to that his daughter, the fire priestess/princess; a couple of lightly deranged professional magicians; a whole city full of wizards; and enough squabbling princes to resemble a kindergarten argument. It's enough to make a man want to just go home.

We all have inner demons. We fight them all the time. Some of us achieve inner peace by coming to terms with them. But how do you come to terms with inner demons that tear free and become outer demons? Eric has been a vampire for nearly a century, and his demons are more than metaphors. While they controlled him, he was the Demon King. Now he has to avoid the monsters in his own mind, as well as angry nobles, fanatical religions, assassins, magi, other vampires, criminal organizations, and more.

It's not easy, being king. You can't always rule a kingdom and still do what needs to be done. Eric - or King Halar, also known as the Demon King - has more than enough problems without the crown. But quitting the job of king isn't easy, either - unless you want to be beheaded. Most people regard that as an unsatisfactory way to quit. Even vampire lords tend to be cautious about guillotines. A king who loses his head has a real problem...or none at all.

Eric - or King Halar, or Vlad, or any number of aliases - doesn't want to be bothered. It's hard to pin down what he does want, if anything. He lives a quiet life, almost a solitary one, mourning in his own way for the loss of someone dear. His quiet solitude can't go on forever. Despite the empty places inside him, events and creatures move through the worlds and across the void between, forcing him into action, into fighting, into confronting things perhaps better left alone...even forcing him into being a King.

Faced with war and the end of the world, Eric - or Halar the First, King of Karvalen - must find a way to stop a godlike entity bent on his destruction. His quest will be no easy thing, not a straight line to his goal, but even he can't anticipate just how far it will lead him on this epic journey. He will have to go farther than he can imagine from everything he has ever cared about before he can even begin a new journey - a journey home. Can he save the world and the people he loves? And, in so doing, will he be able to save himself?

Eric - part-time king, quasi-avatar, and unconventional wizard - has an epic quest before him. He must return to his lost kingdom to save it, slay a creature claiming to be a god, and navigate the terrible risks of a paradox that could undo everything! And to top it off, he's trying to raise a daughter. Nobody said being a vampire was going to be easy, but none of this was in the brochure!

Phoebe, the soulless child, has been raised by her adoptive father, Eric—the universe-hopping vampire wizard from the future. After all, who better to raise a soulless infant than an undead monster? He did his best to raise her right. He made certain she was well-educated. He picked a reasonably decent culture for her to grow up in. He trained her in her powers, taught her everything he could, and even broadened her horizons by touring other worlds, other times, other histories—and some futures!

Eric is a physicist, an angel vivisectionist, and an architect of the future. He's also an accidental time traveler, stuck in the past and trying to re-create his own future. Now he's got to save the world for a better tomorrow, but not like everyone does, in general, every day. Oh, no. He has to make a better tomorrow that looks exactly the way he remembers it, or there may be no yesterday, no today, and no Eric! There is a reason he hates time travel, and it has nothing to do with physics.

In an extra chapter from book two, Shadows, find out what actually happened that night, and why Eric has such a strong dislike of bugs—especially giant ants. "Halloween," "H2," and "This Army" are bonus scenes from book four, Knightfall.