* CompleteMonster:
** {{Dracula}}, previously known as [[UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler Vlad Tepes]], is the BigBad of the series, the [[MonsterProgenitor first vampire]] ever to exist, and, despite his FauxAffablyEvil manner, puts all other vampires to shame with his monstrousness. After being resurrected, he devours hundreds, procured for him by [[TheDragon Valeri Rusmanov]], to regain his full power. He later kidnaps Blacklight Director Henry Seward and subjects him to brutal torture, including ripping out and eating his left eye in ''Zero Hour'', in which he also kills numerous Operators, including [[spoiler:Acting Director Cal Holmwood]]. He is also responsible for turning thousands of violently unstable inmates into powerful vampires, resulting in numerous deaths across the world. After vampires are revealed to the world, he [[spoiler:secretly funds anti-vampire attacks to destabilize the UK, as well as to distract Blacklight and possibly the other supernatural departments; this leads to the deaths of several vampires]]. Once at full power, his first move against humanity is having vampires attack trains and planes, killing tens of thousands. He then seizes the city of Carcassonne in France, taking over 100 hostages, and gives its inhabitants two days to leave. At the deadline, he gives orders to "Burn it down. Burn it all down." This leads to the deaths of thousands more. His ultimate goal is to TakeOverTheWorld, which will result in countless deaths, vampires becoming the dominant species, and even the slightest dissent being punishable by CruelAndUnusualDeath.
** ''The Rising'':
*** [[VampireMonarch Dante Valeriano, the Vampire King of Paris]], claims to have been turned by Valeri Rusmanov centuries ago. In truth, Dante is a former peasant named Pierre Depuis who is far younger than he claims. Despite this, Dante runs Paris brutally, painfully killing any vampire who dares object to his rule. On a nightly basis, Dante has humans abducted and brought to his personal theater where they are [[ColdBloodedTorture tortured]], murdered and eviscerated on stage with their blood drawn for the thirst of the vampires in attendance. When Frankenstein betrays Dante and rescues a girl who had recognized him from his human life, Dante is left a shattered shell of himself, feeding upon multiple humans to regain power and continuing the horrible "performances" at his theater until he finally captures an amnesiac Frankenstein, fully intending to torture him slowly to death in retribution. While not having the body count of Dracula, Dante's unique brand of {{sadis|t}}m, with far fewer resources, stands out.
*** [[spoiler:[[MadScientist Professor Richard Talbot, real name Christopher Reynolds]], is the head of Department 19's Lazarus Project, which aims to reverse vampirism. However, Talbot is in fact trying to find a way to eliminate vampires' weaknesses, a goal which involves brutal torture of vampires. Before escaping, Talbot is in the middle of killing the vampires who are being studied; a [[WouldHurtAChild young vampire]] would have been the next victim. Talbot kills the 23 other members of Lazarus with [[DeadlyGas sarin]], and was about to kill a teenage member before being shot. We learn that he had done this before, torturing vampires and killing his staff. Talbot is also TheMole for Valeri Rusmanov, and is thus responsible for the kidnapping of Department 19's Director Henry Seward, and the 68 members of Department 19 who are killed--including Kate's boyfriend Shaun Turner--when Valeri leads an attack on Department 19's headquarters. While not having the body count of Dracula or the Rusmanovs, Talbot qualifies as one of the worst humans in the series, despite his [[FauxAffablyEvil seeming-politeness]]]].
** ''Battle Lines'': [[HeManWomanHater General Garcia Rejon]] uses every bit of his [[ArcVillain limited page time]] to stand out. Previously a Mexican general, Rejon became head of [[TheCartel the Desert drug cartel]] by having its previous leader--and every person tangentially connected to him--murdered. Rejon was broken out of the Supermax prison he was eventually sent to and turned into a vampire by Dracula's forces. Rejon immediately regains control by having 68 high-level members of the Desert cartel [[CruelAndUnusualDeath brutally tortured to death]]. When the heroes launch an assault on Rejon's compound, unwittingly killing a woman, [[DirtyCoward Rejon]] forces a group of scantily-clad young women--whom he's also heavily implied to have coerced into sex for jobs--to fight them off, armed only with knives and machetes.
* EnsembleDarkhorse: Valentin Rusmanov, for pulling an honest HeelFaceTurn without letting go of any of his [[CruelAndUnusualDeath casual sadism]].
* MoralEventHorizon: Pretty much every villain is ''very firmly'' on the "black" end of BlackAndGrayMorality. Some shining examples:
** Alexandru Rusmanov, BigBad of the first book, is hyped as an AxCrazy lunatic, but other than OffscreenVillainy, he's mostly shown [[KickTheDog physically abusing]] Marie and [[DumbMuscle Anderson]]. His line-crossing moment, though, comes when, in retribution for Jamie attempting to find him, he leads forty vampires to the island of Lindisfarne. They brutally torture and kill at least eighty random people, about half the island's population, and in the third book it's implied that at least a few victims were [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil raped]] as well.
** Garcia Rejon, a drug lord turned [[spoiler: indirectly by Dracula]] during the third book, manages to cross this before he even appears. Despite being a superpowered vampire, he and his fellow vampires [[DirtyCoward hide deep in his mansion]] while they force the bikini-clad women who process drugs for them to serve as CannonFodder armed only with blunt machetes and kitchen tools. One of the women is actually killed because of this, and Larissa makes a point to kill Rejon specifically for this.
** Dracula already passed it centuries ago as Vlad Tepes, and his ruthless torture of [[spoiler: the abducted Henry Seward]] throughout ''Battle Lines'' and ''Zero Hour'' is irredeemably sadistic, but at the climax of ''Zero Hour'', he [[spoiler: intervenes in the battle outside Chateau Dauncy and [[OffWithHisHead decapitates]] Cal Holmwood]]. There is no coming back from that.
* NightmareFuel: The [[CruelAndUnusualDeath death]] of [[spoiler: [[ShellShockedVeteran John Morton]]]] ''will'' make you uneasy about [[PeekABooCorpse what's behind closed doors]].
** The attack on Lindisfarne at the end of the first book. It's a peaceful little fishing town...that suddenly gets attacked by powerful monsters that aren't supposed to exist and that set about torturing and murdering the inhabitants in gruesome ways.
** The actual contents of [[spoiler: [[MadScientist Talbot's]] lab]] are this; it's full of [[spoiler: vivisected vampires, cut up in an attempt to find a way to get around vampire weaknesses to make Dracula's army stronger]].
** An in-universe example, when [[spoiler:Dracula tells Henry Seward]] how he's going to kill him, [[spoiler:Seward's]] reaction is to ''vomit and faint''. [[NothingIsScarier Exactly what Dracula said is never revealed]], but it's clear that they both consider it to be worse than [[CruelAndUnusualDeath impalement]].
** In ''Zero Hour'' and ''Darkest Night'', the [[spoiler: chaos which breaks out when the public finds out about vampires]] is horrifying. There are reports of [[spoiler:goths being brutally assaulted because people thought they were vampires, and a couple who worked from home and so were never seen going in or out had petrol poured through their letterbox and set on fire.]]
** The flashback sequence in the first book, where Van Helsing, Bram Stoker(!) and Van Helsing's valet, Henry Carpenter, go down into some creepy catacombs below a theatre and find what? [[spoiler:The exsanguinated, mutilated corpses of multiple chorus girls who had gone missing from the theatre.]]
* WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids: The series is among the darkest and most mature things to receive the [=YA=] classification. The original novel is already pushing the limits, but the sequels can easily be seen as being written for adults.
* TheWoobie:
** Jamie's dad is gunned down in front of him when he's fourteen, and he is relentlessly bullied and ostracized for the next two years after word spreads that his dad helped a terrorist group. Then, he comes home to find that his mother has been kidnapped by Alexandru Rusmanov. He then learns that his dad sold out Blacklight to the same vampire that kidnapped his mom [[spoiler: (not really)]].
** His mom, Marie, is abducted by Alexandru and kept as a hostage for pretty much the whole first book, and she is then turned into a vampire as her captor's last act of spite.
** Larissa was turned into a vampire when she wandered into a dark alley at a fair, and was forced to abandon her family lest she eat them, after which she ran into Alexandru at an unspecified later time. The only reason he didn't kill her on the spot was because he was DistractedByTheSexy, and she had to convince him that she was a vicious killer in order to survive. When he orders her to kill Jamie, she can't go through with it, and he horrifically mauls her as punishment. Even after officially joining Blacklight and dramatically improving her lot in life, she never feels comfortable with herself, eventually causing her to [[spoiler: run away from everyone after Zero Hour passes and set up a vampires-only commune, which she ultimately has to leave to go fight Dracula again.]]
** Matt Browning is a sweet boy who's been relentlessly bullied all his life due to his intelligence, who gets viciously assaulted by a vampire in his own back garden. He's then taken to a top secret government facility to be treated and has to feign amnesia because he's scared about what'll happen to him. Then, [[spoiler: after joining the Department and finally finding somewhere he can fit in, have friends and make a difference using his intelligence, it turns out the leader of his project is a MadScientist who proceeds to gas the entire project and nearly murders Matt, too. In Zero Hour, he sees a man commit suicide in front of him, and in ''Darkest Night'' he gets assaulted by one of his best friends because of a misunderstanding.]] The poor guy's [[TraumaCongaLine been through a lot]].
** Kate happens to live on Lindisfarne Island when Alexandru attacks it and is forced to witness the {{Gorn}} inflicted on her fellow townsfolk. At the end of ''The Rising'', [[spoiler:her boyfriend dies, too.]]
** Paul Turner, in the later books. In ''The Rising'', [[spoiler:his son dies, resulting in a friendship with Kate, and it's revealed that he feels intensely guilty because he thinks he wasn't a good enough dad, up to losing sleep on the matter. When Kate's room gets bombed in ''Battle Lines'', he comes very close to [[FreakOut losing it]].]] And to add to it, in ''Zero Hour'', [[spoiler:he says that he has done terrible things for the Department and he has to believe it was for good otherwise he might ''kill himself''.]] In ''Darkest Night'', [[spoiler:when the cure for vampirism is finally found, we even get told how feelings like happiness and optimism had been lost to him in recent months... and then when things are just starting to look up for him, Kate gets shot in the neck by Greg Browning and almost dies.]] It can certainly tug at the readers' heartstrings.
** Due to his insane levels of willpower and ability to keep going and be a complete badass whilst doing it, Paul Turner qualifies for IronWoobie as well.
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