Characters / Immortal Guardians

Beware of unmarked spoilers if you're not up to date on the series.


Note: Given the ability of characters to transform between the four categories (human, gifted ones, vampire, immortal guardian), categorization on this page is primarily based on how the character's status when introduced in the series. However, for characters who have appeared in multiple entries, they may be categorized based on their status for the majority of their appearances.

The Elders

Seth

• The Ace: As the oldest and most powerful of the Immortals, there is very little Seth can't do. Seth himself describes his "limitations" as basically skills that have withered from disuse. Meaning, if it's a power, he could if he wanted to, given time enough to practice.
• Adoptive Peer Parent: Despite her being an adult, Seth adopts Ami as his daughter and later Adira as his granddaughter. This generally causes confusion during introductions since Seth and Ami appear to be roughly the same age and Seth looks like someone in his mid to late 20s, far too young to have a granddaughter.
• The Atoner: Part of the reason that Seth protects humanity is to make up for the sheer number of people he killed while in an uncontrollable rage following the murder of his wife and children. Seth still feels guilty about the number of children he orphaned and feels it's his duty to balance the scales by helping humanity survive the vampire threat.
• Age Without Youth: Averted. Most characters, when they hear that Seth is the leader of the Immortals and the oldest of them, expect Seth to look physically aged and are surprised when they see that he looks to be in his late 20s, early 30s at the oldest.
• All-Loving Hero: Seth uses all of his resources to keep the world safe. The purpose of the Immortal Guardians is to safeguard people who don't even know they exist. Seth works hard to keep humans, Gifted Ones, and Immortals safe. He even tries to save and rehabilitate vampires and mercenaries if at all possible.
• Always on Duty: Seth makes himself available as 24/7 emergency backup to the Guardians, no questions asked, no matter where they are or when they need him.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Gershom tries to taunt Seth, saying he's not nearly as powerful as he thinks himself to be and he only survived because his father came to his rescue. Seth's response leaves Gershom cursing and all but foaming at the mouth.
  Seth: And as you can see, I survived.
  'Gershom: Because daddy came to save you.
  Seth: Jealous because your daddy hasn't come to save you?
• Beware the Nice Ones: Seth is very friendly, understanding, and really hard to piss off. But if you do... Well, he is a terrible enemy to have.
• Big Good: Humanity would literally be extinct several times over without Seth's efforts. Then it's discovered that Immortals and Lasarans can conceive children together, negating the plague that rendered Lasarans sterile and inadvertently making Seth the savior of two worlds.
• Celibate Hero: Following the murder of his wife and children, Seth abstains from all romantic and sexual contact, feeling that engaging in such would be a betrayal of his wife's memory. Seth is so adherent to this belief that the Immortals more or less see him as asexual, far beyond such banal urges as sexual desire. They are hilariously shocked when he actually shows interest in a woman.
• The Cavalry: Seth is a one-man Calvary, showing up to save the day when an Immortal finds themselves in over their heads.
• Daywalking Immortal: Seth is impervious to sunlight
• Death by Origin Story: Seth's wife and children were murdered by superstitious villagers. That and his subsequent Roaring Rampage of Revenge very heavily influence Seth's past and present behaviors.
• Determinator: Seth doesn't know the meaning of quit and although he may experience temporary setbacks, he will always eventually achieve his ultimate goal.
• Did the Earth Move for You, Too?: Much to the deep amusement of the Immortals, Gifted Ones, and their human assistants, Seth loses control of his weather-manipulation powers any time he has sex. So everyone on the premises knows when he and Leah are having sex because it suddenly starts torrentially raining, the earth starts quaking, and the wind blows hard enough to threaten to take off the roof.
• Eternal Hero: Seth was born so many millennia ago, the only way he can explain it to his modern compatriots is to say he was already around before The Great Flood. And as he is immortal in the truest sense of the word, he has no end in sight.
• Gentle Giant: Seth is 6'8" but soft-spoken, kind, and extremely compassionate.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Part of the reason it takes Seth as long as it does to identify and stop Gershom is because he can't fully grasp the concept of hurting people simply because you can. Seth spends every day using his powers to protect those who cannot protect themselves and this ingrained mindset makes it hard for him to anticipate who and how Gershom might attack next.
• Hero of Another Story: Despite being the leader of the Immortal Guardians, Seth is a supporting character for the first eight books. It's made very clear that he does tons of things of which the featured characters of the book know nothing.
• Hide Your Otherness: Seth very rarely lets anyone know that he has wings because it leads to additional questions about why he has them when no other Immortal does. Seth eventually explains that he has always hidden them because whenever the truth of what he truly is comes to light, bloodshed always follows. Later, when Zach and then Jared join and don't hide their wings, Seth lets the Immortals believe that it's part of their shapeshifting abilities. This story goes on until Seth is ready to share his true origin.
• Humble Hero: People are awed when they realize how often Seth has saved the world from literal destruction, but to Seth, it's just what he does and he's uncomfortable having the immensity of it highlighted.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Despite having powers so potent he could literally shape the world in whatever way suited him, Seth just wants humanity, Gifted Ones, and Immortals to be safe and happy. When the Big Bad insists that the world could've been theirs to do with as they wish, Seth is stunned, responding "Humans were here first. We came later. It's their world."
• Interrupted Intimacy: Seth accidentally does this to several couples, particularly Marcus and Ami, by teleporting in without warning. Justified in-universe by the fact that when Seth needs help, it's usually an emergency that doesn't have time to wait for people to wrap up their current activity.
• Invincible Hero: Seth is nigh impossible to injure let alone kill. When he is decapitated by a guillotine trap (one of the very few ways an Immortal can actually be killed), his even more powerful father restores him to life, good as new.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Seth plainly tells Leah that he likes her but his enemies would absolutely target her if it were known that they were dating. He tries to keep their relationship platonic but Leah is targeted regardless simply because she is a known associate of Seth's family.
• Just Friends: Seth initially denies his attraction to Leah, afraid that she'll be targeted if they date. So, he claims that he and Leah are just friends. Of course, he's fooling absolutely no one and everyone conspires to push the two together. Even two year old Adira.
• Kinda Busy Here: It's not uncommon for an Immortal to call Seth and hear a full fledged battle taking place on his end of the line. However, Seth very rarely asks the caller to call back later. He will, however, ask them to hold for a moment. The caller will then hear him to dispatch his assailants before he calmly resumes the call.
• The Leader: Seth created the Immortal Guardians, trains them after they are transformed, and directs their actions as a team.
• Living Distant Ancestor: Seth is thousands of years older than the other Immortal Guardians who are all his descendants.
• The Lost Lenore: It takes Seth thousands of years to finally be able to move on from his wife's death.
• The Mourning After: Thousands of years after their deaths, Seth is still grieving the loss of his wife and children.
• My Greatest Failure: Seth is completely devastated any time he's unable to help a gifted one or Immortal. He is extremely upset when he realizes he somehow missed Bastien's transformation from gifted one to Immortal, leaving Bastien to live isolated for nearly two hundred years, mistakenly believing he was a vampire. He is completely distraught when Yuri dies and Stanislov goes missing. He searches for Stan every night for two years, unable to accept that the man may actually be dead.
• The Older Immortal: While most of the Immortals are at least a few hundred years old, Seth and David are so old, they don't even bother trying to quantify their age any more. The general rule in the group is that anyone that isn't at least a thousand years old is basically a newbie.
• Older Than They Look: Seth appears to be in his early 30s at the latest but is several millennia old.
• Omniglot: Seth speaks every language known to man and many that man has long since forgotten.
• Only One Name: Being older than the concept of surnames, Seth only has a first name and only ever introduces himself as such. People sometimes try to call him Mr. Seth in recognition of his status as "The Big Boss" but he assures them that he prefers just Seth, not title necessary.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Seth's children were murdered.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When Seth's wife and children are murdered, the normally calm and peaceful Seth completely loses his shit. He kills the men who murdered them by causing their bodies to spontaneously ignite in plumes of fire. Then Seth takes six foot long swords and kills the men who helped the murderers, the men who didn't help but knew about the plan, the people who didn't know about the plan but would've approved, the people who wouldn't have approved but had previously been mean to his family, the people who hadn't been actively mean to his family but thought they deserved to be treated poorly because of their differences, the people who thought it was okay to be mean to people for being different... and on and on and on... until the city lay in complete waste. Seth admits that the only thing that saved the world from total annihilation was David's desperate appeal to the Others. And even then it took all ten to subdue Seth and only after they drained him of his powers to give him time to come to calm down.
• Same Race Means Related: Averted. When Seth reveals that David is actually his biological grandson, Ethan hesitantly asks how that's possible when David is a very, very dark black man and most people would describe Seth as a white man of indeterminable origin. Seth tells the group that his first wife was Ethiopian which produced children who were mixed race, but the color of Darnell (an African-American member of their team described as being the color of chocolate milk). One of those children then married another Ethiopian and had David, making him three quarters African and one quarter Caucasian.
• Seen It All: Invoked by Seth after he has to save Sean and Nicole from falling to their deaths after jumping from a plane with no parachutes. After his initial anger, Seth is pretty amused, saying that having lived as long as he has, it's rare to have a new experience.
• Shipper on Deck: When Seth begins to exhibit signs of being attracted to Leah, the Immortal Guardians, Seconds, and Network Security do everything they can to help the relationship progress, up to and including David having a heart to heart with Seth, assuring him that it's okay to finally move on from his first wife, who would've wanted him to find happiness.
• Strong Family Resemblance: It is noted early in the series that most of the Immortal Guardians look enough alike to be siblings. In Seth's book, it is revealed that this because they all descend from Seth and as such, share the features of his dominant genes.
• Taught by Experience: Seth will often emphasize that the protocols he has put in place are based on lessons learned the hard way. The importance of routinely replenishing blood, having a second, pairing Immortals for companionships, all of it is learned from Seth's millennia of leadership for which there was no manual.
• Team Dad: Seth serves as a father figure to the Immortal Guardians, to the point that it's even invoked multiple times in the series, particularly in Seth's story after he begins dating Leah. Zach remarks that the Immortals see Seth as a father figure and they have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea of daddy having wild sex.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Tens of thousands of years old, Seth and David don't bother to keep on the cutting edge of technology. They master the things that make their lives easier like basic cellphones and kitchen appliances, but have no interest in knowing how the latest doodad works. At one point, Chris has to explain to them how to use Google Maps and how to zoom in and out on a tablet. Their general attitude is all technology is a fad that will be obsolete before you know it. They're not interested in learning and that's why they pay Chris the big bucks.
• Thematic Theme Tune: Seth's signature ringtone on his cellphone is Skillet's "Monster", a song about a man who hides part of his nature from his friends because that part of him is dark and dangerous. Few of the Immortal Guardians know the truth of what happened to Seth's family and the subsequent rampage he went on. When Seth meets Leah, a human, he's initially afraid to court her because he's much stronger now and fears no one could stop him if something happened to her, triggering him to meltdown again. That potential for destruction that Seth hides make him feel like a monster that no one even knows lives amongst them.
• Weather Manipulation: An involuntary power of Seth. The weather responds to his emotions, particularly when he is extremely upset, angry, or caught up in sexual passion, much to his chagrin. He generally doesn't intentionally manipulate weather conditions but will sometimes create cloud cover to protect his younger Immortals from the sun if being outside is mandatory.
• You and What Army?: When Seth declares Zach off limits to the Others, they push back, asking if Seth really thinks he alone is enough to keep them from taking Zach. Seth reveals that he's not alone and he's powerful enough to conceal the presence of David and dozens of his most powerful Immortals. Not that he needs them to take on the Others.

David

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Seth gives David the ability to teleport, an ability he lacked for the first eight books of the series. This comes in handy just as they need lots of elders who can teleport in order to be able to combat Gershom
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Much like Seth, David is very even-keeled and hard to upset. But it is commonly accepted amongst the Immortals that should you incur his wrath, it very well might be the last thing you do.
• Big Fancy House: The North Carolina contingent routinely meets at David's house which is always described as enormous gated complex with a long driveway. While the exact layout is never explicitly stated, the living room is described as comfortably housing several couches, the kitchen features multiple double door refrigerators, the dining room table seats twenty-five with room for more, there is an onsite infirmary big enough to treat several patients simultaneously, an onsite gymnasium, an apartment suite of rooms each for Seth, David, and Marcus and Amy's family, guest rooms for as many Immortals who would like to stay, and a barn/garage that can house all of the Immortals' cars.
• Celibate Hero: Much like Seth, David has never gotten over the loss of his wife and can't imagine being with another woman, even though it's been thousands of years.
• Cryptic Background Reference: David mentions that he hasn't been on a military base since World War I but never explains why he was on the base. Given that Seth says that war and famine attracts vampires, it makes you wonder if vampires had infiltrated the Great War trenches.
• Daywalking Immortal: David is old enough to withstand several hours of sun exposure
• Dreadlock Warrior: David sports waist-length, pencil thin dreadlocks, is nearly seven feet tall, and is comparable to Seth in levels of power and badassery.
• Genius Bruiser: David is 6'7", oozes power, and enjoys a good book. Whenever he has down time, he can be found in a cozy corner reading a Stephen King novel.
• Good Is Not Soft: Invoked by David when an Immortal, usually Sebastien, pushes too far. He specifically warns them against mistaking his easy going nature for being a pushover and that they will not like the consequences if they make him lose his temper.
• Invincible Hero: David takes three bullets to the brain and still keeps fighting.
• The Medic: Although all of the elders have the ability to heal, this is David's primary ability and role on the team.
• Number Two: David is Seth's second-in-command. When Seth is not around, David's word is law.
• The Older Immortal: While most of the Immortals are at least a few hundred years old, Seth and David are so old, they don't even bother trying to quantify their age any more. The general rule in the group is that anyone that isn't at least a thousand years old is basically a newbie.
• Raised by Grandparents: In Seth's book, as he is explaining the genealogy of the Gifted Ones, Seth implies that he he raised David and his granddaughters in the wake of their parents being murdered.
• Team Mom: In compliment to Seth's status as Team Dad in charge of training and discipline, David is nurturing, basically supplying food, clothes, housing, and attention to anyone who needs it. David maintains an open door policy on any property he owns, has a nightly open invitation team dinners, keeps a fully stocked armory, medbay, and closet of clothes for any immortal who may show up needing them, routinely checks on the emotional wellbeing of the Immortals (including Seth), and personally monitors the health of anyone who comes to his house needing medical attention.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Tens of thousands of years old, David and Seth don't bother to keep on the cutting edge of technology. They master the things that make their lives easier like basic cellphones and kitchen appliances, but have no interest in knowing how the latest doodad works. At one point, Chris has to explain to them how to use Google Maps and how to zoom in and out on a tablet. Their general attitude is all technology is a fad that will be obsolete before you know it. They're not interested in learning and that's why they pay Chris the big bucks.
• Undying Loyalty: David is completely loyal to Seth and goes anywhere the older Immortal goes. They even share a house. Across the entire series, the pair never has an argument or even a cross words for each other. When Seth is decapitated and temporarily killed, David is completely devastated, breaking down sobbing over Seth's lifeless body despite being depicted as fairly stoic. Later, it is revealed that the pair's closeness largely stems from the fact that Seth is David's maternal grandfather.

Zach

• Breaking the Bonds: Once his patience with Roland's Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique runs out, Zach easily breaks the chains that were used to bind him, startling his captors who thought him thoroughly secured.
• Bullying a Dragon: When Roland, Sara, and Lisette attempt to interrogate Zach, Roland takes the bad cop route, punching Zach whenever Zach says something Roland doesn't like. The first time Zach ignores it. The second time he warns Roland not to hit him again. The third time, he breaks the restraints "binding" him, reveals his wings that prove he's much more powerful than he has let on, and promises Roland that if he ever strikes him again, Roland won't survive the retaliation. The Immortals, who are very used to being the strongest people around, are visibly shaken.
• Defecting for Love: Although Zach was already showing signs of changing his mind regarding remaining neutral as the Others have always done in regards to humanity, he firmly decides to defect to Seth and the Immortal Guardians once he becomes meets and becomes infatuated with Lisette.
• Dream Walker: When Zach is being held and tortured by the Others, he seeks Lisette out in her dreams, interacting with her in her dreams to have a few moments of reprieve.
• Forbidden Friendship: Not trusting Zach's motives, Seth forbids both Ami and Lisette from associating with him. Of course, both ladies ignore their normally infallible leader, realizing that he has a bit of a blindspot where Zach is concerned.
• Interrupted Intimacy: The first time Lisette attempts to give Zach oral sex, they are interrupted by Richart abruptly teleporting in with Jenna without warning.
• I Surrender, Suckers: When Lisette, Sara, and Roland catch Zach hanging out on David's roof, they move to capture and interrogate him. Even though he could totally take them all out and escape, Zach allows them to capture him and chain him up so he can spend time in close proximity to Lisette. When he grows tired of their interrogation methods, he breaks the supposedly unbreakable chains and walks out.
• Mad at a Dream: When Zach attempts to enter Lisette's dreams, he finds her dreaming of being intimate with Sheldon, a young, human Second. Not realizing that he's actually witnessing Lisette walk in Tracy's dream, he's jealous and upset that Lisette would desire the man who is barely out of his teens. Lisette is very confused and then amused when Zach jealously confronts her over her supposed pining.
• Mistaken for Romance: When they first discover that Zach is spending time with Amy without anyone else's knowledge, Roland, Sarah, and Lisette assume that Zach has developed a crush on her and is possibly planning to poach her away from Marcus. Roland in particular is furious, but Zach insists they're just friends, leading to the following exchange:

  Roland: "We know you've been meeting her regularly. if you're hoping she'll be a friend with benefits, think again."

  Zach: "I don't know what that is. What kind of benefits?"

  Roland: "Sexual."

  Zach: "A friend you sleep with isn't a friend. It's a lover. I told you, Ami is a friend."

• My Fist Forgives You: When Seth finally apologizes for intentionally trapping Zach where the Others could find him, Zach responds by punching him hard enough to break Seth's jaw. That's the last time Seth's role in the matter is brought up in the series and afterwards Seth and Zach, former best friends, are back on good terms.
• Neural Implanting: Zach implants an extensive knowledge of martial arts and self-defense skills into both Dana and Leah's minds to give them a better chance of protecting themselves while still operating as humans in the Immortal world.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Because he's been hanging around, warning Seth of trouble, and keeping an eye on Ami and Lisette from afar, Zach makes the perfect patsy for the troubles the Immortals have been having. Believing Zach has portrayed him and endangered the Immortals, Seth completely loses his cool, kidnaps Zach, depowers him, and leaves him for the Others to find. The Others then brutally torture Zach for months for daring to try to help Seth.
• Play-Along Prisoner: Although he's powerful enough to evade their attempts, Zach allows Roland, Sarah, and Lisette to subdue and restrain him simply because he wants to spend time up close with Lisette, for whom he is developing an infatuation. When Roland punches him one time too many during his "interrogation", Zach rips apart the chains that had been binding him and warns Roland that the consequences of another punch will be fatal. This trope is later invoked by Seth when he asks why Zach even let the trio get the jump on him.
• Restrained Revenge: Since Zach can't fully retaliate against Jared for torturing him, Zach settles for punching Jared in the face hard enough to break bones every time the two encounter one another.
• Sitting on the Roof: Zach's initial contact with the Immortals is simply sitting on David's roof and listening to the comings and goings. Eventually, Ami realizes he's there and joins him. They don't talk but she shares lollipops with him. Eventually, Sarah, Roland, and Lisette realize he and Ami are meeting and that leads to the confrontation that draws Zach to the center stage.
• Sixth Ranger: Zach is the first Other since Seth to break rank and side with humanity. He is only allowed to join the Immortals after a number of misunderstandings are finally cleared up and he has several opportunities to show his trustworthiness.
• Stalker with a Crush: Zach is initially this to Lisette. He watches her without her knowledge for months before they finally speak face to face for the first time. Even after they finally speak, he tends to hang around the edges, showing up to keep her safe, but not bold enough to really interact with her.
• A Taste of the Lash: Zach is brutally whipped for interacting with Seth who has been shunned by the Others for defecting to humanity.
• Their First Time: Zach spends months pining for Lisette from afar. Then for several more weeks, they meet in their dreams and tentatively flirt and touch each other. The first time they decide to go all the way in Night Unbound is the very first time Zach has ever had sex and Lisette's first time with Zach.
• Unbroken Vigil: When Lisette is tranqued into unconsciousness by a new, unknown sedative, Zach refuses to leave her side for five days. He spends every ounce of energy he has trying to heal her, literally draining himself unconscious repeatedly.
• Unexpected Virgin: Having lived among the Others who don't believe in physical contact, Zach is a virgin despite being thousands of years old.
• We Used to Be Friends: Zach's arc begins with him and Seth estranged, but Zach admit he and Seth used to be close friends. In fact, that's part of what makes Seth so angry when he thinks Zach is the mole: his friend who shunned him, spent years trying to capture or kill him, only to show up making overtures as though he wants to make amends only to have possibly used that thin thread of trust to hurt the people Seth cares about.
• What Is This Feeling?: As they're gearing up for a large battle, Zach finds himself feeling weird. His stomach feels odd, but it's not nausea. His chest feels tight and his heart is racing. He has no idea what's going on. Seth has to inform him that that's what nervousness feels like and that Zach is likely experiencing for the first time because he's worried about Lisette who is not as impervious to damage as Zach himself.
• Winged Humanoid: Unlike Seth, Zach has never hidden the fact that he has wings. While he is capable of hiding them and sometimes does just for convenience's sake, he tends to display them in fights to further emphasize that he is not one to be messed with.
• You Are Worth Hell: The first time Lisette and Zach kiss, he mentally decides that she was worth every moment of torture he's been through in the last few months. He also decides that if this was how Seth felt about his wife, it was no wonder he deserted from the Others.

Jared

• Bad Future: Jared gets visions of a future [[ The Bad Guy Wins so bad]] that it convinces him to break his lifelong, multi-millennia old prohibition against interfering with human development.
• Double Agent: For a while after defecting, Jared continues to live with the Others and pretending to maintain his neutrality to keep Gershom unaware that another of their kind has defected to the Immortals make them all that more powerful. His double agent status is not revealed until Gershome forces their hand after teleporting to Time Square and injuring tons of humans, creating a situation that needed both healers and people who could erase minds, a skill only the Elders have.
• Dream Weaver: Jared plants prophetic dreams in Heather's mind to aid Seth and the Immortal Guardians without alerting Gershom or the Others to his defection.
• 11th-Hour Ranger: Joins the Immortals near the climax of the arc once he realizes that, unchecked, Gershom actually will trigger the Apocalypse, resulting in the death of everyone, including the Others.
• Heel–Face Turn: Jared spent numerous years pre-series trying to either capture or kill Seth and, during the series, captures and brutally tortures Zach. Then he realizes that Zach and Seth have been right all along, he defects and requests to join the Immortals.
• In Love with Love: Now that he's no longer sequestered with the Others, he's super looking forward to all of the human experience, particularly dating. Sean even gripes that Jared asks super invasive questions about sex. Seth points out that as someone who's lived thousands of years, but has never really experienced what humans consider "life", Jared merely wants to learn as much as he can from people who know what's what. It's a running joke that the elder Immortals are terrified of the chaos Jared will unleash when he's actually ready to approach a woman.
• Motor Mouth: It's mentioned by several characters that after thousands of years in isolation, Jared is curious about about every aspect of humanity and wants to pick everyone's brains about everything, usually to the point of the exhaustion of his conversational partner.
• My Fist Forgives You: While Zach can accept that they need Jared's help, he is not ready to forgive Jared for playing a leading role in his torture. This means for an entire book, any time Jared teleports into a Zach's presence, Zach punches him in the face hard enough to break several bones. Jared seems to accept that he totally deserves it and Seth and David, who normally very vocally oppose fighting amongst the ranks, are only mildly annoyed.
• Neutral No Longer: Jared has a vision that if Seth and his group fails to stop Gershom, it will result in the destruction of all life on earth. Not willing to sit by and watch this happen, Jared defects from the sanctuary of the Others and makes his way to the Immortal Guardians to offer his services.
• Technologically Blind Elders: When Jared insists on being part of the infiltration team to save Tessa, Chris refuses, since the team will need to interact with sensitive computer systems and Jared doesn't even know how to operate a smartphone.
• Temporal Immutability: When Jared initially sends prophetic dreams to Heather, he's unsure he can even influence the future. However, when one of the dreams results in Heather being grievously wounded instead of Ethan being killed, Jared realized he in fact can prevent the Bad Future he's foreseen.

The Immortals

Aidan

• Because You Were Nice to Me: When Aidan is repeatedly attacked by vampires, the Immortals show up one by one to keep him company and make sure he's safe, even Sebastien and Roland. When asked why, each recounts a time Aidan helped them even though he didn't have to and at great personal risk to himself.
• Dirty Mind-Reading: The first time Dana and Aidan meet, she performs a psychic reading for him. Secretly a telepath himself, Aidan can see her premonitions of the two of them making passionate love at some future date, even though Dana choses not to share this part of her vision with him aloud.
• Fighting Your Friend: Subverted. Aidan is attacked by someone who looks just like Seth, appears to have his strength and abilities, and knows a lot of what's been going on with Aidan and the Immortals, but it turns out to be Gershom impersonating Seth, using information he's gleaned via telepathy.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Aidan tells Seth that he is starting to experience this. He was willing to break into the Network and risk being executed because he's that desperate for companionship.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Aidan sometimes uses kiddie language like fanny and caboose due to the amount of time he spends around two year old Adira.
• Love Hungry: After thousands of years of loneliness, Aidan steals a list of Gifted Ones and engineers situations to run into them in hopes of finding a love match. One Gifted One is nearly killed by vampires because she assumes her flat tired means it's her turn to "accidentally" run into Aidan. Aiden's desperate attempts to find a partner leads to him being a prime suspect when a large number of Gifted Ones from his list of potentials suddenly disappear.
• Mistaken for Betrayal: When Aidan breaks into the Network to secure a personnel file, it's assumed that he did so in order to use that information against the Immortals with whomever he's working with to raise a vampire army. In reality, Aidan is desperately lonely and stole the list in hopes of finding a Gifted One he might be compatible enough with to mate. Later, his intense desire for companionship is used against him to make it seem he is kidnapping female Gifted Ones and then killing them for rejecting him.
• Mistaken for Evidence: When Aidan abruptly leaves a meeting after being confronted by the fact that several of the women he's been in contact with have gone missing, it's interpreted as an admission of guilty and an attempt to escape. In reality, he sees the pattern and is terrified that something may have happened to Dana. He leaves abruptly to get to her as soon as possible and make sure she's safe.

Dana

• Not a Morning Person: Invoked by Dana to describe herself after she goes on a rant in response to being abruptly woken up for an impending attack for the second time in less than twenty four hours.
• Not-So-Phony Psychic: Dana uses her abilities to work as a psychic. She receives premonitions of both past and future events.
• Oh, Crap!: Dana's reaction when she realizes that Seth is impervious to the tranquilizer she just shot him with.
• Pstandard Psychic Pstance: Invoked by Dana. When Aidan first enters her shop, she mimics the psychic pose used by Shawn Spencer from the television show Psych.
• Shout-Out: Dana refers to Seth as "The great and powerful Oz".
• Touch Telepathy: As part of her services, Dana offers her clients massages. It helps them relax and strengthens her ability to read their minds.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: After having visions that they would try to kill Aidan, Dana tases Roland the first time he attacks, and later tranqs both Roland and Sarah when she mistakes their attempts to apologize to Aidan as an attack. She even shoots Seth with a tranq much to the awestruck astonishment of all the other Immortals.
• Wowing Cthulhu: Seth is impressed by Dana's attempts to protect Aidan. His immediate reaction to Dana's attempts to tranq him is "I like her." Whenever anyone who didn't witness the interaction in person hears about it, the immediate reaction is startled laughter and then wide eyed awe that anybody would be bold enough to try to take out Seth.

Ethan

• Afraid of Needles: When asked to stitch up Zach's wounds, Ethan admits that needles make him squeamish. Instead, he calls Sebastien to help.
• Amicable Exes: Ethan and Lisette used to date but now they're just friends and there are no hard feelings.
• Chekhov's Skill: At several points in the series, it is emphasized that it is extremely difficult to telepathically influence Ethan, even for elder Immortals. This becomes vital when Gershom infiltrates David's home and gives a telepathic command to sleep, knocking out all the Immortals save David and Ethan. While David fights off Gershom, Ethan attempts to get the kids to safety.
• Immune to Mind Control: Because Ethan is naturally resistant to telepathy, he becomes worried that Gershom may have subliminally implanted a command that will cause him to betray the Immortals. However, when Seth attempts to plant a simple compulsion ("forget that you asked me to do this") it doesn't work and Ethan still remembers Seth being in his mind. Given how extremely powerful Seth is telepathically, they decide it's safe to deem Ethan immune to mind control.
• No Infantile Amnesia: Ethan can recall the day of his birth, including what the midwife who delivered him looked like and was wearing.
• Photographic Memory: Ethan can remember absolutely everything he has ever seen. He can even recall, with extreme clarity, the midwife who delivered him, including what she was wearing, how her hair was styled, etc. This comes in handy when the Big Bad can shape shift to mimic other people. Ethan's memory of personal tics that are not easily identified or imitated helps differentiate between the impostor and the real person.
• Psychic Block Defense: Ethan's passive ability. Seth notes that there is something unique about Ethan's neurological wiring that makes him highly resistant to Mind Probe, Telepathy, Mind Control, and any other form of mental invasion. Only the strongest telepaths can affect him and even then, they can't do it discretely. Ethan will suffer extreme headaches, dizziness, and nosebleeds, making it very obvious that he's being attacked.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Ethan feels this way about his photographic memory. It's a more passive power that can't be used in battle and isn't readily as helpful as telepathy, teleportation, kinesis, healing, or any of the cooler powers his fellow Immortals have. However, when an Impostor begins assuming the forms of Immortals to bypass security, having someone who can spot the imposter by using minute details is actually quite helpful.
• Spot the Imposter: Ethan is extremely useful at this due to his photographic memory and his nigh immunity to telepathic manipulation.

Etienne

• Always Identical Twins: Etienne and Richart are described as being the mirror image of each other.
• The Bet: Etienne tells Krysta that he and Richart once had a bet about who could go the longest without sex. It last for over three decades before Lisette found and made them both break it or she would tell Seth the truth about why they were both so pissy and distracted.
  Etienne: No sex. No pleasuring oneself. Nothing but cold showers. It was the longest thirty-two years of my life.
• Embarrassing Ringtone: Throughout the story, Etienne's phone rings to a number of different silly songs including Spongebob's "Squirrels in my Pants" and "I feel pretty, oh so pretty."
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Seth encourages Etienne and Krysta to go ahead and get together, using this as proof that they're highly compatible.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Etienne can communicate telepathically and read the minds of others, a power Richart lacks.
• My Greatest Failure: Etienne and Richart carry a great deal of guilt because they introduced her to Phillipe, her husband who routinely beat her and then turned her.
• Noodle Incident: Etienne mentions that he learned the hard way about testing the limits of his ability to safely land after jumping off tall buildings. The only details given are that he broke a lot of bones and that Seth was really pissed.
• Running Gag: Throughout Darkness Rises, every time Etienne's phone rings, his ring tone is set to a different comically weird song and Etienne has no idea who is changing his ring tones. He suspects his siblings, but eventually it's revealed to be his usually stoic Second in an effort to get him to lighten up.
• Supporting the Monster Loved One: Richart and Etienne are unintentionally turned because they allowed Lisette to repeatedly feed on them. Despite believing her a vampire, they loved her too much to do anything but try to help her.
• Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Invoked in a conversation between Etienne and Krysta. Etienne reveals that he has slept in a mausoleum once but only because he was out hunting vampires and couldn't make it back to safe shelter in time.

Heather

• Bizarre Dream Rationalization: At several climactic points, Heather refuses to believe that what she is experiencing is actually happening. Justified in that the events are actually repeating a dream that she's had multiple times and she's expecting to wake up at any moment.
• Daddy's Girl: Heather and her father are very close. Heather is extremely worried for him when he risks himself by doing favors for the Immortals. General Lane is willing to commits acts of border line treason to ensure Heather's safety.
• Dream Intro: The beginning of Heather and Ethan's story is an intense scene that turns out to be a repeating dream that Heather's been having for weeks.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Heather repeatedly experiences prophetic dreams that are the key to the ongoing mystery.
• Erotic Dream: When Heather learns that Jared is the reason she was having repeated dreams about fighting vampires with Ethan, she asks him why he would plant erotic dreams. Jared insists he did no such thing. Realizing what's happened, Seth intervenes and demurely explains that after having dreamed about someone she's drawn to over and over again, Heather's mind eventually fabricated it's own dreams about Ethan all on its own. ^note  Even funnier when you realize that as an Other who lived in complete isolation from human and their culture, Jared is a virgin who knows almost nothing about sex and probably got an eyeful when he glimpsed Heather's mind to see what she was talking about!
• Go Through Me: Heather physically puts herself between Ethan and her father and his men.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Heather and Ethan spend a significant amount of time trying to find clues in her dreams as to who the threat is only for Seth to later point out that the dream itself is the clue. Heather isn't precognitive and shouldn't be having prophetic dreams at all. The dreams were planted by a powerful telepath.
• Human Shield: Heather is so determined to keep Ethan safe, she tries to convince him to use her as a human shield when he's held at gunpoint. Of course, Ethan is both unamused and unwilling.
• Military Brat: Heather's father is a general in the US military. When Seth and David need someone who is very familiar with what a military base should look like, they tap Heather since she's lived on a number of military bases around the world.
• Power Incontinence: After suffering blood loss, Kiss of the Vampire, and exhaustion, Heather has trouble not broadcasting her naughty thoughts about Ethan, much to chagrin of Aiden, the powerful telepath that is guarding the couple on Seth's orders.
• Self-Deprecation: After being severely wounded in a vampire attack, Heather loses consciousness. When she wakes, she's groggy and the only thing that she can focus on is the fact that she panicked and threw her gun at the vamps. Seth assures Ethan that it's just the side effects of Kiss of the Vampire and she'll be be more lucid later.
• Taking the Bullet: Heather literally jumps in between Ethan and the vampire who is attempting to decapitate him, taking a wound herself that would have been fatal if not for Seth.
  Ethan: "You sacrificed yourself to save me! What were you thinking? I'm immortal. You're mortal. Incredibly, incredibly mortal. You would've died if Seth hadn't gotten to you in time!"
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: When Jared lets down his mental barriers to let Seth read his mind, Heather uses her telepathy to look as well. She quickly becomes overwhelmed by the vast number of memories of the millennia old immortal. Zach has to physically jolt to break her connection and he warns her against trying again, as Jared has information forbidden to all but the Others that Seth would have to erase from her memories.
• Unusual Euphemism: Heather is talking with Ethan while still under the Effects of Kiss of the Vampire. She talks about how Ethan brought her coffee to share. Seth points out that Ethan hates coffee.
  Seth: "I thought you hated coffee."
  Heather: "He does. But he wanted to come around the hedges."
  [silence]
  Melanie: "If that's a sexual metaphor, please don't explain it to me."
• You Are Not Ready: Heather's first instinct upon meeting Zach is to read his mind. Powerful enough to sense her attempt, Zach warns her against, telling she really doesn't want to see what's in his mind.

Jenna

• Arbitrary Skepticism: Jenna can accept the existence of vampires and the variety of abilities Richart has as an Immortal but refuses to believe that she's a gifted one who is in the process of transforming.
• Definitely Just a Cold: Jenna mistakes her transformation into an Immortal Guardian for being sick with food poisoning. She even goes into work!
• Dying Declaration of Love: Seeing what she believes may be Richard's last moments of life is what prompts Jenna to accept his differences as an Immortal and declare her feelings for him.
• Good Parents: Jenna and John are very close and she enthusiastically supports his efforts towards becoming a doctor.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Because of the GHB-like effect of a vampire bite, Jenna does not remember her initial Rescue Introduction with Richart.
• Ideal Illness Immunity: Jenna's immortal trait is that she never gets sick. It is a result of descending from a line of powerful healers.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Jenna's in-laws required her to have a DNA test run on John to prove their son was truly the baby's father before allowing the two teenagers to wed.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: Once Jenna transforms, she and John look more like brother and sister than mother and son. Even before her transformation, Jenna and John are less than two decades apart in age and Jenna is older than she looks.
• Outliving One's Offspring: One of Jenna's fears about transforming into an Immortal.
• Single Parents Are Undesirable: Jenna says this is the reaction she has historically received from men who seemed interested until they learned that she is the single mom.
• Struggling Single Mother: Jenna got pregnant with John when she was a teenager. She and her boyfriend married, but he died not long after in a car wreck, leaving Jenna to raise John alone.
• Unknown Relative: Jenna and John are revealed to be Roland's direct descendants.

Krysta

• Action Girlfriend: Krysta is fighting vampires even before her transformation, something that is unheard of and stuns the Immortal Guardians when they find out.
• Death by Origin Story: Krysta's fiancee is tortured and murdered by vampires in front of her sending her on a quest to kill all vampires.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Krysta doesn't realize it, but she initially meets Roland the night she and her fiancee are attacked by vampires. Because of the Kiss of the Vampire, Krysta has never been able to remember how she got away from the vampires that kidnapped her and killed her boyfriend. Turns out, she didn't escape. Roland showed up, killed the vampires, and got her to safety. Neither of them remembers it until Roland finally remembers after seeing her a few times triggers his memory of that night.
• Jumped at the Call: Not aware of the Immortal Guardians, Krysta uses her ability to view auras to fight vampires. Normally, untransformed Gifted Ones would have little chance, but with the ability to see what a person plans to do split seconds before they do it, Krysta can hold her own. Having previously been attacked by vampires, Krysta believes it her duty to protect people from the vampires.
• Second Love: Etienne is Krysta's second serious relationship. Her fiancee was killed by vampires which is what set her on her quest to rid the world of vampires.
• Sibling Team: Krysta and Sean work together to keep their local university campus free of vampires. Krysta does the hunting. Sean supports her, providing a get away vehicle and providing healing as needed.
• Welcomed to the Masquerade: Once Seth and the others find out about Sean and Krysta, the siblings are invited to the group meeting, put on payroll, and given housing. Sean is set to work working with Melanie to understand and possibly cure the virus. Krysta is paired with Etienne to continue hunting, recruiting vampires, and figuring out who is behind the most recent mercenary group. The two learn about the long history of Immortals, vampires, and the attempts to keep both from becoming public knowledge.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Krysta pretends to be a drunken co-ed to trick vampires into following her into dark alleys where she then kills them.

Lisette

• Amicable Exes: Despite having previously dated for over a century, Ethan and Lisette get along perfectly fine. Ethan is even happy for her finding Zach, albeit a bit sad since he had very strong feelings for Lisette.
• Bait-and-Switch Accusation: Lisette thinks Seth is angry because he's discovered that she's been secretly seeing Zach, who Seth has banned from having contact with the Guardians. In reality, Seth knows nothing of that. He's instead reacting to her secretive, suspicious behavior which makes her a prime candidate as the telepath who has been working to turn vampires to attack the Guardians. This leads to a showdown where Lisette is sobbing her apologies for her betrayal and Seth is broken hearted over being betrayed and they're not even remotely talking about the same thing.
• Dance of Despair: Seth and Zach both mention that Seth learned to dance specifically because Lisette enjoys dancing and it was away to cheer her up when she was feeling lonely and guilty.
• Dream Walker: As a young telepath, it is not uncommon for Lisette to find herself in other peoples' dreams. It's how she learns that Ami was tortured, how she learns that Tracy and Sheldon are attracted to each other, and the reason why she seeks out Zach, when she dreams that he is riddled with wounds. In real life, he is being detained and tortured by the Others.
• A Friend in Need: When Lisette finds Zach grievously wounded, she calls Ethan and then Bastien for help. She asks them for a favor, warning each that it might put them on Seth's bad side, a place no Immortal wants to find themself. Ethan and Bastien both agree without hesitation. When they see Zach, first Ethan and then Bastien, they ask for a shovel, assuming that Zach is dead and Lisette needs help burying the body so Seth won't find out. Lisette is taken aback that both men would agree to what they believed was taking a huge risks and keeping an even bigger secret to protect her.
• Friends with Benefits: Lisette and Ethan were casual sex buddies for about a century until Lisette realized that Ethan was developing real feelings for her. Unable to return those feelings, she decided they should just be friends.
• Girly Girl: Having been raised a socialite in the France right before the Revolution, Lisette loves fashion and bemoans that she has to wear the masculine all-black cargo uniforms that the Immortals wear. She reminisces that during her human life, she would spend hours on her hair, make up, and clothes and she loved how being a fashionista made her feel. To make up for the boringness of her uniform, she wears dainty, frilly underthings and sleepwear.
• Interrupted Intimacy: The first time Lisette attempts to give Zach oral sex, their alone time is interrupt by Richart who teleports in without warning. Of course, Richart has a "my gawd, my eyes!" reaction.
• Mistaken Confession: Lisette confesses to betraying Seth. She believes he is accusing her of betraying him by having a relationship with Zach, who Seth currently despises, but he is actually accusing her of being The Mole who is raising a vampire army against the Immortals. Needless to say, when they finally come to an understanding they're both completely confused.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After Lisette is turned by her husband, her brothers Richart and Etienne allow her to feed off of them to keep her secret from becoming known, not realizing that constant exposure to the virus by feeding would turn them as well. By the time Seth arrives, it's too late and all three siblings have been turned to Immortals. Lisette constantly battles guilt for having unintentionally infected her brothers who were only trying to help her. She doesn't truly forgive herself until they point out that being infected allowed them to live long enough to meet their mates and they are now happier than they've ever been.
• Noodle Incident: When Ethan sees what he assumes is Zach's half-naked, seemingly dead body, he assumes that Lisette accidentally killed him during rough sex. Lisette is offended, sharply asking when Ethan has ever known her to have rough sex.
  Ethan: Quebec. 1985.
  Lisette: ...Okay. You're forgiven.
  Ethan: For 1985?
  Lisette: For drawing the freakiest conclusion you could draw from this situation.
• The Smurfette Principle: At the beginning of the series, Lisette is the only female Immortal Guardian in the North Carolina contingency, as female Immortals are very rare. However, her male counterparts begin to meet mates and convert them, much to Lisette's pleasure.
• Working with the Ex: Ethan helps out several times during Lisette and Zach's story.
• You Are Worth Hell: Lisette believes that Seth might kill her for breaking his mandate that no one interact with Zach. Seth has teleported her to the middle of nowhere and he is so angry that his weather control powers are creating rain and lightning. But she tells him that even if he kills her, it will have been worth it for the time she got to spend with Zach and how Zach made her feel.

Marcus

• Abusive Parents: Marcus' stepfather was verbally and physically abusive. He routinely beats Marcus, saying that Marcus' ability to see spirits means he is demon-possessed, and eventually shoves Marcus' mother down the stairs resulting in her death. Marcus is convinced he'll be next so he flees to Lord Robert, the one man too powerful for Marcus' stepfather to confront.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Averted. Marcus develops a crush on Bethany after meeting her as a teenager. When she meets him 800 years later, she has no idea who he is, since she has yet to do the time traveling that makes their initial meeting possible. Marcus loves Bethany but knows she's destined to marry his best friend, Lord Robert. So, Marcus befriends her, enjoying her presence but refusing to act on his attraction. Beth sees him as nothing more than a close friend during both time periods in which she knows him.
• Death Seeker: Part of the reason Seth assigns Ami as Marcus' second is because he and the other Immortals have noticed his worrying trend of taking increasingly unnecessarily dangerous risks and are afraid that he's lost his will to live and is quietly suicidal.
• Heartbroken Badass: When Marcus is introduced, he is struggling to recover from the loss of Bethany Bennett, the love of his life who traveled back in time to be with the love of ''her'' life. He'd spent 800 years waiting for her, even knowing that he would lose her. Once she's gone, he sinks into depression, no longer having anything to look forward to.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Marcus is over a foot taller than Ami
• Introverted Cat Person: When Marcus is struggling with depression, his main companion is Slim, his cat. He even refers to Slim as his Second. Slim is a semi-feral black cat that enjoys picking fights way outside of his weight class and he has the scars to show it.
• I See Dead People: Marcus' power, one which requires him to be careful to avoid being haunted by ghosts desperate to communicate with the living world.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Despite his undying love for her, Marcus doesn't act on his attraction to Bethany because he knows Bethany will be much happier with Lord Robert than she would ever be with Marcus.
• Magnetic Medium: Marcus attracts spirits who are desperate to communicate with him once they realize he can perceive them. He has had to take very special steps to avoid spirits attaching themselves to him or haunting his home.
• Mistaken for Romance: After hearing Seth call Ami "sweetheart", seeing how happy she always is to see or hear from Seth, and nearly getting curb stomped when Seth thinks Marcus is mistreating Ami, Marcus thinks that Seth and Ami might be flirting with a relationship. But when he actually asks, both Seth and Ami are almost visibly grossed out by the idea that they might be romantically involved and declare their affection to be familial.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: Invoked. When Seth reveals that Ami and Zach have been secretly been meeting for months, he assures Marcus that Ami would never cheat on him. Marcus sharply replies that he knows that, spoken in a manner that implies that he never questioned her faithfulness for a second. He's more angry that she was in physical proximity of a dangerous unknown quantity without back up.
• The Squire: As a young mortal, Marcus served as a squire to Lord Robert.
• Time Travel: Marcus' first love, Bethany, was sent back in time from the 21st century to the Middle Ages. Where she fell in love with Marcus' best friend, Lord Robert.
• You Look Like You've Seen a Ghost: When Stanislav returns, he approaches Marcus. Initially Marcus refuses to speak at him, just staring. Then he slowly reaches out to touch Stan, gasping when his hand makes contact. He's instantly immensely happy. When Susan asks what that was about, Stanislav explains that Marcus' gift allows him to see ghosts and he was unsure whether he was seeing Stan or Stan's ghost until he physically made contact.

Melanie

• Bully Hunter: A surprising example as she's not a physical brawler. But Melanie will not tolerate people mistreating Bastien, especially when they're doing it out of herd mentality ("I don't like you because my friends don't like you.") She repeatedly stands up to network security, the Immortals, and even Chris Reordon who is the main head of security and her boss about how their petty bully behavior triggers Bastien's Jerkass tendencies and pulls them all into a cycle of unproductive sniping. Eventually Seth sides with her and lays down the law about needlessly picking fights with Bastien.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Initially Bastien refuses to be in a relationship with Melanie because he doesn't want the Immortals and Network Security's animosity towards him to transfer over to her. Melanie refuses to listen, continuing to aggressively flirt with Bastien and picking fights on his behalf with anyone who is passive aggressive towards him based on his previous behavior.
• Morality Pet: Serves as this for Bastien. His default setting is irritating asshole who uses violence as a first resort. Melanie constantly encourages him to be nicer, follow the rules, and try to make friends. Later in the series, it becomes a running joke that Bastien will say something surprisingly nice and then complain about how Melanie is a bad influence on his doggedly unpleasant personality.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Melanie does everything from emergency triage to infectious disease to vaccine creation to labor and delivery. Somewhat justified in that it shows Melanie having to do a lot of trial and error because these are not her specialties, but she will absolutely come up with the eventual solution.
• Only Friend: Initially, Melanie is the only one outside of Seth, David, and Ami to believe that Bastien has redeeming qualities. As such, she often ends up defending Bastien against accusations from Chris Reordon and the other Immortal Guardians. Eventually, her staunch defense helps them see all the good things Bastien does, proving that he's a Jerkass with a Heart of Gold, not just a Jerkass. It surprises no one that she and Bastien become a couple in the end.
• Positive Friend Influence: Once they are together as a couple, Melanie encourages Bastien to be friendlier and more actively helpful. It's such a radical change from his previous surly, only helpful when he has to be nature that even Seth comments on it. Whenever anyone mentions it, Bastien jokingly grouses that Melanie is ruining his bad reputation.
• Science Hero: Melanie's chief contribution to the team is medical care. She helps them figure out how the sedative works, develops an antidote for it, studies the vampires to figure out ways to slow the progression of the virus, helps Ami and Lisa through their pregnancies, and generally provides the unique medical care that Immortals, vampires, and Gifted Ones need that can't be provided by generic healthcare providers.
• Super Doc: Melanie basically serves as the prime care physician for the Immortals and vampires. She does everything from genetics research to medicine experimentation to labor and delivery.

Nick

• Fake Relationship: Nick and Eliana routinely pretend to be dating to discourage others from taking undue interesting in them. They do it to discourage a budding crush Becca has on Nick and they pretend to be a couple out for a stroll at night to keep vampires from recognizing them as the threat they truly are. Eliana even invokes it saying she holds his hand so people don't freak out about the two people walking around a college campus dressed in all black wearing trench coats. Instead, they'll just see a not-particularly suspicious goth couple.
• Intimate Artistry: Nick is a prolific artist, particularly at painting and sketching. Kayla eventually learns that most of his paintings and drawing from the last decade are of her since his art was as close to having her around as he could get.
• Just Friends: Despite being very close, Nick and Eliana are not romantically involved. Eliana even encourages Nick's interest in Kayla.
• Knight Templar Parent: Nick turns into this after Becca is targeted multiple times due to her connection to Nick.
• Ludd Was Right: Nick laments the difficulty of trying to do his job in such a heavily surveilled area. He specifically points out that the university campus he patrols has over 1500 cameras, any of which might capture and expose the existence of supernaturals, to everyone's detriment.
• Mistaken for Gay: Because Nick doesn't date and lives full time with Oliver, his second, as a roommate, Kayla initially assume the two are a gay couple until Becca mentions that Oliver has a girlfriend and Nick begins to invite Eliana over.
• My Grandson, Myself: When Richard Roubal recognzies Nick as a fellow soldier from Vietnam, Nick pretends to be the grandson of the man Richard remembers.
• Oddball in the Series:
  • At the time of its release, Nick's story is the only book to feature an Immortal not based in the North Carolina contingency. Instead, his story takes place exclusively in Houston, Texas.
  • Nick's is the first story in the series where there is no threat of a massive vampire uprising. In fact, in the opening pages, he and Eliana discuss how weird it is to not be facing that constant threat and how quiet it has been of late.
• Precocious Crush: When Nick suspects that Becca, Kayla's teenaged daughter, was beginning to develop a crush on him, he asks Eliana to come to his home in hopes of softly discouraging Becca's interest. His pretense that he's already romantically involved with a beautiful woman his own age successfully fends off Becca, but also leads Kayla, Nick's actual love interest, to believe that he is unavailable.

Richart

• Always Identical Twins: Richart and Etienne are described as being the mirror image of each other.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Richart can teleport. Etienne either needs to be transported by a teleporter or use a traditional mode of transportation. If one of the twins just suddenly pops into the room, it's Richart!
• Insatiable Newlyweds: Richart, Etienne, and Lisette are incredibly close, but once Richart marries, Etienne and Lisette spend far less time at Richart's house so they don't have to constantly listen to Richart and Jenna having sex.
• My Greatest Failure: Etienne and Richart carry a great deal of guilt because they introduced her to Phillipe, her husband who routinely beat her and then turned her.
• Real Men Cook: Despite having been born in the 18th century, Richart likes to cook and does most of the cooking for himself and Sheldon. He also enjoys treating his siblings Lisette and Etienne to home cooked meals and practically begs Jenna to let him cook for her.
• Rescue Introduction: Richart and Jenna first meet when Richart rescues her from a pack of attacking vampires.
• Simultaneous Arcs: In Still Darkness (Richart and Jenna's novella story) and Phantom Shadows(Sebastien and Melanie's story) cover the same period of time with the climactic group events being detailed in Sebastien's story and occurring off stage in Richart's, as he goes through his own separate story.
• Supporting the Monster Loved One: Richart and Etienne are unintentionally turned because they allowed Lisette to repeatedly feed on them. Despite believing her a vampire, they loved her too much to do anything but try to help her.
• Teleportation Misfire: After he is severely injured in a fight, Richart teleports away intending to go to safety. His disoriented brain locks on to the safest place he can think of which turns out to be the home of Jenna, his uninitiated mate who has no idea about the truth of who he really and what he really does. When he realizes his mistake, he tries to transport out but his overtaxed powers conk out and he falls unconscious.

Roland

• Cool Uncle: Roland is Adira's favorite honorary uncle and she will literally throw herself out of the arms of whoever is holding her to get to him when he arrives.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: Seth gives Roland the ability to teleport and shapeshift in order to add to the roster of elder Immortals who can teleport and heal just in time for their battle with Gershom.
• Almost Kiss: Sara and Roland almost kiss within an hour of meeting only to be interrupted when Roland's Modesty Towel drops to the floor and then he almost passes out from blood loss when he bends to retrieve it.
• Berserk Button: Don't you even THINK about harming Sara.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Roland was transformed after his brother and wife conspired together to set him up to be kidnapped and killed by a vampire. The two were having an affair behind his back and wanted him dead so they could inherit his title and land. When he survives and returns, unaware of his family's culpability in his ordeal, his wife lulls him to sleep and then attempts to stab him in his sleep. Furious, Roland murders both her and his brother. Several hundred years later, Roland falls in love with a human woman and reveals the truth of his special abilities. She and her sister go and gather a mob that then tries to kill him.
• A Deadly Affair: Roland's wife and brother's attempts to have him kidnapped and killed so they can be together and inherit his title and lands results in Roland being painfully transformed into an Immortal and then killing the two in retaliation once he realizes what they'd tried to do.
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: Having been grievously betrayed by his first wife and then later a woman he intended to marry, Roland is very resistant to Sara's attempt to develop a relationship with him. It's not until Sara's life is in danger that Roland is willing to admit that he likes her and wants her around. Even then it's rough going with Roland constantly waiting for what he considers to be an inevitable betrayal.
• Friend to All Children: In contrast to how abrasive he is with adults, Roland is surprisingly comfortable around children, exhibiting tons of patience and good humor. Having been the only Immortal other than Seth to have fathered kids pre-transformation, he is really good with kids and is easily Michael and Adira's favorite honorary uncle.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: At the first hint of betrayal, Roland completely flies off the handle and usually only Sara or Seth can make him calm down and see reason.
• Improperly Paranoid: Roland's paranoia is justified in that he has been betrayed before by people he trusted deeply, but across the series, his suspicions are rarely correct. He jumps to conclusions that usually prove to be red herrings.
• Inheritance Murder: Part of the reason Roland's brother and wife tried to murder him is because as the oldest son, Roland was the heir to all of their family's wealth, land, and titles, but if he were to die his brother was next in line.
• Introverted Cat Person: Roland has a cat named Nietzsche that he accidentally turned immortal. Nietzsche has been Roland's main companion for about forty years.
• I Work Alone: Roland is so anti-social, he's the only Immortal Guardian allowed to break Seth's decree that all Immortals have a Second.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: By his nature as a healer, Roland does have a level of compassion for others. However, you have to really, really work to get to that layer because it is hidden by infinitely more layers of emotional armor due to multiple betrayals from people he trusted. But if you break through, Roland is one of the most loyal friends you can have.
• Living Distant Ancestor: Roland is about 750 years older than Jenna, John, and Michael, his many times great grandchildren.
• Never Be Hurt Again: Roland lives in isolation, believing that he can't be betrayed again if he doesn't let anyone get close enough to be considered a trusted friend. For hundreds of years, Marcus, Seth, and David are the only exceptions to this rule, mostly out of necessity.
• Only Friend: For a while, Roland's only friend among the Immortals is Marcus, not because the others don't want to befriend him, but because Marcus is the only one who refuses to be turned away by his brusque nature.
• The Paranoiac: Having been betrayed by friends and family more than once, Roland is extremely paranoid of any new person he meets, particularly humans. Any time anything goes wrong, Roland immediately blames whoever just joined the group, assuming they were secretly a mole that has betrayed the group. His refusal to let anyone other than Seth know where he lives is actually a plot point in more than one book.
• Pursued Protagonist: Darkness Dawns begins with Roland being chased by several vampires who are attempting to stake him and leave him for the sun to fry.
• Raised by Grandparents: After Veronica Becker is killed, Roland and Sarah adopt baby Michael since he is Roland's great (many times) grandson.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Roland is surly, anti-social, and easily angered personality. Sara balances him by being calm, friendly, and social.
• Running Gag: At least once a book someone makes a joke about how anti-social Roland is or gripes when they find out that the source of the problem was Roland being anti-social.
  Seth: Damn his anti-social ass.
  Roland: Sorry!
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Roland's abrasive nature is a defense to keep people from getting close enough to hurt him.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Bastien spends nearly two hundred years attempting to kill Roland. When things come to a head, this doesn't even particularly faze Roland. If you live long enough, you make enemies. What he refuses to forgive is Bastien kidnapping Sara and cracking her skull during an attempt to lure Roland into a trap. This, combined with Bastien's murder of Ewen, leads Roland to constantly campaign for Bastien's execution and to constantly stoke the Immortals' fears that Bastien may be planning to betray them. Seth eventually has to step in and tell Roland to get over it, keep it to himself, or both, because his unending grudge against Bastien is hurting the team.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: Roland's first wife schemes unsuccessfully with Roland's younger brother to kill him. When he learns what they've done, he returns the favor, much more successfully.
• Unknown Relative: Having fathered children in his mortal life, Roland still has living descendants even eight hundred years later. As of the conclusion of Death of Darkness, he has been revealed as the sire of Jenna and John McBride (Richart's eventual wife and stepson) as well as Veronica Becker and her son Michael.
• Used to Be More Social: It's implied that when he was a human, Roland was a member of high society and actually very social. But after repeated betrayals that nearly got him killed, he has become profoundly reclusive for fear of being betrayed and hurt again. Oddly enough, hints of his old personality are best seen when he interacts with young children, with Roland being able to easily engage with them and make them laugh.
• Violence is the Only Option: Having literally been stabbed in the back before, Roland is a big proponent of getting someone before they get him and when he "gets someone", he's usually attempting to wipe them from the face of the earth.
• Wounded Hero, Weaker Helper: When Roland is staked and left to die in the sun, he only survives because the then-mortal Sara finds him, helps uproot the stakes, and drags him to safety. Later, Roland and Marcus are both shot numerous time and forced out into the midday sun after Roland's house is set on fire. Weak from blood loss, sun exposure, and smoke inhalation, they only survive because Sarah is able to get them to shade and then use Roland's phone to contact Seth.

Sara

• Abusive Parents: Sara's mother is emotionally abusive, resentful that she had kids so young. She acts like an eternal teenager, stealing Sara's clothes, attempting to steal Sara's boyfriends, and generally refusing to step up and be the responsible head of the household, forcing Sara to care for herself and her younger brother.
• After Action Patch Up: After freeing Roland from his captivity, Sara attempts to treat the stigmata wounds in his hands and feet.
• Anvilicious: Sara has lots of strong opinions about vegetarianism, environmentalism, Hollywood beauty standards, and many other touchy aspects of life and she's not afraid to share them with people she's just met. She quotes the Bible to support her vegan views, talks about how non-organic foods are trashing peoples' bodily temples, how organic foods just taste better, how eating junk food is lazy and self-harming, etc. It comes across as the author heavy handedly trying to stan for her own personal point of view. Thankfully, the promotion of sustainable living, while shared by many of the other characters, becomes less obviously judgmental in subsequent books.
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Sara and Roland's biggest concerns about adopting baby Michael is that neither of them had very good family experiences, particularly Sara with her mother and father being emotionally abusive and physically absent respectively. Thankfully, their worry was for naught and they prove to be wonderful parents.
• Damsel in Distress: Subverted. Sara is kidnapped by Bastien. Although she's not strong enough to fight him off, she does put up a fierce resistance, including stabbing Bastien in the ass, causing him to trip and drop her, giving Roland enough time to catch up.
• Good Samaritan: Despite being a woman who lives alone, Sara does not hesitate to intervene when she sees a man being jumped by three others. She then takes him into her home, renders medical treatment, and helps him get in contact with his support system, all without expecting anything in return.
• Hero's First Rescue: Sara's first foray into the Immortal world is saving Roland from three vampires who have staked him to the ground and intend to leave him to roast in the sun.
• Last Day of Normalcy: When the reader is introduced to Sara, she's a music professor who's planning to spend her day off working in her backyard garden. Next thing she knows, she's saving a naked stranger from two men who are trying to crucify him. By nightfall, she, Roland, and Marcus are fighting their way free of a vampiric siege.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Definitely the calm, friendly, social balance to Roland's surly, anti-social, easily angered personality.
• Rescue Introduction: Sara and Roland meet when she saves him from vampires who are trying to kill him.
• Stumbled Into the Plot: Sara was hanging out in her backyard when she sees an unidentified blur fly by her. While she's trying to figure out what it was, she hears to men talking about hurting a third man who've they've ganged up. Sara specifically was planning to go call 911 and let the authorities handle it, but she hears the men start stabbing the third man. She rushes to the clearing, witness that they've staked the man to the ground and appear to be about to murder him so she and her trusty shovel, dispatch the two baddies and save the man who turns out to be Roland.
• What Does She See in Him?: People often question how friendly and perky Sara and angry and abrasive Roland ended up happily together.

Sean

• Big Eater: Sean eats a lot. It's partly from having very lean years during his late teens, during which he was constantly hungry, and the demands of his new body that he's not accustomed to. So he's either eating, just eaten, or thinking about when he'll eat next.
  Nicole: I'm gearing up for war and you're in here stuffing your face?
• Just Friends: Sean is very hesitant to admit that he and Nicole are developing romantic feelings towards each others. He worries that Seth or Chris will forbid their relationship or that the male seconds will insinuate that she's achieved her position by offering sex to her Immortal.
• The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Sean and Nicole both lament the fact that hunting vampires doesn't leave them time to date. On top of that, Sean has eyes that glow when he's aroused, so he has to abstain to keep from outing himself as supernatural.
• No Escape but Down: When a henchman starts shooting a gun inside their plane and causes a rupture, depressurizing the cabin, Sean has no choice but to jump out of the plane, fearing that one of the wild shots will strike Nicole in the head. He grabs her and jumps, but they're 50,000 feet in the air with no parachute and no idea how they'll get to safety.
• The Talk: Sean and Nicole spend a little bit of time talking about the current dry spell they're both experiencing. Sean's celibacy is primarily because lust causes his eyes to give off a supernatural spell and he doesn't know how to hide that from a potential partner. Nicole suggests masturbation but Sean says it just makes him feel depressed and lonely. Nicole then asks how the other Immortals deal with the glowing eyes. Sean says that those who aren't married simply abstain.
• Undercover as Lovers: Sean insists on going undercover as Nicole's boyfriend to keep her safe and serve as backup.
• What the Hell, Hero?: After being forced to jump from a plane to avoid gun fire, Sean is able to contact Seth. Even the nigh unflappable leader is startled to find himself suddenly tens of thousands of feet in the air. When they are safely back on the ground, Seth invokes this troping asking Sean why in the world he would jump from a plane without any type of safety net.

Sebastien (Bastien)

• Actually Not a Vampire: While nearly all of the Immortals have to have this discussion at some point, Sebastian is the only one who has to receive even after he learns of the existence of Immortal Guardians and the differences between Immortals and vampires. For over two hundred years, he mistakenly believed himself to be a vampire and a natural enemy of the Immortal Guardians. Because of his aggressive behavior, the Immortal Guardians likewise mislabel him. It takes Sara, a then Muggle to point out that despite his behavior, Sebastien has all the hallmarks of an Immortal. Her suggestion is still met with skepticism until Seth is able to confirm his status. They then have to capture and convince Bastien himself.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Bastien's compassion towards vampires combined with his prickly nature makes it very hard for him to make friends with the other Immortals.
• Arc Villain: Sebastian is the Big Bad of book one.
• Black Sheep: In two hundred years, Bastien has killed an Immortal (something no other Immortal has done), tried to kill a second Immortal, raised a vampire army, targeted the Immortal Guardians, invaded the Network, and basically refused to show any level of common courtesy to the other Immortals, provoking them at every turn. For the first four or five books, the only thing keeping Bastien's head on his shoulders is Seth and David's iron clad decree that they will not tolerate violence against him. This does not prevent Bastien from being shunned, not that he actually tries to befriend anyone.
• Byronic Hero: After discovering that he was betrayed by his best friend and everything he has believed for the last two hundred years is a lie, Bastien begrudgingly joins the Immortals, but he's very prickly and offputting, pushing buttons whenever he can. However, Seth, David, Ami, and Melanie all know that he's secretly very kind hearted, he's a good leader of men, he's ferociously protective of the few people he considers friends, and he really just wants to help people.
• Category Traitor: Bastien gets a double dose of this. He's despised by the Immortals for leading a vampire army against the Immortals and killing Ewen, a popular Immortal. After the failed uprising, the vampires also hate Bastien for essentially switching sides and abandoning their plan for retribution after discovering that he's actually an Immortal (not that Bastien was given any choice about joining the Immortals).
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Bastien tries to deliver one of these to Roland multiple times, including having Roland staked out to die in the sun and burning down Roland's house with Roland inside.
• Death by Origin Story: The murder of Bastien's pregnant sister is the trigger to his series' arc.
• The Empath: Bastien's primary power is the ability to read the emotions of others. He uses this primarily to discern if someone is being truthful or deceptive.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: After Bastien is finally recovered and spends time being retrained by Seth, he works as part of the Immortal Guardians but is absolutely despised by all the other Immortals. If not for Seth and David firmly stating that he is not to be killed and that attacks on him will not be tolerated, Sebastien most likely would've been executed for his many crimes.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: Bastien believes himself to be a vampire and embraces it, creating an army to take on the Immortal Guardians, killing vampires who become too violent to follow orders, kidnapping Sara to use as bait against Roland.
• "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: Bastien admits that he sometimes breaks the rules because he knows he's unlikely to be punished because Seth still feels super guilty about failing to realize Bastien had transitioned.
• Heel Realization: Bastien spends 200 years trying to kill Roland to avenge his sister's murder only to learn that she was actually killed by her husband Blaise, who then blamed Roland who was hunting Blaise down after the latter left a trail of drained bodies. Additionally, he finds out that the vampires he was protecting from the Immortal Guardians were secretly killing innocent women and children instead of feeding strictly on heinous criminals.
• Hidden Depths: One of the reasons Seth refused to put Sebastien to death is because of how kind Bastien is to other loners. He quickly connects with Ami when she is recovering from her captivity and shows a great deal of compassion for Cliff, Stuart, and the other vampires who are trying to hang on long enough for a cure.
• Jerkass with a Heart of Gold: Bastien may not get along with most of the Immortals, but he does have a way of connecting with desperate loners. He befriends a few young vampires and is fiercely loyal to them, trying to help them survive the virus, and absolutely crushed every time one succumbs to the illness. He also welcomes Immortals like Zach and Tessa who have a less than smooth entry into the Immortal world.
• Mercy Kill: Because Bastien has befriended vampires, he has to accept that he may have to kill them to keep them from becoming raging monsters. He kills one himself, Melanie exsanguinates another, and they're constantly having to keep a watch on Cliff to see if he's reached the point of no return.
• My Greatest Failure: In all of history, Bastien is the only Immortal Guardian whose transformation Seth failed to detect. In fact, part of the reason it took the Immortals so long to realize Bastien actually was an Immortal is because an Immortal acting independently of Seth's guidance was unthinkable. Seth feels immensely guilty for having failed to locate Bastien, leaving him to be taken in by vampires who then brainwashed him to hate Immortals. As such, he refuses to allow Bastien to be executed for crimes he committed due to his misguided understanding of Immortals and vampires.
• No Control Group: Bastien tests the antidote for the sedative by injecting himself with the experimental counteragent against Melanie's medical advice.
• Oh, Crap!: In his arc, Bastien has three, all of which happen when he accidentally hits another character's Berserk Button. The first is when he unintentionally cracks Sara's skull. Roland is so furious, he basically punts Bastien across the room. Bastien quickly realizes that Roland is much stronger than he anticipated and he has no chance of beating the elder Immortal. The other two come when he violates Seth's inviolable "Do No Harm" rule when it comes to Amy. Confrontations with Seth are the only time the fearless and cocky Bastien is nearly piss his pants scared.
• Post-Support Regret: Bastien is deeply hurt to discover that the vampires he'd been working so hard to protect and help were secretly going out and killing innocent people without his knowledge. Additionally, he helped protect Montrose Keegan who claimed to be trying to find a cure to the vampirism but is actually using his research to try to figure out how to sedate an Immortal in hopes of being able to dissect them for information. All of the research that Keegan gathered while under Bastien's protection eventually falls into the hands of the groups opposing the Immortal Guardians, first the Mad Vampire King, then the mercenary groups, and finally Gershom.
• The Power of Hate: Sebastien is fully powered by his hatred of Roland and his desire to avenge the murders of his sister and best friend.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Being forced by Seth to join the Immortal Guardians does not erase two hundred years of hard feelings. It takes quite a while for Bastien to even acknowledge he actually is an Immortal Guardians and he still prefers the company of vampires. Combined with his previous attacks against the Immortals, many of the Guardians are openly hostile towards Bastien and he makes it clear at every opportunity that the animosity and distrust runs both ways.
• Revenge: For two hundred years, Bastien's sole focus is finding Roland and avenging the murder of his sister, Cat, and his best friend Blaise.
• Staking the Loved One: Bastien is forced to kill one of his friends when the virus progresses too far for him to have any hope of recovery.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Invoked. When Sarah is hypothesizing that Bastien might actually be an Immortal, she opines that if Bastien, Marcus, and Roland stood side by side, people would assume they were brothers. Seth later reveals that they are all very, very distantly related cousins.
• Tragic Intangibility: Bastien learns that the ghost of his murdered sister has been trailing him for over 200 years. When he is finally able to see her, he immediately tries to hug her and is distraught to the point of tears when he is unable to due to her bodiless state.
• Villain Protagonist: The series begins with Bastien as the main antagonist with several chapters dedicated to his POV of how he plans to take down the Immortals. By his book, he has shifted to a begrudging anti-hero that still antagonizes the rest of the group.
• Was It All a Lie?: Bastien considered Blaise his best friend and spent 200 years hunting Roland Warbrook to avenge Roland's supposed murder of Blaise and Roland's sister, Cat. He then learns that Blaise killed Cat, intentionally turned Bastien, and then lied about Roland to be the murderer in hopes that Bastien would kill Roland who was hunting Blaise for a series of murdered pregnant women. On top of all that, Bastien learns that he's not a vampire as he believed but actually an Immortal, a group that he has hated with all his heart for centuries. Bastien has trouble wrapping his head around the fact that nothing he's believed over the last 200 years was actually true.
• You Are What You Hate: Bastien spends over two hundred hating Immortal Guardians only to learn that he actually is an Immortal, not a vampire as he's always believed. Even after he learns the truth, it takes several more books for him to start referring to Immortals as "us" rather than "you".

Stanislav

• Amnesiac Hero: The arc of Stan's book is trying to recover his memories of who he is, where he's from, how he ended up buried in Susan's basement, and why he has the special abilities he has.
• Amnesia Danger: Because Stan has absolutely no remembrance of his life, he is in constant danger from the faction that is trying to capture him for his regenerative abilities. If he had full access to his memories, he'd know that he has every capability of defending himself plus he has access to an immense network of back up that can literally show up at a moment's notice.
• Amnesiac Resonance: Although Stanislav can't remember who he is or anything about his past, he instinctively knows how to block Susan's telepathic abilities, how to suit up for an op, that drinking blood will heal him, and that he must avoid the sun. Susan and Stan are able to contact Alexei after Susan hands Stan a cellphone and asks him "if we were surrounded, if you knew with all certainty that you would be captured and I would be raped and murdered, what number would you dial to get help?" He instinctively dials Alexei's cellphone number.
• Buried Alive: After being seriously injured during a battle and rendered unconscious, Stan is kidnapped by vampires who then bury him in the garage of their current hideout, intending to come back later when they've found a buyer willing to pay for access to Stan's regenerative capabilities. Stan comes to after he is buried, hears their plan, and is so furious that he uses the last dregs of his energy to manipulate their emotions, making them so enraged they kill each other. However, this leaves him buried several feet underground until Susan eventually discovers him.
• Exposition Beam: The events of Stan's recovery are featured in both Stan's stand alone novella and Seth's full length novel. In Seth's novel, when the two are reunited, Stan tells Seth that he's too exhausted from blood loss to spend the energy recapping everything that has happened to him and gives Seth permission to just read his mind to fill himself in.
• Forgot the Call: Stan completely forgets that he's an Immortal Guardian.
• Hopeless with Tech: Nicole describes Stan as being hopeless with technology, barely able to make a call on a smartphone and needing help from Alexei, his second, just to download audiobooks.
• Never Found the Body: When Stanislav is caught in an explosion that would be nearly impossible to survive, most of the Guardians assume that he had to have died. However, because they never found the remains of Stan's body and Seth can't sense Stan's disembodied spirit, Seth holds out hope that Stan is still alive and continues to search for him. Eventually, Seth's faith is rewarded.
• Reflexive Response: Susan gives Stanislav her phone and tells him to focus on calling for help. She then builds up a hypothetical situation where they are in imminent danger of death, continually repeating that he needs to call for help. Finally, she yells at him to call for help and he reflexively types in the digits for Alexei, his Second.
• Repressed Memories: Part of the reason Stan's memories are so slow to return is because he is not yet ready to process Yuri's death.

Tessa

• Angsty Surviving Twin: Tessa is still traumatized after witnessing the gruesome murder of her twin brother and being tricked into helping his murderer.
• Death by Despair: Chris, Jared, and Seth are worried that Tessa is reaching this point. When Tessa asks to go outside during the day time, Chris insists that Jared (who has healing and teleporting abilities) accompany her, fearing that she's going to end it all by walking into the sunlight.
• Death by Origin Story: Tessa's twin brother William was murdered in front of her before Tessa ever appears in the story as a character. His death was the primary motivation behind her hatred of Seth and the Immortal Guardians.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: When Seth takes on the form of Tessa's murdered brother, William, Tessa grabs him in a bear hug and breaks down sobbing, completely overwhelmed by the chance to see and hear her brother one more time. She even has to mentally talk herself down when Seth shifts back, because seeing his image change feels like losing William all over again.
• Five Stages of Grief: Tessa spends most of book 12 in stage 4 (Depression).
• From Bad to Worse: Just as Tessa is starting to connect with Jared and feel like things are looking up, she's kidnapped by the latest Big Bad and subjected to torture.
• Green Thumb: Tessa has the ability to make plants grow.
• Heel Realization: Once she's away from his sphere of influence, Tessa learns that Gershom was the one who actually murdered her brother and he'd manipulated her into trying to kill Seth and the Immortal Guardians, the very people who are desperate to rescue and help her.
• The Insomniac: Tessa has significant difficulty sleeping, primarily because she is still traumatized by the loss of her brother and the resulting brainwashing and manipulation by Gershom.
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: Tessa is struggling with this particularly having personally witnessed her brother's brutal murder and then being tricked by his murderer into waging a campaign of terror against the Immortal Guardians. She struggles with crippling depression and survivor's guilt.
• Revenge: While under Gershom's influence, Tessa is hell-bent and determined to make Seth pay for her brother's murder.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: When Leah is injured during Tessa's attack at Little Gifts, Seth uses a sleep command to incapacitate Tessa so he can help Leah without being attacked. Tessa is startled to wake up in an unfamiliar studio apartment in what she later learns is a subfloor of the Network.
• Was It All a Lie?: Tessa has a great deal of trouble accepting that Gershom is the true villain, particularly since it means that everything she did at his behest was nothing more than attacking innocent victims.

Gifted Ones

Darnell

• Bodyguarding a Badass: Darnell serves as David's second in command, and if needed, Seth's. Obviously, since those two don't have any of the limitations of the other Immortals, he's more of a concierge and serves as the de facto leader of the Seconds, leading their physical training.
• Shout-Out: In the very first book, Darnell is playing Tomb Raider.
• Techno Wizard: Chris describes Darnell as this, saying he's so good at it that he even offered Darnell a ten million dollar retention bonus in hopes of retaining him for the Network, but Darnell chose to serve as David's Second. Darnell is the one who decoded the encrypted files from the research facility that was holding Ami and he is the lead for retrieving the files in the facility holding Tessa.

Emma

• Audience Surrogate: At the beginning of the story, Emma is just a worker bee at the Network. She doesn't have any direct contact with the vampires or the Immortal Guardians and what little she does know is derived from office gossip. In her introductory scene, she and her co-worker Cynthia are gossiping about the vampires and Immortals the way most people would discuss a tabloid article about their favorite celebrity. Even once she and Cliff are introduced, Emma remains on the periphery, only having contact while they are at work, only meeting the Immortals who are particularly close to Cliff, and knowing very little of what the main group is up to.
• Babies Ever After: After supporting Cliff through his vampirism and his struggles with sanity, Emma and Cliff marry and are expecting twins.
• Establishing Character Moment: When the Network comes under attack, Emma forgoes evacuating with the other employees to go look for several of her elderly and heavily pregnant co-workers who likely can't physically handle the running and climbing of the evacuation route.
• Ideal Illness Immunity: Emma states that, as a descendent of a healer, she never gets sick and she's never had so much as a cold.
• Informed Ability: Emma states her gifted abilities as never getting sick and having a photographic memory, remembering everything she's ever read. While not getting sick is a passive ability, she never demonstrates any particular use of her photographic memory either.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Emma is good friends with Sadie, a nonagenarian who treats all her co-workers like her grandkids.
• Morality Chain: Emma is Cliff's touchstone for when he's dealing with the intrusive thoughts that are encouraging him to be violent. Around her, the voices fades. It gets to the point that even Chris Reordon and Seth will transport Emma as needed when Cliff is experiencing a psychotic episode.
• Rescue Introduction: Emma and Cliff's first meeting happens when Cliff rescues Emma from the collapsed Network building.

Kayla

• Education Mama: Kayla homeschooled her daughter, Becca, for all twelve years of her education, helping Becca score admissions to Duke University.
• Plain Palate: There's an entire scene where Kayla mentally gushes over how she and Nick have similar snack preferences (plain berries and ice water). Nick hand feeds her the berries and it's presented as extremely sexy. Later, they eat unsalted popcorn and wonder why other people insist on flavorings.

Nicole

• Bodyguarding a Badass: Nicole serves as Sean's second. Sean is Immortal, but she watches over him to make sure he's not ambushed and that he has everything he needs.
• Elite School Means Elite Brain: Nicole has a doctorate from Harvard.
• Grade Skipper: Nicole is so smart that she graduated with a doctorate from Harvard at age 17.
• Hates Their Parent: Nicole deeply resents that her parents pushed her so hard academically simply so they could brag about her accomplishments to their friends. Because she was always being pushed ahead academically, Nicole was never allowed to interact with her own peer group. She was bullied and struggled to learn social skills. Nicole completely broke off contact with her parents as soon as she reached the age of majority.
• Helicopter Parents: Nicole's parents were obsessed with her academic achievements. After coming home from school, she was required to adhere to a strict study schedule that only allowed her 30 minutes of "free time" which had to include eating and showering.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When Nicole and Sean are forced to jump out of a plane, Nicole, who is completely human and tens of thousands of feet in the air, quickly begins to suffer from hypothermia and hypoxia. Once Seth rescues them and gets them to the ground safely, Nicole needs to be healed from the effects of both.

Susan

• Canine Companion: Susan has a beagle named Jax.
• Connected All Along: When Susan meets Ami, she realizes that Ami is the tortured captive she saw in the mind of the man who was attempting to lure her into his "research project." The man's mental image of Ami is what alerted Susan that she was in grave danger and needed to get to safety. Additionally, she's always believed that she owes her clean escape to the work of the battered women's network that helped her book a flight across the country. In reality, the Immortal Guardian's security Network caught wind of what happened and covered her tracks. Then, while rescuing Ami, Seth and David killed everyone who had any knowledge of her and destroyed or confiscated all records at the research facility.
• Rescue Introduction: Susan and Stan meet when she rescues him from her garage where he's been buried alive.
• Rescue Romance: Susan and Stan slowly fall in love as she attempts to help him recover from being buried alive and houses him while he tries to recover his memories.

Humans

Chris Reordon

• A Father to His Men: The safety and wellbeing of his staff is tantamount to Chris and the only thing that can ever make him lash out at an Immortal. If someone harms his men, Chris will absolutely refuse to get over it, doing everything he can to eliminate any chance of the harm repeating, to the point of getting tunnel vision. He campaigns first for Bastien's execution and then for his expulsion from the Immortal Guardians. He insists that Aidan is the mastermind behind all of the Immortals current woes, despite evidence to the contrary. It gets to the point where both David and Seth have to firmly tell him to back down when he challenges their decisions not to punish Bastien or Aiden the way Chris wants.
• Gas Leak Cover Up: Chris uses this more than once in the series to explain a building or complex that got leveled by Immortal activity.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: If there's something you need, Chris can get it for you. Access to restricted US military bases? No problem. Satellite imagery? Done. Several dozen bodies disposed of? A crew is on its way. The dating history of the person you just met? Check your inbox.
• Manipulative Editing: Resentful that Aidan infiltrated Network security undetected, Chris presents a report in such a way that it heavily implicates Aidan in the disappearance six female Gifted Ones. What he fails to disclose is that Seth, David, and Ethan don't believe Aidan is involved and three male Gifted Ones have also gone missing who don't appear to have had any contact whatsoever with Aidan. Once Seth insists that Chris investigate the disappearances with the goal of exonerating Aidan, they learn that nearly a hundred Gifted Ones who have no connection to Aidan are missing from all across the country.
• Married to the Job: Chris works so much that even Seth and David think he might be over doing it. No matter when you call, Chris is on duty. Several Immortals recognize that Chris is attracted to his assistant Kate and attempt to give him a nudge, but Chris admits that he's far too busy to act to take up a relationship.
• The Men First: Chris is deadly serious about the safety of his men and the people he's charged with protecting.
• No Sympathy for Grudgeholders: Chris holds a serious grudge against anyone who manages to infiltrate the security of the Network or injure any of his guards. He demands that Bastien be executed when he learns that Bastien killed another Immortal (and doesn't really relent when he learns it was self-defense). Then, he leads the campaign to have Bastien removed from active duty as an Immortal Guardian after Bastien breaks into the Network after Chris refuses to allow him to visit a vampire friend in crisis. Later, after Aiden breaks into Network file for an innocuous reason, Chris tries to present Aidan as the main suspect in the disappearance of a number of Gifted Ones, despite that the facts don't fit his assertion of Aidan being the perpetrator. It gets to the point that Seth literally has to tell him to get over his grudge because it's effecting their ability to work as an effective team. When Chris insists that he doesn't hold grudges, the rest of the group literally laughs out loud, causing him to blush and admit that maybe he does.
• The Renfield: Seth and the Immortal Guardians' go to guy when it comes to technology, security, troubleshooting, and dealing with humans in general.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Chris' grudge against Aidan leads to Roland accidentally outing Aidan's supernatural abilities to his uninitiated love interest, Seth and the other Immortals read him the riot act, telling him to get over himself.
• Workaholic: Day or night, Chris Reordon is at the office. He works so much that even the Immortals, who can go days without sleep, worry about him wearing himself out. At one point, he even admits that since the recent problems began, he's gone an entire year without taking a single day off and that on the rare occasion that he does take a day off, he doesn't know what to do with himself.

General Lane

• Black Site: General Lane first becomes aware of Seth and David when they show up at a highly confidential black site that is being monitored via surveillance cameras round the clock. Later, once he establishes that Seth, David, and the Immortals are the good guys, he helps them access other black sites that are being used by Gershom in his ploy to kick off the apocalypse.
• Fake Kidnapping: When General Lane is unwilling to listen to their initial approach, Seth and David pretend to have kidnapped Heather and are "holding her hostage" until Lane meets their demands. Of course, Seth and David are not actual bad guys so their demand is a face to face meet where Lane is forced to listen to their explanation of what's going on.
• Good Parents: He and Heather get along great and try to stay on the same page even when their perspective jobs require them to keep secrets.
• Knight Templar Parent: There's not much General Lane won't due to ensure Heather's safety and the Immortals by extension.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Once presented with evidence of the hidden war between the Immortals and the Private Military Companies, General Lane uses his considerable authority to help Seth and the Immortals any way he can.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Multiple times, General Lane finds himself having to chose between protecting classified American military intelligence or divulging highly sensitive intel to help Seth and the Immortals protect humanity.

Leah Somerson

• Covering Up Your Gray: When asked to guess Leah's age, Seth points out that she doesn't have any gray hairs. Leah replies that this is thanks to discrete hair dye.
• Dance of Romance: Seth and Leah flirt by dancing in her store after closing. This ends up being captured by the security feed, shocking Chris Reordon, Zach, and David who are stunned to see their normally stoic and dignified leader dirty dancing with the owner of the local baby supply store.
• Girl of My Dreams: Seth initial becomes aware of Leah's existence when he sees her in his dreams. Because his dreams are sometimes prophetic, he begins to put out feelers to find out who she is and why he might be dreaming of her.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Seth initially resists dating Leah, not wanting to endanger her. But when the other Immortals realize that he's actually interested in someone for the first time in nearly a millenia, they begin jumping through hoops to set up safety measures so that Seth will feel comfortable. When an attack makes it clear she's actually safer wit him, he gives in and begins really dating her.
• Kids Play Matchmaker: Every time Adira sees Seth and Leah together, she toddles over and links their hands together, leaving them holding hands.
• Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone: The first time Leah shows up at David's house to visit Seth, David banishes all the Immortals from the premises to give the two complete privacy. He also threatens that any telepath he catches trying to read Leah's mind will face his personal wrath.
• The Mourning After: At one point in the story, Leah seeks Seth out and they end up watching a movie together. Later, she admits that she'd coming looking for him because she didn't want to be alone on the anniversary of the car wreck that killed her husband and unborn child.
• Muggle: Leah is a human, not a Gifted One.
• Muggle–Mage Romance: Seth is the most powerful Immortal in existence with a mind boggling number of fantastical abilities. Leah is a normal human with no supernatural abilities whatsoever.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Seth is many millennia old while Leah is only 46. Hilariously, Leah initially is hesitant to date Seth because he appears to be in his early 30s and she feels like she's robbing the cradle. When she learns the truth, she feels silly for how often she went on and on about being so much older than he.
• Pick Up Babes With Babes: Leah jokingly asks if Seth uses Adira to make himself more attractive to women who might have a soft spot for single dads.
• Second Love: Both Seth and Leah have previously been married only to tragically lose their spouse.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Afraid that being publicly linked with Seth will endanger her life, Seth resists falling into a relationship with Leah. Any time anyone asks what's up between them, Seth insists they're just friends.
• Shipper on Deck: The Immortals are all on board with Leah and Seth dating, wanting Seth to be happy after being alone for so long. Even the normally abrasive and anti-social Roland cleans the common area of the house when he's told that Seth has a female caller, wanting to make sure she gets a good first impression of their home and will be open to returning.
• Shower of Love: Once she and Seth are officially together, they become very big fans of shower sex.
• Statuesque Stunner: In contrast to most of the female Immortals, Leah is just shy of six feet tall. When she first meets Seth and David, she's visibly tickled by the unique opportunity to feel petite for once.
• Touched by Vorlons: Seth's father gifts Leah with immortality as both a reward for Seth's millennia of good deeds and a wedding present to the couple.
• Tragic Backstory: Leah is single because she and her husband were blindsided by a distracted driver. The accident severely injured an eight-months pregnant Leah, causing her to lose the baby, and then her husband died a few days later, only waking long enough to discover that the baby had died. Leah never got to hold the baby and was too injured to attend her husband's funeral.
• Tragic Stillbirth: Leah was eight-months pregnant when a car crash caused her to go into premature labor. Because Leah was trapped in the car for hours in a position unsuitable for labor with no medical intervention, the baby died.

Vampires

Cliff

• And Your Reward Is Parenthood: Cliff fought the dark impulses of vampirism and was willing to sacrifice his life to save the Immortals who serve as a barrier of protection to humanity. He tells Bastien that while he was infected, all he wanted was to be able to go back to being human, marry a nice girl who loves him, and have lots and lots of kids. In the end, he's been cured of his vampirism, married Emma, and they're expecting twins.
• Babies Ever After: After years of being infected with vampirism, struggling with sanity, and nearly sacrificing his life to save the Immortal Guardians, Emma and Cliff have married and are expecting twins.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Cliff engenders a great deal of goodwill from the Immortals and the Network employees because of his willingness to risk his life to help people. At one point Seth even laments that Cliff was not born a gifted one who could be safely turned because he would have made an amazing Immortal Guardian.
• The Cavalry: Subverted. Although Cliff and the vampires are mostly confined to their sub-level apartments, their willingness to help leads to "let the vampires out to play" becoming a contingency plan for if the Network is invaded.
• Deus ex Machina: Cliff's vampirism is magically cured in the same miracle even that resurrected Seth. As far as Seth can tell, Seth's dad rewarded Cliff for loyal and selfless service to Seth.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Cliff spends three years as a vampire, fighting insanity, is kidnapped and tortured, eventually fights as a quasi-Immortal, and then is fatally wounded helping Seth and the Immortals storm Gershom's compound. At the end of his story, he is miraculously cured of the virus and able to live life as a free human, marrying Emma and becoming a Second.
• Eating Lunch Alone: Although the Network staff is not hostile to Cliff, particularly after his help when their worksite is ambushed by mercenaries, they are still very wary. Justified given that vampires are plagued by unpredictable and violent breaks with reality. As such, although Cliff is given a great deal of freedom to move around the compound, he always ends up at a lunch table by himself in the cafeteria.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Due to the psychological trauma of being kidnapped and experimented on, Cliff doesn't remember meeting Emma during the Network invasion.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: Cliff goes on hunts with Bastien and Aidan and has no problem killing other vampires who are too far gone to be saved.
• Interspecies Friendship: Cliff, a vampire, is close friends with Bastien, an Immortal Guardian. Of course, their friendship began when Bastien believed he was also a vampire, but when he learned the truth, he still maintained his close friendship with Cliff. Eventually, Cliff becomes close friends with all of the Immortals and the humans who work at the network. They are all rooting for Cliff's survival and are devastated when he shows signs of deterioration.
• Leonine Contract: Cliff, Vince, and Joe are given the option of either going with the Immortal Guardians to be contained at the Network while scientist work on a potential cure for their vampirism or refusing and fight to the death against Seth, an Immortal who is overwhelmingly more powerful than any of the vampires.
• Missing Time: Cliff experiences this whenever he has a psychotic break.
• The Nose Knows: Cliff inadvertently exposes Whetsman's treachery when he attacks the man after smelling traces of Linda's blood on him.
• Oddball in the Series: Cliff's story is the only one in which neither of the featured pair is an Immortal Guardian. Instead, Cliff is a vampire and Emma is a Gifted One who works as a Network employee.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Cliff flips out and attacks Dr. Whetsman, beating the man unconscious. He refuses to calm down, even as the guards are shooting at him, and he eventually has to be heavily sedated. Eventually, they discover Whetsman had shot Linda, a nurse who worked closely with Cliff, after she caught Whetsman snuggling out a highly regulated sedative. The scent of Linda's blood on Whetsman triggered Cliff's attack and alerted the Immortals that something was deeply wrong.
• Predator-Prey Friendship: Cliff, a vampire, is friends with Immortal Guardians, the group that slays vampires, and with the human employees of the Network, even though humans are preyed upon by vampires.
• Pull the Thread: On three separate occasions, Cliff is the one to have an adverse reaction to someone who has infiltrated the Network or the Immortal Guardians. He attacks Whetsman when the doctor is brainwashed into stealing the sedative, he attacks Gershom when the man imitates Seth, and he's fighting Tessa when she's disguised as a vampire.
• Shipper on Deck: Several of the Immortals and members of network security work to accommodate Cliff and Emma's relationship. They even ry to hide it from Seth, afraid he might forbid a relationship between a vampire and one of his Gifted Ones. When Seth reveals that he's always known about the relationship, he actively encourages the two, saying that Cliff deserves happiness in whatever time he has left.
• Simultaneous Arcs: Cliff's book picks up during Act Three of Bastien's story. It then jumps through the series, performing a Meanwhile, Back at the… Network, showing what Cliff's experience is like, living as a vampire confined to the Network sub-levels, periodically showing Cliff's perspective of events that happened in prior books.
• Sole Survivor: Cliff is the only last and only survivor of Bastien's Vampire Army.
• Token Heroic Orc: Cliff is one of three vampires that surrendered when the Immortal Guardians defeated Sebastian's attempt to lead a vampire uprising. Cliff and the other vampires live at the Network, allowing the scientists to study them in an attempt to find a cure for the virus. Despite suffering from the usual symptoms of the virus, Cliff fights to stay sane and helps the Immortals in any way he can in their effort to safeguard humanity from Vampires.
• Tragic Monster: Cliff was a junior in college with a bright future ahead of him when he was attacked and turned into a vampire. Cliff really struggles with the voices in his head that are urging him towards violence. He is a good person by nature and it is very clear from his behavior that if he'd been a Gifted One, he'd be a very effective Immortal Guardian.

Lasarans

Amariska (Ami)

• Adult Adoptee: After her rescue, David and Seth declare Ami as part of their family and introduce her as their daughter whenever meeting new people. This does however usually require them to explain that a) they're not co-parents and b) Ami is not biologically related (usually after people question how two people who look roughly the same age could possible be father and daughter).
• Afraid of Doctors: After being subjected to horrific torture by scientist and doctors testing her regenerative healing capabilities, Ami is desperately afraid of doctors and medical environments. She's barely even able to tolerate Immortals who have healing capabilities. She freaks out the first the first time David tries to heal her and fights Marcus when he tries to take her to Roland to be healed.
• Alien Autopsy: Ami endures this as the government agents who captured her attempt to discover the key to her power and how they might be weaponized.
• Badass Driver: Ami can drive at incredibly high speeds and maneuver with hairpin accuracy.
• Bad Liar: Ami is comically bad at lying. The Immortals and Seconds think it's adorable, but Ami is annoyed by her inability to come up with believable excuses on the fly.
• Everyone's Baby Sister: The Immortal Guardians and the Network Security team are all extremely protective of Ami.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Ami is over a foot shorter than Marcus
• Human Aliens: Ami is so human-like, the only way that Seth and David know that she can't possibly be is her telepathic ability, despite Seth's surety that she's not a Gifted One either.
• I Come in Peace: Ami came to Earth to warn its government of an impending threat. The officials she meet pretend to be friendly then capture and torture her, looking for ways to use her alien abilities for their own purposes.
• The Insomniac: After Seth and David rescue Ami, she doesn't sleep for weeks on end. It is not until she starts to connect with Darnell and begins to believe that Seth and David can keep her safe, that she finally falls asleep. It's such a deep sleep, it initially alarms David. When Ami begins to work as a Second to Marcus, Seth is furious at Marcus, telling her that Ami hasn't slept for six days because she can only sleep when she feels safe in her surroundings.
• Interspecies Romance: Ami and Marcus are from different planets.
• Long-Lived: While not immortal, Ami's species routinely lives many centuries.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Much of her odd behavior is due to being an alien learning about human culture, but the zany things she does like trying to bathe the cat and using the formal dining room as a disco roller rink shakes Marcus out of his depression and cause him to fall in love with her.
• Mistaken for Disease: When Ami starts to suffer from fatigue, nausea, fever, and exhaustion, she believes she has been infected with the virus. It takes Seth, David, and Marcus asking a lot of questions for the group to finally realize she's actually pregnant.
• Named After Their Planet: The Lasarans are from Lasar. Taelon is later confused by why the people of Earth are called humans rather than Earthlings.
• The Outsider Befriends the Best: Amariska, an alien from another planet, ends up being taken in by Seth and David, literally the most powerful beings in the history of planet Earth, and they consider her to be family and under their protection.
• Past Experience Nightmare: The other telepaths reveal that whenever they find themselves in Ami's dreams, she's dreaming of the torture she experienced at the hands of the government scientists who experimented on her.
• Pregnancy Scare: Inverted. Ami believes she's contracted the disease that transitions Gifted Ones to Immortals and humans to vampires and is terrified since they don't know how the virus will interact with her alien biology. After a series of miscommunications that nearly leads to Seth choking Marcus to death, they realize she's not sick, just pregnant.
• Rescue Introduction: The first time Seth and David meet Ami is the day they rescue her from the research facility that has been holding her captive and experimenting on her.
• Sleepwalking: When injured, Ami has the ability to get up, go to the restroom, and return to bed all without waking. Seth tells Marcus that she may also talk but she won't remember anything she says or does during this time once she's fully lucid again.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: One of the reasons the Lasarans have not reached out to Earth is because Earth is far behind Lasara technologically. When introduced to Lasaran technology, even Seth is impressed.
• Telepathic Spacemen: Seth and David find Ami because she'd been unintentionally sending out indecipherable telepathic distress messages. It came across to the younger Immortals in the area as inaudible nails on a chalkboard and they reported it to the Network, triggering a visit from Seth and David who realized the sensation for what it was. Eventually, they discover the reason they couldn't understand her was because she was an extraterrestrial who didn't speak any Earth language.
• Waif-Fu: Once she's healthy and trained, Ami is a complete badass. She is one of the only non-Immortals in the entire series that can actually fight vampires. Prior to getting pregnant, she would fight right by Marcus' side.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The justification Ami's captors use to justify how they treat her.

Antagonists

Augustus Benford

• Bullying a Dragon: Benford has no idea what he's getting into when he decides to target the Immortals. However, he is sure his money and his hired muscle will keep him safe. So when he sees David and Seth standing in his immortality lab, he doesn't think twice about talking shit, ordering his men to shoot David, throwing a punch at Seth, or pointing a gun at Seth. Seth then narrates Benford's death to him, killing him without ever laying a hand on the man.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Seth and David point out that unlike their previous enemies, Benford doesn't want to raise an immortal army and engage in world domination. He wants to create a serum that will keep people paying him without end to stave off aging and he's willing to kidnap, torture, and engage in highly illegal human experimentation to get what is ultimately no more than another big pay day for him.
• Hope Spot: Seth heals Augustus, making him feel decades younger, giving Benford a taste of what he's been desperately craving. Then he tells Benford that men like him are not meant for Immortality, that all of his wealth will be passed on to his "do-gooder" grandson, and informs him he's about to have a fatal heart attack. Seth and David then watch as Benford dies, reminding him one more time that not even being filthy rich and super influential can save him from death.
• Immortality Seeker: Benford wants a serum for eternal youth both to sell as a product but also for himself and his cronies so they can be eternal titans of industries.
• Karmic Death: Augustus dies of a heart attack inside the "immortality lab" in the bowels of his pharmaceutical research center. He's surrounded by doctors, but they've all died as a result of his scheme to trap an Immortal as a lab rat.
• Longevity Treatment: Benford's goal in kidnapping the vampires and Tessa. He wants something that will extend life but require continual dosage so people have to pay him ad infinitum to maintain the results.
• Privilege Makes You Evil: Much like Roubal, Benford feels entitled to immortality because of his wealth. But he's even worse than Roubal because he actively despises those who simply want to make the world a better place, viewing them as simple minded and weak willed.
• Punch Catch: Benford attempts to throw a punch at Seth only to be met with one of these.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Benford thinks nothing of kidnapping, torture, or murder. He has enough money that people will do what he orders, no questions asks. Seth invokes this when he finally confronts Benford, pointing out that the one thing Benford wants (immortality) is something that no amount of money can buy.

Emrys/Donald/Nelson(Private Military Contractors)

• Evil Army: The PMC is a bunch of hardened mercenaries who have no qualms about having a running gun battle on a college campus or attacking a military base in a way that might trigger war between belligerent nations.
• Court-martialed: Emrys was dishonorably discharged from the military, a punishment reserved for the worst types of offenses.
• Private Military Contractors: Emrys, Donald, and Nelson's goal in gaining the virus is to create an army that they can then sell to the highest bidder at exorbitant prices.
• Too Dumb to Live: Seth, David, and the Immortals attack the base. Despite seeing the Immortals take unrealistic levels of damage and shake it off, when confronted by Seth and David, all Emrys, Donald, and Nelson are thinking about is how much money they could get if they could harness Seth's abilities.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Emrys and his cronies have no qualms about torturing vampires and immortals or killing seconds. All they care about is money.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The PMC owners think nothing of infecting soldiers with a virus that is guaranteed to require their execution within two years. They'll just get more people will to take the serum.

Gershom

• Arc Villain: Gershom is the overarching antagonist for over half a dozen books.
• Bad Samaritan: Gershom convinces multiple gifted ones to fight for him by pretending to be on their side. He assumes the form of Aidan and kidnaps several Gifted Ones, then in his own form, rescues them and offers them a chance for retribution. Later, he assumes Seth's shape and murders Tessa's brother, then returns in his own shape and feigns an attempt to save her brother's life. He then offers to transform Tessa into an Immortal, train her, and give her the opportunity to kill Seth, knowing Seth would never attack an Immortal or suspect them of meaning him any harm. All together, Gershom has a dozen Immortals who firmly believe that Seth is a villain and that Gershom is a good guy who saved their lives when it's actually the complete reverse. Gershom is in fact only using them to attempt to kick start the literal Apocalypse.
• Batman Gambit: Gershom targets Ami and Adira because he remembers how badly Seth reacted when his wife and children were slain. Gershom is hoping to trigger a repeat performance in either Seth or Marcus. However, he doesn't count on Jared having a vision and putting the pieces together in time to intervene.
• Boomerang Bigot: Gershom hates humanity, believing the entire species to be odious and inferior. Seth points out that he, Gershom, and the others, while having been gifted Immortality at birth by their fathers, were all born of human mothers. They may not seem like they have much in common with the average human, but they wouldn't exist without humans.
• Boom, Headshot!: Gershom teaches his brainwashed Immortals to take headshots at Seth, knowing that it's the only thing that can even slow Seth down since they have no chance of getting close enough to decapitate the powerful Immortal.
• The Chessmaster: Gershom uses vampires, mercenaries, military, Gifted Ones, humans, Immortal Guardians, and Others in intricate plans to attack Seth and enact his plan for world domination plans. Despite being telepathic and nearly omnipotent, it takes nearly a dozen books to identify Gershom as the true perpetrator and to put a stop to his chaotic schemes.
• Disappointed by the Motive: After the climax of book 11, Seth goes to visit Gershom specifically because he wants to know what drove Gershom to attempt to kick off the Apocalypse. It boils down to disliking how little regard humans have for the state of the environment, blaming Seth for not allowing humanity to be annihilated by a foreign bio-virus, and believing that the Others should rule the planet. Seth decides that Gershom truly has lost his mind, pointing out that the Others all have human mothers and that the planet Earth is the humans' to do with as they please, regardless of how damaging it might be. This doesn't even factor in that there are only about a dozen Others on a planet that houses roughly seven billion humans.
• Divide and Conquer: Gershom knows that he can't take on Seth, David, Zach, Jared, and all the Immortal Guardians so he continually deploys gambits that either makes one party look like they've betrayed the group, causing distracting in-fighting, or launches simultaneous attacks that literally requires the team to split up, diluting their strength.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Gershom can't fathom why Seth would want to intermix with humans and use his godlike powers to protect them for seemingly nothing in return. Seth's stance is that as flawed as humans are, they have the potential for good and deserve to live their lives without outside interference from Others, vampires, and aliens.
• Evil Counterpart: Gershom is roughly as old and powerful as Seth, but instead of protecting humans, his goal is to annihilate the race.
• Fate Worse than Death: After he is finally captured, Gershom is drained of his powers and chained inside of volcanic chamber where he'll stay for the rest of eternity to ensure he never becomes a threat to humanity again.
• Fighting Across Time and Space: Gershom teleports repeatedly teleports at random across the globe to evade Zach, Seth, and Jared's attempts to capture him. Aidan and Richart try to help but Gershom is known to pick sunny places that are dangerous to the highly photosensitive, younger Immortals.
• Fright Beside Them: Using his shapeshifting abilities, Gershom causes havoc by impersonating Seth and other Immortals and committing heinous acts of brutality and betrayal, leaving the recipient either dead or reeling with confusion. The ultimate example is when Gershom-as-Seth attacks Aidan. The others don't come to his aid because Seth would only attack for a really good reason. But his anger is so out of character, Aidan reaches out to Seth telepathically because he simply can't accept that the person in front of him is the real Seth. Aidan is beyond relieved when the real Seth arrives in response to his desperate summons.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Part of the reason it takes so long to identify Gershom as the culprit is because Seth has no reason to believe that Gershom would hold a grudge towards him. Once Seth does realize who his antagonist, he still has no idea why Gershom is doing the things he's doing or why he's targeting Seth and the Immortals. It's so inexplicable that Seth, Zach, and Jared decide it must be a mixture of jealousy and insanity.
• Hypocrite: Gershom believes that humanity should be wiped out because all they do is launch ponitless wars that get a bunch of innocent people killed... which is exactly what Gershom has been doing, nearly triggering World War III on no fewer than three occasions.
• Mirror Character: Gershom is the terrifying answer to "What if someone had Seth's powers but wasn't an unflinchingly good person who loves humanity?" In contrast to Seth, Gershom uses his near omnipotence to put the world at risk of annihilation multiple times, hates humanity, tries to help the virus spread, and intentionally targets humans and Gifted Ones.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: Knowing how powerful David is, Gershom teleports in and immediately shoots David point-blank in the head three times. This barely slows David down and the two fight until David finally succumbs to blood loss.
• Restart the World: Gershom wants to trigger the apocalypse to wipe humans from the world and start over with a pristine planet.
• Sanity Slippage: After millennia of staunch isolationism, Gershom goes from a peaceful and passive observer of humanity to literally trying to jump start the Apocalypse, not caring who dies in the collateral damage.
• Take Over the World: Gershom's goal. He thinks humanity should be exterminated and Earth should belong to the Others alone. What he thinks the eleven of them will do with an entire planet is not exactly explained.

Richard Roubal

• Immortality Seeker: Roubal wants to be immortal to escape the ravages of old age and mental deterioration.
• Note to Self: Richard gets around the memory wipes and his own dementia by leaving himself notes detailing his belief that Nick is the key to some type of immortality.
• Oddball in the Series: Richard isn't Immortal, a vampire, or a member of the military. He's just a rich old man who refuses to accept that his money won't negate his mortality.
• Privilege Makes You Evil: Richard's entire motivation is that he should be able to buy his way out of death. Despite being somewhere between seventy and eighty and having lived most of that time in the lap of luxury, he believes his wealth entitles him to immortality, even if he has to hurt or kill other people to achieve it.
• Scatter Brained Senior: Richard is suffering from dementia. Claiming that Nick, who appears to be in his early 30s, is actually his battle buddy from a war fought over 60 years ago makes Richard seem even more senile.

The Vampire King

• Big Bad Wannabe: He declares himself the king of the vampires and the Immortal Guardians his target. When you consider that this means he's asserting himself as the vampiric equivalent of Seth, it becomes laughable how easily he's defeated once the Immortal Guardians identify him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Dennis loves to act like king of his fiefdom, treating his minions like disposable workers. But after he teams of with Emrys, whose goal is weaponizing the virus for financial gain, Dennis finds himself being treated like a disposable minion, being tranqued whenever he gets to wound up. Being sidelined and tranqued so often pushes him further into his insanity, leaving him vulnerable when the Immortals finally move to capture him.
• Mook Depletion: Vampires who aren't killed by the Immortal Guardians may end up still dying as Dennis rages about losing the confrontation and kills his men for daring to retreat.
• Offing the Annoyance: Dennis kills Keegan's assistant because he deems the man a distraction to Keegan and the idea of Keegan being to distracted annoys Dennis, despite Keegan insisting that Scott was actually helping him quite a bit.
• Shoot the Messenger: Dennis has a bad habit of killing anyone who gives him bad news. If the messenger is too value, he'll kill whatever unlucky mook happens to be within reach. This often results in him getting incomplete information as his minions are afraid to tell him what happened and he doesn't bother to ask clarifying questions before flying off the handle.
• Self-Applied Nickname: Dennis decided to call himself the Vampire King. Everyone not under his command mocks it as stupid and presumptuous.
• We Have Reserves: Since Dennis' goal is to transform as many people as possible to create an overwhelming army, he doesn't give a second though to killing minions who have annoyed or displeased him. He considers them disposables who can easily be replaced.