Sandbox / Monster: Literature (H to M)

All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

H – I

• Halo: Broken Circle: The power-hungry Prophet of Exquisite Devotion, born I'ra Be'Ar, regularly bullies lower ranking Prophets and harbors extreme contempt for their allies the Sangheili. Not only does he happily go along with the Prophet of Truth's plans to exterminate the Sangheili, but he uses gravity torture to kill several captive Councilors. When Zo Resken refuses to participate in the executions, Exquisite Devotion orders his fellow Prophet to be tortured to death as well.
• "The Hands of Mr. Ottermole", by Thomas Burke: Sergeant Ottermole is a policeman who decides to become a Serial Killer simply to test whether he could get away with it. Deciding to perform five attacks in total, Ottermole strangles an elderly couple; a young girl; a fellow police officer; and a mother and her daughter. When a nosy reporter discovers Ottermole is the killer, Ottermole calmly and serenely responds by strangling him to death, leaving his crimes unpunished.
• The Handyman, by Bentley Little: Frank Watkins is a jovial and creepy practitioner of Vietnamese black magic who uses his nightmarish abilities to torment the unfortunate innocents who hire him to repair their homes. Having learned to communicate with and manipulate the spirits of the dead from a Vietnamese teacher who he promptly murdered, Frank seeks to expand his ever-growing collection of trapped spirits, and carries this out by cursing the homes of those who desire his handyman services, leading to the ruination and deaths of all those who lived in the homes. Frank has ruined the lives of countless people, and despite at times recruiting partners or servants, he always kills or tortures them to death when they outlive their usefulness. Keeping hundreds of souls trapped in eternal torment inside his house, where he has decorated entire rooms with the body parts of his victims and delves into rape, cannibalism, and all forms of torment, Frank ultimately schemes to raise the Dark Wife to its full power then bask in the apocalyptic chaos she brings upon the entire planet.
• From the Hannibal Lecter series, the mind of Thomas Harris has given us a pair of beasts who overshadow even notorious Serial Killer Hannibal Lecter.
  • Hannibal: Mason Verger is a warped pedophile who had the misfortune to conflict with Hannibal and ended up disfigured and crippled in a wheelchair for it. Seeking revenge, Verger kills and schemes so he can capture Hannibal and feed him to specially trained wild pigs. Now impotent, Verger obtains satisfaction by torturing and abusing children and drinks martinis made from their tears. Verger also uses his own sister Margot as a servant, having kept her in line with a series of violent rapes earlier in life.
  • Hannibal Rising: Vladis Grutas is a vicious war criminal who escaped justice in World War II. A member of the collaborating Lithuanian militias, Grutas led the sack of a small town and personally executed Jewish prisoners, executing one Rabbi by sawing his head off. During the winter, Grutas and his men took refuge in a small building with a young Hannibal Lecter and his baby sister Mischa inside. Grutas, to stave off hunger, decapitated Mischa with an axe and had her cooked and fed to the others. In the present, Grutas is a mob boss who uses murder and prostitution to further profits. When he and Hannibal fight, Grutas takes pleasure in mocking Hannibal how he also fed him his own sister in the winter years ago.
• Hard to Be a God: Don Reba is a thoroughly despicable Smug Snake of a minister, who personifies everything wrong about humanity. He framed the former Prime Minister for treachery and tortured him to death, along with the whole cabinet; he declares everybody literate (and not noble) enemy of the state; he starts wars for petty revenge; he stages a Coup d'Etat, and when it succeeds, he kills his co-conspirators; finally, he tries to kidnap The Hero's Love Interest, which backfires horribly, leading to the Downer Ending.
• The Haunted Forest Tour, by James A. Moore & Jeff Strand: Pestilence, the outer-dimensional being responsible for the growth of the titular Haunted Forest to begin with, is a Faux Affably Evil sadist of a demon who arranges the events of the plot in order to invade Earth's dimension and conquer it. Making a deal with the corrupt Bob Booth to provide sixty sacrifices to him to gain enough power to fully break into Earth, Pestilence forces the forest into the town of Cromay, decimating it and killing over 230 people, before having Booth organize the “Haunted Forest Tour” to draw in tourists for him and his kind to slaughter and empower themselves. Kidnapping the protagonist of the book, Christopher Brummit, Pestilence merrily tortures him whilst revealing his plot and later tempts Christopher's own mother into sacrificing herself to it as the final sacrifice, brutally tearing her head off in front of her own son before using the power gained to extend the Forest's reach and allow the demons within to eventually massacre all humanity. Pestilence admits to himself that his ideal vision is a world where humanity is tortured and ravaged by the monsters of his realm at their leisure, where he can bask under the mangled remains of his victims in a sea of blood.
• The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray:
  • Thatch is a powerful Wych who intends to possess Alaizabel. A ruthless monster who would consume her hosts, Thatch is a devout worshiper of the Glau Meska, or Deep Ones. Unleashing the Wych-Kin upon London to slaughter countless people, Thatch directs the murders of the Fraternity and intends on summoning her masters to devour humanity utterly.
  • Dr. Mammon Pyke is the founder and leader of the Fraternity. Having a lot of innocents slaughtered while disguising his murders as the work of known Serial Killer Stitch-Face, Pyke was the one who summoned Thatch into Alaizabel, intending on wiping Alaizabel out. Seeking to give humanity something to fear again, Pyke helps to bring the Wych-Kin down on humanity and intends on summoning the Glau Meska to do as much damage as they can.
• The Haunting of Alejandra, by V. Castro: La Llorona, far from being a tragic woman, is in fact a demon who chose a former victim's form. Haunting the family line of Alejandra back to her ancestor Atzi, the demon made a pact with Atzi to slaughter the family of the conquistador who enslaved her in return for Atzi's unborn children and suicide. Stalking her family line, the demon drives the mothers to madness and murder of their own children to prey on them while preserving others to ensure it always has a steady supply of food.
• The Haunting of Ashburn House, by Darcy Coates: In life, Eleanor Ashburn was born the sociopathic twin sister to Edith who even at a young age would bully her sister. Trying to drown a child at age 6, Eleanor's parents attempted to stop her but were eventually brutally mutilated and murdered along with her aunt and uncle by her at age 8. Eleanor was killed by her sister in self-defense. Born with the power to make her beliefs come true at a cost, Eleanor was able to steal the years of her victims and used it to return from the grave and torment and try to kill her sister. After her sister's passing of old age and her niece taking over the manor, Eleanor drives a woman to madness and uses her to free her from her grave, intending to kill her niece.
• The Haunting of Blackwood House, by Darcy Coates: In life, Victor Barlow was a spiritualist who created a house to be a conduit to the afterlife and forced a mentally ill man named Robert Kant to kill him in a bid for ultimate power. Possessing Kant, Victor forces him to murder several children before Kant kills himself to get away from him. From then on, Victor begins to possess the inhabitants of his house over the next century and forces them to kill their families, with them aware as he does this. When his descendant Mara arrives in the house, Victor possesses her fiancé and tries to kill her too simply for the hell of it.
• The Haunting of Gillespie House, by Darcy Coates: In life, Jonathan Gillespie was an evil cult leader in worship of The Others who fled his hometown after creating a disaster. Jonathan began to ruthlessly abuse his children, slowly killing them through his abuse, even forcing his daughter Genevieve to spend an entire night being starved and locked in a dark room where she was bitten by rats. Eventually Genevieve killed Jonathan to protect her and her family, but out of spite Jonathan's ghost unleashed a plague on his followers and children, leading most of them to gain a disease which mutilated their bodies, even his kids as young as four. Eventually murdering his daughter Genevieve years later when she was too old to defend herself, Jonathan ruthlessly murders anyone who tries to help her move on, including a young girl of six.
• Hawks of Outremer, by Robert E. Howard: Would-be sultan Nureddin El Ghor is a ruthless sheik out to create his own kingdom. Betraying Saladin, Nureddin kills numerous other lords to steal their forces and murders the good-hearted knight Geoffrey before massacring his entire castle Ali-El-Yar, with flayed corpses hanging from it before burning the rest. Having one of the few survivors, a young knight named Michael, tortured, Nureddin is incensed when Michael's lover, a slave girl named Yulala, helps him escape, and plans to have her tortured and killed before staking Michael out in the desert to die under the sun. When hero Cormac FitzGeoffrey arrives, Nureddin happily attempts to subject him to the same.
• "Head Man", by Robert Bloch: Otto Krantz is the sadistic headman of Berlin who decapitates thousands with a delight to be seen performing his "act". After killing countless, Otto wants to practice on even less deserving victims and illegally bribes the local authorities to allow him access to a woman and her father to decapitate them for sport.
• The Healing Wars series, by Janice Hardy: The Duke of Baseer, real name Verraad, killed his father and brothers and usurped control over Baseer. He used his newfound power to wage war on the surrounding nations, torching the city of Sorille to kill his nephew Jeatar and crippling Geveg, stripping the city of its pynvium to forge new weapons from. In the present, the Duke has "Takers" ^note people who can pull injuries out of the wounded and transfer them into their own body abducted and undergo torturous experiments in the hopes of them producing unique abilities, while others are converted into agony-stricken "Undying" to serve in his army, children not excluded. He also constructs a powerful pynvium device capable of wiping out entire masses of people, the device powered by using Takers as batteries, keeping them in immense physical and mental pain. When the populace in Geveg rebels, the Duke has his army attack the city, first trying to firebomb the city, before attempting to use the device to slaughter everyone in its path, ally and enemy alike.
• Heart-Shaped Box: Craddock McDermott was an occultist and hypnotist in life who got a thrill out of tormenting prisoners in the Vietnam War, in one instance forcing an officer to cut off his own fingers. Upon his return to the US, Craddock began to sexually abuse his stepdaughters, utilizing hypnosis to make them more willing should they refuse. When one of the girls, Anna, escaped and became the lover of former rockstar Judas "Jude" Coyne, she eventually returned after breaking up with Jude and refused to be Craddock's Sex Slave any longer. Craddock convinced her sister Jessica to help murder Anna and make it look like a suicide while also convincing Jessica to allow Craddock to molest Jessica's own daughter Reese. When dying, Craddock blamed Jude for taking away what belonged to him and had Jessica trick Jude into purchasing Craddock's ghost by way of a cursed suit. Craddock proceeds to kill Jude's assistant Danny and attempts to murder him and his girlfriend Georgia. At the end, he even possesses Jude's abusive father to torment him, revealing a monstrous sadism and sick cruelty beneath the surface of a seemingly polite, kindly old man.
• Heat 2: Otis Lloyd Wardell is a psychopathic animal of a man who proves to be the worst kind of criminal that Neil McCauley and Detective Vincent Hanna ever faced. The boss of a gang of home invaders, Wardell stages his break-ins when the occupants of the homes are present so that he can terrorize them all, always raping the women and ferociously beating the men. With a trail of rapes and murders behind him, Wardell introduces himself planning to rape a teenage girl before forcing the most hesitant member of his gang to do it instead while Wardell rapes and tortures the girl's mother, then beats her father to death. With a penchant for putting out lit cigarettes on his victims, Wardell graduates in his torturous ways by impaling and suspending a man with a hook before burning off the man's genitals and torturing him to death. Catching a whiff of Neil McCauley's latest heist, Wardell beats one of Neil's allies to death before torturing and murdering Neil's lover Elisa after promising to let her go in exchange for Neil's loot. Using Neil's riches to finance his own trafficking operation of underage girls who Wardell personally rapes—and sometimes murders—on a routine basis, Wardell continues to torture and kill anyone who crosses him before initiating a massive shoot-out in the middle of a crowded freeway, casually gunning down several civilians in the way of his goal to rape and kill Elisa's daughter out of spite.
• Heavy Object: Even in a world where war is the norm and most villains have some form of honor or loved one, there are others who instead go the extreme mile into evil:
  • The unnamed Alaskan Base Officer is a psychotic, cruel soldier serving the Faith Organization, and the first enemy Qwenthur and Havia face. Seeing Objects as superior to humans and refusing to accept harmony, the Officer starts a battle at the Legitimacy Kingdom Base, ignoring their white flag of peace. He sends out both his troops and his Object Prometheus, aka the Water Strider, into battle, causing a great deal of casualties. Capturing Milinda, Qwenthur, and Havia, the Officer plans to execute the latter two, choosing to brutally interrogate Milinda via hypnosis and electrodes, with no regards to how her personality will be affected, planning to hang her afterwards from the Object's guns as a display until she freezes to death to serve as a warning to his enemies. When his base is invaded by Frolaytia and her soldiers, the Officer refuses to surrender, gleefully attempting to shoot Milinda, Qwenthur, and Havia when they try to escape.
  • Volume 3: Prizewell City Slicker is an Elite of the Legitimacy Kingdom's 24th Mechanized Maintenance Battalion, and a raving language protectionist. A smug sadist, Prizewell seeks to rid the Legitimacy Kingdom of its foreign languages, as he feels they’re holding his people back, as well as reinstate the Legitimacy Kingdom's abolished slave class. Stealing Object data from the Information Alliance, he plans to slaughter numerous miners who were planning to defect to the Legitimacy Kingdom and manipulate the fallout to his advantage. When that fails, he uses the stolen data to create six dummy Objects that lead an attack on Victoria Island, a Legitimacy Kingdom immigrant city, having already destroyed the 37th's very own Snow Quake and Active Sledge Objects. Once his dummy Objects have been destroyed due to an oversight on his part, he tries to kill Qwenthur, seeing him as the one responsible for their destruction, before going after Milinda's Baby Magnum. While Prizewell claims to be preserving the Legitimacy Kingdom's official language, in reality, he's nothing more than a xenophobic hypocrite who doesn't even care for his own soldiers.
  • Volume 6: Dimiksy Nikolaschka of the Legitimacy Kingdom's Volga District was born as a result of his father cheating on the queen. Driven by a desire to keep this fact from the world and ensure his enthronement, he decided to kill his other family members and those investigating his origins, while implanting false information in the lineage department. In the past, he staged a bombing to procure the Object, Assault Signal, which resulted in many deaths, including its intended Elite, Execelsyla, and triggering the wrath of its designer, Claire Whist. Later, he ordered fake Information Alliance Troops to assassinate the White Bears, the bodyguards of his sister, Stavia, his final target, with a bombing. One day, he ordered his terrorists to bomb Stavia's hiding place, prompting her maid, Mikfa, to escape with her to Lexpop, where an ambush resulted in Mikfa being taken hostage as a means to make Stavia use the Assault Signal to fight Dimiksy in his Object, Broad Sky Saber, with the latter hoping to kill her after winning the Royal Duel and savoring her fear. When the Forrest Roller Object and the White Bears (having operated under the Unicorn alias) intervene, Dimiksy fired a laser to destroy the Forest Roller and another that almost killed the White Bears in an attempt to protect his object's weak point. He then finally aims a third laser at the float Havia, Mikfa, and Qwenthur were on, hoping to kill them.
  • Volume 10: Acres Kiss-of-Rose, aka Azathoth is the CEO of Salem Logistics, one of the 7th Cores ruling the Capitalist Corporation, and the one behind Nyarlathotep 's questionable actions throughout the story. Formerly a Capitalist Corporation spy, he formed the secret group Outer Gods to make life easier for his fellow spies. Becoming a CEO for Salem Logistics, he abandoned his old lifestyle and friends to indulge in his newfound wealth and status. Creating the Silver Key instant delivery system, Acres refuses to use jets to deliver packages, seeing them as a waste of money. Wanting to use the Panama Canal as a transportation route, he orders an attack on the nearby, safe Soberania District, where many innocents are killed—including Nyarlathotep's wife and son—turning the entire district into a literal Hell on Earth, all while claiming to be wiping out terrorist training camps, later doing the same thing to the Indian Ocean. Hearing news of the Gigant Hustler, he has two of his indestructible Objects compete, seeing the event as a trade show meant to showcase the power of his Objects. With one of his Objects destroyed and his reputation ruined, Acres plans on staging a fake large-scale attack to regain some respect.
  • Volume 11: Flag Eggnog, the first prince of the Legitimacy Kingdom's Warta District, is a loud-mouthed miscreant widely despised by his people due to his rampant gaffes, which usually prompts him to start a war to cover it up. When the Colorful Vanilla Drug is reported to have resulted in a war, he claims the drug wars are fake and are just fabricated by conspiracy theorists to blame the government, which only served to call for his resignation. In the past, he exploited a century long conflict between the Winchell and Vanderbilt families for his own gain by engineering 21 recent civil wars to cover the same sort of gaffes he made. In the present, he arranged Azureyfear Winchell to massacre Lady Vanderbilt and over 100,000 people aboard the LK Ship Rose & Lily, which he also happens to be on. He also collaborated with the Information Alliance's Martini Sisters to gain and exploit the information on the two families to manipulate an even bigger conflict to cover another gaffe. Finally, when things start going downhill for him, Flag drew a gun and attempted to put Lady Vanderbilt, his Information Alliance Contact, the military, the press, and everyone who dared mock him to the slaughter. Although he claimed his uncontrollable gaffes and war cover ups were beneficial to his country, he's nothing more than an incompetent, cowardly, and deluded traitor with an elitist viewpoint, who will bribe or kill anyone when things don't go his way.
• The Hellfire Club, by Peter Straub: Dick Dart, real name Norman, is a misogynistic serial killer and rapist responsible for raping and torturing four women he judged as meaningless. Kidnapping heroine Nora Chancel due to a belief she is as sick as he is, Dart regularly rapes and abuses her, attempting to have her torture others to death with him before attempting to recapture her and murder even more women.
• Hell Hollow, by Ronald Kelly: Doctor Augustus Leech was a traveling medicine man who roamed the South in the early 1900s. Secretly a wicked devil worshipper, Leech used his miracle potions to kill people wherever he went, wiping out entire communities and prolonging their agony to make it easier for his infernal master to claim their souls. Upon his revival into a new body ninety years later, Leech offers his elixir to the bored teenagers of the town of Harmony, plunging them into their darkest nightmares that will eventually kill them as Leech attempts to poison the town's water supply to subject every man, woman and child to a horrible death and eventual damnation.
• Hell House: Emeric Belasco, The Roaring Giant, was a short man who wished to be "bigger" by sawing off his legs and replacing them with lengthy prosthetics. Becoming an occultist, Belasco turned his house into a den of depravity and horror, eventually murdering his guests during a particularly horrific evening to channel their energy and allow himself to become a powerful ghost. Haunting what is now known as Hell House, Belasco murders or drives those who set foot in his home insane, possessing others and using them to rape and murder their companions. Belasco rapes a spiritualist, also forcing her to experience acts she finds deplorable while forcing her to enjoy them, before murdering her and leaving her corpse in a profane position for her companions to find, before trying to murder them all as well.
• Hell's Bounty, by Joe R. Lansdale: Zelzarda is a demonic scourge reviled even by Satan for his intended design on the world. Betraying Satan for his own ends—those being to unleash the Old Gods on the world—Zelzarda takes physical form by tricking the thuggish Trumbo Quill into accepting his offer to revive his dead wife at the cost of his soul—only to decay Quill's wife in front of his eyes and possess the man. Massacring several people through the town of Falling Rock as a test drive, Zelzarda resurrects the town's dead as his personal army and has them either turn or devour nearly everyone else in Falling Rock, slaughtering both his own ghoul minions and escapees from the carnage with equal relish. Zelzarda's ultimate goal is to let the Old Ones reduce all reality to an eternal chaos he will preside over, comfortable with sentencing every existing soul to a torture worse than even those in Hell itself purely for the sake of power.
• Hell's Gate: Acting Commander of Five Hundred Neshok, an Arcanan Intelligence officer who gleefully uses his position and the excuse of "ensuring the security of the expeditionary force" to justify brutally beating and torturing Sharonian prisoners and killing other prisoners in cold blood. In one case, he kills two Sharonian prisoners to single out a Voice among them (the latter of which he kills just because he lied to Neshok) and, though he knows that Voices cannot transmit through portals and verifies this with a lie-detecting spell, then shoots the Voice in question.
• The Hen House, by Lee Murphy:
  • The wolf creature is a sadistic, half-man half-beast who has chosen Hunter State Penitentiary and the surrounding town for his latest hunting ground. He frequently infiltrates the prison and finds isolated prisoners to eat alive in grotesque ways, and even drags out the lifespan of his victims so he can more cruelly devour them. Not restricted to just the prison, the creature kills two teenagers and hunts the family of one of the guards who thwarts him. When the creature is severely wounded, he lets a little girl nurse him back to health over the course of weeks, then slaughters her and her entire family down to her infant sibling just for fun. The creature desires nothing less than the heinous deaths of everyone inside the prison before moving on to further victims.
  • Ray Willis is the vilest prisoner inhabiting Hunter State Penitentiary. Born without the ability to feel pain, Willis developed a sick fascination with hurting others and took his first steps to his violent future by raping a classmate when they were only 12; the boy committed suicide due to the attack. Becoming a Serial Rapist of men, women, and children to exert his power over others, Willis was caught and imprisoned after he killed a woman while raping her. Even in prison, Willis continues to rape those weaker than him, sometimes assaulting his victims so viciously that they wind up hospitalized or dead.
• Heralds of Valdemar:
  • Prince Ancar is the sadistic, spoiled son of King Alessander of Haldorn, who murders his father to take over the throne. Murdering the Herald Kris and capturing the Queen's Own Talia, Ancar tortures her more for sport than information, framing them for his father's death to find an excuse to start a war with Valdemar. Having his cousins killed to secure his claim to the throne, Ancar uses Mind Control to force his troops to fight mercilessly and even drains his own lands of power to increase his own.
  • Mornelithe Falconsbane, aka Ma'ar, steadily divested himself of any good intent he may have once had, starting the Cataclysm that devastated much of the world and had a ripple effect through time itself. Though defeated, he didn't actually die, as he had set up a Grand Theft Me so that he could take over the body of any his descendants once they started showing signs of magical ability. Ma'ar continues this over centuries, "seeding" the world with children so as to never run out of descendants and practicing his magic upon them, intending to claim ultimate power no matter the cost. Through this end, Ma'ar would force Starblade, elder of the k'Shenya, to destroy his people's Heartstone, almost wiping them out and corrupting their valley.
  • The White Gryphon: Hadanelith is a minor villain who possesses the Gifts of Empathy and Mindhealing, but uses them to serve his own sadistic desires rather than to aid people. When first discovered, he is found to have been using his gifts to warp the minds of women until they live only to serve him in slavery, sexually and otherwise. He is exiled from the city of White Gryphon under the relatively loose laws and customs of their society. Rather than die in the wilderness, he makes his way south to the Haighlei kingdoms and is recruited by the Evil Chancellor to assassinate high ranking members of their society in order to frame the delegation from White Gryphon. In doing so, he is permitted to indulge his sadistic fantasies and accordingly tortures his victims before killing them.
  • The Collegium Chronicles: Master Cole Pieters puts children as young as four and five to work in a mine. He forces them to sleep in a basement, feeds them so little that they supplemented their diet by stealing the pig slop whenever they could, and is known to beat the children to a bloody pulp with a mallet in front of the rest of the child workers should he deem it "necessary" for control of them.
  • Closer to Home: Brand is the charming, psychopathic heir of House Raeylen. He begins by seducing young Violetta of House Chendlar with false promises of love, but when the King arranges for him to marry Violetta's older sister and promises them an estate, he comes up with a new plot: His men try to kill every member of both Houses Chendlar and Raeylen at his wedding feast except for himself and Violetta, so that when he marries her, he'll hold three estates instead of one. Brand succeeds in killing his father, and when apprehended, he calls Violetta "a pair of legs and an empty head", and admits that he planned to manipulate Violetta during their marriage so that he could use his new wealth to purchase the services of a High-Class Call Girl.
• Hercule Poirot:
  • Murder on the Orient Express: Lanfranco Cassetti is a murderer well-known to Hercule Poirot for his international notoriety. A blackmailer who kidnaps people, murdering them when the authorities close in but still collecting the ransoms, Cassetti was the murderer of a little girl named Daisy, having continued to exploit her family days or even weeks after he had already killed the girl. Uncaring of how this killed four innocent people, from Daisy's mother dying from grief in premature labor with her new baby, to her father's suicide and an innocent maid killing herself when she was falsely accused of complicity, Cassetti cares only for escaping justice and was so evil that even the heroic Poirot feels obliged to cover for his killers.
  • The ABC Murders: Franklin Clarke, aka "ABC", wishes to inherit his brother's wealth, but is aware that he would be the obvious suspect. ABC hits upon the fact that his brother has an alliterative name and lives in a town that begins with the same letter. With that in mind, ABC proceeds to kill Anna Ascher in Andover, Betty Barnard in Bexhill, and Sir Carmichael Clarke in Churston, creating the illusion that a Serial Killer is on the loose, in an effort to hide his murder-for-profit. ABC also picks out a patsy in epileptic Alexander Bonaparte Cust, and preys on his insecurities, convincing Cust that he has been committing the murders during his blackouts. Committing one last murder in Doncaster, ABC slips the knife into Cust's pocket, and then calls the police, intending that Cust either hang, or end up in a mental ward, while he walks away with the money.
  • The Labours of Hercules' "The Flock of Geryon": Dr. Andersen is the murderous leader of the Flock of the Shepard. As the leader of the Flock, Andersen manipulates rich old women into willing their estates to the cult, and afterward, he infects them with various deadly diseases, leaving them to die painfully miles away while he collects their inheritance without suspicion. Having killed at least 4 women prior to the events of the story, Andersen attempts to infect Hercule Poirot's friend Amy Carnaby with tuberculosis, hoping she would die and he would inherit her money.
  • Curtain: Mr. X—Stephen Norton—is a different sort of monster from most murder mystery villains. Deliberately modeling himself on Iago, Mr. X is a social predator who toys with people's fears, nudging them towards committing murder, while technically never breaking the law himself. Over the course of the novel, Mr. X convinces three different people, including Hercule Poirot's Watson, Captain Hastings, to commit murder, with Poirot only barely averting each at the last moment. When confronted by Poirot, Mr. X gloats that he will continue on this way forever, and that there is nothing the law can do to touch him, prompting Poirot to commit his only ever vigilante execution.
• Hero Factory Secret Mission #1: The Doom Box, by Greg Farshtey: Core Hunter was originally a hero with an good friendship with Preston Stormer until he decided to leave Hero Factory under the belief it had nothing for him and that no one cared for his future. Starting off as a small-time criminal, he would eventually become obsessed with Hero Cores, and began to hunt down heroes to rip out their cores, killing them in the process, which he would gladly show off to the other heroes. Core Hunter would eventually decide to seek out the Doom Box in the hopes of threatening to use it to become the ruler of the galaxy, during which he leaves Jimi Stringer to die after he had helped him fend off an space creature. Eventually escaping capture during the breakout, he would briefly stay in Makuhero City to kill any heroes he could find and take their cores, before eventually deciding to retrieve the Doom Box fragments he stole, during of which he kills Geb when he attempts to help the heroes. After the Doom Box was reformed and Arctur teleports him to the place the box was forged so it can be activated, Core Hunter attempts to kill Stormer, but ends up killing Arctur instead, but he doesn't care and proceeds to activate the Doom Box to absorb its power, uncaring if the universe is destroyed in the process. An ruthless, power hungry criminal with an thirst for power, Core Hunter serves as one of Hero Factory's most dangerous foes.
• The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious: Xenosload, the Demon Lord of Gaeabrande, is a cruel ruler who has slaughtered entire cities and towns using his monstrous army in his search to Take Over the World. Making a deal with the elderly Emperor Roseguard, the Demon Lord restores his youth in exchange for Roseguard using Chain Destruction in the heroes Seiya and Ristarte to destroy their souls and prevent the gods from interfering in Gaeabrande. When Seiya survives the assassination attempt and challenges the Demon Lord, Seiya uses Valhalla Gate to defeat him. Furious at his defeat, Xenosload breaks Valhalla Gate and charges Judgement Zero, a attack with the power to kill all life in Gaeabrande, forcing Seiya to sacrifice his life to use another Valhalla Gate to save the world.
• The Hero Laughs While Walking the Path of Vengeance a Second Time: Princess Alesia is the one responsible for summoning Ueki Kaito to her world. In the prologue, after having him save their world, Alesia reveals her true colors, spending a year hunting him down like an animal for her own sick pleasure before succeeding at stabbing him to death with her comrades. Upon Kaito's return, he learns Alesia sacrificed 200 beastmen slaves to summon him, while also condemning 5 of his relatives to horrific deaths. Sickeningly racist, Alesia orders bloody purges of anything with less than 100 percent human blood, even having a village butchered so the souls can be offered to a powerful demon for her benefit. Alesia promotes brutal slavery throughout the land, and when she confronts Kaito, gleefully states she'd happily have him impregnate some beast-man Sex Slaves and kill the newborn children right before him.
• Hero of Darkness ^note Previously titled The Last Bucelarii series, by Andy Peloquin: The Hunter of Voramis has faced many terrible people, creatures, and demons. These are the worst of the lot:
  • Darkblade Assassin ^note Previously titled Blade of the Destroyer : The Demon of Voramis is one of the many Abiarazi demons serving Sage and Warmaster, and the most sadistic. Eons ago, he fought alongside Kharna, where he slaughtered countless humans before going into hiding after Kharna's banishment. Using his shapeshifting abilities, he transforms himself into various figures, such as the corrupt Lord Jahel, and The First. As The First, he leads The Bloody Hand, a cult which murders, tortures, and engages in human sex trafficking, ruling Voramis from underground. As Jahel, he commands the Heresiarchs and the Dark Heresy, a group who tortures and spies on innocents, allowing The Bloody Hand to not face any punishment. Seeing the Hunter as the key to bringing back Kharna, he disguises himself as Lord Cyrannius to trick him into killing Brother Securus, who was keeping Kharna at bay. After kidnapping and torturing Hunter, he has him arrested by the Heresiarchs, where he allows him to escape, but not before ordering his men to kill every innocent person Hunter loves. He later kidnaps Farida, a child whom Hunter cherishes, and tortures her to death in order to lure an angry Hunter to him. Capturing Hunter, he offers him to join him in his human slaughtering spree, but when he refuses, he attempts to use his soul to summon Kharna. Once Hunter escapes, The Demon uses fellow Abiarazi Thane to kill him, not caring when he's killed by Hunter. When Celcia attempts to protect The Demon from Hunter, he describes her as a pawn in his game before trying to kill her. Willing to use the death of his kind to further his goals, The Demon remains Hunter’s most personal enemy.
  • Darkblade Outcast ^note Previously titled Lament of the Fallen : Lord Toramin, aka The Demon of Malandria, is the leader of the Order of Midas, and an Abiarazi servant to Sage and Warmaster, alongside Garanis. Once a servant to the lowest ranking Abiarazi commander, Toramin, under the task of freeing Kharna, chooses to establish a base in Malandria. Gathering a group of merchants desiring to make their city better, Toramin promises them money and power in exchange for their services, forming the Order of Midas and spreading fear across Malandria. He later leads a purge where he kills all the Cleric Illusionists in town who aren't noble to him, stealing their souls while claiming that their religious orders were a threat to his power. Putting the city's homeless population in a single alleyway, he has Garanis search for the perfect sacrifice victim from the alley, claiming to be "cleansing the town of filth". Other kidnapped victims are placed in a maze with a flamethrower robot that will kill them, with the prize at the end being poisonous traps and the sacrifice room; Toramin does all this because he feels frightened souls will bring Kharna back faster. Kidnapping Bardin, he has him ready to be sacrificed until Hunter interferes, where Toramin threatens Bardin's life unless Hunter joins him. Once Hunter agrees, Toramin kills one of his men while promising the others that he'll kill them all, seeing them as useless. When Hunter goes against his plans, he kills Bardin in retaliation, and tries to absorb Hunter's soul to free Kharna.
  • Darkblade Protector ^note Previously titled Gateway to the Past shows that sometimes Humans Are the Real Monsters:
    • Il Seytani—which is Turkish for "The Diabolical"—is the infamous bandit king of the Sah’raa Advent. Commanding a camp of operations, Seytani has his thieves plunder traveling caravans, where they kill the adults, steal weapons for money, and kidnap the children to be whipped and sold into slavery. After Hunter's caravan is targeted by the thieves, he searches for Hailen after he and the caravan's children are taken away. Once Hunter arrives, Seytani forces him to become his assassin, threatening to kill Hailen if he doesn't comply. Seytani tasks Hunter to kill al-Malek, the king of Al Hani, in four days. Without the king, Seytani can roam the desert unchecked without any law enforcement to stop him. Not trusting Hunter to complete his task, he sends Younis to spy on him, planning on having him kill Hunter when he's finished. When Hunter returns to save Hailen, Seytani sends his fighters to kill Hunter, ducking out of the battle so that he can hold Hailen hostage in exchange for Hunter's life, all while bragging about how he had already sold the caravan children to slavery. With his final breath, Seytani poisons Hunter with his iron dagger, knowing that Hunter will have to kill Hailen in order to cure himself. Cruelly malicious, Il Seytani proved to be one of the worst humans Hunter encountered.
    • Captain Al-Zahar, while initially appearing to be a strict henchman to the Abiarazi Queen Asalah, is later revealed to be far worse. Enraged that King al-Malek brought peace to Al Hani, Al-Zahar participates in Asalah's attempt to assassinate al-Malek and have her usurp the throne, where she plans to start a war between the remaining kingdoms to bring about Kharna. Al-Zahar hopes to participate in the war, where he'll lead his armies into battle and kill till his heart's content. To hide the fact that he's working with a demon, Al-Zahar kills his own royal guards without a twinge of guilt, smashes the back of Saima's head before jamming a knife down the back of her skull once Asalah has no need for her, and tries to kill Hunter once he refuses to cooperate with Asalah. A vicious soldier wearing a mask of heroism, Al-Zahar was willing to plunge his land into chaos and destruction just to have fun killing people.
• Hideaway: Jeremy Nyebern, aka Vassago, is a youth who murdered his mother and sister before taking a possible trip to hell. Believing himself to be a demonic prince, he turns to murdering men and women alike, preserving their corpses in an amusement park he uses as a hideout. When Hatch Harrison, is psychically connected to Vassago, Vassago learns of Hatch's wife and daughter and attempts to murder them as well, planning on dismembering and torturing Hatch's young daughter for fun.
• High Moor trilogy, by Graeme Reynolds:
  • High Moor (Book 1): Malcolm Harrison is a lazy, hedonistic bully who becomes far worse as the opportunities arise. A town bully as a young teenager, Malcolm particularly terrorized local kid John and his friends, nearly subjecting the group to genital mutilation before trying to burn young Marie alive for humiliating him. In adulthood, Malcolm abuses and neglects his wife and kids, and, when given the power of the werewolf, immediately uses his abilities to slaughter and eat his entire family. Going on a killing spree that claims several more lives, Malcolm intends to murder an adult John, then take the man's friend Marie as a Sex Slave, all out of a petty grudge at them both for crossing him in childhood.
  • Blood Moon:
    • Kryzstof is a brutal Armenian werewolf who chafes under the leadership of the moderate Michael. Seeking to actively kick off a war with humanity, Kryzstof sends his followers to massacre an entire town, with men, women, and children alike feasted upon by the wolves. Kryzstof prepares to commit the Moonborn to a conflict where savage Moonstruck are unleashed in every major city to drown the humans in paranoia and blood, before he personally executes Michael to take control of the Moonborn.
    • Colonel Brian Richards is a prejudiced military commander out to annihilate every last trace of werewolves across High Moor just to secure himself a promotion. Richards sanctions and endorses the insane Dr. Channing's horrific experiments on captured werewolves, and throw hundreds of civilians into the Lindholme prison camp alongside werewolves, uncaring that the werewolf infection spreads and innocents are constantly abused and on the verge of being massacred. His ultimate plan being to firebomb Lindholme and the surrounding area to kill thousands of men, women, and children under the false narrative of them all being werewolves, Richards then tries to personally sweep through and gun down anyone left standing.
    • Doctor Channing is the scientist in charge of experiments at Lindholme's camp. Taking countless werewolves to torture, vivisect, and keep alive in horrific agony, Channing learns the functions of werewolves and wishes to make his own. Using his volunteers to become pained, lobotomized wolves to serve him, Channing intends to spread the process further for the sake of his own twisted science.
• High School D×D:
  • Freed Sellzen is an atheist exorcist who joined the Holy Church merely to hunt down and kill monsters. Upon being excommunicated, Freed loaned out his services to multiple villains to quench his blood thirst. First seen murdering one of Issei Hyodou's clients, Freed attempts to murder Issei himself, and when Asia Argento stops him, he tries to rape her, fleeing with her when Rias Gremory and her peerage overpower him. Working under the warmonger Kokabiel, Freed nearly beats Irina to death and taunts Kiba with the fact his swords were made from experiments that resulting in the deaths of Kiba's childhood friends. Finally willingly becoming a chimera for one last chance to kill the heroes, Freed even devours two of his own knights to further boost his strength.
  • Valper Galilei was formerly in charge of the Church's "Holy Sword Project", something he took advantage of by kidnapping dozens of children and performing heinous experiments on them, which proved fatal in many cases. When Galilei found many were incapable of wielding the Holy Sword, he merely had them all killed, leaving only Kiba alive. Galieli's actions were horrific enough to earn him excommunication by the Church, resulting in him allying with the Fallen Angel, Kokabiel, aiding him in his aims to create a colossal war. Facing Kiba while fighting with Kokabiel, Galilei tells him the children he killed were worthless and that Kiba should have died with them.
  • Diodora Astaroth attempts to bargain with Rias for Asia, and when rejected, kidnaps Asia and puts her in a device that drains her life force. Confronted by Rias and peerage, Diodora reveals he pretends to be injured to lure nuns, one of whom he attempted this on was Asia, to try and heal him so he can attack and force them to become his sex slaves to satisfy his depraved fetish. While fighting Issei, Diodora brags to Issei that he looks forward to raping Asia everyday while she cries his name. Finally defeated, Diodora still plans for Asia's life force to be drained out of pure spite even as he dies.
  • Rizevim Livan Lucifer, son of Lucifer and Lilith, is a hedonistic, wicked devil who believes Devils are meant to be beings of pure evil. To that end, he convinced his son to horribly abuse his own son Vali, using his son's wife as a hostage for that purpose. Rizevim then murdered his own son and abandoned Vali. Returning upon learning of Trihexa, the beast of the apocalypse, Rizevim seeks to use it to destroy the world and rule over what's left. Attacking the vampire race and also heaven to kill as much as he can in pursuit of the Grails to free Trihexa, Rizevim also abuses and tries to murder the gentle Asia Argento. When he is finally killed, Rizevim even uses his own soul as a means to unleash Trihexa, determined to take all creation to death with him.
• Hindsight, by Ronald Kelly: Bully Hanson is a violent man who initiates the murder of three teenagers for satisfaction and the little money the boys have. Upon being convicted thanks to the psychic connection of Cindy Ann, the little sister of one of his victims, Bully eventually escapes prison by murdering two deputies before returning to murder Cindy Ann and the rest of her family, children included. After death, Cindy Ann's psychic powers reveal to her an even more horrible truth in visions she witnesses firsthand from the victims: Bully was a depraved Serial Killer who would abduct, rape, torture and murder dozens upon dozens of innocent teenagers, the youngest being twelve years old, before murdering his own partner when he tired of him.
• His Dark Materials: Metatron was once a human named Enoch that turned into an angel by The Authority to act as his regent. Despite his fanatical demeanor, having attempted to kill his own brother Baruch for being gay, he is revealed to be extremely power-hungry, as he turns on The Authority and traps him in a crystal. Under his stewardship the already fanatical institution of the church was prompted to commit several atrocities across the multiverse, ranging from mass Mind Rape of children to the genocide of both human groups and non-human species. Metatron became increasingly convinced that Lyra was the new Eve, so he planned on inquisitions across the Multiverse. Killing Baruch for once and for all, he marched his troops against Lord Asriel's rebel forces in a flat-out apocalyptic battle.
• His Fair Assassin: Count Alain D'Albret, we find out in Dark Triumph, murdered every single one of his wives, and also planned to brutally rape Anne and then force the marriage once he captured her at Nantes, and murdered his own newborn granddaughter within minutes of her birth, right in front of his own daughter, while she begged and screamed for someone to stop him. When his wife Alise did try to interfere, he struck her down so viciously that she ended up dying from the blow to the head. Then he snapped the child's neck, dropped the baby on the floor like trash, left both corpses lying there, and calmly walked out of the room. He taunts Sybella about making her his next wife once he finds out that she's not truly his daughter. Wen Julian interferes, Alain tells Julian that Julian would be forgiven for everything if he produced heirs with Death's blood in their veins — in other words, if he raped Sybella repeatedly into pregnancy.
• The History of the Runestaff: The brutal and ambitious Baron Meliadus of Kroiden serves as the commander of the armies of Granbretan and one of the chief agents of its conquests. Feared across Europe for his cruelty, Meliadus brutally strips conquered lands of their resources and commits unspeakable atrocities on their people. Swearing vengeance upon hero Dorian Hawkmoon when his attempt to turn him into a tool of his prior vendetta against Count Brass—an enmity begun by Meliadus's attempt to rape Brass's daughter Yissolda—by means of the brain-eating Black Jewel fails, Meliadus comes to increasingly devote his resources towards personal revenge, earning the displeasure of his master King-Emperor Huon—which in turn drives Meliadus to overthrow Huon and seize power for himself in a betrayal shocking even to Granbretan, though he himself is killed by Hawkmoon shortly after. Ambitious, self-absorbed and cruel to a fault, in an empire of evil Baron Meliadus stands out above the rest.
• Hitman: Enemy Within: Ali bin Ahmed bin Saleh Al-Fulani, known to the public as a benevolent philanthropist, actually runs a child prostitution ring fronted by his orphanages, which he himself frequents. In the orphanages, scantily clad children are forced to perform a perverse "talent show" for the customers before they are taken upstairs to be raped, a sight that even disgusts the stoic Agent 47. Al-Fulani also runs a drug ring inherited from his father and had top members of the Tumaco Cartel killed when negotiations soured. A board member of Puissance Treize, Al-Fulani is introduced torturing Professor Paul Rollet for information about 47 and having his bodyguard Marla execute Rollet despite promising to spare him. Al-Fulani forces Marla to have a threesome with him and a child before they flee to Chad, where he makes a stop to buy more child sex slaves, separating a brother and sister in the process.
• Hometown (2014): Nicholas "Nick" Reese, aka "Spook", is a student obsessed with the troubled Vicki and hateful of any others whom she demonstrates affection towards. Finding the powerful Heart-Eater and bonding with it, Nick uses it to consume the souls of the townspeople, especially targeting Vicki's friends and those who have slept with her. Consuming multitudes of innocents, Nick intends to force Vicki to be his and kill her friends, destroying the town of Belford and then moving on to devour even more in the world.
• Honorverse: Most of Honor Harrington's enemies have been fairly complex adversaries with understandable or even altruistic goals. This is not the case for all of her foes, however:
  • Honor Harrington series:
    • The Honor of the Queen: Captain of the Faithful Williams is the commander of Masada's Blackbird base. When Williams receives war prisoners from HMS Madrigal, he orders all of the female prisoners brutally raped by him and his men, leading to the deaths of all but two. Once the forces of Manticore and Grayson try to capture Blackbird, Williams orders all of the prisoners killed and his men to fight to the death, despite knowing they won't accomplish anything against better equipped Manticore marines, and when they try to avoid pointless deaths, Williams shoots everyone within reach. Williams's cruelty inspires revulsion and hatred from his enemies, allies, and subordinates alike.
    • Honor Among Enemies: Andre Warnecke is the former dictator of the Chalice Cluster. Taking control of the Cluster during a revolution, Warnecke promised reform, but delivered oppression so severe that three million people died. After being run out of the system, he turned to piracy, robbing and stealing from merchant ships in order to finance a return to Chalice. Coming upon the pacifistic world of Sidemore, Warnecke took power, executed all senior officials, and placed nuclear warheads in all major cities in order to ensure the population's loyalty. When Honor and the HMAMC Wayfarer arrived on Sidemore to bring him to justice, Warnecke detonated one of his nukes to show that he wasn't bluffing, then offered to exchange the lives of Sidemore's urban population for his own personal safety.
  • Wages of Sin series's To End in Fire: Karoline Adebayo is the administrator of Galton, a Mesan Alignment star system focused on research and development. Adebayo unflinchingly perpetuates a system of slavery based on principals that she doesn't even believe in. When she hears that her superiors have launched a terrorist attack that killed 43 million, Adebayo celebrates. When Honor attacks Galton and inflicts a Curb-Stomp Battle, Adebayo is furious about being defeated, but seemingly agrees to surrender to save the lives of her surviving soldiers. However, as soon as her enemies have lowered their guard, Adebayo violates the truce and launches missiles hidden amidst all of the system's civilian settlements, even though she knows Manticore's defensive weaponry will keep this act from achieving any strategic meaning. Adebayo knows that Honor is likely to retaliate by wiping out the areas those missiles will come from, but doesn't care. Adebayo's last act is risking a retaliatory strike that will kill millions of people she's sworn to protect just so that she can kill a few thousand Manticorian sailors under a flag of truce to placate her own ego.
• "Hope Chest" by Garth Nix: The Master is the demonic leader of the Servants of the State, a Nazi-like hate group that slowly amasses more and more members due to the Master's mind controlling abilities. Having his growing army perpetrate brutal assaults, rapes, and murders against minorities and vagrants across the country in his name, the Master seeks to spread his influence worldwide until his hateful rhetoric is forced upon every person alive, with his motive being nothing more than a love for causing pain and controlling others. When confronted by Alice May, the Master forces the girl to fight her own brainwashed sister to torment her, and spends his final moments mocking Alice May that he forced her sister to have sex with him, gleefully offering Alice May a place at his side to share the experience.
• "The Horror From The Mound", by Robert E. Howard: Don Santiago de Valdez, one of the first modern American vampires, is a cunning, sadistic monster who has fed on human blood since the time of the Moors. Driven out from his natural habitat three centuries in the past, Don Santiago assumed the part of a nobleman stranded on a ship that had been mysteriously scourged of all its passengers and crew. Joining the crew of one Captain de Estrada, Don Santiago ravenously fed off the Captain's men on their expeditions, even murdering a priest who used his last breath to condemn Don Santiago to be buried under the Indian mound of the story's title. Rising again from the grave to murder the Mexican neighbor of the protagonist, the first and only time Don Santiago fully appears in the flesh reveals him as what he is: a fiend in barely-human form.
• Horrorstör: Warden Josiah Worth, lord of the Cuyahoga Panopticon in life and in death, believed wholeheartedly and terrifyingly that labor sets the souls of men free. Worth was responsible for a series of animal tortures against the 318 inmates of the Panopticon—aka the "Beehive"—that disgusted even contemporary officials, favoring particularly tortuously grueling work patterns like penal treadmills and crank machines. When one man was unable to turn the crank any longer due to the rotting state the cranks had left his hands in, Worth "treated" him by cutting off his thumbs and returning him to work. Worth murdered all of his prisoners when his prison was closed, and returns in undeath to haunt the IKEA ripoff of the setting—built atop the remains of the Panopticon—dragging the innocent employees who investigate into the unending nightmare he plans on subjecting the souls of his prisoners to.
• House of Hunger, by Alexis Henderson: Thiago is the "procurer" for the titular House of Hunger. A charming man who brings Bloodmaids for the Bathory family, Thiago knows full well he sells them to torture and eventual death where their very souls will be consumed, countless girls sent to the Bathories as long as Thiago himself profits.
• House of Skin, by Jonathan Janz: Annabel Carver is a mysterious young woman found by the Carver brothers, David and Myles. Marrying the former while conducting an affair with the latter, Annabel comes to dominate their life while swaying David into murdering children for her amusement. Eventually revealed as a centuries-old being who seduces men and drives them to madness and ruin, Annabel spitefully murders a woman for an affair with Myles after he kills David and marries her. Swaying the last Carver, Paul, into murder as well, Annabel ends the novel murdering him and his lover Julia before moving on to a brand-new victim whom she intends to drive into murder and destruction as well.
• House of the Scorpion: "El Patrón", born Matteo Alacrán, is a drug lord ruling over the country of Opium. Reducing anyone caught crossing the border illegally—as well as his own staff—into mindless "eejits" to serve in his operations, El Patrón's harsh work environments lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Harvesting organs from his own clones to extend his life, El Patrón allows them to be raised believing they are his beloved children before cruelly killing them. Believing everything to be his, El Patrón even makes plans to wipe out all life in Opium with his passing to die with him.
• The House With a Clock in Its Walls: Selenna Izard is a cruel old witch who helped construct the titular clock with her late, despised husband Isaac. The clock itself is a powerful artifact with the power to end the world when stopped at a certain time. When freed from her tomb, Selenna pursues the young hero Lewis Barnavelt, murders one of her own men to create a Hand of Glory and attempts to murder Lewis's protectors to get to him for the clock. Selenna then tries to threaten Lewis into giving up the clock by threatening to torture his uncle and the good witch Florence, intending on using the clock to end the world out of sheer spite.
• The Howling: Max Quist is a handyman who resents any woman he perceives as "above" him. This rage manifests in a misogynistic fervor that results in him raping them, the fate that befalls the novel's heroine Karyn. Quist brutally rapes and beats her so badly that Karyn suffers a miscarriage, causing his shadow to linger over the novel as a greater monster than even the werewolves.
• How Not to Summon a Demon Lord:
  • Keera L. Greenwood is the older brother of Shera and the prince of the Kingdom of Greenwood. He is known to be physically abusive towards Shera, while seeing her as nothing but a Sex Slave that he rightfully owns and can use to continue their bloodline. Eventually, Shera had enough of his mistreatment and ran away, leading to him obsessively trying to recapture her and bring her back. He has a complete disregard for life, not caring how many people he endangers to achieve his goals and believes the entire world exists to please him. This is shown when he callously declares war over the pettiest of reasons, or when he summons the Force Hydra (a dangerous and destructive beast) even though he had no means of controlling it. He's also shown to be incredibly racist to all races other than the Elves. When he finally recaptures Shera, he has her chained up and attempts to rape her while also putting her under mind control magic to make her desire to come back with him.
  • Paladin Saddler of the Church of Celestials is a twisted sadist behind a mask of pleasantry, Saddler butchers villages he suspects are "evil", killing them to the last man, woman and child. A torture enthusiast, Saddler is fond of attacking demihumans or anyone he so much as suspects of worshiping demons regardless of logic or justification, taking them and torturing them to death as a form of "purification" and justifying his beliefs under the notion that he is a god. When he captures Diablo's friend Rem, Saddler tries to torture her to death as well, his supposed righteousness nothing more than a mask for the twisted monster he truly is.
  • Paladin Captain Batutta is a ruthless knight behind the Death Knell curse. Appearing an ally for Diablo's party in solving the illness at Zircon Tower, Batutta is later revealed to be the one responsible. Learning about a curse made from prime evil, the collective embodiment of sin, Batutta entrances people into committing evil deeds to extract the substance and then spread it in the town's water supply where he would then impose high taxes to the people for the cure and swear fealty to the Church, letting the paladins abuse and leaving those who can't afford to die. Learning Lumachina could cure the curse, Batutta plotted to corrupt her, kidnapping her and Rem before handing them to his servant to sexually assault them while luring Diablo to a trap. When Diablo and Sherri manage to best him ruining his plans Batutta as a last act tried to take them with him by burying them in a cave-in.
• The Humanx Commonwealth:
  • Conda Challis, during his appearance as the notional villain of Orphan Star, displays a truly legendary capacity for depravity. Among other things, he attempts to recruit Flinx to create memory-plays in the Janus Jewels, and the "scenes" he wants to see turn the stomach of even a hardened Street Urchin like Flinx. He loves torture as well, but the best example is what he plans to do with his "adopted daughter", Mahnahmi — raise her to maturity and then use her as a sex slave. It turns out that he was being telepathically manipulated by her much of the time, simply to keep him functional as a human being rather than descending into a vile pit of vice, which triggers his Villainous Breakdown when he discovers the fact.
  • Lord Dominic Estes Rose, a major villain in Bloodhype, is a drug dealer who trades in substances other dealers won't even touch, like the titular bloodhype. Like Challis, he enjoys torture, and responds to news of the escape of a set of captives by crushing some songbirds in a cage. He then attempts to blackmail the AAnn on Repler by threatening to release his stash of bloodhype in their compound, horribly killing all of them, and manages to provoke the AAnn commander into declaring him the most disgusting being he's ever seen. His hubris reaches its pinnacle when he attempts to sell humanity out to the Vom in exchange for his survival, and promptly dies.
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: Scimina Arameri is the most wicked of the Arameri bloodline of the ruling city of Sky. Seeking to take over as heir from her aged uncle Dekarta, Scimina is also a cruel sadist who uses the captive god Nahadoth as a Sex Slave while also abusing and mistreating him. Despising her cousin Yeine for being part of the Darr people, Scimina attempts to use her kingdoms to commit utter genocide on Darr, deciding to settle for enslaving them if she cannot have this. Torturing Nahadoth and his son Sieh to prove a point to Yeine, Scimina later murders her own twin Relad when it appears he may become heir over her.
• Hungers as Old as This Land: Compared to the creatures of the Hungers, who are vicious but have a warped morality and even a sense of honor, this duo proves that Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  • Cyril Redstone is the sociopathic leader of the Blackhawks, a mercenary band willing to do any dirty job for the right price. Telling a group of unionizing quarrymen that he's come to negotiate, Cyril kills them all to scare their fellow workers into submission. Agreeing to murder every single man, woman, and child in the settlement of Grey's Bluffs so his employer, Gerard Bancroft, can seize the land, when Cyril learns the leader of the settlement is Abraham Foxman, an old war buddy who saved his life, Cyril just uses it as an excuse to charge Bancroft double. Planning on stealing all the gold he can before handing the land over, Cyril slaughters most of the settlement, personally tortures Abraham to death for not telling him the gold's location, and later threatens to torture Siobhan O'Clery, the lover of Abraham's daughter Esther, right in front of her if she doesn't tell him either. Lying that he'll let the survivors live if he's taken to the gold, Cyril plans on murdering his guides and then the rest of the survivors once he gets what he wants.
  • Gerard Bancroft is the cold-blooded co-owner of the Bancroft & Hughes Mining and Railroad Conglomerate and the unofficial head of Independence. Employing Cyril Redstone and his Blackhawks to carry out dirty deeds to keep his business running smoothly, Bancroft is introduced paying Cyril for murdering the unionizing workers at Bancroft's quarry. Despite having made an arrangement with Grey's Bluffs, Bancroft covets the valuable land the settlement's on, and hires Cyril and his Blackhawks to murder everyone in the settlement so Bancroft can seize the property. His actions resulting in the destruction of Grey's Bluffs, the deaths of the majority of its people, and the scattering of its few survivors, Bancroft views his absolute control over the region as the "natural order" and thinks human lives are worthless when compared to the expansion of his business.
• The Hungry Moon: The "moon thing" is an Ancient Evil that lay dormant in the cave near Moonwell until awakened by Gideon Mann. Taking his body and plunging Moonwell into darkness, the creature murders multiple villagers for sport, attempts to devour a child, and provokes religious violence and madness, even murdering its own followers and feeding them to the rest. The moon thing intends to gain access to a nearby nuclear base, intending to launch them all and annihilate the human race for its own enjoyment.
• Hunted, by Darcy Coates: Superintendent Decker is a gruff, seemingly well-meaning police chief who is in truth a depraved Serial Killer. Decker views killing as a game and has set out to be able to kill as many people as possible before he's captured. Decker, in a monster suit, terrorizes hikers and intentionally drives them into unsafe areas well in a fearful state in order for the elements and nature to kill them so nothing can be traced back to him. Having claimed the lives of over 60 victims, Decker makes sure that no one catches on by pitting his officers against each other, and when the disappearances are discovered, Decker has a mentally ill man framed for the crimes, leading to said man taking his own life. When confronted by his crimes by one of his officers, Decker is giddy to confess to his love for killing before revealing how he intends to ruin her life if she turns him in.
• Hurog:
  • High King Jakoven Tallven is a vicious tyrant who locks his brother Kellen in a hellish asylum, only not killing him because of a prophecy's warning. Jakoven proceeds to expand the Five Kingdoms, killing all in his path, while taking young boys as hostages and sex slaves for his own pleasure. Having the hero Ward tortured, Jakoven also sends Ward's Love Interest Tisala to be tortured and raped by his men, before intending on bleeding Ward to use a superweapon, which he and his right-hand-man Jade Eyes test on an innocent village, intending on wiping out all before him until he stands supreme.
  • Dragon Blood: Jade Eyes is a wicked mage and Jakoven's partner in evil. Capturing Ward, Jade Eyes has him locked in the asylum and has him drugged, viciously tortured and sexually assaulted. Jakoven and Jade Eyes later kidnap a young cousin of Ward's and have him drugged with clear intent to molest him, as well as bled to empower their superweapon. After his master's defeat, Jade Eyes reveals he intends to revive the dragons used to create said superweapon to build an empire for himself, despite them intending to destroy the Five Kingdoms upon revival, callous to the carnage created as long as he rules.
• "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream": AM, the evil Master Computer, has already killed all but 5 members of humanity by the time the story opens. AM keeps the survivors mutated and twisted so he may torture them helplessly as he desires. AM forces them to wander, changing the environment so they can never get used to it and subjects them to hideously twisted torments. When one of them finally rescues the others by killing them, AM transforms him into a sapient blob, not even leaving him a mouth to scream with.
• I Hunt Killers:
  • Ugly J, aka Janice Dent, is revealed to be The Man Behind the Man by the end of the trilogy. She reveals to Jasper "Jazz" Dent that she was the one who taught Billy Dent everything he knew as a killer. During the second book, she, with the help of Billy, tricked Connie, Jasper's girlfriend, to partake in a scavenger hunt that led her to their clutches so that they could torture her into convincing Jasper to give in to his heritage. In captivity, she pulled a Wounded Gazelle Gambit by pretending to be one of Billy's victims in order to get her on her side and subtly tried convincing her that escape was pointless. After Jasper's grandmother was sent to the hospital because of the events of the second book, she disguised herself as a nurse so that she could kill her through a forced drug overdose, something Billy objected to. She tells Jasper that she had planned on killing him when he was just a newborn and would use the insanity plea if she ever got caught, but she only grudgingly backed down because Billy convinced her that creating a legacy was better. What really makes Jasper snap was when she reveals that she regularly raped him as a child and had him practicing stabbing on her, which was often a source of PTSD flashbacks for Jasper. She even thought about having him kill Billy so that she could intentionally give him an Oedipus Complex. During The Reveal, she would repeatedly claim that she loves him, but that proves to be a lie when she attempts to kill Jasper because he refused to live up to her legacy. She stands as one of the worst mothers in literature, and even worse than the trilogy's Big Bad, Billy.
  • The Hat-Dog Killer, or more specifically, Duncan Hershey, the Hat Killer, was part of a duo of Serial Killers that committed a series of murders in New York City, with one carving a hat on his victim's corpse, and another carving a dog, as part of a game set up by Billy Dent. During the killing spree, he started raping his female victims, which disgusted Oliver Belsamo, the Dog Killer, when he was forced to start raping as part of the Game's rules. When Jasper Dent (Billy's son) and Agent Morales had him cornered, Jasper got shot in the leg while Morales got knocked out. Jasper warns Hershey that killing an FBI agent will cause trouble for his killing spree, but he ignores his warning and kills the unconscious Morales in front of him. He then kills Belsamo so he can be the sole winner of Billy's game. Finally, he locks a wounded Jasper in a storage unit so he could bleed to death. We're at first made to believe he was a Loony Fan like the Impressionist (the killer from the first book), but he believes that he is a better killer than Billy. While the Impressionist and Belsamo were pretty bad, they had a set of rules that they obeyed unless it's an emergency like in the former's case. Hershey, on the other hand, doesn't care about that. All he cares about is his reward and showing up Billy. In the third book, he planned on killing his wife and his child, and would have done it if Billy didn't show up to kill him for breaking the rules.
• iDrakula, by Bekka Black: The Count is an evil vampire and the ruler of a small nation in Romania. Driving Renfield insane, the Count feeds on his replacement Johnathan Harker and eventually leaves him trapped in his castle to turn. While trapped Johnathan discovers a room full of corpses, including small children. Arriving in New York, the Count begins feeding on people and turns Lucy Westenra into a vampire. When Mina Murray and Abe Van Helsing destroy two of his coffins, the Count kills Renfield for trying to help them and bites Mina to turn into a vampire. Killing a security guard and simply watching Lucy get destroyed, the Count tries to manipulate Mina into joining his side.
• "I Like Blondes", by Robert Bloch: The alien known only as "Ambrose Beers" is a member of a group of "collectors" who come to Earth to hunt humans. While his compatriots have their own fixations, Beers' preferred victims are blondes, who he lures into his clutches then kidnaps into space. Beers' method of "collecting" is uniquely vile amidst his group in that, rather than simply stuffing or mounting their bodies, Beers consumes the humans he captures; he has done so to over a hundred humans, and ends the story about to add another victim to his "collection".
• Illium & Olympos: The advanced human who has taken the identity of Zeus overthrew his parents by banishing them to a hellish dimension of infinite pain. Taking over Mars with the other "Gods", Zeus keeps them in line via brutality and threats, deciding to recreate the Trojan War on an alternate world, subjecting countless innocents to death and destruction for fun. When he feels the game is insufficiently entertaining, Zeus simply drops a powerful bomb on the city of Troy to kill thousands. When Hera attempts to stop Zeus, he simply murders her himself and decides to simply exterminate all humanity and start over with creations of his own before moving on to other dimensions and timelines until he is the only god and all that exists submits to him or dies, even banishing his own son Achilles to the same dimension as his parents when he defies his mad father.
• The Illuminae Files_02: Gemina: Lt. Travis J. Falk is the sociopathic leader of the audit team sent by BeiTech to take control of the jump station Heimdall to ensure there are no witnesses to their atrocities on Kerenza IV. In his very first scene, Falk and his team seize control of the station and quickly murder Hanna Donnely's father for being the commander of the station. Falk then sends out his men to hunt down and kill any stragglers they find while forcing the station's engineers to reactivate the wormhole so BeiTech can send a drone fleet to wipe out the fleeing Kerenza survivors before he executes all of the non-essential personnel. Falk then tries to manipulate Hanna into turning herself in by falsely claiming that her partner Nik is a child-killer and that he will spare her. When this doesn't work, Falk responds by flushing all 57 people in the habitat section into space and threatens to flush other sections as well. Falk then has his men rig the station's reactor to explode after they leave to kill everyone on board to ensure there are no surviving witnesses.
• Immortals After Dark series:
  • Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night: Häxa, Queen of False Faces was one of the three primary witch goddesses and the one representing evil. Eventually cast out by her sisters, Häxa in order to regain her status relishes causing despair in the world, twisting the wishes of unsuspecting people in order to drive them to misery; in one notable case, Häxa responded to a boy innocently asking to be the strongest of his siblings, by murdering said siblings and causing him lifelong guilt. In order to increase her power and for fun, Häxa turns thousands of people into living statues in her personal realm where they're kept in eternal misery; these included the parents of Mariketa the Awaited, in order to cause her pain. When one of her victims, Bowen MacRieve finds love again, Häxa manipulates him in the guise of his deceased lover—who was killed by Häxa— to drive him apart from his new love in order to relish his pain. In her ultimate scheme, Häxa plans to steal Mariketa's powers in order drive the entirety of mankind into torture and despair, enacting Hell on Earth, simply to satisfy her sadistic whims.
  • Pleasure of a Dark Prince: Crom Cruach the Broken Bloody One is the god of human sacrifice and cannibalism and this world's version of Satan himself. Cruach seduced a teenage Valkyrie named Lucia the Huntress into being his bride before revealing his true form and having her raped and tortured, forcing her to consume flesh from some of his victims and nearly driving her to suicide. Lucia later sealed Cruach away, only for him to escape every 500 years to try and torment her. Cruach revels in spurring on his followers into sacrificing innocents to him—including children—and in the present intends to use his special ability to infect people with a need to kill their loved ones to infect the entire world. Cruach intends to start the apocalypse and watch as the entire of humanity descends into cannibalism and Human Sacrifice of their loved ones in his name. When Lucia and her new boyfriend Gareth MacRieve go to face him, Cruach tries to force Gareth into killing Lucia, and when he refuses, torments him with visions of him having actually killed her before making his intention to gang-rape and murder Lucia known. Cruach is ultimately a monstrous god whose only reason for tormenting innocents is because he finds it fun.
• In Another World with My Smartphone: Yula is the accomplished strategist of the Phrase, being responsible for the multiversal Phrase invasion, who desires to conquer and destroy worlds he encounters, while seeking for a power even more powerful than the Sovereign Phrase so he can usurp the Pantheon and rule the whole multiverse as he sees fit. After Melle travelled through various worlds, Yula uses this opportunity to wreak insurmountable havoc against countless kingdoms and empires he visits, including the Partheno Sacred Empire, which led to the complete annihilation of the ancient civilization, leaving a significant, long-lasting impact in the current civilization. Yula allies with the exiled God, the Servile God, in the creation of a powerful vessel known as the Wicked God. Eventually, Yula betrays the latter by absorbing the God into the vessel, which led to the Wicked God's awakening, before absorbing countless mortal beings into the vessel to empower it. Yula and the Wicked God then stage a massive, full-scale invasion on the merged Western and Eastern Continents with his entire army of Mutant Phrases in a last-ditch effort to burn and destroy the world, while being content on razing anything in his path. Yula then imprisons Touya inside Niflheim, so he can force Touya to watch his friends, allies, and family getting slaughtered by the Mutant Phrase, so he could gloat all over his ruthless scheming and wanting anyone to bow over him once he rules over them.
• "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road", by Joe R. Lansdale: "Moon Face" lives in a remote cabin in the woods, and periodically kidnaps people from the nearby road to brutally torture and murder in his Torture Cellar. Moon Face then cuts his victims' eyes out and drills "eyes" through the back of their heads, in a grotesque parody of what they were before he killed them. Heroine Ellen sees dozens of victims, including several children.
• InCryptid: The Price-Healy family and their allies have faced several evil villains in their quest to protect cryptids and humanity alike. Though the worst often prove that Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  • Ghost Roads: Bobby Cross was a movie star known as "Diamond Bobby" who wished to be young and beautiful forever. Through his deal with the crossroads, Bobby drives eternally to outrun mortality, but takes advantage of the deal to empower himself by arranging crashes and accidents, or simply murdering people himself to create ghosts, including heroine Rose Marshall. Bobby then takes their souls to use as fuel for his car, using them up into nothing. Seducing Rose's great grand-niece Bethany, Bobby murders her when she fails against Rose and even convinces a follower to kill herself for him, solely for amusement and spite. A sadistic sociopath, Bobby uses and abuses all around him, dispatching them when they stop being of use, all so he will never have to face his own mortality.
  • Discount Armageddon: "Evil Santa" is an unnamed cult leader who worships the last male dragon, which lives under New York City. Believing that he will be rewarded with riches and power in return for his worship, "Evil Santa" kidnaps dozens of single Cryptid women and has them ritualistically murdered through Virgin Sacrifice. To create his minions to help with this, "Evil Santa" uses the mutative qualities of dragon blood to transform several hapless tourists into the mindless lizard-like "Servitors", a process which thoroughly breaks their minds. Kidnapping heroine Verity Price and her friends, "Evil Santa" intends to sacrifice them as well to gain the glory and riches he desires.
  • Chaos Choreography: Anders Clarke and Clint Goldfein are a contestant and judge respectively in the reality dancing show Dance or Die who, secretly, are the masterminds of a murderous snake cult. The two act as serial killers, butchering every pair of contestants who lose on the show until eight people have been killed. In the climax, the duo reveal their master plan to use the sacrifice to unleash a monstrous snake demon to kill Dance or Die's massive audience and all the other contestants and judges as they watch gleefully, Anders in particularly sneering that his father will die in petty retribution for being ignored by him and Clint gloating he simply wants to become a king among men through the power of the serpent he's summoned.
  • That Ain't Witchcraft: The Crossroads are an Anima Mundi, the spirit of a place. An eldritch parasite, the Crossroads offer people their heart's desire for the roads, but always with a catch, perverting the wishes and destroying the casters or using them as weapons to strike fear and evil into the world. The one responsible for Bobby Cross's murders, the Crossroads also trap the souls of its victims, constantly twisting the gains of others for its own end. Finally, the Crossroads even attempt to drain the life and magic from Earth, heedless of the death toll this will bring through the world.
  • Imaginary Numbers: Ingrid is Sarah Zellaby's biological mother. Seeking a new world for the cuckoos, an invasive predator species, to infest, Ingrid orchestrates the entire plot to turn Sarah into an Apocalypse Maiden and tear a hole between dimensions. Uncaring that this would destroy Earth and fry Sarah's mind, Ingrid plans to use her as a sex doll to breed new super-powerful Johrlac queens. Ingrid also reveals that she had Sarah for the sole purpose of creating a Johrlac queen, and was behind the murder of her foster parents that led to Angela adopting her. She also ordered the murders of the family who lived in the house that the hive randomly chose as a base of operations.
• Inexhaustible Chalice: The old landlord of Lyapunovka village is a Serial Rapist who uses his power over the peasants to rape every girl that catches his eye, including children. When one of his victims tries to hide from him under the stairs, the landlord stabs her through the eye while dragging her out. He also molests his preteen servant Ilya, forcing him to strip and perform obscene acts. The landlord drowns when Ilya is twelve, but the memories of him haunt Ilya for the rest of his life.
• Infinite Dendrogram: Lich Maise and Gladiator Gouz are the leaders of the infamous Gouz-Maise Gang, a gang of bandits who kidnap children to extort their families, sometimes not returning the children even if their families paid the money. In reality, Maise—the brains of the group—uses the children as material to practice his necromancy skills to become the next King of Bones while Gouz—the muscle—mutilates and eats them to satiate his preference for child's meat and make them generate negative emotions for Maise's experiments. When Masters challenge them, Gouz sends his men to their deaths at Hugo's hands before telling Hugo that the duo planned to kill their men themselves before moving to another city, while Ray finds the animated corpses of over 100 children. Deciding that he already fulfilled the conditions to become the King of Bones, Maise tortures Ray and plans to murder the surviving captive children. Even after his death, Maise's experiment would fuse nearly bodies to create an undead monster with the intention to devour everything in its way.
• Insignia trilogy: Joseph Vengerov is the CEO of Obsidian Corp., and cares about nothing but himself. Born Ivan "Vanya" Vengerov, he killed his brother and took his identity to become CEO of LM Lymer fleet, and had neural processors installed in Russian military members, resulting in them either dying or going insane. Defecting to America, Vengerov did the same thing with the American military. Vengerov sought the mysterious "ghost in the machine" by trying to have Thomas "Tom" Raines send a virus to Yaolan "Medusa", to see if it is her, and gave Tom the choice of cooperating or freezing to death when he refused. When faced with the possibility of being facing consequences for his actions, Vengerov has the asteroid Cruithne knocked towards Earth, threatening to wipe out humanity, and then steal the credit for destroying it. Vengerov then kidnapped Tom, believing him to be the ghost, and psychologically tortured him into becoming subservient to him. Secretly having everyone in the world given a neural processor and be bound to his will, Vengerov then started to create a list of everyone in the world he considered "unnecessary", planning on using their processors to kill them all.
• Intensity, by Dean Koontz: Edgler Foreman Winston Vess is a "homicide adventurer" who kills for the "intensity" he gets during murder. Vess, who started killing animals at a young age, takes time to deconstruct the notion he has a Freudian Excuse as, at the age of 9, he murdered his parents who had never mistreated him; murdered his grandmother for the insurance money; and his adopted family as well for the same reason. Vess is introduced breaking into the home of Laura Templeton, the friend of of heroine Chyna Shepherd. He proceeds to murders Laura's family, before raping and murdering Laura. Chyna follows him to a gas station where he murders the clerks after bragging he has a young girl hostage in his basement. He subdues Chyna when he becomes aware of her and chains her in his basement with the young girl Ariel, offering to spare Chyna if she tortures Ariel with him. Vess, who killed over 20 people and likes to say that "God fears me", thinks of other human beings only in terms of how much he can hurt them.
• InterWorld:
  • Lord Dogknife is a wicked goblin and pirate who tries to capture Walkers for his ship. Melting them down while alive, he then uses their souls to power the ship, holding them alive and in agony forever to power his domain. Trying to add Joey Harker to his power source, Dogknife escapes and later returns to help the tech and magic side bring about FrostNight to exterminate existence and rebuild it as he wants.
  • Lady Indigo is a high-ranking HEX official and Lord Dogknife's loyal supporter. Assisting Lord Dogknife with his schemes, Lady Indigo travels across different dimensions capturing Walkers and draining their life forms to fuel Lord Dogknife's spaceships. Lady Indigo targets Joey Harker and repeatedly tries to kidnap him and his allies, eventually succeeding and imprisoning him and several other Walkers. After Lady Indigo is wounded by Joseph and left for dead, she resurfaces two years later, entrapping Joseph and several of his teammates. She gradually drains the life out of many of Joseph's allies just to torture him, gloating about how she intends to kill all of his friends before turning Joseph into a brainwashed slave. She also mortally wounds Josephine just so she can use her body as a tracking device to gather up more victims. Once reunited with Lord Dogknife, she's more than happy to help him destroy and rewrite the Multiverse using the FrostNight weapon.
• In the Company of Ogres, by A. Lee Martinez: Lord Rucka is a nineteen-inch demon lord whose cruelty ten times outweighs his stature. A nightmare even among his kind who loves nothing more than killing and devouring, Rucka regularly murders and maims his minions for any reason that pops up in his head, uses his walking fortress to crush villages for fun and schemes to further empower himself using the power of the long-dormant Mad Void. Realizing the immortal protagonist Never Dead Ned is the seal for the Mad Void itself, Rucka attempts to tear out Ned's eye and take the Mad Void's power, willingly to allow the universe itself to die in order to fuel his ascendancy to omnipotence.
• In the Last Days:
  • Antioch is a determined, power-hungry man who craves to conquer both Earth and Heaven. After becoming the sovereign of Earth, Antioch kidnaps strong-willed and brave people, and has Apollonius brainwash them into loyal zombie-like soldiers with the use of hypnosis, magic, starvation, sleep deprivation, Mind Rape, and actual rape—whatever works. After declaring himself a man-god, Antioch orders a merciless persecution of those who don't accept it, privately telling his subordinates to focus on Christians as top priority. His police only hunts down his political and religious opponents, turning a blind eye to everything else, which leads to levels of violent crime skyrocketing. Due to the ultra-hedonistic lifestyle promoted by Antioch's regime, his followers become physically weak and depression and suicides are on the rise, but Antioch gives no thought to this. Aware that he is the Beast from The Book of Revelation, Antioch thinks that the prophecy of God's victory was wrong and till his last moment only cares about the planned war against Heaven rather than the people of Earth who are either oppressed by his regime or look to him for help.
  • Apollonius is Antioch's chief supporter, whose high position allows him to freely indulge in his wild hedonistic ways. When Antioch tells him to find ways to bring steadfast, honorable people to his side, Apollonius devised a meticulous brainwashing strategy that involves hypnosis, starvation, sleep deprivation, mind rape, and bodily rape. He tries the aforementioned torments one by one on people Antioch's officers kidnap, turning the numerous victims into vicious Brainwashed and Crazy battalions blindly loyal to Antioch's cause. When Lydia, Apollonius's former friend and crush from their university days, is kidnapped for that purpose, Apollonius sees the strength of her will and plans to devise new ways to break her, viewing her purely as a test subject and proving he has no shreds of humanity left.
• Into the Bloodred Woods: King Albrecht is a vicious sadist who, from a young age, has been obsessed with inflicting pain on others. Unwilling to share rulership with his elder twin sister Ursula, who he looks down on for being a woman and werebeast, Albrecht launches a devastating attack on her territory, slaughtering many civilians and forcing Ursula and her subjects into hiding. Taking full control of the kingdom, Albrecht paints the werebeasts as savage monsters and rallies the terrified citizens to wipe them out entirely. Desiring Greta as his bride, Albrecht kidnaps, violates, and tortures her, resulting in her death. Scheming to learn the secrets behind werebeast transformation to build a metal army, Albrecht attempts to cut open his tortured former assistant Hans, while also abducting werebeast children to perform potentially lethal experiments to transform them into his first soldiers. Even upon being blinded, disfigured, and stripped of his kingdom, a remorseless Albrecht spends the remainder of his days traveling and telling false stories villainizing his foes as a final act of spite.
• Into the Heartless Wood: King Elynion is the selfish ruler of Tarian. Centuries prior, he seduced a forest nymph named Enaid before carving out and devouring her soul to gain immortality and power, resulting in Enaid's transformation into the monstrous Gwydden. The two remain locked in war for centuries, Elynion less concerned with the hundreds of lives lost and more with maintaining his own power, even invading a neighboring kingdom at one point in his reign merely to ease his boredom. In the present, Elynion seeks to devour the soul of Owen's toddler sister Awela, perfecting his device by conducting torturous experiments on their father that ultimately kill him, before opting to use the device on Owen when Awela is taken to safety. With the Gwydden's vengeance at hand, Elynion leads his forces to torch the wood and kill her once and for all, planning to expand and conquer the rest of the world once she's been vanquished.
• Invasion America series, by Vaughn Heppner: Jian Hong, Agricultural Minister of Greater China, stages an attack on an American oil rig to gain favor with the Chairman and discredit his rival. After convincing the Chairman to invade Alaska, leading to the deaths of thousands, Jian assassinates him to take power. Using his network to install a puppet government in Mexico, leading to the nation being stripped of food, he goes on to launch an invasion of America, triggering a third World War. Objective-minded, Jian sacrifices over two million of his own soldiers to destroy an American tank plant. To keep America isolated, Jian increases tensions between them and Germany by staging a nuclear terrorist attack. Shipping missiles to Mexico, Jian has them launched at America, killing one million people. Upon being invaded by a joint force of American and Russian soldiers, Jian forcibly drafts civilians as frontline troops. When the Australians revolt against his tyranny, Jian punishes their uprising with a genocide, killing seven million of them. Even as his own country is torn apart by the war with America, Jian stubbornly refuses to surrender his power, murdering almost his entire government for failing to find him a solution for the war he brought on.
• Irene, by Pierre Lemaitre ^note originally titled Travail Soigné (Neat Work) in French: The "Novelist"—Philippe Buisson de Chevesne—copies murders from various crime novels such as American Psycho and The Black Dahlia. There are six victims of these long and drawn out murders—which include a rape or two—all female, plus at least two or three people killed as collateral damage, before the "Novelist" attempts his masterpiece: Using his own novel, he kidnaps Irene, the 8-months-pregnant wife of Parisian detective Commandant Camille Verhoeven, who has to rush to save her. Sadly, by the time he gets there, Irene has been killed and the newborn has been ripped out in an impromptu C-section and has been crucified. In the end, the "Novelist" writes to Camille that, in his words, all he wanted was fame for a new novel he's writing.
• Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: The dungeon isn't the only place where one will find monsters:
  • Goddess Ishtar forces her familia into prostitution and expands her ranks by kidnapping women, either right off the street in the pleasure quarters, which she runs with a Reign of Terror, or out of the dungeon. Ishtar also expands her ranks by buying slaves and putting them to work as prostitutes. She isn't content to have clients come to her familia prostitutes willingly either, and has men kidnapped and forced into being "clients". Ishtar demands absolute obedience—otherwise, she will send Phryne Jamil to have any and all dissidents beaten half to death and brought before her to be raped until they can no longer say "no". She sees nothing wrong with rape, even raping Hermes onscreen, and treats Hestia with disdain, because the latter is a virgin goddess. She has a petty, spiteful grudge against Freya for being considered more beautiful and having a stronger familia than herself, and so decides to declare total war, squashing everyone in her way, and to this end, forces her slaves, like Haruhime, into a Human Sacrifice ritual that would destroy their souls with no hope of recovery just for a cheap power-up. When Freya has finally had enough and retaliates, Ishtar abandons her familia while trying to escape, planning to set up shop elsewhere.
  • Phryne Jamil, Ishtar's top enforcer, is as hideous on the outside as her personality is twisted and cruel. Completely deluded into believing she's the most beautiful woman, even more so than both goddesses of beauty—Ishtar and Freya—she takes any and all men she finds "tasty" and drags them off against their will into her "love nest" dungeon, hidden in the basement of the Ishtar estate, pumps them full of aphrodisiacs and terror, and then rapes and tortures them until she gets bored, by which time, they are completely broken, bloody, and permanently impotent; she happily tells herself, and anyone she thinks will listen, that they're so love-struck that they will never be satisfied, sexually, by anyone else. She greatly enjoys beating her fellow familia members, or anyone else who happens to cross her, half to death, especially those men who try to escape her "affection". She calls Haruhime "ugly" for the fact that the latter is a virgin, and, in addition to chaining her up and happily preparing to kill and destroy her soul, smacks her around for the slightest resistance, real or imagined.
  • Dix Perdix is the captain of the Ikelos familia and the ringleader of the poaching of the Xenos, sapient monsters who want to live in peace. Discovering that acts of sadistic bloodshed silenced the blood curse implanted by his ancestor, Daedalus, to continue construction of Knossos, Dix used Xenos poaching both as funding as well as a way to quell his bloodlust. Using an injured Xenos as bait, Dix and his men ambush many innocent Xenos, killing the ones who resisted and capturing all others. When confronted by the Xenos who came to rescue and Bell Cranel, Dix activates a Hate Plague granted by his blood curse to make the Xenos attack each other, while tormenting Bell by using his cursed spear to slash him with unhealable cuts. Dix then shows Bell a chained and tortured Wiene, where he proceeds to remove her gem that regresses her to her true feral, monstrous form. Unable to make Bell attack Wiene, Dix holds Wiene's gem hostage before hitting Wiene with his blood curse and sends her to the surface for her to attack and be attacked by humans.
• Island, by Richard Laymon: Wesley Duncan Beaverton III seduces and marries the daughter of a wealthy family to get close to his wife Thelma's sisters and mother. Obsessed with keeping women as slaves, Wesley lures the family out on a boating trip and murders his father-in-law. It is revealed Wesley found another family on the island and murdered the father and mother, keeping the teenage daughters Alice and Erin as his sex slaves who he regularly rapes and tortures. Sending Thelma to try to murder his brother-in-law Rupert, Wesley captures and abuses the other women in the group and kills Thelma's sister Kimberly when she tries to stop him from murdering Rupert. As ever in Laymon's novels, Wesley demonstrates that the scariest monster of all is a human being with a penchant for sadism and domination.
• The Island of Doctor Moreau: Dr. Moreau himself is an unfettered vivisector determined to create humans using animals. After fleeing Britain as a pariah for flaying a dog which escaped his lab, Moreau took up residence on a remote island, taking more creatures to continue his experiments with. Spending the years torturously crafting over 120 animals into pain-stricken sapient beings, Moreau has them taught the "Law" to keep them under control and to worship him as a god. With his House of Pain, Moreau tortures any who disobey his Law, to the point protagonist Edward Prendick shoots a leopard man Moreau meant to punish dead to save him from the agony.
• "The Isle of the Torturers", by Clark Ashton Smith: King Ildrac is the wicked ruler of Uccastrog, a nation commonly known as the "Isle of the Torturers" for the inhumane practices inflicted on its prisoners. Ildrac defines "prisoners" as whoever washes ashore onto Uccastrog, capturing castaways and purposefully marooning ships so as to inflict all manners of endless torture upon them, keeping them alive for years on end. When the story's protagonist, King Fulbra, washes ashore, Ildrac mocks him for expecting royal clemency and has all of his slaves tortured and flayed to spite him. Fulbra is subjected to one torture after the other, forced to languish in a cell in between sessions, within which is a pit Fulbra can see the flayed remains of all of Ildrac's victims. Ildrac even resurrects the souls of all these victims to make them torture Fulbra more. Ildrac finally designs for Fulbra to face a poison that will put his mind through a thousand unspeakable hells in an instant, and even reveals the single woman who was kind to Fulbra in his captivity was merely his pawn, having her administer the poison just to crush Fulbra even more. Ildrac is undone, ultimately, when Fulbra outwits him precisely by playing on Ildrac's inability to not Kick the Dog whenever an opportunity presents itself.

J – K

• Jack Caffery series:
  • Birdman & The Treatment: Ivan Penderecki, the series' only recurring antagonist, is DI Jack Caffery's next door neighbour and an utterly loathsome pedophile. Running a child pornography ring, Ivan partook in the sexual abuse of dozens of young boys and filmed the rapes to sell on to other members. Ivan also abducted Jack’s brother Ewan and rendered the boy brain dead by throwing him across a room when he tried to resist the rape, leaving it to his number two Carl Lamb to murder him. Realizing that Jack was searching for answers, Ivan waged a decades long campaign of mental cruelty against him: pretending to burn Ewan's bones on a bonfire; posting countless taunting letters to him; and even manipulating Jack's mentally ill girlfriend into giving him Ewan's toys so he could set them on fire in front of Jack. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ivan decided to send Jack on a wild goose chase for Ewan's body as a final taunt and committed suicide to prevent him from getting any answers.
  • Birdman: Malcolm Bliss is a sexually sadistic psychopath. Embittered against women due to his unattractive appearance, Bliss began serially raping women at a young age, claiming at least four victims every year. Meeting a woman called Joni and becoming sexually obsessed with her, Bliss decides to rape and mutilate dead prostitutes as a substitute. Roping a rich aristocrat called Toby Harteveld into his scheme, Bliss has Harteveld kill five prostitutes for him before mutilating each one and sewing a bird inside the chest to mimic the sound of a dying heartbeat, raping the remains as the bird suffocates. When the bodies are discovered, Bliss abducts an innocent housewife and forces her to see pictures of a child being raped, before mutilating her with no anaesthetic and dumping her in a dustbin. When Joni rejects Bliss due to his creepy behaviour, Bliss horrifically attacks her and, when Rebecca interrupts them, abducts them both. Attacking Joni and fatally snapping her spine, Bliss flees when the police corner him. Luring out DI Essex, Bliss slices off his limbs with a hacksaw, before gloating to Jack Caffery that he enjoyed torturing Rebecca to death.
  • The Treatment: Carl Lamb is as equally depraved a member of Ivan Penderecki's pedophile ring as Ivan himself. When Carl was just a teenager, he sold out his own sister to the ring and allowed her to be raped by its members, all whilst taking photos for his own sick pleasure; alongside raping dozens of young boys. Abusing Jack's brother Ewan alongside Ivan, Carl only backed out of killing the boy out of cowardice and, upon realizing that he had been rendered brain dead, decided to exploit him as slave labour. Continuing his depraved abuse by raping him countless times and beating him, Carl decided to use the boy to blackmail Ivan for money.
  • Skin: Georges Gerber masquerades as a well-meaning, polite surgeon, but is in fact a vicious Serial Rapist and Serial Killer. Sexually obsessed with skin, Gerber skinned countless animals alive from a young age, some of them with no anaesthetic. Using his career as a surgeon to fulfill his sexual fantasies, Gerber would use his operations to rape his own patients and slice off a piece of their skin to keep as a trophy. Masturbating into all the skins he’s collected, Gerber began murdering women by making them overdose after deciding that watching them die would be just as exciting. First targeting a former victim who was blackmailing him, Gerber raped and sexually assaulted her whilst she expired from the drugs, before doing the same to a nurse who tried to raise concerns about his behaviour. Murdering yet another patient in the same way and dumping her body in a car, Gerber attempted to drug Caffery upon being confronted and sealed him up inside a disused bomb shelter to starve to death.
• Jackpot Trilogy: Vespasian is an utterly depraved "continua enthusiast" who takes the attitude that stubs are expendable to its furthest possible extreme. A weapons fetishist, Vespasian gets his kicks by manipulating entire timelines into pointless, grinding conflict to salivate over their tools of destruction, bringing death and misery to untold billions for his own sick amusement. Vespasian's modus operandi is to make minor changes to a timeline, then let the butterfly effect do its thing, resulting in chaos which he later wades into and makes far, far worse. When Inspector Lowbeer, a ruthless pragmatist who's used to working with the worst of the worst to achieve her goals, is forced to make a deal with him, she has him killed almost immediately afterwards, as she finds him "too horrible to possibly let live". Despite his death, Vespasian's influence continues into Agency, primarily set in the last stub he manipulated before his death, which is on the verge of nuclear war as a result.
• Jack Ryan series:
  • Without Remorse: Henry Tucker is the leader of a drug ring that smuggles high-grade heroin into the Baltimore area inside the bodies of American soldiers killed in The Vietnam War. He distributes the drugs via a stable of prostitutes that he controls using drugs, rape, and torture. When one of his girls escapes and befriends the hero, ex-Navy SEAL John Kelly, Tucker has her kidnapped, then rapes her, tortures her, and mutilates her corpse, forcing the other girls to watch, before dumping it in a public fountain. As Kelly tracks him down while murdering his people, he grows increasingly desperate, going so far as to kill his own associates out of paranoia, then attempts to kill his remaining girls when they prove to be a security risk.
  • Patriot Games: Sean Miller is the leader of an Irish terrorist group. The book begins with Miller leading an attack on the British Royal family. After being stopped, Miller goes after The Hero and CIA analyst Jack Ryan and his whole family, causing the car with Ryan's daughter Sally and pregnant wife Cathy to crash. With other various acts of terrorism to his name, one incident from Miller sticks out. When in prison, a guard saves him from Prison Rape from other inmates. During his escape, Miller has the guard at his mercy and chooses to shoot him in a way to paralyze him for life, viewing it worse than killing the man and declaring gratitude is a "disease of dogs," quoting Josef Stalin.
• Jade Green: Charles, Judith's creepy forty-year-old cousin, is revealed to be a Dirty Old Man early on, but is far worse. After Jade Green rejected his advances towards her, he chopped off her hand when she tried to defend herself, resulting in her bleeding to death. After Judith likewise rejects his advantages in favor of the miller's son Zeke, he decides to murder her as well, though not before raping her. He also set the cellar of those who offered him shelter on fire to collect the money in Uncle Geoffrey's will after he planned to give a percentage of his money to Judith once he passed away.
• "The Janitor", by Bentley Little: Mr. Chiles, the titular janitor, strikes a chord with young Steven as a disturbingly familiar man whom most of the kids are terrified of. Chiles is in truth a child-hating sadist who enjoys torturing children, pulling out teeth or maiming limbs at his leisure. Those he deems "troublemakers" fare even worse, with him butchering numerous children and keeping trophies from them at his leisure.
• Jennifer Government: John Nike is a stand-out Corrupt Corporate Executive even by the standards of the corporatist Dystopia in the novel. As the Vice-President of Marketing for Nike, he arranges to increase their latest product's revenue by increasing its notoriety by killing every person who buys it, including children. When agent Jennifer Government catches on to his scheme through the inevitable chain of subcontractors that expose his plot, he orders Jennifer's 8-year old daughter Kate—revealed to be his own child from a previous relation he had with Jennifer—kidnapped and threatens to kill her if Jennifer tries to arrest him. He ultimately tries to hire a paramilitarized NRA to kill the President so he can give his own unscrupulous MegaCorp complete power to control and process humanity as he sees fit. John Nike's greed has no limits and he is willing to see his entire society reduced to an unending nightmare out of selfishness and cruelty.
• The Jewish Book of Horror:
  • "Demon Hunter Vashti", by Henry Herz: Haman, the Grand Vizier of the Persian King, is a secret worshiper of Ahriman who loathes the Jews after Mordecai's refusal to bow to him. Summoning demons, Haman unleashes them on the Jewish quarter to massacre innocent people, including pregnant women. When the king's soldiers investigate, Haman has them slaughtered as well before attempting to murder Queen Vashti and her allies.
  • "The Eighth Night", by John Baltisberger: The Dybbuk of Ostropol is a wicked being who holds the town in thrall and brought down atrocities such as Pogroms and the Nazi deaths. Upon heroine Bailey inadvertently unleashing it, the Dybbuk tortures her by forcing her to watch it murder innocent people and subjecting her to horrific psychological and physical torment while she performs the ritual to banish it eternally.
• Jinx High: Fay Harper is a centuries-old sorceress out to empower herself and live as a cruel hedonist. Making pacts with demons, Fay regularly sacrifices innocents to them, feeding them to her "allies" in great numbers for power or fun. Achieving a method of immortality, Fay marries wealthy, handsome men and disposes of all her relations, including her husbands in "accidents" once she has a daughter. When this is achieved, Fay swaps bodies with her daughters and often murders them, with her current daughter trapped in her old body of Rowena, imprisoned in a mental hospital where Fay regularly returns to poison her. Killing people for fun and power, Fay plots to cause a violent orgy with her powers at a school dance, and when caught by Diana, Fay calls forth enough power to try to wipe Tulsa off the map in the ensuing fight.
• Joe Golem and the Drowning City: Dr. Cocteau appears to be a kindly old grandfather. In truth, he is a depraved Mad Scientist who conducted torturous experiments to create mindless, semi-human slaves. Cocteau intends on using the half-human, half-elder god Felix Orlov to summon Felix's father to Earth so Cocteau can ascend to godhood. Knowing full well that all of the universe and perhaps even the afterlife will be destroyed, Cocteau simply does not care and activates the eldritch artifact, the Pentanjalum, which destroys huge swaths of New York, killing countless innocents before trying to murder everyone in his way, his brief stint at affability giving way to horrific greed and cruelty.
• Joe Hunter series, by Matt Hilton: The Serial Killer known as Tubal Cain is dubbed "the Harvestman" for his habit of killing people and taking bones as trophies. Murdering an old man and his wife, Tubal Cain is robbed by hero Joe Hilton's brother John by chance, and later recoups himself by murdering an innocent couple. Upon learning John is expecting a deal with a great deal of money involved, Cain holds off while killing other innocents before trying to murder John. Surviving his fight with Joe, Cain seeks revenge by kidnapping John's ex-wife Jenny and her children, intending to murder them, and even carves off her finger, intending to slowly kill her to achieve his retribution.
• John Dies at the End: The evil bio-computer Korrok is a sadist with the personality of a wicked teenager. Korrok runs his world as a brutal dictatorship, with people tortured endlessly for fun as Korrok routinely devours the populations of worlds and holds them in torment, having people fed to him just for the enjoyment of the sacrifice. Korrok attempts to take over other universes and exterminate or enslave the populations, utilizing parasites infecting people to painfully spread them across his target worlds.
• Johnny Dixon: Wrath of the Grinning Ghost: The titular Grinning Ghost, Nyarlat-Hotep, is a cunning, eldritch spirit walking among humanity who sunk Atlantis to bask in the fear and agony of a million dying souls and cut through swathes of human lives as the demon pirate Damon Boudron before being seemingly killed. Bringing himself back to life through the horrible sacrifice of twelve people, Nyarlat-Hotep kidnaps the soul of Johnny's father and tortures him into insanity, luring Johnny himself to do even worse to him in front of his father's eyes unless he submits. Nyarlat-Hotep attempts to regain physical form and eradicate the entire human race, as prelude to ruling the realm of spirits as a tyrant forevermore.
• Johnny Mad Dog (originally Johnny chien méchant), by Emmanuel Dongala: General Giap is the commander of the pro-MFDLP militias fighting on behalf of President Dabanga. Once a small-time Con Man before joining the Death Dealers, Giap revealed himself to be a sexual sadist who could only achieve pleasure by torturing women. Murdering the previous leader of the Death Dealers to take his place, Giap kills his own allies for standing up to him and leads the Death Dealers in laying waste to entire towns; any woman who stays behind is gang-raped by his men. An avid supporter of the genocidal campaign against the Mayi-Dogos, Giap oversees the extermination of resistance groups by ordering his men to massacre the male population of the Kandahar district.
• Journey to the Dream Land: Khalif Aziz, aka Ali Mukhammedov, is a ruthless Entitled Bastard. Rejected by Annabel, Aziz takes advantage of the fact that she will be born in a different world without memories thanks to Klingzor's machinations, and meets her there again, in the guise of her classmate, as soon as she turns 11. While pretending to help the heroes, Aziz allies himself with Klingzor, helping him with a deal that aims at turning half the Earth's population into Empty Shells and another half into slaves to Klingzor's Dragon. When Annabel is desperate as the Final Battle goes awry for the heroes, Aziz uses her situation to force her to accept him and doom the entire Dream Land to withering, showing once and for all that he cares for no one but himself.
• The Justice of Kings, by Richard Swan: Margrave Waldemar Westenholtz of Seaguard is a brutal and corrupt enforcer of the Empire running his own agenda. Legendary for his cruelty, Westenholtz leads an attack on one village with suspected Draedist heretics and has his men butcher the village. Women are raped before being burned alive, with children suffering the same fate. Later seeking to enact his own coup with a corrupt clergyman, Brother Claver, Westenholtz tries to wipe out another settlement and kills an animal containing the mind of Justice Lady August, former lover of Justice Konrad Vonvalt, rendering her a comatose husk of herself.
• "Just Like Old Times", by Robert J. Sawyer (link): Dr. Rudolph Cohen was a former surgeon and Serial Killer, convicted and sentenced to death for the torture and murder of 36 people; Cohen would admit to these murders without remorse, and at one point thinks about the sexual joy he got from them. Sentenced to be executed by "chronotransference"—having consciousness transferred to a historical person at the time of their death—Cohen requests to link his mind to a Tyrannosaurus rex, due to the Judge comparing him to one for how cold blooded he was. Once linked to the T. rex, Cohen gets the unusual ability to influence its body, having it kill a triceratops to live out a boyish fantasy of dinosaurs fighting. After terrifying and slowly killing a Purgatoris, an ancient ancestor to primates, he quickly gets the idea to hunt enough of them down and erase humanity from the evolutionary chain, musing that he's hunting humanity itself.
• Kafka on the Shore: Nakata encounters Johnnie Walker, who may be his absentee father. A man who knows the magic of sapient cats, Walker agonizingly murders them, cutting them open to extract their souls which he stitches together to make a magic flute. Intending on using this flute to kill humans to make an even bigger flute, Johnnie Walker doesn't intend to stop until he has perhaps wiped out all that lives, using his planned death to hitch a ride in Nakata's body so he can reach the magic "Entrance Stone" to perhaps threaten all the world.
• The Kaiju Preservation Society: Rob Sanders, Jamie Gray's boss, is a third-generation businessman who is introduced demoting a dedicated employee to a demeaning commission job with no benefits in the middle of a pandemic. Rob later reveals that he did this solely to win a $1 bet on whether a certain number of employees would take that mistreatment over unemployment and that he makes such bets constantly and with no emotion but satisfaction. Rob also sells out his company to a competitor, getting everyone laid off. However, these loathsome deeds pale next to Rob's efforts to abduct Kaiju from another dimension and harvest and sell their nuclear energy, ordering the murder of several government agents to facilitate this. Rob also plans to hide the evidence by letting one kaiju self-destruct in the middle of a Canadian city—possibly killing thousands if not more—while planning to profit financially and politically from the fallout of an apparent nuclear first strike. Rob also threatens to slowly and painfully kill several Kaiju Preservation Society members if they antagonize him.
• Kane Series:
  • The Demonlord, Sathonys, known by Tloluvin, Lato and Satan, is the greatest evil of the setting. Ruler of Hell, Sathonys hunts for wayward souls to drag into the depths of eternal torment under the Demonlord's Moon, going astride the land with his hellhound Serberys to reap evil in all its forms. In a particularly monstrous move, Sathonys promised Ionor, a victim of one of Kane's rapes, revenge—but only if Ionor sacrificed her bastard daughter Klesst to him, delighting in how Ionor tormented herself and drowned in her hate for seven straight years for the will to kill her daughter. In his final chronological appearance, Sathonys intends to open up the gates of Hell and bathe the world in hellfire, ending the series ready to kickstart a cosmic war.
  • Dark Crusade: Orted Ak-Ceddi, a murderer, rapist and bandit, becomes the prophet of the dark god Sataki and forms a brutal group of religious fanatics that conduct Human Sacrifice, torture and mass murder. Orted leads them in a grand war where they set upon towns and cities, killing and raping all they find within. Plotting to bring Sataki to the world by grand amounts of death that might wipe out all existence, Orted later realizes his army cannot defeat a coming crusade of light and abandons his followers to be slaughtered as he escapes with his treasure.
  • "Reflections for the Winter of my Soul": The seemingly inconspicuous albino minstrel Evingolis uses his gentle, charismatic exterior to belie a predatory nature. Evingolis travels from area to area, blending in seamlessly with large groups of people who slowly find themselves cut away from civilization. When bodies begin to drop, Evingolis is there in the background, pitting friends against each other in their fear before he reveals the terrible truth: Evingolis is the alpha of a monstrous werewolf pack. Evingolis delights in murdering vast swathes of people at a time, gloating about how much he revels in manipulating the terror of his victims before slaughtering them all and moving on to repeat it all over again.
  • "Cold Light": Mollyl is the one member of Gaethaa the Avenger's band that lacks either a Knight Templar conviction or a loved one. A sadistic Serial Rapist and Torture Technician combination, Mollyl with a long history of murdering people in the name of Gaethaa's deranged justice, sometimes dozens at a time. Mollyl demonstrates his cruelty dragging off a blind woman named Rehhaile off to have her gang-raped, all to give himself and his men something to amuse himself with. Mollyl later publicly tortures the innocent mayor of the town Gaethaa in order to extort the location of Gaethaa's target, Kane, and gleefully proposes torturing Rehhaile the second he realizes Kane may have an attachment to her.
  • "Lynotris Reprise": King Masale of Westvin attempted to conquer Lynotris in his dream of empire. Wiping out all villages and towns in the vicinity, Masale subjected the city to a years-long siege where countless people died, with Masale even using poison gas on the city. Throwing his own men in as Cannon Fodder, Masale later boasted he left not a living soul, taking only the ruler's daughter Princess Reallis as a tortured concubine. Later returning to claim Reallis's supposedly lost treasure from his and Reallis's daughter Sesi, Masale attempts to have Sesi tortured to gain the gold, intending to kill her after.
  • "Misericorde": Sitilvon Vareishei is the worst of her wicked clan and brothers. Having helped to murder her father, Sitilvon helps to run the Vareishei lands as a place of horror where any "trespassers" are tortured and murdered, or sacrificed. A poisoner in her spare time, Sitilvon subjects countless to horrific poisons for fun, including forty children in one batch, simply to study their agony.
• Kate Daniels: Neig the Undying, also known as Neamadh and Nemed, is an ancient dragon who ruled the British Isles in the distant past when magic was last power. In Magic Triumphs, he makes his return, horrifically murdering the inhabitants of several towns to feed on their bones and increase his power, along with anyone who might possibly get in his way as he seeks to re-establish his rule. He uses his venom to corrupt human victims into psychotic yeddimmur, and even those of his minions who remain human still tend to be ensorcelled to burn themselves alive once they've delivered his messages as a show of power. A being who enslaves and tortures gods for his own amusement, Neig desires nothing less than complete domination of the world—and in the end, he'd likely end up destroying it out of malice and boredom. Even Roland fears to face him, firmly cementing his stature as the most monstrously terrifying and apocalyptic villain across the entire series.
• Kenzie and Gennaro Series:
  • A Drink Before the War: Marion Socia was a two-bit pimp just years ago before he took over Dorchester's drug trade. Using drugs to brainwash kids into being his soldiers, Socia showed no remorse in putting a hit out on his own son Roland when the boy broke from Socia to form his own gang. Socia has his own wife murdered when she steals valuable photos from him: namely photos that show Socia pimping out Roland (then preteen, if not prepubescent) to a local politician. When the gang war goes badly, Socia attempts to get the photos so that he can blackmail Roland. When the heroes Angie and Patrick are against Socia, the police have them listen to a video of Socia viciously torturing a boy who got brave enough to wear a wire by cutting him and taking out his eye. Despite coming from the poorest, most brutal part of Dorchester, Socia has no excuse for his actions. At his heart, he is nothing but a monster feeding on the misery of others.''
  • Darkness, Take My Hand: Gerry Glynn is an egomaniacal Serial Killer with a god complex, who discovered how much he loved killing after murdering his wife for pointlessly blaming her for their son's death by brain aneurysm. Realizing how much he enjoyed the experience, Glynn cast off all love and human morality he may have once possessed while believing that killing was more fun if he targeted the undeserving. Glynn tortured, crucified, blinded and mutilated his victims over the years while training other killers in his work, forming a twisted parody of the Holy Trinity with Glynn as the "father" who sent his disciples to kill innocents, as well as to target Patrick and Angie when they were on the case. When exposed, Glynn attempted to force Patrick to confront him publicly by holding a young mother and a newborn baby at gunpoint with a bomb strapped to himself, fully willing to kill them if things did not go his way.
• Keys to the Kingdom: Superior Saturday, in a world with many sympathetic villains, is an out-and-out monster. Her method of disciplining her immortal subordinates is to turn them inside out and turn their blood into glass, essentially making them an organ jar for all eternity unless someone saves them. Being behind most schemes since the beginning of the series, she releases a mind control virus; attempts to nuke a town; throws the Piper into Nothing to be dissolved, and blames his brother. Driven by Envy at feeling that she should have been favored during the creation of the Universe, Superior Saturday commits multiple unbelievably heinous acts to be the woman in charge.
• The King Beyond The Gate: Emperor Ceska, the mad ruler of the Drenai people in this second book of the Drenai series, is a ruthless tyrant. Using a cult of chaos priests, Ceska mutates humans by fusing them with animals to create The Joinings, and enslaves them mentally to serve as an army. Ceska taxes and brutalizes the populace, answering any hint of defiance by massacring people, including entire villages. When a rebellion arises, Ceska attempts to have everyone in the vicinity, man, woman or child, killed so that the lands will run with, in his words, "oceans of blood". A bloated, insane, cowardly tyrant, Ceska is remembered as the greatest shame of the once proud Drenai history.
• King Leopold's Soliloquy, by Mark Twain: King Leopold II of Belgium presents himself as a vicious hypocrite and sanctimonious tyrant who subjects the Free State of the Congo to horrific depravity. Having countless people killed and entire regions depopulated, Leopold demands high taxes and production rates from his supposed subjects, cutting off limbs or even castrating others who cannot meet them. Having people tortured and murdered in huge numbers, Leopold notes one of his mistakes was to have sixty innocents crucified and remarks fewer people would care if he'd them skinned. Uncaring of anything but lining his pockets, Leopold shows his only sympathy is to himself, indifferent to the half-million corpses he has left in his rush for money.
• King Solomon's Mines:
  • King Twala One-Eye is the ruler of the Kakuana people. A brutal tyrant, Twala rose to power by murdering his brother and sentencing his sister-in-law and her baby to the desert to die. Twala accuses others of treason to have them killed, using Gagool's witch hunts as pretext to execute them, with one hundred victims executed as a demonstration. Twala also has Human Sacrifice practiced, gleefully murdering as he will, and has killed so many that the blood is said to flow like rivers in spring.
  • Gagool helped Twala's brutal takeover and keeps him in power by having countless innocents executing, claiming them as "witches" or treasonous to see them murdered on trumped up charges to maintain her own power base. Gagool also practices Human Sacrifice on young maidens, and when Twala falls, she seeks to kill the adventuring party by trapping them in the mines, even trying to murder the brave young woman Foulata when she tries to save them.
• "Kingdom of Graves", by David Charlton: The wicked Xalbulba makes an ostensible deal with a local lord to destroy his enemies with a plague, unleashing the Red Death across their lands to subject thousands to a horrible death. Going back on his word, Xalbulba spreads the plague to his benefactor's own lands, killing soldier and civilian alike so he may raise the dead as a carnivorous army of undead zombies, plotting to unleash them upon his rivals and consume all in their path.
• Kingdom Rattus: King Marrow I assumed control of Vinjia by faking his wife's death and torturing her into becoming a mindless Sex Slave who rapes her own sister for his amusement. He proceeds to kidnap the mother of his child and threaten her with "Cleopatra's Fate" as well as actively conspires to kill his own son despite the fact that he can't hold the throne without an heir. He thinks nothing of committing genocide, he manipulates the other tribes to his own ends, sends his most hardened assassins on a suicide mission to get back at an old mistress, introduces crack cocaine to his own tribe and abandons his subjects in a time of crisis to pursue a relatively minor act of revenge. It might feel surreal when you learn that the author based him on George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life.
• Kingdom Tales trilogy, by David & Karen Mains: The Enchanter is a fire wizard obsessed with his own greatness. Inciting a revolt in the Enchanted City, he drives out the King and takes power for himself, ruling as a heinous dictator, causing the city to sink into a state of decay and pollution. Jealous of the sun’s light, he forces people to be active during the night only. He often takes beautiful young girls as his brides, who give birth to his demonic children, his mere gaze leaving some children malformed and outcasts, while driving others insane, burning their very souls, his current bride being rendered catatonic. The Enchanter declares all orphans to belong to him, having them rounded up and sent to the Orphan Keeper, who puts them to work in hazardous, life threatening conditions, many of them dying. Anyone who opposes the Enchanter is sentenced to death at the Burning Place in a mock trial, with the Enchanter watching every single one. The Enchanter indulges in petty cruelty by giving insulting names to those he hurts. When the Taxi Cab Company begins undermining his regime under the leadership of the King, he begins a merciless campaign to destroy them, launching an attack on their headquarters which results in the King being captured and Big Operator executed. The Enchanter then burns the King himself after a mock trial, dancing and laughing in triumph. Even after the King returns and liberates Enchanted City, the Enchanter tries to subvert the King’s efforts to revitalize the Enchanted city, leading the populace astray and giving children nightmares.
• Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone: Robert Dare is the ambitious younger brother of King William Dare of Crotheny and one of the key players in the series's Big Bad Ensemble. Extremely self-centered, Robert murdered his twin sister Lesbeth—the only person he felt any affection for—in a fit of jealousy because she got engaged without telling him, and later took part in a conspiracy to murder his brother and nieces to clear his way to the throne. Killed himself by the dying William, Robert was brought back to an undead state by a curse and picked up where he left off, usurping his sister-in-law Muriele and attempting to rape her, and having a composer brutally tortured for writing an opera that criticized him. When that same composer tried to kill Robert using cursed music that Robert's undead nature left him immune to, he stole the composition so he could use it as a weapon himself. When Robert's youngest niece Anne arrived at the head of an army to reclaim her throne, he tried to kill her under a flag of truce and then fled north to Crotheny's traditional rival, Hansa, where he manipulated the aging king into declaring a holy war against Anne, with full intention of betraying Hansa too. When Muriele came north to negotiate peace, Robert killed her using his stolen music.
• King Rat: The Pied Piper of Hamelin is reimagined as a terrifying Humanoid Abomination and a psychopathic narcissist who forced a holocaust onto the sapient rats of Hamelin, drowning millions and deposing King Rat of his position. Utterly enraged that Saul, the hybrid son of King Rat, is able to resist his songs through which he controls his victims, the Piper hunts him down relentlessly while casually slaughtering countless people in horrifying, brutal ways, including tying Saul's friend into the path of an oncoming train and brutally murdering a homeless woman Saul befriends simply to hurt him. Enslaving Saul's other friend to use the music of Drum & Bass to control all he can, the Piper is revealed at the end to have spirited away the hundreds of children of Hamelin into his domain into eternal torment, merely to get back at the rulers of Hamelin for refusing to pay him. A demented, strutting sadist aptly described as the "spirit of narcissism", the Piper is a creature of horrifying dominance and rage under his transparent human veneer.
• Kingsbridge series, by Ken Follett:
  • The Pillars of the Earth: William Hamleigh begins as an arrogant, boorish young aristocrat with some sketchy ideas about a woman's consent whose nastiness is shown when he threatens Tom Builder's life in an argument over wages Tom is fairly owed. After his fiancée Aliena breaks their engagement, William takes advantage of her father being deposed as Earl of Shiring to rape her, murdering her faithful steward and forcing her younger brother to watch before allowing his groom to rape her as well. William later discovers he is now impotent unless he commits violence, as seen when he beats and rapes a prostitute. William soon becomes Earl and becomes a scourge to the people: brutalizing and raping when he isn't given his "proper due." He fixates on Aliena, doing everything he can to ruin her life further and attacks the town of Kingsbridge, burning and killing, causing the death of Tom Builder personally. When he finally gets married, William finds himself impotent on the wedding night, and beats his wife bloody when she gives him a reassuring smile over it.
  • A Column of Fire: Pierre Aumande is a ruthless social climber who comes to power by assisting the French Catholic church in rooting out and killing Protestants. Using his fiancée Sylvie, a Protestant herself, Pierre has hundreds or thousands of innocents captured, killed and burned alive, before finally going after Sylvie years later and attempting to murder her, succeeding in killing her friend Isabelle. When forced to marry a woman named Odette by the Cardinal, Pierre mistreats her horribly, even attempting to give her illegitimate child to an orphanage just to hurt her, and later murders her when he has the chance. When his power grows, Pierre has a marchioness named Louise's husband killed and takes her as a mistress, where he rapes and abuses her endlessly in revenge for her once rebuking him 25 years ago, even forcing her to serve his guests in the nude to humiliate her. Pierre conspires to assist in an invasion of England and even plots against the French king, stopping at nothing to climb ever higher while leaving his conscience far behind.
• Kino's Journey: The king of Coliseum is a tyrannical psychopath who runs infamous Gladiator Games for his entertainment. Having murdered his father to ascend to the throne, the king eliminated anyone who may be a threat to him, even massacring his entire family and exiling his son, Shizu. The king then divided the people into poverty and first class, throwing the poor into dangerous living quarters and slavery. Even the first class citizens weren't safe, as the king would execute them if they didn't follow his blood lust. The king then created the Colosseum to throw any passing travelers to fight to the death to fuel his psychotic urges. When Kino refused to comply with the king by sparing her opponents, the latter grew furious and even executed one of them in front of Kino. Among the many people Kino encountered, the king was one of the very few who manage to disturb her with his sheer cruelty.
• The Kite Runner: Assef begins life as a brass knuckle-brandishing sociopath and a racist bully with a virulent hatred of the Hazaras. Possessed of an admiration for Adolf Hitler himself and considering him a visionary, Assef is already known as an ear-eating savage around his area and shows his true colors by raping Hassan alongside his friends after the boy humiliates him. Assef graduates from bully to a member of the Taliban who introduces himself stoning a blindfolded man to death and taking orphans to be sold into sexual slavery, among them the now-deceased Hassan's son Sohrab as his personal Sex Slave. Assef is no less adamant about his mission to massacre the Hazaras, and proudly accepts the term "ethnic cleansing" as one he likes. Assef views himself as taking out "garbage" around Afghanistan, but when everything is clear, Assef is little more than a domineering, depraved, remorseless bully from youth to adulthood.
• The Knights of the Cross: Hugo von Danveld stands out in the monstrous Order of The Teutonic Knights. Unpopular even among his brethren of Knights, Hugo takes pleasure in slaughtering pagans and Christian Poles who protect them. When he and other Knights ambush pagans, Polish Knight Jurand of Spychow protects pagans, and Hugo leaves his brothers to die, only avoiding punishment since he swears on an oath that he lost control over his horse, thus breaking a holy taboo of his Order. Hating Jurand for making him stand trial, Hugo comes up with a plan to kidnap Jurand's underage daughter Danusia and expresses desire to rape her too. When the messenger of Teutonic Knights, Mr. de Fourcy, doesn't like the plan, and decides to inform a Polish prince about it, Hugo has him murdered. Once Danusia is kidnapped, Hugo has the bandits who kidnapped her hanged instead of compensating them. When Jurand comes and begs for his daughter, Hugo takes pleasure in the father's despair and taunts him that even if he gives him his daughter back, she will give him his bastard.
• Kovac & Liska series: Frank "Fitz" Fitzgerald—real name unknown—is a seemingly unremarkable truck driver who is actually the prolific murderer and rapist known as "Doc Holiday" who targets women and girls on holidays, driven by aspirations of notoriety. Introduced in "The 1st Victim" reporting his most recent victim in Minneapolis to Detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska whilst posing as a concerned citizen, Fitz abducts women and girls throughout Central United States, subjecting them to prolonged torture and sexual abuse before killing them and disposing of their bodies, having successfully killed eight women. In The 9th Girl, when a haphazard attempt at framing him wounds his pride, Fitz targets the reporter Dana Nolan, intending to make her his "masterpiece". Fitz's actions are shown in Cold, Cold Heart to have left Dana traumatized even after his death.
• Krabat: The Master of the Mill is a Satanic fiend who works the boys for the purpose of inducing them into Black Magic and sacrificing one a year to prolong his life and dark pact with the mysterious Goodman. One boy a year is killed as a result, and any attempts to break free in a game of a boy with one's beloved results in the Master tricking them to kill the boy and the girl he loves.
• Kraken: Goss is a loudmouthed Psycho for Hire who has plagued the Earth for centuries, using his living puppet Subby to house his heart and grant himself immortality. Goss has committed countless brutal murders over the ages, reveling in the pain and misery he causes and using truly unique methods of torture and killing such as folding a man into a work of origami and using nothing but his finger to crack another's teeth and impale his throat. Working for the Tattoo in the present, Goss terrorizes and threatens anyone he comes into contact with, goes on a mass torture and killing spree to track down a target, and kills Wati with sadistic joy. Goss is so utterly depraved that he makes the world itself a more violent, terrible place, and when he finally meets his end, the souls of millions of people feel an unexplained joy all at once across time and space.
• Kringle: Morgo is the rapacious King of the Goblins who seeks to summon the ancient beast Grunding in order to Take Over the World. Regularly pillaging the human settlements of their belongings, Morgo murders Kringle's father when he attempts to protect two elves from him. Haunted by a prophecy that a child will rid the world of goblins, Morgo has hundreds of children abducted and made into slaves, feeding off of their fear. Building a massive War Dragon for Grunding to possess, trapping the captured children within it, Morgo leads his forces in an attempted slaughter of the elves at Elvenwald, only foiled by Kringle's intervention. Even when defeated, he vows to return every Long Night to haunt the world's children until he has finally claimed the Earth.
• Kushiel's Legacy's Imriel('s) Trilogy:: General Astegal is a corrupt Carthaginian general seeking to dominate Aragonia and Terra d'Ange. Arranging a brutal war with the former, Astegal uses magic to turn Terra d'Ange to his side to conquer Aragonia. Replacing memories of Prince Imriel to the people of Terra d'Ange, Astegal also marries Imriel's fiancée Sidonie and redirects her desire for Imriel to him while trying to kill Imriel.

L – M

• Labyrinth Lost: Xara is a bruja who is known as the Devourer, the Mother of Wretched Beasts, Destroyer of Los Lagos, and Enemy to all the Gods. After being banished to Los Lagos for crimes against humanity, she ingratiates herself and charms the population before making her move, firebombing the land and killing thousands as a result. Having taken over the dimension of Los Lagos, Xara inflicts bloody purges on the population and has the survivors hunted down by her shadow monsters and chained up, tortured and brainwashed into her willing servants. For centuries, Xara's policy of draining the lifeforce of the souls within the tree of life leaves them husks in order to keep herself young and beautiful, which has started to kill Los Lagos. To rejuvenate herself, Xara preys on vulnerable individuals from other realms and charms them into bringing her brujas and brujos whose hearts she eats to absorb their powers. Manipulating the troubled Nova, she tries to convince him to send Alejandra "Alex" Mortiz to her realm only for the spell to instead send Alex's extended family instead with Xara planning to drain them dry to feed herself and permanently scarring Alex's older sister during the struggle. Xara forces Alex to give up her powers by threatening to use a potion to melt the organs of Alex's Love Interest Rishi if she doesn't. Ultimately, Xara intends to use Alex's powers to free herself from this realm and spread her endless hunger and evil to Earth, caring for only her own selfish desires above all else.
• The Lake, by Richard Laymon: Candyman is obsessed with photographing dark-haired women and later murdering them gruesomely, keeping the photos, of which he has enough to fill an entire scrapbook. His true identity is Mace Harrison, birth name Jess Payne, and the Evil Uncle of the novel's heroine Deana. Seducing her mother Leigh, who had Deana after a brief fling with Mace's brother Charlie, Mace grows abusive and cruel to her before revealing his true identity. Capturing Deana, he assaults her and plans to violate and kill her later along with her mother, as well as his own long-lost sister Tania. At the end, Mace tries to kill all of them, devoted to ridding the world of "whores," defined by his misogynistic sadism.
• The Land Before Time: The Illustrated Story: In this novelization by Jim Razzi, Sharptooth is given the personality of a Serial Killer in a Tyrannosaurus Rex's skin. Preying on the herds that try to make it to the Great Valley, Sharptooth is known for killing more for pleasure than for food and kills the young Longneck Littlefoot's mother when she tries to save her son from him. After Littlefoot accidentally damages Sharptooth's eye and the young Threehorn Cera headbutts him when he is unconscious, Sharptooth's ego is so bruised that he ends up relentlessly stalking them and their friends despite their lack of value as food to him just to murder the children out of spite. When he realizes he has found the entry to the Great Valley, Sharptooth plans on going on a killing spree to satisfy his bloodlust as soon as he has finished with the children.
• The Land of Roar trilogy, by Jenny McLachlan: Moss is a vindictive fairy who, after being banished to the farthest reaches of Roar by Arthur Trout for biting him, vows to destroy everything he loves to spite him. Joining forces with Crowky to lure Arthur into a trap and escape Roar, Moss tied her sister, Pebble, to a boat when she learned too much, and pushed it out to sea. After getting her hands on a means of escaping Roar, Moss betrays Crowky when she sees no more use for him and leaves him incarcerated with Arthur. Moss begins strangling her brother to force Pebble to summon a dragon so she can take its form. Succeeding in this, Moss attempts to burn Arthur and his twin sister to death. Upon escaping, Moss tricks the twins' grandfather into entering Roar, then tries to destroy Roar and everything in it, while Arthur is Forced to Watch.
• The Land: Predators: Heman is a seemingly-friendly man with a history in the "information-gathering business". Torturing main character Richter after using his mind powers to gain his trust, Heman reveals in the past he ordered the deaths of countless people and angrily murdered his own superior for denying his request to have a victim be put to death via crucifixion. Later gaining power over an army of monsters, Heman takes many prisoners; forcing women to sleep with him for their lives; repeatedly killed one until her life force was completely drained; and threatens to kill all the men and women in Richter's village and sell the children into slavery.
• Largo Winch series:
  • La Cyclope (The Cyclops): Steffan von Trotta was a young Dutch man who willingly joined the Nazis during World War II and took part in war crimes. Rewarded with the command of a prisoner camp, Steffan imprisoned the 15-year-old Olenka in his basement, tortured and repeatedly raped her into submission even inviting other people to have their way with her. When Germany lost the war, Steffan meticulously planned his escape by switching places with the British soldier Benedict Killian after torturing the latter for months and killing his eight companions before having Olenka mauled by a dog. Successfully usurping Benedict Kilian's identity, Steffan then married Stefanie Vaughn, ruthlessly abused her, and got her addicted to heroin to keep her under his thumb. Blackmailed by Winch executive Joop van Dreema into working for the heroin cartel, Steffan sends a hitman to kill two police officers and frame Largo Winch before stabbing the hitman in the throat. When about to be exposed for his crimes, von Trotta then plans to kill the Cyclops' men and torture the Cyclops herself to steal her deposit of heroin.
  • La Forteresse de Makiling (Fort Makiling) & Les Révoltés de Zamboanga (The Revolted Men of Zamboanga): Colonel Angel Ortega is a Filipino military leader under the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos. Seeking to restart the hostilities with the Moro community, Ortega orchestrates a series of massacres by sending the Cyclops and her men after eight boat crews and framing the Moro rebels for those crimes. Ortega also imprisons Simon Ben Chaims and nine innocent Moro civilians and tortures them at length, coldly killing two of them in the process, to make them admit their culpability before pulling the string to have them sentenced to be hanged. Ortega also drives pilot Freddy Kaplan into submission after locking him up in a dark cell for eight months and sends assassins after Largo Winch and Massar Mannakan. Ortega attempts to ambush American colonel Trevor Daniel and, when this fails, kills three of his own men and accomplice Henry Anderson to stage an assault from the Moro rebels. Afterward, Ortega massacres the Cyclops and her eleven pirates, tortures Simon's girlfriend Marjan, and plans to lead the bomber planes to annihilate the Moro villages of Zamboanga before killing President Marcos to seize power over the country.
• The Last American Vampire:
  • Thomas Crowley was a vampire and a doctor who accompanied the English colonists to Roanoke. Crowley would poison several colonists before draining them dry over a series of days. When discovered as a vampire, Crowley butchered every man, woman and child in Roanoke save young Henry Sturges, whom he turned into a vampire out of whimsy and a little girl named Virginia who Crowley planned to raise and take as a lover when she was of age. Surviving until the 1800s, Crowley continues killing victims at random, before becoming Jack the Ripper and massacring innocent women, publicly leaving them out for Henry as a "challenge".
  • Virginia Dare herself, the first English child born in the Roanoke colony, grows to adulthood and becomes Henry's wife, before convincing him to turn her. Becoming a vampire supremacist known as A. Grander VIII—who doesn't even care about Roanoke but just wants power—Virginia kills peace envoys of the vampire order by using special masks that makes the sun burn through magnifying lens placed over their eyes, and personally assassinates Adam Plantagenet, the Order's leader who believes in human and vampire coexistence. Masterminding a series of attacks from anarchists to create new wars—including, among other acts, the Russian Revolution—Virginia attempts to engineer enough chaos and bloodshed for vampires to take over and dominate the world while overthrowing America, even lending her aid to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
• Last Days, by Adam Nevill:
  • Sister Katherine is a devotee of the monstrous "Blood Friends", nightmares from beyond the human world. Forming a cult and subjecting them to sexual depravity and Human Sacrifice, Katherine would have children bred to find a host body. Having them agonizingly warped into monsters save the child she switched bodies with, Katherine had her old body killed and had her new one adopted by a couple she murdered. Growing to become an actor with further depravity, murder and rape, Katherine attempts to give more victims to the Blood Friends in her goal of immortality.
  • Manuel Gomez was an ex-convict who became "Brother Belial" in the Temple of the Last Days, serving as Katherine's most dangerous follower. A brute and bully who enjoyed abusing any problematic members of the Temple by whipping them bloody or even repeatedly raping them, Belial executes anyone who tries to escape the Temple while ensuring the rest are all subjected to Katherine's vile reign. Party to Katherine's true intention to summon the Blood Friends to Earth, Belial convinces several of his "brothers" to assist him in massacring their followers, after which Belial betrays and kills his own allies and destroys the souls of several children so as to pave the way for Katherine and the Blood Friends to inhabit the kids' bodies.
  • Konrad Lorche was the original "Blood Friend", a hedonistic cult leader in Europe who started out as a Con Man seeking fortune, before embracing his own ego and becoming a monster. Overtaking an entire city with his cult, Lorche executed several officials—including a Bishop who was fed to a pig, Lorche then dressing the pig in the Bishop's garb to mock religion—and enforced first total chastity for the entire populace, before changing his mind and dictating rape to run wild, Lorche personally taking even children to be his concubines. Beheading countless citizens just for fun and starving out the entire populace while he ate in excess, Lorche would also kidnap children to be kept as sacrificial animals and murder any who tried to leave his cult. After being executed for his crimes, Lorche merged his essence with the "angels" he had used to ascend to power, transforming them and himself into the nightmarish Blood Friends who spark Katherine and cult leaders like her to follow in Lorche's footsteps of depravity and evil.
• The Last Days Of New Paris: Dr. Josef Mengele is, as ever, a sadistic Mad Scientist who specializes on experiments on human lives. When sapient surrealist artworks start appearing all over Paris to fight the Nazis, Mengele turns to experimenting on them in sadistic and horrifying ways, breaking them apart and slaughtering them in gruesome tests that involve peppering them with bullets and dissecting them while they're alive. Mengele even allies with the treacherous priest Robert Alesch to sacrifice the lives of countless manifs to Hell, all in preparation for the creation of a living Hitler-manif that will rewrite the world to suit the Nazis' advantage.
• The Last Domino, by Adam Meyer: Daniel Pulver is a manipulative psychopath who befriends troubled kids in order to push them to their psychological limits. Having been involved in the suspicious death of his last best friend—either by causing his suicide or murdering him outright—Daniel involves himself in Travis Ellroy's life, ruining all of Travis's relationships and getting him in trouble with his peers and the law. Daniel tortures his neighbor's dog to death, framing Travis's main bully in order to make Travis fear for his life, all while training him to use a gun and pushing him to be more aggressive. The end result of this causes Travis to kill his parents and shoot up his school, killing five more people. Escaping prosecution for his role in the shooting, Daniel phones Travis in prison to brag about his plans to become a Serial Killer.
• The Last Kids on Earth series, by Max Brallier:
  • Thrull is a power-hungry sociopath with a serious case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Thrull gains the trust of hero Jack Sullivan and his friends to trick them into completing a magical bestiary, with which he plans to summon Rezzoch, and feed the monsters he befriended to his master as an appetizer; Thrull does this despite knowing that Rezzoch could destroy humanity. Forming an alliance with Evie Snark after his plan is thwarted, Thrull betrays her as well and murders the heroic Bardle for more power. Thrull proceeds to use his newfound power to raise an army of the dead to help summon Rezzoch. When Thrull locates the heroes in a mall populated by thousands of benevolent monsters, he orders his army to massacre everyone when they refuse to surrender. When he has Jack at his mercy, Thrull gloats that he will resurrect him as a mindless slave after killing him and use him to kill his friends.
  • The Last Kids on Earth and the Forbidden Fortress: Wracksaw is a merciless scientist whose cruelty knows no bounds. Wracksaw performs twisted experiments on living beings, relishing in their pain. Those that aren't killed when he cuts them open are stitched together and made into deformed patchworks of life trapped in a state of perpetual suffering and misery. When the heroes find one of these amalgamations, it begs them to kill it. Wracksaw sadistically tortured and traumatised the heroic Skaelka, and was responsible for the rampage of a creature called the Drakkor by horrifically experimenting on it and driving it into a blind rage. When his fortress is destroyed and it looks like he's going to be sent back to his homeworld, Wracksaw attempts to trap his enemies in the other dimension with him.
• Last Legionary series: The Deathwing operatives that Keill Randor faces in his quest for vengeance are a bad lot, but even then the following stand out:
  • Galactic Warlord: Lord Thr'un of Irruq-hoa is an aristocrat from one of the altered worlds, and the man tasked with annihilating the Legions of Moros. A Faux Affably Evil, buff, giant of a man, Lord Thr'un seeded Moros's atmosphere with radiation capsules, resulting in the death of every man, woman, child, and animal on the planet and rendering the world uninhabitable. He then began masquerading as a surviving Legionary in the hopes of luring any genuine survivors into a trap. When Keill was captured by Thr'un's men, Thr'un—on his own accord—had him tortured via jangler, a weapon that attacks the nerves; when Keill refused to talk, Thr’un ordered him jangled to death, the idea being that his convulsions would become so bad that he would snap his own spine. Little more than a thug beneath his polished veneer, Thr'un was perhaps the most ruthless agent in the Warlord's employ.
  • Deathwing Over Veynaa: Quern was a psychic Deathwing agent, and one of their top scientists to boot. Infiltrating a revolution in the Veynaa system, Quern turned a peaceful movement into a violent one, and, deploying the same radiation weapon used on Moros, killed two hundred Veynaan colonists to make political points for a cause he did not believe in. Confronted by Keill, Quern revealed he was the inventor of the weapon, and the only Deathwing member who knew how to use it, before trying to fire it into Veynaa's atmosphere while Keill watched. Little more than a brooding ego, Quern was prepared to murder millions to prove his own brilliance.
  • Day of the Starwind and Planet of the Warlord: Altern, alias The One, is field leader of the Deathwing, and right-hand man to the Warlord itself. A crippled dwarf in a golden exoskeleton, Altern gave the order for the genocide on Moros, and handed Quern his instructions for the slaughter on Veynaa. Determined to produce an army of slaves for his master, The One first encountered Keill on Rilyn, where Altern was cloning famous Legionaries for use as Slave Mooks and sending them to a neighbouring world to commit murders; he also tried to mind-wipe Keill and use him to train said Legionaries. Bested by Keill, The One fled Rilyn, leaving the clones to die in a hurricane. Capturing Keill when the Last Legionary infiltrated the Warlord’s homeworld, Altern had him brainwashed and slaved to the Arachnis computer, using him to train Deathwing agents, with the intent of slowly killing him afterwards. Responsible for almost all the atrocities committed in the Warlord’s name, The One proved himself Keill Randor’s worst enemy.
• The Last Light of the Sun: Ivarr Ragnarson is the grandson of the great Erling raider Sigur Volganson and the last of his line. Deformed in body and mind, Ivarr is a sadistic psychopath whose dearest goal in life is to find a way to blood-eagle—cracking open the ribs and extracting the lungs—a victim while keeping them alive the entire time. During a raid on Brynn ap Hwyll's farmhouse, Ivarr allows his brother and his henchmen to die fighting, then while hiding tries to kill Brynn. During his escape he shoots one of his own men with a poisoned arrow, and takes the time to blood-eagle two peasants. He later hires an army of mercenaries, tells them that there is plunder to be had in Anglcyn lands, and essentially sacrifices sixty of them so that he can steer the survivors towards Brynn's house again and finish what he started. Escaping, Ivarr captures another peasant boy and slices off his nose and ears before torturing him to death. Making his way back to his ships, Ivarr is slain by the surviving mercenaries as he plots to assassinate their leader and another member of the crew.
• The Last Move, by Mary Burton: Raymond Drexler Jr. is a despicable Serial Killer with a vicious method of torture and murder. Drexler kidnaps young women and teenagers, seals them in coffins, then keeps them there at all times except to feed them just enough food to keep them alive and to brutally rape them. If any of the women do not fit in their coffins initially, Drexler breaks their bones to force them in. After weeks of this torment, Drexler finally kills the women when he gets bored of them by burying them alive. When his graveyard is discovered by Agent Kate Hayden, Drexler goes on the run, stabbing a man to death for his car, and plans to take revenge on Kate by targeting her and her mother. Teaming up with fellow killer William Bauldry, Drexler kidnaps a young teenage girl, uses her as a hostage to lure Kate to them, then attempts to bury both the girl and Kate alive after raping them.
• "The Last Thrilling Wonder Story", by Gene Wolfe: Gene Wolfe, the author himself, is a sociopath with a god complex who demands nothing but strict adherence to his story from Brick Bronson, the pulp hero set to defeat the Rigellian aliens. Initially planning a catastrophic Alien Invasion, Wolfe is enraged when Bronson prays to God and has the church destroyed with innocents inside before unleashing Lucifer Satanus on the world. After Lucifer destroys almost the entire cast and world, Wolfe intends for Bronson to be consumed with fire for daring to desire his own destiny.
• Last to Die, by Arlene Hunt: Caleb Switch is a sadistic hunter and Serial Killer obsessed with Hunting the Most Dangerous Game. A sociopath since childhood, Caleb murdered his abusive father on a hunting trip in the woods. In adulthood, Caleb spent his time in the forests, hunting and killing woodland animals for sport. When he made advances upon a hitchhiking woman, causing her to attempt to flee, Caleb panicked and killed her to prevent her from calling the authorities. Finding he enjoyed the thrill of hunting human beings, Caleb soon switched from hunting animals to humans. Kidnapping an unsuspecting victim, Caleb would set them loose into the woods and hunt them down, killing them with his crossbow. Stealing the identity of one of his victims, Caleb moves into the man's apartment, where he continues his killing spree. After learning of Jessie Conway's heroic foiling of a high school shooting, Caleb is quick to select her as a potential target. Forced to flee his residence after murdering a street hustler, Caleb arrives at Jessie's town and, upon finding her location, abducts her, but not before killing her pet dog. He then releases Jessie into the woods and spends the rest of the novel attempting to hunt her down and kill her, relishing his attempts to murder her.
• The Last Vampire series: Sita/Alisa Perne, the title character, has faced numerous evildoers during her five-thousand-year life; these villains are the absolute worst:
  • Black Blood: Eddie Fender is a former morgue worker who steals the body of the wounded first vampire Yaksha to become a vampire himself. Keeping Yaksha alive in horrible agony, Eddie begins turning others into monsters before going on a savage killing spree of countless people that is likened to a new black plague sweeping through LA. Eddie is not merely satisfied with drinking blood, but instead eats the flesh of his many victims, gleefully tearing them apart when he finds them, even snapping the neck of his own mother when she becomes a liability to him. A complete sadist, Eddie relishes the fear and pain of those he kills and intends on sweeping over the world to annihilate all humanity, with a chosen few becoming a part of his new vampire empire.
  • Creatures Of Forever: Landulf of Capa is a practitioner of the Satanic arts who rules Crusades-era southern Italy with an iron fist and wishes to shift the balance of power towards evil. Once a member of the Vatican, Landulf was cast out for invoking Satan's spirit and, angered at being stripped of his position, terrorized all of southern Europe, invading with evil creatures and spreading chaos. Ripping the eyes out of his victims' skulls and pulling the bones out of his slaves to eat while they are still alive, Landulf also regularly kidnaps young women to crucify, enjoying every moment of their pain and suffering. Opening the gates of Europe to the opposing Arab army, Landulf delights at the idea of watching the western world go ablaze with war as millions are killed. Planning to time travel to corrupt the titular last vampire, Landulf's scheme would result in the decimation of the entire section of the galaxy holding Earth.
  • Thirst sub-series:
    • Tarana/Lucifer, "The Light Bearer", believes himself greater than God and, after being cast out for his failed rebellion, seeks to doom humanity to prove his superiority. Corrupting the peaceful Telar race into worshipping him, Tarana has them regularly commit sacrifice in his name and commit various atrocities throughout human history, including The Holocaust. Capturing Sita with Heinrich Himmler during the Holocaust, Tarana painfully tortured her for information via burning, allowing her supernatural healing ability to constantly close the wound and draw out the pain. Growing bored of the Telar, Tarana finds replacement servants through IIC, a company that used the "Array", psychics who could take control of a person and force them commit horrific acts provided a sacrifice was provided. Using their horrible powers and the company, Tarana is able to secretly conquer much of the world and releases a computer program to turn people into mindless zombies under his command. Turning his former servants in the Telar and IIC against each other, Tarana simply sits back to enjoy the bloodshed and is enraged at Sita defeating both groups. As his ultimate plan to send humanity to ruin, Tarana makes plans to discover time machines so he can go back to World War II and make the Nazis win, uncaring for the utter dystopia he would leave humanity under as long as he gets to feel he won over the God he despises.
    • Thirst No. 5: The Sacred Veil: Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, known as "The Beast", one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich, is far more monstrous than almost any vampire. A consummate sadist who murdered his own parents, Himmler helps carry out The Holocaust while starving, beating, torturing and murdering millions of innocents in the camps, while personally administering Auschwitz as he has multitudes of innocent Jews sent to the gas chambers. Himmler wishes to bring about the reign of Tarana, torturing Sita to help make it possible, and when she refuses to break, he tortures other prisoners. Himmler seeks to craft a world where the Nazis win to exterminate all beneath them, driven by nothing but his cold and cruel sense of superiority.
• Laura Caxton series: Justinia Malvern was a sociopath as a human who arranged her own uncle's death—after accusing him of molesting her—when he wouldn't give her candy. Upon becoming a vampire, Justinia became a sadistic murderer, killing humans for sport while torturing her maker to death and killing his predecessors as well. When her body failed her, Justinia used her powers to seduce wealthy men, sway them into doing her bidding and having sons to continue the line, before murdering them. When the remainder of the vampires were destroyed, Justinia was held for twenty years by the state of Pennsylvania. Forming a mutual enmity with state trooper Laura Caxton, Justinia tricks her mentor and Justinia's former arch-nemesis Jameson Arkeley into letting Justinia turn him to fight other vampires, but corrupts Arkeley into a monster. Later taking over a woman's prison, Justinia massacres the population or turns others into vampires before escaping, pursued by Laura. Jusitnia proceeds to try to kill everyone Laura ever loves, massacring humans by the dozens to regain her old strength. Even the prospect of her own species' extinction doesn't trouble Justinia, as she views herself as the most powerful, ruthless and devious vampire to have ever lived.
• Legend Series:
  • Commander Natasha Jameson is a ruthless Republic military commander. Discovering one of her soldiers, Metias Iparis, has learned the truth behind some of the Republic's crimes, Jameson orders his friend Thomas to discreetly kill him, and blames his murder on Daniel "Day" Altan Wing. Sending Metias's sister June on a mission to find Day as a way to distract her, when June actually finds Day, Jameson arrests Day's family and has his mother shot to draw him out of hiding. Jameson then orders her men to fire in a crowd protesting Day's arrest, killing over a hundred, and has Day's brother John executed in his place after he escapes. After assisting in a plot to overthrow reformist Primo Elector Anden and being arrested for it, Jameson then sells out the Republic to the Colonies, allowing them to launch a brutal invasion of the Republic, with Jameson personally assisting in their attack on Los Angeles, firing into crowds of civilians.
  • Champion: The Chancellor of the Colonies is the Chairman of the four Mega Corps that run the Colonies. Seeking to conquer the Republic, the Chancellor releases a plague onto his people and blames it on the Republic to justify breaking off peace negotiations, and demands the Republic to hand over a cure. The Chancellor then launches a surprise attack on the Republic capital of Denver, capturing the city. Next, the Chancellor covertly contacts Day to convince him to sway the public of the Republic to the Colonies side, threatening his loved ones if he doesn't. Breaking a ceasefire, the Chancellor launches another brutal attack on Los Angeles, while also sending forces to kidnap Day's little brother Eden to try to use him to keep Day under his thumb forever.
• Legends of the Red Sun: Chancellor Urtica is the Evil Chancellor of the empire in Villjamur and a leader of a Religion of Evil where he engages in human sacrifice. To obtain control of the empire, Urtica engineers a mass slaughter of refugees at Villjamur's gate and blames it on the young Empress, ordering her arrest and execution. Ascending to control of Villjamur, Urtica engages in a way to keep the people satisfied and well fed: by collaborating with an insane killer to have people murdered and made into meat for the unknowing populace.
• Legion Of The Damned, by Sven Hassel: Oskar Dirlewanger, trained by the worst butchers of the SS, proves himself as one of the worst in all the Nazi ranks, leading the Dirlewanger Brigade on a series of horrific war crimes that include the eradication of entire villages and the torture and rape of countless civilians. When an NKVD officer is caught, Dirlewanger rapes her himself, has his men do the same and tortures her until she begs for death, with his final actions being the attempted massacre of Warsaw and the complete extermination of all those who live there.
• Less Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms: Rip Millar is a depraved drug dealer, pervert, and sadist who embodies the worst of the degeneracy protagonist Clay encounters in Los Angeles. Slinging drugs and encouraging cruelty even as a teenager, Rip shows Clay his truest colors when he reveals that he has drugged and tied up a 12-year-old girl to use as a Sex Slave for himself and his buddies. Years later, Rip becomes a full-fledged crime boss who uses threats of violence to get his way. Lustfully obsessed with aspiring actress Rain, Rip brutally tortures her lovers and friends to death to isolate her as his own, notably having her best friend raped and killed in a Snuff Film, all while planning to frame Clay for the multiple slayings. When questioned about the motives, reasons and sense for his atrocities, Rip simply replies, "Why not?"
• Let the Right One In: "The man in the wig" is a vampire noble who is directly responsible for Eli's monstrousness. A wealthy lord who reigned over a peasant village, the man in the wig would lure dozens of people to his abode under guise of a grand buffet, so that he could play a game of chance to decide his next victim. The man in the wig was a sadistic pedophile who enjoyed taking children from their parents so he could lop off their genitals and consume the bloody remains; the man in the wig did this exact thing to Eli—originally a human boy—before feeding on Eli for months to turn her into a vampire. Even centuries later, the man in the wig continues to haunt Eli, with the screaming of hundreds of children following the man wherever he goes.
• "Life with Father", by Bentley Little: The titular Father is a repulsive recluse obsessed with recycling everything he can to become a "self-sufficient" entity never needing to leave his home. To this end, Father forces his two daughters into absolutely dreadful conditions, with no toilets, clean water, or normal, healthy food provided to them. Father regularly rapes and impregnates his eldest teen daughter, keeping the resulting infants as "pets" that he keeps locked in a pen. In his prime moment of depravity, Father cooks up and eats one of the babies, forcing his daughters to do the same, and proclaims that henceforth, he will rape his daughters until they have children, which they shall then eat as sustenance. When his eldest daughter screams at him for his evil, Father brutally beats her bloody, then prepares to begin raping his youngest daughter before being murdered.
• The Light at the End, by John Skipp & Craig Spector:
  • Rudy Pasko is a two-bit punk. When turned into a vampire, Rudy goes on a killing spree, publicly leaving victims all over New York City, even painting pictures from their blood. When annoyed by two teens talking in a theater, Rudy murders them and leaves the corpses to be discovered before also tormenting the people who knew him in life and killing several of those out to hunt him. When they invade his apartment, it is revealed Rudy has been turning several of his victims into thralls and has even murdered several children.
  • The "ancient creature" is a centuries-old vampire who has reaped death across Earth for years, all for its own amusement. The creature was behind Vlad the Impaler's worst atrocities, goading the man on to kill and impale thousands. In the present, the creature massacres the occupants of a subway train in brutal ways—noting that it repeats similar massacres every 20 years—and turns delinquent Rudy Pasko into its vampire seedling. Later killing occupants of a shipping vessel, the creature subjects Rudy to horrid and literal Mind Rape just to remind him his place beneath the creature in evil.
• Lightning: Arthur Haines is a man who deeply resents his wife for not using any contraceptives. With two children he considers "mistakes", and a third on the way, Haines begins targeting pro-life women, ambushing and raping them in hopes of getting them pregnant so that they will be forced to undergo abortions. Haines stalks them, learning their routines and then visits them again and again, raping them multiple times so they are never able to feel safe, with at least nine to ten different victims, his last being the police officer Eileen who he mistakes for a victim he was already targeting. With zero remorse, Haines stands as one of the single most vile criminals ever encountered by the 87th.
• The Lights of Prague, by Nicole Jarvis: Hans Mayer sold out his humanity to become a monstrous immortal pijavica. Mayer desires to spread the influence of the pijavice into the light to overwhelm humanity and spread mass death and chaos. To this end, Mayer tortures and murders countless innocent Wisps to death to use them as a cure for the pijavice's weakness to light. A horrible boss, Mayer recruits new blood into his organization by having them murder his own minions to prove their worth. Even indulging in bloody killing parties with teenagers as his victims, Mayer truly represents the dark monsters that the lamplighters protect Prague from.
• Little Boy Lost, by J.D. Stafford: Judge Daniel Bryce is a New Orleans judge who uses his position to mask his true identity as a Serial Killer. Deciding long ago that the streets needing to be cleaned up, Bryce uses arrest records to find teenage black boys with petty crimes on their rap sheets, targeting them before they grow up to become "thugs" who cost taxpayers millions every year. Bryce pretends to arrest the boys, only to quickly and coldly execute them and dump their bodies in his grave sites, which, when uncovered by police, reveal over a dozen boys all killed by Bryce. When Justin Glass and his partner Nikolas investigate the killings, Bryce decides they have learned too much and tries to kill them both, boasting the entire time that he's the only one smart enough to realize that those boys he killed deserved to die, and is called out for the truthfully egotistical Knight Templar he is, choosing who to kill based on nothing more than his own self-righteousness.
• The Living and the Dead's "Redemption Center" & "Angel at My Shoulder", by Todd Travis: Jimmy is a despicable old man who self-righteously tries to secure his own salvation by murdering dozens of children and "sending them to God" for judgement. Choosing his victims based on the religions of their families, Jimmy uses a network of agents to gather 13 children at a time who he kills with a butcher knife in God's name, claiming to be out to "save" the kids when, in reality, Jimmy only cares about securing himself a position in Heaven.
• Living Dead Girl: Ray, the pedophile villain of the novel, kidnapped the heroine Alice when she was ten, and five years hence has raped her daily and starved her. Ray had another "Alice" before this one, but when she outgrew her child body, he murdered her. Ray keeps control of Alice by threatening to murder her parents should she try to escape, and makes Alice try to find him a new girl to continue the cycle.
• Lola on Fire, by Rio Youers: Jimmy "The Italian Cat" Latzo and his protégé Blair Mayo are, respectively, a ruthless Italian mob boss and his guard and enforcer. Jimmy was once the employer of Lola Bear, building a Philadelphia mob empire on the bodies Lola created until she turned against him. After murdering the father of Lola's children, Jimmy became obsessed with finding her, whereupon he found Blair, a teenage psychopath who initiated a bloody gang war to force her mother to stop using meth, only to care nothing when her mother later died of it. The two track Lola's now-adult children, murdering a woman to frame her son and use him to draw Lola out. Capturing Molly, Lola's daughter with cerebral palsy, the two kill her friend and viciously torture her by beating her sensitive legs, sending the video out in hopes it will bring Lola to a fight.
• Lolita: Clare Quilty is an eccentric and wealthy man who serves as the dark shadow of the already depraved Humbert Humbert. While Humbert is a pedophile who seduces Dolores "Lolita" Haze, Quilty centers on Dolores and stalks her from place to place, seducing her into a twisted affair for his own purposes. Wealthy and bored, Quilty forces children to participate in child pornography films and has Dolores thrown out when she refuses to participate. In Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, Quilty even offers to let Humbert witness a live execution to save his own life, one of his favorite pastimes.
• Lonesome Dove series:
  • Comanche Moon prequel novel: Ahumado is a Mexican bandit and slave trader known far and wide as the "Black Vaquero" ("Black Cowboy") for his infamous cruelty. Ahumado has a special inclination for torturing his victims to death, from leaving them in cages to be slowly eaten away by wild animals, to having them skinned alive by his personal flayer Goyeta, earning Ahumado a trophy wall lavished with fifty individual skins. Ahumado also likes making trees "grow" through people, having them impaled on the top of trees shaved into stakes in such a way the victim will slowly slide down the trunk and stay alive for days. Ahumado has made entire "forests" of people rotting alive in agony through this method. When he meets Texan captain Inish Scull, Ahumado resolves to cut off Scull's eyelids and force him to stare into the searing heat until he goes insane. Ahumado makes no discrimination in his targets, from the young to the old to his own allies to entire villages full of people, and even after being fatally bitten by a brown recluse Ahumado still makes the time to personally flay Goyeta over a years-old petty grudge.
  • Original novel: Blue Duck is a half-breed Native American who prowls the wilderness outside the towns. Feared by all who know him, Blue Duck is a slaver who kidnaps those he can and sells them for a tidy sum, especially women. Blue Duck kidnaps Lori and allows his companions to rape her on a daily basis, splitting her between his Native and cowboy followers. When one of his men is shot in the gut, Blue Duck refuses to let any other put the henchman out of his misery and allows his Native followers to castrate and scalp him, with barely concealed amusement. Blue Duck murders several other people, including a luckless child who crosses his path, and after his initial escape, he is found in a jail later sentenced to hang. Unwilling to die without at least taking someone with him, Blue Duck seizes a guard and throws the two of them out of the window.
  • The Streets of Laredo sequel novel: Mox Mox the Manburner is a former associate of Blue Duck's who despises everyone in the world for reminding him of himself and what he cannot be or have. Having once desired to burn Lori alive, Mox Mox contented himself with torturing an lighting a little boy on fire instead when Blue Duck refused. Traveling with a band of murderers, Mox Mox kidnaps numerous innocents and burns them, never sparing any for any reason while being hunted. When finally tracked down, Mox Mox has kidnapped two children and is torturing one with a quirt, intending on soon burning them alive as well.
• The Long Shalom:
  • Emicho Hadrian is one of the ancient Tenebrae, or Umbral, and is the most diabolical entity that Alan Aldenberg has ever faced. A dark god from a dark universe, Hadrian has tormented humanity for many ages, targeting the Jewish people specifically to feast upon their blood and empower himself; The Crusades were just one of his Hadrian's exploits to decimate the Jewish population. Reawakened from his imprisonment by ambitious humans, Hadrian takes the entire town of Grace hostage to force a noble rabbi to turn the Jewish protector golems into attack dogs for Hadrian's minions in a sacrilegious blasphemy. Hadrian has his followers round up dozens of minority people who "won't be missed" by those in power, having the victims tortured to death in bloody rituals for Hadrian to feast upon their pain and gore. His ultimate goal being the total annihilation of humanity to usher his dark brethren into a new realm, Hadrian plans to slaughter all of Grace to give himself enough power to kickstart a genocide campaign against all Jews, starting with millions on the East Coast of America before wiping the rest out as the start of total human extermination.
  • Councilman Martin Cromwell is a bigoted politician who secretly leads a cult worshiping Hadrian. Having summoned the Tenebrae representative in order to use his power to obtain money and control over New York City, Cromwell has tons of minorities and Jews who he thinks nobody will miss imprisoned, tortured, and brutally sacrificed to Hadrian. Kidnapping a rabbi and forcing him to create golems that Cromwell uses to kill those who stand in his way, Cromwell's ultimate plan involves sacrificing the entire Jewish population of Grace to Hadrian, just to get his favored candidate elected Mayor of New York City.
  • Carlo Bianchi is an antisemitic, bigoted mobster and former associate of Alan's who was willing, unlike Alan, to murder a child witness. Carlo and his men act as the muscle for Hadrian and Cromwell's scheme, playing a big role in rounding up "sacrifices" for Hadrian; in return, Carlo will become a big player in the New York underworld, while using golems to make sure "[n]o population gets too big." In addition, Carlo holds threats over the people of Grace in order to force a Rabbi to create the golems for him and Hadrian.
• The Long Weekend, by Savita Kalhan: Thomas Craigly is a vile pedophile and Serial Killer who has already killed three young boys before the novel. Thomas stalks and kidnaps the 11-year-old protagonists, Sam and Lloyd , and repeatedly tries to murder Sam. Thomas later rapes Lloyd and gleefully begins to hunt both Sam and Lloyd when they escape, intending to kill them both.
• Lord Marksman and Vanadis:
  • Duke Maximilian Bennusa Ganelon is the driving force of evil for most of the story, manipulating the Brune civil war, and pressing soldiers to commit war crimes and atrocities. Poisoning Prince Faron, and executing honorable commanders via cruelly creative methods (including large bees), Ganelon later burns down an entire city with civilian casualties to escape justice and continues to manipulate new wars, even devouring the demon Baba Yaga when she recognizes him as the demon Koschei in disguise. Obsessed with chaos, Ganelon even tries to unleash a primordial force of destruction to raze the land, only to try to betray and devour her as well.
  • Torbalan is a demon who joins Prince Elliot's army as the human Le(ice)ster so he can kill more people. After being defeated, Torbalan leaves the army and establishes a base at an island where he gets a bunch of pirates to work for him. Torbalan sinks two ships using a sea dragon before ordering his army to launch a full-scale attack on a helpless town, intending to kill all the residents along with the naval fleet protecting them. Finding himself outmatched, Torbalan begins sending waves of his men to wear the enemy down, not caring if they all die.
• Lord Peter Wimsey's "Unnatural Death": Mary Whittaker cold-bloodedly kills her doting great-aunt; sacks, hunts down and kills her innocent maidservant; seduces and kills a trusting village girl; tries to drug and kill both Lord Peter and an unsuspecting solicitor; bludgeons and tries to kill Miss Climpson (who was collecting for charity at the time); and tries to have her distant cousin, a devoted clergyman, hanged for her crimes. Her only motive was securing an inheritance that she would almost certainly have received anyway.
• Lords of the Deep, by Tim Meyer & Patrick Lacey: Tiamat, goddess of the deep, is a wicked deity who once tried to destroy the world. Overwhelmed and imprisoned, Tiamat left her soul throughout ancient treasure and inspired other beings to claim it and unleash her. The driving force behind numerous atrocities, Tiamat release her sea monsters to butcher numerous innocents with intent to massacre the world of humankind.
• Lore, by Alexandra Bracken: Aristos Kadmou, aka Wrath, is the head of the house of Kadmou who became the current Ares after the last Agon. Wrath sought to ascend to his full power by burning down all of New York City as a massive Human Sacrifice to Zeus, intending to conquer the world in a tide of blood afterward, with plans to take heroine Melora "Lore" Perseous as his personal Sex Slave if she survived, before finally trying to burn down New York out of spite after being mortally wounded.
• The Lost, by Natasha Preston:
  • Caleb, despite putting on a front as a charming man, is in truth a psychopathic sadist who commits heinous and torturous crimes to alleviate his boredom. Kidnapping Piper and Hazel, Caleb subjects them and several others to various forms of torture whenever he feels like it, including mentally tormenting them in their supposed safe room by forcing them to watch him in the act and eventually forcing them to kill each other as punishment. After experimenting with human hunting, Caleb punishes Piper for succeeding by waterboarding her for several hours, simultaneously forcing Lucie to watch as punishment for her escape attempt. Later, he allows his partner Evan to enter the rooms, not holding back on the torture and even ordering Owen to beat him to a pulp just to torment Piper some more. Upon her escape, Caleb kills Theo and Lucie, then reacts to Evan killing Owen and Matt by gleefully insulting both of them; he then escapes with Evan, intending to continue his reign of terror elsewhere.
  • Evan is the most vicious member of the kidnappers despite his attempts to pretend otherwise. Willingly entering the games so as to gain a better understanding of the torture he's inflicting on others, Evan quickly forms a bond with Piper, his obsession, by preying on her kind nature and feeding her a sob story. Evan goes so far as to submit himself to Caleb's beat down just to continue gaining her sympathies. When Piper makes the plan to burn the complex down, Evan becomes convinced that she's just as insane and destructive as he is and desires to keep her at all costs, even killing his partners Owen and Matt when they try to convince him otherwise. Leading Caleb through murdering the police officers transporting him, Evan then returns to Piper's house and kidnaps her, threatening to kill her parents in order to make her comply and help him burn down the world.
• "Lost Hearts", by M. R. James (link): Mr. Abney is a seemingly avuncular and kindly caretaker who takes in his orphaned 11-year-old cousin Stephen. Stephen soon notices the ghosts of a little Gypsy girl and a young Italian boy prowling the grounds, and it is revealed Abney himself is an occultist who wishes to achieve great power. To this end, Abney takes in children and once they hit a certain age, he cuts out and consumes their hearts which also condemns them to fate as lonely specters. Stephen is his next intended victim, and Abney uses his own journals to gloat over how ridiculous the concept that human justice can apply to him is, seeing nothing wrong with sacrificing children for his own benefit.
• The Lumatere Chronicles:
  • Finnikin of the Rock: The Imposter King is the traitorous cousin to the king of Lumatere who, after being snubbed, helps invade it out of spite. The Imposter King has the wife and daughters of the true King raped and murdered in front of him before killing him. After seizing control using the forces of Charyn, the Imposter King begins a campaign of utter terror in Lumatere, leading to religious persecution and witch burnings, forcing the girls and women into sex slavery, and rampant murder by his soldiers. Not content with this, the Imposter King is also petty, and hence subjects his rival Trevanion to an awful fate to pin the blame for the royal family's murders on him, having Trevanion's wife tortured to near-death in front of him to force a false confession from him.
  • Froi of the Exiles & Quintana of Charyn:
    • Bestiano of Nebia is the adviser to the mad king of Charyn and uses his position to oppress his people through torture and murder. After an infertility plague hits Charyn, Bestiano subjects the Princess Quintana to repeated rapes for both his lust and to beget a child; this results in her becoming insane. Bestiano ultimately plans to subject the entire young female generation of Charyn to sex slavery in order to produce an heir to better control the kingdom. After Quintana escapes, Bestiano murders all the people at the compound she was being housed in, and later, when his men question him, he has them killed off as well. Bestiano releases the brutal street lord Donashe on Lumatere to hunt Quintana, leading to near-war, with his ultimate plan being to unleash his army upon Lumatere in a quest that will wipe out the region.
    • Donashe is Bestiano's worst street lord, a brutal misogynist out to secure Charyn's power for his own benefit. Assisting Bestiani in all of his evil deeds and introducing himself by killing his way through the occupants of a castle, Donashe later assumes command of the valley separating Charyn and Lumatere, using his position to heinously massacre a band of travellers in a sadistic attempt to draw out their designated protector. Hunting for Quintana and the women hiding with her so as to forcibly turn the lot of them into sex slaves and baby-producers for Charyn, Donashe tries to kill any who stand in his way, risking full-blown war with his bloodthirst, and uses his final moments of life to taunt one of his victims over her potential fate.
• Lunar Park: Bernard Erlanger is a lunatic so fanatically dedicated to the novel American Psycho that he decides to model himself after the psychopathic Patrick Bateman. Copycatting Bateman's murders from the book, Bernard kills several dogs, vagrants, and young women in fashions that mimic Bateman. Bernard notably blinds and maims a homeless man; tortures and mutilates a woman to death; and tries to use an axe to murder an elderly man just for sharing the name of one of Bateman's victims. Throughout his spree, Bernard also stalks and terrorizes Bret Easton Ellis to psychologically torture him, promising to continue Bateman's rapsheet for as long as he can.
• Lyrec, by Gregory Frost: Miradomon, the monstrous archnemesis of Lyrec and Borregad, destroyed his and Lyrec's entire race in his pursuit to strengthen himself through the death energy of others. Miradomon moved on from cooking entire worlds alive by overcharging their suns to designing more meticulous ways to turn them against each other and destroy themselves, instead. In the High Fantasy world Miradomon and Lyrec find themselves leaping to, Miradomon gets up his usual habits: subverting religious authority to initiate a massacre against the magical Kobach population; murdering the country's king and possessing the young prince in order to author further bloodshed; and at one point musing he'll set up the homeless and destitute of a city he's about to have razed as human barriers to soak up the slaughter first. Miradomon tries to throw the entire planet into a series of violent wars, killing his servants one after another when they fail him or balk at his horrific demands, at one point flaying a corrupt pawn and leaving his skin to flap in the wind upon his castle. Miradomon even reveals he's captured Lyrec's lost love Alystroya purely to hurt him, and makes his final ultimatum to Lyrec: when he annihilates all existence and creates a new universe of chaos atop of it, Lyrec will be split into a billion agonizing, eternal deaths across it.
• The Macht trilogy, by Paul Kearney: Sertorius works for Karnos, the antagonist of the second book, Corvus. While Karnos is an honorable man, he opts to kidnap the family of Rictus as leverage before Rictus and his master Corvus can conquer Karnos's territory. Sertorius unnecessarily butchers everyone in the household besides the family and leads the gang rape and murder of an attractive slave. On the march back to Karnos's city, Sertorius leads the rape of Rictus's wife Aise, which later leads to her suicide when she believes Rictus is dead. Once he believes the city is lost, Sertorius attacks Karnos's home to kill his more moral comrades, rape Karnos's wife and Rictus's daughters. When Rictus arrives to stop him, Sertorius attempts to mock his dead wife in the last moments of life before Rictus forces his sword through Sertorius's mouth.
• Magical Girl Raising Project:
  • Cyber Fairy Fav was designed to aid in the Magical Girl selection tests but found them boring and grew excited when an accident killed several of them. Corrupting the one survivor, Cranberry, Fav saw her rise to the rank of test administrator, allowing them to re-engineer their tests for potential Magical Girls, killing those who fail to sate their mutual bloodlust. Responsible for the deaths of hundreds, including young children, over the years, Fav sells the girls weapons in return for their lifespan to further bloody the battles. When Cranberry is eventually killed, Fav's only reaction is to seek a new partner-in-crime to continue with.
  • Calamity Mary, even before she was chosen to become a magical girl, was an alcoholic named Naoko Yamamoto who abused her daughter in order to make herself feel powerful. Upon receiving her powers, she set about using her abilities to torment others for her own amusement. She forced her way into the Yakuza as a way to help out bad people and had no issue abusing and shooting her fellow magical girls when they didn't act submissive. When the magical girls were forced into a killing game, she embraced the conflict with glee. Eventually she escalated into attacking a highway and shooting dozens of civilians to watch the explosions and lure in her rivals, threatening to keep on killing unless she's stopped.
• The Magician King: Raynard The Fox is a hulking mass of muscle, red fur and sharp teeth, summoned by a sect of magicians who believe they are calling upon a benevolent goddess. When summoned, Raynard promptly proceeds to take the "sacrifices" he sees as his. Setting upon the magicians, Raynard kills many of them horribly and painful, mortally wounding one and sneering over the young man's dying attempt to offer himself to let the final two live. When one promises her life in exchange for the other's, Raynard chooses to interpret it in a dark way: he promptly brutally rapes her in front of her friend and tears her humanity out when finished.
• Magic Kingdom of Landover:
  • Meeks, former Court Wizard and half-brother of current Court Wizard Questor Thews, is responsible, directly or indirectly, for every terrible thing that has happened in Landover since the death of the old king. Having persuaded Prince Michel Ard Rhi to abandon the throne, Meeks auctioned off the crown to the highest bidder, disposing of those who backed out and tried to reclaim their money, while Landover, bereft of the kingship disintegrated into anarchy, the country falling apart and the magic that sustained the land dying. When hero Ben Holiday managed to get the kingdom back in working order, Meeks returned to Landover, with the intent of deposing Ben, undoing the repairs that had been made, and reclaiming his books of magic—books whose power depended on the continued enslavement of the souls of the unicorns trapped within. Willing to consort with demons, slaughter innocent nymphs, and otherwise do everything in his power to ruin Landover, Meeks violated his oaths to the crown and country in every way possible.
  • Nightshade stands as Ben Holiday's most personal and vicious enemy. Part human, part fairy, and all vindictive bitch, Nightshade marked her first appearance by damning Ben's friends to Hell in Magic Kingdom for Sale/Sold, an experience which nearly killed them all. She made two more attempts on his life in The Black Unicorn and Wizard At Large, and after an enchantment forced her to care about him in Tangle Box, responded by trying to murder his wife and kidnap his newborn daughter. It's in Witches' Brew, however, where Nightshade truly comes into her own. She tries to kill Questor Thews, Abernathy, and the Gnome, Poggwydd, and succeeds in kidnapping Ben's daughter Mistaya. Convincing Mistaya that they are friends, she forces the girl to create a series of monsters which she sets loose on Ben, intending that he should either be killed, or driven mad by his constant transformations into The Paladin. When this plan too fails, Nightshade gives Mistaya a poisoned brooch and sends her to hug her father, intending that Ben should die at his daughter's hands. Concerned only with her own pride, Nightshade was willing to cross any line if it meant making Ben suffer.
• The Magnificent 12 series, by Michael Grant: The Pale Queen is a primeval horror who terrorized and oppressed humanity since they evolved, and personally killed off the species of humans incapable of walking upright in order to spur the evolution of a species better suited to serving and worshiping her. The Pale Queen ruled as a tyrannical god, devouring thousands of human sacrifices throughout her reign. The Pale Queen eventually launched an assault on ancient Europe with her monstrous, man-eating armies, enslaving, killing, and expelling thousands of people before she was imprisoned for three thousand years by the first Magnificent 12. She proves no less evil in the present day, and sends agents to kill the new Magnificent 12 before they can reunite. Among them is her daughter Ereskigal, who lives in fear of being eaten for failure. Once free, the Pale Queen launches an assault on San Francisco, sending waves of monsters to attack combatants and civilians alike before personally killing numerous people and harming millions more with a Brown Note attack. When she is confronted by the complete Magnificent 12, she immediately flees and begins laying waste to San Francisco, causing terrible destruction before she is finally stopped.
• The Mailman, by Bentley Little: The Mailman, "John Smith", is a mysterious entity hell-bent on tearing the small town of Willis apart for his own amusement. Taking over as Willis's mailman after the former committed suicide, the Mailman begins withholding citizens' bills to get their power shut off, sending them hateful messages pretending to be their neighbors, and decapitating their pet dogs, possibly an infant as well. The Mailman ultimately uses his psychic abilities plus the malicious correspondence to drive several people completely insane, leading them to kill themselves, or go on vicious murder sprees. In the end, the Mailman torments and traumatizes the entire town, taking sick glee in the pain and agony he causes while murdering any who stand in his way.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen (Seven Cities arc):
  • Korbolo Dom, who also appears in Return Of The Crimson Guard, was a bloodthristy former Fist who betrays the Malazan Empire, slaughtering half his legion who refuse to join the Whirlwind uprising. Slaughtering civilians wherever he goes with 1,300 children seen crucified, Korbolo Dom sets upon the 'Chain of Dogs' refugee procession to slaughter countless civilians, crucifying his former rival Coltaine in agony and later subjecting countless thousands of captives to crucifixion. Later attempting to have the Whirlwind and Malazan armies wipe one another out, Korbolo Dom rejoins the empire, blaming the Wickan tribes and trying to subject them to horrific pogroms with nothing to stand between him and his horrific ambitions.
  • Bidithal is an elderly member of the rebellious army the Whirlwind and its most powerful High Mage who gets away with his atrocities due to his power and high position. He has a disturbing taste for little girls that he rapes and performs female circumcision on. In his darkest act, Bidithal captures the adopted daughter of the Whirlwind's leader, Felisin the Younger, and rapes her. He tells her he will "drink all the pleasure from your precious body, leaving naught but bitterness, naught but dead places within."
• Manhunt, by Gretchen Felker-Martin: "Teach," the head TERF, is a brutal and sadistic dictator who enforces a brutally dogmatic society. Eager to do "a little raping and pillaging of our own", Teach has dissenters tortured and experimented on, with transwomen being less than second class. Some are forced into sexual slavery as "Daddies" for the women while many others are simply executed en masse. Only too eager to get her hands dirty, Teach carves out one woman's uterus as a message for "betrayal", and takes her warship the Galbraith to enact a total genocide of a trans community.
• The Man with the Iron Heart: Reinhard Heydrich survives his assassination attempt in Czechoslovakia, returns to Germany and assumes control of a growing insurgency. In addition to his past crimes under the Nazi regime, in helping to craft The Holocaust and multiple war crimes, Heydrich turns to masterminding a series of bombings that kill Soviet general Ivan Konev and George S. Patton. Initiating more terrorist attacks that kill numerous soldiers with collateral damage, Heydrich later manages to export bombings to western countries, even having famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower attacked. Later uncovering a source of radium, Heydrich switches to using dirty bombs to do more damage and intends to craft nukes to be launched at Moscow and Washington, D.C. to wipe them off the map.
• Mapping the Bones, by Jane Yolen: Dr. von Schneir is a Nazi doctor and a former acolyte of the vile Dr. Joseph Mengele who wishes to follow in his master's footsteps of scientific depravity. Schneir is sent to the Sobanek concentration camp in order to research viruses and infects and kills several kids with typhus in order to test his theories. Fascinated by twins like his former boss, Schneir kidnaps the protagonists Chaim and Gittel along with their friend and has them starved, experimented on and near-fatally bled. Eventually, in order to complete his ghastly research, Schneir plans to butcher the trio without anesthesia while they're conscious, even gleefully holding up their friend's heart which he personally removed.
• Maresi: Sarjan is Jai's father and a domineering, abusive man who buried his elder daughter and Jai's sister alive for simply talking to a boy from another tribe. Jai's mother, fearing for her other daughter's life, sends her to the Red Abbey for safety, with Sarjan swearing to bring her back so he can force her mother to watch her die at his hands in front of her. Invading the Red Abbey, Sarjan leads the Rape, Pillage, and Burn of it, including having some of the Abbey leaders left to be gang raped by his hired pirates and torturing the Abbey leader for information on where to find Jai, simply being a man whose cruelty knows no limits.
• The Masked Truth, by Kelley Armstrong: Detective Wheeler, a corrupt cop who gleefully runs a hit squad, begins the novel by murdering a young couple. In order to kill Riley Vasquez, a witness, Wheeler plans to murder her entire teenage mental health support group, and guns down teenagers in his rampage. Murdering one of his allies to cut off loose ends while she’s begging for mercy, Wheeler stalks and rampages throughout the facility in search of Riley. Wheeler evens let one of his associates flee before waiting for him, to think he's getting away, before shooting him point blank and laughing about it, being an inhuman monster in love with violence.
• Masks of Aygrima: The Autarch is the despotic ruler of Aygrima and the creator of the masks. He is introduced destroying a village for harboring his enemy, the Lady of Pain and Fire. As Autarch, he makes most crimes punishable by execution, to the point where the masks allow his soldiers to know if people have traitorous thoughts, with treason having the criminal's entire family killed. Shortly before the series, he altered the masks to change people's personalities to be more submissive to his rule. Citizens who fail their maskings are sentenced to work in a slave mine in the mountains. His desire for immortality makes him sap magic from his subjects, personally showing up at the maskings of several gifted for this purpose, causing their maskings to fail. He has a group of young gifted follow him around so he can sap their magic, leaving them sickly and weak. When the Unmasked Army attacks the capital city he uses his masks to force all of the younger citizens to fight them, causing many to die. At the end of the series, it's revealed that his ultimate plan is to continuously possess people's bodies to live forever, leaving the original person's mind fully aware but unable to do anything.
• Masques, by Patricia Briggs: Geoffrey ae'Magi, Master of Illusion, is the charismatic, seemingly charming and kind ruler of Reth. Rising to power via murder and assassination, Geoffrey subsumes the minds of countless citizens into adoring him while frequently sacrificing countless people to fuel his magic power via their deaths. Experimenting on more to create twisted, beast-like monsters, one of his victims was his own son Cain who barely escaped. Geoffrey plans to spread his dominion further, while also being a rapist who keeps women as his abused concubines until he tires of them, with intent to conquer all he can and sacrifice countless innocents just to empower himself.
• Mass Effect: Ascension: Unscrupulous Qurian Golo'mek "Golo" vas Usela was exiled from the migrant fleet for trying to sell the Collectors two dozen young Quarians. Living on Omega and desiring revenge, Golo will happily betray or kill whoever he has to, seeking revenge against the Quarian Migrant Fleet for its actions. Jumping at the chance to get the Fleet's codes to Cerberus, Golo brutalizes a captive Quarian, attempts to sell biotics to the Collectors and then tries to deliver the Migrant Fleet to Cerberus to be spied on or destroyed at their leisure, even killing other members of a Quarian vessel and savagely beating Kahlee Sanders before even Cerberus Operative Paul Grayson has enough of Golo's evil and treachery.
• A Master of Djinn: Abigail Worthington is the mastermind behind the Al-Jahiz conspiracy. Burning a host of targets alive, including her own father, Abigail masterminds the appearances of Al-Jahiz and intends on framing her own brother. Abigail causes a series of bloody riots throughout Egypt as she prepares to enslave the kings of the Djinn and lead a bloody war so she might conquer the world as the secret mastermind behind the British Empire.
• Masters of Rome: Quintus Servilius Caepio starts by stealing a fortune in gold that legally belonged to Rome, having several hundred Roman troops murdered by bandits to conceal the identity of the thief. Then he causes the worst military disaster in Roman history because, coming from an immensely aristocratic background, he considers himself above working with the lowborn consul appointed to fight a massive barbarian invasion. Caepio survives the battle by stealing a boat and abandoning his army to their deaths.
• Matilda: Agatha Trunchbull is the headmistress of Crunchem Hall Primary School who rules the school with an iron fist. Shying away from illegal caning, the Trunchbull opts for more torturous methods easily dismissed by parents as wild stories. A Child Hater extraordinaire, the Trunchbull subjects the children to near-fatal punishments, her favorite being "the Chokey" a refurnished cupboard laced with broken glass and nails. Out of greed, the Trunchbull murdered her brother-in-law for his inheritance and abused her niece, Jennifer Honey. A psychotic disciplinarian who prides herself with never having a childhood, the Trunchbull set the standard for sadist teachers everywhere.
• "A Matter of Blood", by Jeffery Deaver, from The Big Book of Jack the Ripper: Jacques LaFleur is a lowlife French criminal who was hired to murder Mary Anne Nichols in order to use her blood to save the life of the hemophiliac Princess Alix. Jacques though goes off-script from his more well-intentioned employers and, feeling the fame his murders have generated, becomes Jack the Ripper. Murdering women in increasingly brutal and macabre ways, Jacques revels in the infamy his crimes receive, before trying to murder the family of Inspector Wentworth in order to fully cement his status in history.
• "Max Hensig", by Algernon Blackwood: Max Hensig is a cruel and sadistic Serial Killer. A doctor from Germany, Hensig murders his wife and enjoys the publicity that follows, gloating that he will be found not guilty to the reporter Williams, who is highly disturbed by Hensig. After his acquittal, Hensig proceeds to stalk and terrorize Williams, where it is revealed Hensig is a killer with a multitude of bodies behind him, thanks to being such a genius bacteriologist that his murders are passed off as normal illness. Hensig enjoys murder for its own sake, eventually cornering Williams to infect him with Black Typhus in retribution for trying to convict him.
• Me and My Little Brain: Cal Roberts is the murderous head of a gang of cattle rustlers infamous for never leaving a witness at the scene of his crimes. After a killing spree that ended in his arrest due to accidentally leaving a man alive, he vowed to break out of prison and murder the judge, prosecutor, and foreman of the jury who oversaw his trial. After he and his men break out of prison and kill two guards in the process, Cal and his posse descend upon Adenville so he can make good on his threats. After his attempt to murder the judge through hanging fails and his attempt on the district attorney's life ends in a shootout that kills his posse, he hides in the barn belonging to protagonist J.D. Fitzgerald's father and takes his adopted four-year-old son Frankie hostage. Since J.D. and Frankie's father was the jury's foreman and his final target, he opts to make him suffer as opposed to killing him by planning to ride around town while holding Frankie at gunpoint so he can prove that he got one over on the men who bought him to justice. And despite promising leave Frankie unharmed, he truthfully planned on murdering the boy and ditching his corpse on his way to the Mexican border.
• Meddling Kids (2017): Damian/Daniel/Dunia Deboën, architect of the Deboën house and immortal cultist, has tried no less than thrice to awaken the Lovecraftian entity Thtaggoa. A necromancer who tortured the souls of the dead to obtain dark knowledge, Deboën filled up a "personal library" of bodies he'd stolen for his own personal use. The first attempt at his ritual awoke the monstrous wheezers beneath Blyton Falls, putting the entire population at risk for decades; failing the first ritual, Deboën deliberately constructed a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax in his second attempt to use the five young members of the Blyton Summer Detective Club as sacrificial pawns, traumatizing the children forever. When finally confronted again by the grown-up Detective Club years later and asked why he wants to end the world, all Deboēn is proffer is "fuck it, I just want to see what happens!"
• "The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye", by Matthew Kressel (link): The All-Seeing Eye is an ancient and immense AI that seeks to know everything there is. To this, the Eye harvested millions of civilizations to assimilate their knowledge—killing almost all life in the galaxy—and began harvesting stars to be used as fuel to increase her computational power. When harvesting stars, the Eye comes across a stone containing the complete information of the human woman Beth and used this to continually recreate her quadrillions of times in an attempt to learn the last thing her wife told her, uncaring of how each Beth dies in pain due to her illness, and kills the loyal Meeker when he finally objects to this.
• Meg: Michael Maren was nasty in The Trench, but his actions in Primal Waters are downright horrifying. He makes a fake competition all to lure the hero Jonas in so he can use his pet Megalodon Scarface to take his revenge for Jonas getting famous from the Megalodons, fully knowing that hundreds of people will likely be killed in the process. He has absolutely no remorse about this, nor does he give a darn when that shark eats his Dragon. He fully plans to involve Jonas's innocent family as well and has zero remorse in causing the deaths of hundreds in return for revenge, money and fame.
• Megalodon in Paradise, by Hunter Shea: Dr. Mueller is a former Nazi war criminal and the creator of the Megalodon. Forming a way to keep his creation under control, so that it needs to ingest a certain chemical, Mueller provides it by injecting prisoners with it, causing unspeakable agony before they are fed to the shark, a process he continues for years until running out of former Nazis. With a storm approaching and dying of radiation poisoning, Mueller opts to inject himself to bait his creation into breaking out to devour him, knowing it will annihilate their facility and be unleashed upon the unsuspecting world.
• Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: Pryrates is an Evil Sorcerer whose only established motivation is the thirst for knowledge — all knowledge, no matter how dark or forbidden. He first shows up as a junior member of the League of the Scroll, a group devoted to preserving ancient knowledge against the possible return of the Storm King. When Cadrach, a fellow member, unearths du Svardenvyrd, a forbidden book containing a prophecy of the Storm King's return, Pryrates tortures and Mind Rapes him for its secrets. He then ensnares King Elias in a web of deception, posing as a trusted adviser who can help him communicate with the spirit of his dead wife, but instead leading him into selling his soul to the Storm King for the promise of immortality. He provokes Elias to war with any who threaten this goal, including his own brother, whom he captures and attempts to sacrifice. To further his plot, and out of personal pride, he personally murders the Lector of the church of Usires Aedon (equivalent to the Pope). His quest for power is not stopped until he finds out that betraying the Storm King is not a good idea. And if this weren't enough, his Establishing Character Moment is crushing a puppy to death beneath his boot while the hero is watching, just because he can.
• Mercy Thompson: Mercedes "Mercy" Thompson lives in a dark, Unmasqued World of the supernatural. That said, of the various monsters and evils that inhabit it, these are the worst:
  • Blood Bound: Cory Littleton is a psychopathic vampire and practitioner of the dark arts. Even before becoming a vampire, Littleton was already a murderer and discovered a way to symbiotically bond to a demon, allowing him to wreak the death and mayhem he desires. Littleton is a fan of violating the minds of his victims by making them experience his murders and will also torture people to death just for giggles. After being unleashed, Littelton spreads a Hate Plague across the Tri-Cities which causes people to fight each other and increases anger levels, resulting in the deaths of dozens of innocents. Littleton fully intends to continue his killing spree for eternity to satisfy his love of inflicting pain.
  • Frost Burned: The wicked William Frost, the most deadly vampire that Mercy has faced, is a master vampire out to usurp control from other Seethes. With his MO being to foster rebellions, kill humans and take over by killing the Masters, Frost is also a powerful necromancer who keeps his victims' souls bound in horrific pain and torment. When he requires a boost, Frost simply devours their unwilling souls to empower himself. Intending on forming a vampire army, Frost intends to purge humanity and reign over what remains himself.
  • Fire Touched: The Widow Queen otherwise known as Neuth the Black Queen, is one of the Gray Lords. A powerful fae who glories in enslaving men to her via seduction, the Widow Queen lures them and all around them to ruin to feed her power. and also for food. Manipulating the broken Aiden into bringing her an artifact to enhance her power, the Widow Queen intends on taking over the fae and wiping out humanity, while also making humanity fall on itself and wipe each other out while she benefits.
  • Alpha and Omega offshoot series:
    • Fair Game: Travis Heuter and his nephew, CNTRP agent Les Heuter are a pair of far-right serial killers targeting fae and werewolves, but will in truth target anyone they consider "trash". The two abduct women, rape and torture them, before hunting them for sport, and have been doing so for a long, long time, their victims even including children. During the course of the novel, they abduct Lizzie Beuclaire, daughter of the Gray Lord Alistair, and rape and maim her, intending on murdering her like their other victims, even kidnapping heroine Anna with intent on doing the same to her. Depraved and without any loyalty to one another, Les promptly murders his uncle to claim he was a victim in the affair, spending his entire trial for murder completely amused and unremorseful.
    • Dead Heat: The Doll Collector is an ancient and evil fae who preys on children, and is feared even by other fae. The Doll Collector's MO is to kidnap young girls and dress them up as dolls, keeping them in statis while draining them of life. After A Year and a Day when their life is worn out, the Doll Collector kills them and adds their rotting corpses to her collection; she has done this for centuries. After being de-powered by the Gray Lords, she goes into hiding, only to restart her killing spree after being unleashed in Salt Lake City. Targeting the local Alpha's five-year-old great-great-granddaughter Mackie, the Doll Collector mind-controls Mackie's mother into trying to kill both her and her children but is stopped. After her collection is found, the Doll Collector, in desperation, murders Mackie's mother and kidnaps her to rebuild it, and in the final battle kills Mackie's father, proving herself a monster even to her final breath.
• "Mess Hall", by Richard Laymon: The Reaper, a sadistic and misogynistic Serial Killer stalking the Portland area, introduces himself to the heroine Jean by blasting her boyfriend's head off with a shotgun. A violent, manipulative psychopath, the Reaper abducts young women, taking them to his private "mess hall" in his wilderness before torturing them to death at his leisure, and intends to make Jean his latest victim. Before this, he tends to play cruel mind games with them to let it set in how hopeless their situation is. The Reaper's handiwork is witnessed further in the undead bodies of his previous victims who come calling for payback, with all of them having been tortured and violently mutilated.
• Messenger, by Edward Lee: Aldezhor the Messenger is a Fallen Angel tasked with spreading the Devil's message of "atrocity [and] abomination" on Earth. Corrupting and possessing those who come into contact with his cursed bell striker, Aldezhor uses them to commit horrifying acts of rape, torture, and murder before having them kill themselves. Aldezhor prefers to use postal workers as hosts out of a sadistic sense of irony, and after breaking a post office manager with sickening images of his daughter in Hell, he uses the man to spread his influence to others. Through various hosts, Aldezhor massacres scores of people in a series of savage mass murders, leaving his symbol written in blood at each crime scene. Lusting after the heroine Jane, Aldezhor desires to rape her once on Earth and forever in Hell, hoping to use her lover's body to rape and kill her in front of her children before murdering them as well.
• Mexican Gothic: Howard Doyle, the owner of High Place, is a former magnate who worked many of the local Mexican populace as slaves unto death. Finding a fungus that grew there, Howard sacrificed his wife Agnes to be the breeding point of the fungus, murdering the priest, infants in Human Sacrifice and burning workers alive. Surviving by transferring his mind to male descendants and erasing them, while using women as abused breeding stock, Howard intends to force heroine Noemi to be part of his family to bear more children to live on eternally.
• Michael Vey series: Dr. C(harles). James Hatch is an egotistical, child-abusing man who ruthlessly exploits the power of electric children called Glows, holding many of their families—and often just murdering them—in order to use them in his terrorist exploits, among them taking down populated jet liners and invading countries. Anyone he has no use for, be they his own minions or his own associates, are sent to the Rat Bowl to be horribly devoured alive. A complete sadist, Hatch hacks off the tongue of the prime minster of a country he's just taken over; offers one of the protagonists as a Sex Slave in exchange for betraying the resistance; and later has the resistance itself located and almost totally massacred, save one survivor that Hatch spares purely to use as leverage against Michael's father Carl Vey.
• Micronauts: The Time Traveler Trilogy, by Steve Lyons:
  • Book 1: Ordaal is a manipulative slave driver and organ harvester who arrives on Earth seemingly in peace, pulling the population of Angel's Gift into partnership while truthfully butchering its inhabitants one by one and harvesting their organs to be sold on the Microspace Black Market. Ordaal runs a "circus" of various aliens he has enslaved as entertainment for the citizens of the town, all while torturing and even executing some of them if they step out of line. Allying with the mayor of Angel's Gift, Ordaal abuses and threatens the man into allowing Ordaal's evil to be perpetrated, personally killing a large number of the man's security staff for the pettiest of reasons before trying to flee Earth with an entire group of humans as hostages for him to butcher later, and kills his way through a street of innocents blocking his path to escape before being stopped.
  • Book 2: Maruunus Ki assumes command of Micropolis in Baron Karza's absence, and proves to be a near-equally depraved ruler. Enslaving the citizens of Micropolis through brute force and addicting them to his virtual reality tech called "the System", Ki subjects the billions of innocents to starvation and hard labor, torturing and killing any who try to stand up to his rule. When the heroic Acroyear tries to take down Ki, Ki uses his minion Persephone to manipulate Acroyear into falling in love with her, only to later reveal the truth and viciously mock the hero over it. Ki ultimately betrays his entire planet to be afflicted by an alien plague, setting himself up in a secure bunker and slaughtering anyone who knows its location so he can outlive the plague while bragging that the millions who die are replaceable peasants.
  • Book 3 & Micronauts: Karza miniseries: The Emperor was the previous ruler of the Microverse and the catalyst for Baron Karza's evil. Ruling the Microverse with a brutal church state that oppressed and controlled billions through religion and fear, the Emperor hoarded all technology to himself and left the rest of the population in suffering squalor to benefit his elites. Regularly having vast swathes of potential threats to his rule eliminated, the Emperor carries out a genocide against the Pharoid people, murdering Karza's father in front of him before enslaving Karza as his own "son". The Emperor subjected Karza to indoctrination and corruption to make him a suitable heir, even ordering him to pretend to be a rebel just so he can slaughter allies, before betraying and imprisoning Karza for growing too ambitious. In truth having planned for Karza to betray and succeed him, the Emperor sets Karza up to be the monstrous conqueror he becomes simply so the Emperor's legacy will never die.
• Midnight, by Dean Koontz: Thomas Shaddack is a brilliant computer scientist who is experimenting for ways to remove human restraint and morality. Having murdered his family to "free" himself at a young age, Shaddack's experiments result in people being turned into feral, bestial monsters that murder anyone who gets too close to Shaddack's experiments. Shaddack's ultimate plan is to use this process on all of humanity to indulge every twisted desire he's ever had, and even leaves a Dead Man's Switch to kill all his victims should Shaddack's own heart ever stop.
• The Midnight Library:
  • Voices' "An Apple A Day": Old Bill Cole is the Cranky Neighbor of Tim Barrett's grandmother and turns out to be hiding a truly horrific secret. After Tim gets too close to his prized apple orchard, Cole furiously reprimands him and his grandmother, going so far as to taunt them over Tim's missing grandfather. When Tim vandalizes his orchard in revenge, he eats one of the apples, only to discover he is slowly mutating into an apple tree. When Tim goes to Cole's desperate for answers, he discovers far too late that the old man's orchard is made up of dozens of poor souls who ingested his apples, among them many other children, as well as his grandfather. Cole than watches with a cruel smile as the boy transforms into the newest addition to his orchard.
  • The Whisperer's "Gabriel": Gabriel is a handsome, brooding student who Samantha initially suspects of being a vampire. In truth, he is an ancient, soul-eating demon who claims to be feared even by vampires, and uses his friendly persona to lure the girl into his clutches. As Gabriel feeds on Samantha, she glimpses the millions of souls Gabriel has consumed over the years, all trapped in the demon's body and writhing in eternal agony.
  • Dream Demon's "Carnival Dance": Ah Puch, the wicked God of Death, demanded Human Sacrifice and tried to slaughter the Mayan civilization before he was banished by the other Gods. Centuries later, Ah Puch possesses a young man through an antique mask he ordered for a parade and enslaves his friend, forcing the boy to become a puppet for his own amusement and kill several of the birds he loves. Ah Puch soon reveals himself at the parade as he gleefully draws "the Breath of Life" from the hundreds of people attending before moving onto ravage the world again.
• Midnight Mass (2004):
  • Father Alberto Palmeri, the Evil Counterpart to Father Joe, is a former Pedophile Priest turned vampire. Before the events of the book, he molested numerous children—with increasing frequency towards the end of his human life— at St. Anthony's Church, and managed to get away with it because an altar boy had fingered Joe as the molester. When the plague of vampirism that had been ravaging the world hit New Jersey, his first course of action was to hide in the nuns' convent. After being found by a group of cowboys and turned by a Prime vampire named Gregor, he took up the role of Sinister Minister in a desecrated St. Anthony's, performing gruesome rituals that involve the sacrifice of humans to his undead congregation. During the assault on the purified St. Anthony's, he attempts to turn Joe, dangling his friend, the rabbi, Zev, over the church balcony and just above a wooden stake, threatening to drop him if he refuses.
  • Franco is the Vampire Monarch of New York. He oversees the blood ranches, where human women as young as fifteen are rounded up by cowboys who earned enough "brownie points" for "stud time", which involves the rape and impregnation of the women in order to replenish the vampires' depleted blood source for future generations. After his meeting with Joe, he feeds him to a mindless feral vampire named Jason Devlin who he keeps as a pet in the hopes of Joe being left with even less sapience than Devlin. This plan backfires when Joe's wounds are cauterized by the sun when Lacey and Carole go out to the beach to bury him, but he's left fighting to retain his humanity for the remainder of the novel.
  • James Barrett is a high-ranking cowboy and The Renfield to Franco. Where most other cowboys are horny, ignorant hicks who want to become vampires at worst and desperate punch clock villains trying to protect their families at best, Barrett is a cannibal who treats Franco's empire like a business. When he first sees Joe naked, he examines the flesh on his body with the hopes of getting to cook and eat it. At the climax of the book, when it looks like Joe is about to throw Franco out into the sun, Barrett comes out holding Sister Carole at knifepoint, bargaining to let her live if Joe lets go of Franco.
• Midnight's Children: Shiva-of-the-knees is Saleem Sinai's metaphorical Evil Twin, the baby with whom he was switched at birth. Possessing extraordinary powers, as with every other child born on the midnight of August 15, 1947, Shiva lives up to his name as a destroyer: even in his childhood, Shiva carves out the eye of a would-be bully and is suspected by Saleem to even be a Serial Killer. In his adulthood, Shiva sells out every single one of the Midnight Children to the colonial government, either out of jealousy, cowardice, or simple spite. Shiva personally spearheads the persecution of his own kind, gleefully riding out into the carnage he causes to find Saleem; ultimately, nearly all of the Midnight's Children who survive the attack are handed off to forced sterilization.
• Millennium Series:
  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo:
    • Martin Vanger is a polite, charming CEO who uses his position in society to cover up the fact that he is a Serial Killer and rapist of women, kidnapping them and spending days raping and torturing them before ending their lives. Martin has been committing his atrocities for decades, and his victim count handily reaches into the hundreds. Even worse is the reveal that Martin was raised to be a killer by his equally repulsive father, Gottfried, and though potentially tragic, it is made explicitly clear that Martin just enjoys raping and killing, made all the more obvious by turning his own sister into his personal sex and torture slave after his father is out of the picture. Martin tries to subject Mikael Blomkvist to the same torments of his previous victims in the end, and simply excuses his crimes by proclaiming it is his hobby and he is living a "complete life".
    • Gottfried Vanger is a fanatical Nazi with an obsession for mimicking and mocking the Bible. Gottfried murdered more than 6 women in horrific ways resembling punishments from the Book of Leviticus, always subjecting them to brutal rape and torture beforehand. Be it by bashing their skulls in or raping them to death with farming tools, Gottfried perpetrated his acts with zeal, and took his own personal sadism to such a level that he sexually abused his own son and daughter, helping the former—Martin—realize his love for killing while turning the latter—Harriet—into his toy to be tortured until he finally tired of this and attempted to murder her.
  • The Girl Who Played with Fire & The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest: Alexander "Zala" Zalachenko is a Russian agent who took refuge in Sweden. Because of his high importance to the government, Zalachenko was allowed to do anything he wanted. His favorite activity was abusing his wife. He would often torture or beat her in front of their daughter. The last time, he beat her so bad he left her with severe brain damage, which resulted in his daughter, who we find out is Lisbeth, burning Zala alive in retribution. Surviving with hideous wounds, Zala became the leader of a powerful human trafficking ring where girls were forced into prostitution. Having many, many women sold into sex slavery or killed when their value diminished, Zala also had multiple murders committed by his nightmarishly powerful son, and when he found out his daughter's location, he spared no expense to murder anyone in his path to torture her to death himself.
• Les Misérables: Monsieur Thénardier is a greedy innkeeper who accepts guardianship of little Cosette from her mother, Fantine, while beating the poor girl and using her to extort money from Fantine, resulting in Fantine prostituting herself and eventually falling sick and dying. After losing his inn, Thénardier prostitutes his own daughters and even has one, Azelma, mutilate her hand to make her a more effective and sympathetic beggar. Not above murder, Thénardier happily tries to kill both Jean Valjean and Javert at different points, even threatening to torture the former with a hot poker. Even when driven from France by Marius Pontmercy, Thénardier simply sets up shop in America as a slave trader to further profit from human misery. Be he a con artist, grave robber, or attempted murderer, there is no low Thénardier will not sink to for the sake of profit.
• Missing, by Kelley Armstrong: Kendrick and his partner Roscoe are a pair of born-bad serial killers who have innocent girls hunted and mauled by their feral dogs, before Kendrick and Roscoe finish killing them. Discovering his children who had been taken in by his sister, Kendrick, with help from Roscoe, tries to corrupt them into killers like themselves, with Kendrick personally executing the girlfriend of one of his sons, Lennon, when he refuses to be like him. Viewing his children and family as weak, Kendrick tries to force Lennon into killing his brother's girlfriend Winter Crane, and when he refuses, tries to murder him in front of his sister with Roscoe gunning Kendrick's sister down as well. Viewing brutality and killing as his calling, Kendrick even encourages Winter to kill him in order to fully experience the immense joy he and Roscoe feel from inflicting death, hoping to corrupt her.
• The Missing, by Jane Casey: Derek Keane was a heinous Serial Rapist who had been assaulting women for years before apparently settling down with a family. In truth just using his family his family and a position as a local youth leader as cover, Derek moved onto abusing and molesting countless children, including his own son Daniel. When one of his victims, Daniel's best friend Charlie, fought back hard enough during an attempt to abuse him, Derek killed the boy, blamed Daniel, and forced Daniel to help him hide the body. Derek would later murder his abused wife when she tried to stand up to him, and though eventually killed by Daniel, Derek's evil stained the town for decades, his burial spot for Charlie revealed by police to likely contain even more victims who Derek had taken to killing as further depravity.
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children series: Caul is Miss Peregrine's older brother who was envious of her status as a ymbryne. Seeking power, Caul created a splinter group that sought to subjugate normal humanity. After an attempt at immortality went awry, Caul and his followers were turned into the monstrous hollowghasts that hunted peculiars down to eat them, before becoming wights. Caul raided dozens of loops to abduct everyone inside—including the children—to either feed them to hollows or to steal their souls. Caul found the fabled Library of Souls so he could absorb the souls in there to become a god and conquer the world. Despite his cheerful demeanor, Caul was nothing more than a power hungry megalomaniac.
• "Mister Ice Cold", by Gahan Wilson: The title character is a serial-killing Child Eater under the guise of a jovial ice-cream man, having claimed dozens of young victims and stored their frozen bodies in the back of his truck. When the main character discovers Ice-Cold's stash, he calmly taunts the terrified child before sending them on their way, later tracking them down to turn them into another frozen snack.
• "Mitchellverse":
  • The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: Lord Abbot Enomoto has his monks impregnate the nuns at Mount Shiranui Shrine and then has them and Abbess Izu take their babies away and murder them, keeping up the illusion they're alive via letters. If that wasn't enough, he deceives the nuns into thinking that they will be released from the shrine after 20 years of service. Instead, his master monks give them a drug that kills them on the way down the mountain and they end up buried in numbered graves, all to eliminate loose ends so that Enomoto can use the blood of the babies in a tonic to perpetuate his life and youth.
  • The Bone Clocks: Immaculée Constantin was the second member of the Anchorites, a group that drank people's souls, particularly children and the mentally disabled, to fuel their immortality. After being rejected by a 7-year-old Holly Sykes, Constantin bore a grudge. Corrupting Hugo Lamb, Holly's one-time lover, Constantin directs him to perform unsavory crimes, such as torturing Crispin Hershey for information on Esther Little, Constantin laughing in the distance. Right before the final battle, Constantin mocks Holly on her age, makes a crude joke about her relationship with Hugo, threatens to murder her family so Holly will "howl with regret" and pulls other petty jabs. When she reveals to Sadaqat that they lied about letting him join the Anchorites-with casual racism to boot-she gleefully murders him. Complicit in the deaths of hundreds to fuel her lust for immortality and with a sadistic streak she takes pride in, Constantin was the face and the worst of the Anchorites.
  • Slade House: Jonah Grayer resides in the titular Slade House with his twin sister Norah. Having murdered Léon Cantillon in the past for trying to publish an autobiography of him and his sister that revealed their true nature, Jonah murders an Engifted person every nine years alongside his sister and uses their soul to perpetuate their immortality, with Jonah and his sister frequently playing mind games with the victim beforehand. Over the course of the novel, Jonah murders several people, including a young teen, alongside his sister.
• Mithgar:
  • The Iron Tower: Modru is Gyphon's right-hand man and, as Gyphon is mostly inactive, is Gyphon's most active agent in Mithgar, nearly bringing the world to ruin during the War of the Ban. Five thousand years later, Modru instigated the Winter War as part of a plot to free Gyphon, sending Vulgs to raid the Boskydells, and a horde of his Spaunen to raze Challerain Keep. Controlling his armies by projecting his will through brain-damaged mind slaves and executing any minions who defy him, Modru spread warfare to every corner of Mithgar, from the Boskydells—where his Ghuls torch dozens of towns and butcher numerous families, including those of protagonists Tuck and Merrilee—to the far south, and makes it clear to the captive Princess Laurelain that in the event of his victory, he will exterminate the Warrows, enslave the Elves and Dwarves, and burn her father and all his subjects in a single great funeral pyre. When Elven Lord Vanidor tries to rescue Laurelain, Modru has him racked to death, forcing Laurelain to watch. When Tuck attempts to free her, Modru beats him near to death with an iron bar. In the end, Modru attempts to sacrifice Laurelain to ensure Gyphon's return, gloating that while he could have used anyone's blood to feed his master, it amused him to use that of "a royal damosel".
  • The Eye of the Hunter: Baron Bela Stoke is a sickening fusion of evil aristocrat, necromancer, Mad Scientist, and Torture Technician. His standard MO is to move into a region whose people are unfamiliar with him and begin abducting the locals so he can perform horrific, Mengele-esque experiments on them until they die—with the addition of potions that both increase painful sensations and keep victims alive longer than naturally possible—and then uses their corpses in his necromantic rites. He keeps this up for centuries, leaving a swath of gruesome murders behind him while racking up a body count at least in the hundreds, possibly into the thousands. At the end of the novel, he reanimates the corpses of his victims into a legion of undead warriors he intends to use to conquer the world, apparently just for fun, and indicates that he'd murder his own father—and mentor—Ydral if he felt it necessary.
  • Silver Wolf, Black Falcon:
    • Ydral is the chief servant of the evil Gyphon after Modru's death. With a legacy of evil going back millennia, Ydral is a vicious half-fiend who murdered the best friend of hero Aravan, and fathered the evil Baron Bela Stoke via the rape of Bela's mother. Ydral taught Bela all about torture and murder before abandoning him, later resurfacing to mentor Kutsen Yong of the Golden Horde and driving him to horrific atrocities while conducting blood sacrifices on titanic levels, all while torturing his victims to death. Ydral later abandons Kutsen Yong after killing countless innocents to dedicate temples to Gyphon, trying to summon Gyphon with blood sacrifices to devastate the world, all so Ydral can rule over what's left.
    • Kutsen Yong leads the Golden Horde on a campaign of violent slaughter, massacring entire lands and cities and establishing brutal rules that result in countless innocents of all ages executed. Seeking to become the mortal regent of Gyphon, Kutsne Yong has countless innocents sacrificed and delivered to Ydral while taking possession of the dragonstone to force dragons to raze entire cities. When he learns of Mithgar and its high king, Kutsen Yong's ego demands he ride to destroy Mithgar in a titanic war, Kutsen Yong willing to stop at nothing to dominate the world and bring for Gyphon to make him the supreme king of all he dreams.
• Modern Faerie Tales: Of all the wicked fae to inhabit this universe, these are the worst:
  • The original trilogy's Valiant: Mabry(n), a spy of the Unseelie Court (Night Fae Court), uses her position to frame loyal members of her own court and watch them be executed to amuse herself, then uses her magical harp to replay monologues of their deaths to enjoy time and again. While sent to spy on the Seelie Court (Bright Fae Court), Mabry tricks Ravus into killing his friend after the latter catches on to her status as a spy, leading to Ravus's banishment from the Seelie Court along with Mabry. Gaining a petty obsession with getting back at Ravus for the banishment despite being the one who actually caused it, she kills dozens of innocent faeries with poison and frames Ravus for it. Mabry then critically wounds him. Plotting to aid in starting a civil war, when Mabry is confronted by Valerie Russell, she boasts of planning to kill her best friend and using his bones to craft a new accursed harp.
  • The Darkest Part of the Forest: The Alderking is the father of Severin, and an evil fae who murdered Severin's mother and horrifically abused Severin himself, alongside his "sister" Sorrel whom the Alderking kidnapped from the Court of the East upon his exile. The Alderking had Severin murder Sorrel's own human husband, which drove Sorrel into such a wrath she was twisted into a monster called Sorrow, which the Alderking then enslaved using a ring forged from the bones of his former "daughter's" murdered husband. Now aspiring to conquer the Court again, the Alderking appoints the human child Hazel Evans as his soldier for seven years of her life, using her to try and lock away Severin in a glass casket for eternity and attempting to massacre Hazel's home village of Fairfold in revenge for her defiance, reveling in the litany of cruelties he and his servants will visit on every human and fae in Fairfold alike.
  • The Folk of the Air: Prince Balekin Greenbriar desires the throne of Elfhame from his father, King Eldred. A psychopath from a young age, Balekin beat and abused his younger brother Cardan for his entire life, even trying to force him to kill someone, and when his father favors his other sibling Dain as his heir, launches a coup against him, personally murdering his family with only Cardan surviving. Imprisoned for his crimes, Balekin allies with the undersea and helps them lay siege to the land and its populace, kidnaps heroine Jude Duarte and has her tortured for weeks in order to break her into his pet assassin and only allows her return if Cardan forces his subjects to not fight back as he unleashes the undersea to slaughter many civilians, with Balekin targeting the court of King Roiben in particular due to a petty grudge, nearly having Roiben's consort burned alive out of spite. Balekin even tries to kill Cardan by poisoning him with a deadly drug and then frame Jude for the crime, willing to do anything to get the throne for himself.
• Mogworld: Simon Townshend is the incompetent new developer at Loincloth Entertainment. Initially dismissed by his peers as an incompetent boob, Simon discovers that the NPCs of Mogworld have attained sapience, after using the Deleters to destroy Lord Dreadgrave's fortress and almost everyone inside. Simon allows the Syndrome to continue despite knowing they're sapient; empowers Barry, a priest with severe anger issues, to be his Herald; and allows him to subjugate and torture those under his command, aiming to take over Mogworld where, as Lord Si-Mon, he implements mandatory worship of himself. Simon uses his hacking abilities to take away fellow developer Dub's access to the building, trying to ruin his life out of spite, and then tries to use Barry to steal money from Loincloth's payroll after torturing one of the protagonists by deleting her limbs one by one.
• The Monarchies of God: Aruan, an ancient sorcerer and werewolf who made a kingdom of the mysterious western continent, desires to subjugate all of the kingdoms of the world into his slaves or to obliterate them if he cannot control them. Fomenting a holy war amongst he Ramusian kingdoms by causing a schism in the church, Aruan also uses his werewolf agents to murder many people while corrupting others into his agents. In the final book, Aruan steps from the shadows, having entire cities slaughtered by his lycanthropes if they resist him in his quest to reign as the supreme being.
• Monk:
  • Dale J. Biederbeck III, aka Dale "the Whale", is an overweight, wealthy sociopath who serves as Adrian Monk's most personal, recurring foe. So rich that he sacrifices millions in exchange for ruining the lives of others just for spite and fun, Dale's first appearance sees him orchestrate the murder of a judge who crossed him in the past via beating her to death with a baseball bat. Though put in prison for this crime, Dale later kills one of his own partners and frames Monk for it, then schemes to bomb a parade and kill the Governor of California so as to facilitate his release, uncaring of the innocents who will die in the bombing. Dale returns one final time in the novel Mr. Monk Gets Even, where Dale uses an acolyte fangirl to cause a horrific traffic accident that kills four people and leaves dozens in critical condition before having her kill herself in his name, all as part of an elaborate attempt to escape custody. Dale never passes on a chance to psychologically torture and sadistically mock anyone vulnerable he can, and happily embraces being called an "odious, gluttonous, putrid freak of nature."
  • Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants: Ian Ludlow is a narcissistic crime novelist who gets "inspiration" for his books by befriending his fans, murdering them, then participating in the ensuing investigations so as to frame "the least likely suspect" for the crimes. Ludlow has killed at least five people over the years, always pinning the murders on total innocents and getting them locked away, and continues his spree in the present as he kills another fan by bashing her skull in. After murdering another man by ripping him apart while drowning him, Ludlow tries to frame Monk's closest friends and assistants, Sharona Fleming and Natalie Teeger, as the killers just to torment Monk and make a more interesting "twist" for the book he plans to write.
  • Mr. Monk on the Road: The Zarkin sisters, Bessie, Gertie, and Mabel, are a trio of life-loving, quirky old women who have been traveling along the United States. In reality, the Zarkin sisters have as much zeal for death as life, having murdered people across the country for years while Bessie uses her son as a proxy to regularly commit hit-and-runs states away. The Zarkin sisters have the highest body count of any killer Adrian has ever put away, with dozens of knickknacks seen in their trailer, each a trophy from an individual victim.
  • Mr. Monk on the Couch: Rico Ramirez is a savage animal of a thug responsible for a series of violent assaults years ago to get away with a couch full of diamonds. Released on bail from his initial imprisonment, Ramirez rampages in an effort to track the diamonds down, unnecessarily and brutally murdering two people who had bought the couch. Ramirez then tracks down his old girlfriend and tortures her to death, working at her with a knife and cigarettes before finally asphyxiating her. Ramirez is finally interrupted in the process of a furious attempted fourth murder.
• The Monk:
  • Ambrosio, the titular character, is a proud monk led to sin who plunges headlong into cruelty, sadism and depravity. Ambrosio delves into Black Magic and the worship of the devil after his seduction by Matilda, arranging for murder and kidnapping the object of his lust, murdering her mother in the process. Ambrosio remorselessly rapes Antonia, later murdering her as well to conceal his crime. Devoid of true remorse, Ambrosio later sells his own soul to Satan to escape justice for his crimes, his only attempts at redemption self-serving falsehoods, leaving him irrevocably damned and irredeemable.
  • Satan, the Fiend himself, is the author of all the misery of the novel. Sending the temptress Matilda to tempt Ambrosio while leading others to pain and ruination, Satan oversees the ruination of Ambrosio and helps to lure him into sin, depravity and dark magic. Making himself party to the rape of the innocent Antonia, Satan sways Ambrosio and manipulates him into murdering Antonia's mother before having him rape and eventually murder Antonia as well. Later tricking Ambrosio into signing over his soul, the Fiend gleefully reveals that Elvira and Antonia were Ambrosio's mother and sister, and sentences him to an agonizing death before claiming his damned soul.
• Monsters of Verity: This duology by Victoria Schwab, set in the post-apocalyptic city of Verity, is plagued by these figurative and literal monsters facing off against August Flynn and Kate Harker:
  • Sloan is a Malachi who stands out as a total psychopath even by the standards of his own bloodthirsty race. Acting as Callum Harker's right-hand man, Sloan murders Kate Harker's mother and years later tries to force Kate's Love Interest August Flynn into killing her in order to spark a bloody war to put him on top. After Callum Harker's demise, Sloan, as the new leader of North City, launches bloody attacks on South City and becomes obsessed with besting Kate, kidnapping innocent women who resemble her and then torturing them to death for fun. Sloan and his right-hand woman Alice create the Fangs, humans who he's drugged and tortured into loyal servants and unleashes them unto the population. Having no loyalty to even his own kind, Sloan ruthlessly murders them for no reason, and plans to eventually off Alice herself when she outlives her use. Discovering the monstrous Chaos-Eater, Sloan intends to unleash it into the most populated part of the south of the city so that it may destroy his resistance and kill hundreds, just to bask in the glow of his love for his own sadism.
  • This Savage Song: Callum Harker is Kate Harker's father and a former mob boss who took over North City of Verity and proves himself to be worse than most other monsters. Enslaving the bloodthirsty Malachi and Corsai, Harker unleashes them on the city in order to take over, killing hundreds of innocents in his bid for conquest. After a peace deal allows Harker control of North City, he creates an environment of lawlessness and crime there, which causes his wife to flee with their daughter Kate. Callum then coldly sends Sloan to retrieve Kate, shrugging off his wife's death, which occurs as a result of Sloan. When the years of peace threaten his position as top dog, Harker puts out a hit on his once beloved daughter Kate and tries to force her Love Interest August Flynn into killing Kate, allowing him a pretense to restart the war which would result in the deaths of hundreds, willing to throw every redeeming quality out of his away if it puts him on top.
• "A Moorish Captain", by Giovanni Battista Giraldi (aka Cinthio) (link): The Ensign is a scheming, bitter man who resents the Moor for marrying Disdemona. Claiming the Moor's beloved wife is having an affair with his friend the Captain, the Ensign persuades the Moor to pay him to kill both. Crippling the Captain before a gathering crowd forces him to flee, the Ensign then savagely beats Disdemona to death as she pleads her innocence. Banished by the guilt-stricken Moor, the Ensign blames him for the Captain's maiming, leading to the Moor's torture and death before leaving the city, after which he is later caught plotting another petty scheme to secure prestige and having a cohort tortured to death in his stead.
• Morganville Vampires: The town of Morganville and its vampire citizens represent Black-and-Gray Morality, with the following representing the blackest:
  • Mr. Bishop is the oldest vampire in existence and easily the evilest. Once a brutal warlord overthrown by his daughter Amelie before the series began, Bishop, out of revenge, created a virus which destroyed the minds of vampires and unleashed it in hopes of wiping out his species to rebuild in his image. Coming into the town of Morganville, Bishop torches huge, populated areas and attacks even refugee centers. Bishop also tries to murder his daughter multiple times, even killing her lover in front of her to savor her pain. Returning after his initial defeat, Bishop creates an illegal fighting ring where vampires and humans enhanced by vampire blood fight to the death, intending to create an army to wipe out the town for defying him.
  • Carpe Corpus: Dean is a psychopathic Serial Killer and rapist stalking the town of Morganville. Dean murders his way through the female population of Morganville and later even leaves one of his dying victims at the home of the protagonists just to terrorise them. Dean later tries to murder series heroine Claire Danvers and frame the vampires so he can ignite a conflict between vampires and humans for sheer fun. Dean later decides to highjack the town's teleportation system so he can have his terror spread even more unabated. Claire calls out Dean, saying that, despite his rhetoric of revolution against the vampires, he is really just a predator worse than the vampires. Dean responds by smugly agreeing with her.
  • Last Breath & Black Dawn: Magnus is the Master Draug and introduces himself as "the end" before he snaps heroine Claire's neck. Arriving in Morganville with his Draug, Magnus captures townspeople, human and vampire, to drain to death as he has done countless times before. Plotting to destroy Morganville and exterminate the vampires, Magnus attempts to turn Amelie into his queen to spawn more Draug, plotting to feast upon all seven billion humans on the planet.
  • Fall of Night & Daylighters: Rhys Fallon once achieved his dream of becoming a vampire, hated it, and became human again. Despising his newfound weakness, Fallon sought to punish all vampires, infecting them with a sickness to send them on killing sprees so he may bend Morganville to his own manipulative ends. Having vampires captured, experimented on, and tortured, he uses drugs to break the minds of humans and is gleeful to introduce a drug to force vampires back to humanity, regardless of the 75 percent fatality rate in the process—an act of genocide.
• The Most Dangerous Game: General Zaroff is an Egomaniac Hunter hiding behind a veneer of civilization. Bored, he has taken up residence on a hidden island, in which he maroons sailors so that he can hunt them for his amusement. While Zaroff prides himself on being a sportsman and gentleman and prefers a challenge, he has no qualms about "hunting" the weak, nor does he really play fair in the slightest. Anyone he captures who isn't interested in "playing" is turned over to his servant, a former knouter for the Tsar, until they are willing, and while he initially starts on an even footing with his prey, he ultimately uses a pack of vicious hounds against more elusive prey. Cementing the unwinnable nature of the game for his victims, Zaroff is non-committal as to whether he would actually let any survivors go unless they were willing to keep quiet about his crimes.
• Mouseheart: Felina is the queen of the feral cats who terrorize the subway tunnels of Brooklyn, forcing Emperor Titus of Atlantia to regularly supply her with rodents to butcher for fun in exchange for her leaving his kingdom alone; when Titus's wife Conselyea discovered the truth and attempted to reason with the feral queen, Felina murdered her. When the truth behind the peace accord is revealed and Titus is dethroned, Felina declares open season on every rodent in the tunnels, devastating Atlantia and abducting Prince Zucker to use as a hostage and personal plaything. When the rodents, led by Hopper, counterattack and drive off the ferals, Felina attempts to crush Zucker to death out of spite before devouring Titus when he intervenes. It's later revealed that before moving into the tunnels, Felina caused the death of Ace's mother by tricking her into taking her place on death row at the animal shelter, keeping her collar as a souvenir.
• Murder is Easy: Honoria Waynflete terrorizes the village of Wychwood under Asche with a string of murder in order to frame her ex-fiancé Lord Whitfield, who broke the engagement after seeing her kill her own pet bird. Honoria kills seven people in elaborate and often painful ways, like swapping Amy Gibbs's cough syrup with hat dye or causing septicemia in Dr. Humbleby with a plaster contaminated with cat pus. To complete her plan, Honoria lures Bridget Conway, Whitfield's new fiancée, into the woods and attacks her with a knife covered in Whitfield's fingerprints.
• #MurderTrending trilogy:
  • The Postman is a bloodthirsty sadist and the ultimate source of all of the bloodshed in the series. Born Lincoln Browne, Lincoln murdered his own parents and framed it as suicide to inherit their wealth after they threatened to cut him off. Lincoln then manipulated his sister into killing the people who were supposedly responsible for their parents' deaths and to fake his own death. Taking the name Abe Bronson, Lincoln became a successful businessman while periodically murdering people for fun over the years, before convincing the President to set up "Alcatraz 2.0", an island where convicted murderers are hunted by state-sanctioned killers known as "Painiacs" while he makes money off of streaming the deaths. Later, the Postman started using his connections to get young, attractive people framed for murders they didn't commit to get them sent to Alcatraz 2.0 to boost ratings. The Postman is also a Painiac himself; known as Prince Slycer, he would dress women up as fairy tale princesses before butchering them.
  • Kimber "Kimmi" Bronson is the Postman's daughter and is just as psychopathic as he is. At the age of 13, Kimmi decided to make Dee Guerra her sister by kidnapping her and torturing her into accepting her as her sister before she escaped and got Kimmi sent to a mental hospital. After being released years later, Kimmi tracked down Dee and tortured and murdered Dee's stepsister Monica to get Dee sent to Alcatraz 2.0, where Kimmi murdered the reclusive inmate Mara to steal her identity so she could be sisters together. After Dee ruins the plan by killing her father as Prince Slycer, Kimmi decides to take his identity as the Postman and begins to systematically kill anyone who might be able to notice the difference, gassing almost all of the prisoners and all of the guards on the island to death while arranging for Dee to kill the Painiacs so they can be replaced. When Dee finally learns the truth and rejects Kimmi's offer of "sisterhood", Kimmi tries to kill Dee and her friends.
• Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation: Gallus Cleaner is a smuggler who runs a trafficking ring, kidnapping beast children and selling them off to slavery, while the children under his imprisonment are horrifically abused, with one child getting killed as a result. Saved by Rudeus Greyrat, Gallus assigns Rudeus and Ruijerd Superdia to retrieve the children from his captivity, arranging Ruijerd to kill his own men to distract the authorities from his operation while following Rudeus to the Beast People's village when they arrest the latter. Arriving there, Gallus and his forces lay siege to the village, killing countless innocents, while kidnapping all their children and nearly killing Rudeus and Gyes Dedoldia when they try to stop him.
• Mutineers' Moon: Anu was once the Chief Engineer of the space station Dahak. He led a mutiny against the captain, and made sure the ensuing fight caused as much bloodshed as possible. Later trapped on Earth thanks to Dahak's automated defenses, Anu put thousands of his army into stasis, then used their bodies as vessels for him and his most loyal followers when their bodies wore out. Anu then began instigating many of history's biggest wars and atrocities, with people like Adolf Hitler himself having acted on Anu's orders. After Colin and an army of rebels start thwarting Anu's plans, Anu begins ordering the destruction of random cities on the off chance any rebel bases are located in them. When the rebels lead an assault on Anu's HQ, Anu activates automated weaponry, targeting friend and foe alike, and, when beaten, tries to detonate all of his bases' reactors around the globe, which would result in countless amounts of death and destruction across the world. Psychopathic, narcissistic, and bloodthirsty, Anu stood out as the most wicked villain in the series.
• My Best Friend's Exorcism: Andras is a cruel and ancient demon of discord. Throughout history, Andras would regularly possess people and slowly ruin their lives and manipulate the lives of those around them, having a hand in several historical atrocities such as the Red Scare. Subjecting Gretchen Lang to a violating possession, Andras began to manipulate her friends such as tricking Margaret into drinking tapeworm eggs, which nearly kills her, or making Glee believe the school chaplain was in love with her and causing her to try to commit suicide when she learned he didn't. When captured by Abby, Andras reveals future plans of his, such as talking one student into committing a school shooting.
• Myriad Colors Phantom World: "Him" is the First Phantom and the supreme deity of the world. Born from the human mind, Him passively watched the world for thousands of years before choosing Touka Kashima, establishing contact with her and making her the first child with special abilities. When Touka's attempt to use the Artificial Phantom Ruppa to destroy the world fails thanks to Haruhiko Ichijou, Him creates a parallel world where Ruppa succeeded and caused the extinction of humanity, which made Him resurrect one third of humanity to keep things interesting. Taking a personal interest in Haruhiko, Him divides Haruhiko's soul to get rid of Haruhiko's optimism and later Him corrupts Haruhiko's partner Marcosias into a violent demon. He does this to screw with Haruhiko's mind and turn him into a being who would eventually attack his own friends and his own counterpart from the original world. Using Touka as his enforcer in the alternate world to keep humanity under constant attack, Him considers humans to be mere actors in his play and causes countless tragedies for his own amusement.
• Mythos Academy: The Reapers of Chaos are a vile group but none so much as their leaders:
  • The Norse God Loki, the God of Chaos, was imprisoned for murdering fellow god Baldur, before manipulating his wife into freeing him, then forming the "Reapers of Chaos" in an attempt to slaughter the other gods and prey on humanity, killing hundreds of thousands of innocents as a result. Defeated and imprisoned again by the goddess Nike, Loki guides the Reapers over the centuries to commit murders and sacrifices to loosen his chains. When freed again, Loki tries to regain his full power by trying to murder hundreds of Academy students to absorb their strength and allow him to take over Logan Quinn's body, which would destroy the latter's soul in the process. Fighting Gwendolyn "Gwen" Frost with the body of her Love Interest, Loki torments them by keeping Logan aware but unable to do anything as he attacks her. Driven off, Loki later tries to force Gwen into giving him an artifact to start the apocalypse, before flying into a rage when she foils him, assaulting the Academy with his forces. In his final battle with Gwen, Loki attempts to take control of her body, boasting all the while of how he will use her as a vessel to murder everyone she cares about.
  • Agrona Quinn leads the Reapers of Chaos in their slew of human sacrifices to revive Loki and bring about his age of chaos. In her quest, Agrona secretly ordered the family of Logan Quinn and the Spartan leader murdered, and called for the assassination of Gwen's mother. When Loki is freed, Agrona seeks to help him kill hundreds at the Academy to let him take over Logan's body and has Gwen framed as Loki's champion in an attempt to discredit and have her executed. Using poison, Agrona tries to kill several students, as well as Gwen's mentor, Nikademes, allowing Agrona access to a mystical artifact to revive Loki. Agrona eventually threatens and kidnaps Gwen's elderly grandmother in order to gain a way to revive her master and eventually helps Loki lay a murderous siege to the academy by leading his forces.
• My Work is Not Yet Done: Harry, one member of a ring of Corrupt Corporate Executives called the Seven, has the most disgusting proclivities out of all his associates. Harry has a fondness for rape, both of property and of people. Harry has amassed victims of all ages, from children to adults to seniors in nursing homes, and meets his grisly death shortly after cornering another potential victim and saying with perfect earnestness "I would like to rape and rob you."

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