Product Description

I have reached my breaking point. And now I will not, cannot be stopped. With the Soul Eater on the verge of god status, it's time for me to take a final stand, even if it means losing everything I love. Even if it means losing my life.

I've got plenty of power on my side, and some I didn't know I could count on in the first place. But it's nothing compared to the army of the undead the Soul Eater is building up. And time is running out.

They say that good always triumphs over evil. I hope that's true. Because the odds aren't in our favor, and the fate of the world is in our hands.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53315 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00" h x 6.46" w x 6.58" l, .38 pounds
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
"Armintrout's bold debut...bares its fangs early, unafraid to spill blood and vital organs from its very first pages. This fast, furious novel is a squirm-inducing treat." - Publishers Weekly"

About the Author
Jennifer Armintrout has been obsessed with vampires ever since the age of four. Raised in an enormous Roman Catholic family, Jennifer attributes her interest in the macabre to viewing too many funerals at a formative age.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
This day, when I bolted upright in the bed, throat tensed, vocal cords poised to emit a scream as soon as the gasping breath I'd drawn forced its way out, a hand clamped over my mouth. Nathan was already awake.

Don't make a sound, he warned through the blood tie, his body rigid with tension that jumped through our mental connection, filling me with his anxiety.

Something was seriously wrong. In the past few weeks, since we had fled Grand Rapids and come to Max's Chicago penthouse, Nathan's entire focus had been my recovery. I'd gone mute and practically catatonic after Cyrus, once my sire, then my fledgling, had died. After I'd wake from one of my many nightmares—daymares, I supposed, since we vampires are third-shifters on account of that pesky sun thing—Nathan would hold me and try to reassure me that it had all been a dream, that he wouldn't let anything harm me. Now, though, I felt his irritation and acute distraction through the blood tie, the telepathic and empathic connection that coursed between a fledgling vampire and their sire, and I knew something wasn't right.

Before he could explain, I heard a thud and some violent cursing upstairs.

There's someone in the apartment, I practically screamed into his head, and the pressure of his hand on my jaw subsided slightly.

I know. That's why I said not to make a sound. I'm going to check it out. He let go of my face and threw back the blankets. I could tell from the faint light outlining the heavy curtains that it was still the middle of the day, but Max's apartment was specially designed to be dark as a tomb and just as protected from unwanted sunlight.

Be careful, I warned. As if someone could be careful apprehending an intruder in their home. At least Nathan would be armed.

Crap. He wasn't armed. "Nathan!" I whispered after him, so the cause of the disturbance wouldn't hear me. Unfortunately, neither did Nathan. He was probably halfway up the stairs by now. Rolling my eyes, I got out of bed and pulled on the jeans I'd discarded the night before, realizing how ridiculous a silk camisole nightgown looked with jeans. Good thing this wasn't a fashion show. I grabbed a stake from the drawer in the bedside table. Forget something? I shot across the blood tie, letting him feel all my aggravation at having been pulled out of a comfortable bed. I hoped it would cover the fear that pounded through my veins.

Besides pants? he quipped. He was scared, joking with me to disguise it.

We'd been sleeping in the room I'd used when I'd stayed with Max, after the spell we did to free Nathan from his sire's possession went all sorts of haywire. No, that wasn't true. The spell had worked perfectly. It was our relationship that had gone all kinds of haywire. I'd left with Max to try and sort through the disaster of my personal life, but—as seemed to be the case ever since I'd become a vampire—the preternatural world didn't slow down for boyfriend-girlfriend drama. Nathan's sire, the Soul Eater, was still out there, trying to become a god and turn the world into his own personal feeding trough.

Though I'd spent a lot of time in the penthouse, I still wasn't familiar enough with the halls to navigate in the dark. The place was huge and, as huge places often were, decorated with lots of expensive and sharp-edged little tables bearing fragile objects that held the potential for lots of noise if they came crashing down. The guest rooms were on the first floor. Who or whatever had broken in would have had to access the place through the main entrance on the second floor, or the roof door on the third. I felt along the wall, recoiling whenever I encountered the shape of a painting or a light switch. My toes painfully found the bottom step of the stairs to the next floor, and I wondered why I hadn't heard Nathan tripping and falling over himself on his way. I gripped the rail and went slowly up the stairs, quelling the urge to race up, making heavy clomping sounds on each step. There was no light at the top. I'd just keep on going until there weren't any more stairs, I supposed.

Or, until I ran into something. Nathan turned abruptly as I collided with him. He grabbed my arms as if to flip me onto my back, but stopped before I even needed to tell him it was me. Don't do that, he admonished through the blood tie.

"Sorry," I whispered, craning to see past him in the dark. We were at the top of the stairs. The marble floor of the foyer gleamed in the faint glow from the recessed wall lights set at shin level around the perimeter of the room. When Max's sire, Marcus, had designed this place, he'd obviously done it with daytime stumbling in mind. Too bad he hadn't employed that feature in the rest of the house. In the darkness, a shadow moved, fast, from the bottom of the stairs to the third floor to the kitchen door.

Well, there's at least one, Nathan told me grimly. You stay here.

I pressed the stake into his hand and watched him go, wondering how long I'd have to wait before following him. He knew me well enough that he'd expect me to disobey his command, but if I waited long enough he'd be too busy with the intruder to stop me.

The kitchen door opened and light spilled out. No burglar I'd ever heard of turned on lights. Well, at least, they didn't in the movies. But burglars didn't break in during the day, either. Unless this burglar knew who and what he was dealing with.

How did they find us so quickly? my mind screamed as I watched Nathan disappear behind the door. It swung shut and I was left to adapt to the darkness again. It isn't fair. We haven't had any time.

And just like that, fair blew right out the window. There was a shout, not Nathan's, and the clatter of metal-on-metal that seemed to go on and on. A grunt, a thud, something hit the wall. I charged up the stairs, my heart very like this many times before fogging my brain.

I pushed through the door. Nathan's stake lay on the pristine white tile. The rack of pots over the kitchen island was half-empty, most of its stock scattered on the floor. The island itself was completely bare, like a body had been thrown or dragged across it. Nathan's body, from the looks of things on the floor. His assailant had him pinned, no small feat for a human fighting a vampire, and he was definitely human. I could smell his blood, and his fear. The man lay across Nathan's chest, the muscles of his back straining against his black T-shirt. Judging by the V of sweat growing there, he would tire soon. And judging by the shape of the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans, he'd come here betting on a fight.

I knew why Nathan was losing. He didn't want to hurt a human, even if they were out to hurt us. I, on the other hand, didn't care all that much when the human in question could be one of the Soul Eater's day staff. I grabbed one of the pans off the floor, a heavy, copper-bottomed saucepan. I'd just raised it up when Nathan's gaze met mine and knew my intention. He gripped the intruder's wrists and forced them down, then pushed him off. His strength was enough to send the man flying across the room, safely out of my range. He didn't want me to kill a human, either.

Nathan was on his feet in an instant, charging as I screamed, "Nathan, don't! He's got a gun!"

The shot rang out before I'd noticed the man had climbed to his feet. Nathan crumpled to the floor, and there was a second of horrible silence before he rolled onto his back, groaning and whimpering. The intruder stood, face drawn in shock. I leaped after him, easily clearing the corner of the island between us, and knocked him to the floor. His fingers tightened around the gun. I had to slam his closed fist into the floor over and over, until the tile cracked under his knuckles and he howled in pain, releasing the weapon. I hated to give him credit, but the guy was tough.

I grabbed the gun, hoping my shaking hands and the way I held it didn't mark me as a total novice. A novice can still pull a trigger, I thought, and, through his haze of pain, Nathan admonished, Squeeze, Carrie, not pull. You squeeze a trigger.

I rolled my eyes and pressed the point of the gun into the stranger's forehead. Imagining a bullet lodging and blossoming in fatty brain tissue, I pulled it back, just in case my trigger finger squeezed when I didn't mean to.

"Don't move," I barked when he cradled his bleeding hand to his chest.

"Shouldn't you check on your friend there?" His voice had an appealing, everyman tone to it. Like the professor I had who'd been from upstate New York and could make a pharmaceutical lecture sound like a retelling of a softball game victory. It was a dangerous quality in an armed assailant, because it put me slightly at ease.

I'll be fine, Nathan sent on a wave of agony. It was a little hard to believe when he was writhing on the floor and making strangled cries as though he'd just hit a ten on the pain scale. I turned back to my captive. "He'll be fine. Who sent you?"

"Well, no one. I'm here once a month." He nodded to the refrigerator. On the floor beside it was a small cooler, white with a red top that swings back, the kind that you'd pack a transplant organ in. "I'm Max's blood supplier."

I lowered the gun a little. "Right. And you just waltz in here all the time."

"Well, once a month," he corrected with a shrug.

I was about eighty percent sure he was lying. "Sorry. I think that Max would have mentioned you to me. Or, at least, that I would have seen you before."

"No, I'm quiet. And I've got keys. How the hell else do you think I got in here? There's a doorman and great security." He ran his uninjured hand through his sandy-colored hair, his gaze flicking to Nathan, still on the floor.

"Listen, I knew your friend there was a vampire, or I never would have shot him."

"Right." Trembling, I moved to tuck the gun into the back of my jeans.

"I wouldn't do that. Not with it ready to fire and the safety off." He held out his hand for it. I turned, fired a hole into the side of the plastic wastebasket, then looked for the safety switch and pushed it before sliding the gun into my waistband. I felt oddly empowered with a gun in my hands, and...

Customer Reviews

All soul's pitch black night
I loved this book as much as I loved the preceding ones. In this book it's not only good against evil, it's also the good guys wondering how evil they are capable to become to defeat the Soul Eater.

Ziggy's coming back, totally changed by his sire's wickedness, now an adult person, darker than ever, and making you wondering at every single page who's side is he going to be, and yet knowing it from the beginning was awesome.
Carrie, becoming more powerful, dangerous and decided than she's ever been, being capable of things no one could expect from her, for one single reason: Nathan.
Nathan, scared not only about his sure fate but about Carrie's, suffering for her more than he ever did when Marianne was dying, not knowing if he'll be able to survive to her sure death. As touchy as always.
And of course, our beloved Max, who's internal fight between his two natures while fighting his way back home has a place in this dark disclosure for the series.

As always Armintrout had rhythm, a wicked imagination that makes you wanna stand and scream in some passages and her particular skill to make you become paranoid, not knowing for sure what's going to happen until it's done.
If you enjoyed the 3 preceding books, you'll feel the same about this one. And yet the end didn't convince me- but I think there was really no proper final for all the darkness and pain they have faced.

Really an extraordinary novel by Jennifer Armintrout.

A full 5 stars! Out of the darkness of all Souls' Night, comes light.
All Soul's Night is the satisfying conclusion to a series that has reinvented itself with every book. Vampires Carrie and Nathan are taking a breather before the final battle to stop the cunning Soul-Eater whose powers grow with each vampire soul he 'drinks, a battle that they are ill equiped to fight. After withholding his love for three books, Nathan is finally ready to love Carrie, but Carrie is now the one holding herself apart. Frustrated Nathan runs out of patience, calling Carrie on her pettiness and selfishness, forcing a little introspection on Carrie who at long last sees the cost others have paid for her selfinterest. Unfortunately this revelation comes a bit late and Carrie may loose Nathan for good when he willingly walks into a trap baited with his foster son Ziggy - the son who died in Nathan's arms but who is somehow `alive' but tied to Soul-Eater through the fledgling/sire blood tie. Believing his sire's lies, Ziggy delivers Nathan into torture and certain death -- Nathan is intended to be the sacrifice that will fuel the Soul-Eater's transformation into a dark god. Given Armintrout's willingness to sacrifice her characters in previous stories, I was definitely on the edge of my seat for a good portion of the book wondering if Nathan was going to survive the torture that make Armintrout's books fall on the `Horror' side of urban fantasy/ paranormal romance.

Most of the players in the story are ones that we've already met in the series. The magical Dalia who continues to revel in her depravity plays her evil part with glee but pregnant werewolf Bella is mostly on the sidelines. And even though the main thrust of preparing for the battle against the Soul-Eater lies with Carrie, dual natured vampire/werewolf hybrid Max who has his own struggles, Ziggy with his divided loyalties, and newcomer to the series Bill an ex-Marine blood supplier -- the only human amid all the vamps but whose acceptance may help to win Ziggy back his soul -- also play important roles. I could rave on about the character development and the great plot. I was impressed by the way that Armintrout builds the characters up for the final confrontation and actually gives them the skills to have a hope of winning.

I really enjoyed the final journey to Armintrout's Blood Ties world where sacrifices are always required, death is not always permanent and endings are not predictable - who'd have thought that a series so dark could end with a promise of light.

The Turning (Blood Ties, Book 1)
Possession (Blood Ties, Book 2)
Ashes to Ashes (Blood Ties, Book 3)
All Souls' Night (Blood Ties, Book 4)

a voice teacher and early music fan who loves to read
BAD GUYS GET DEAD - CARRIE GETS WED -SOUL EATER LOSES HEAD.
Thus ends (I think!) Jennifer Armintrout's very excellent 'Blood Ties' quadriligy. I loved everyone of these four books - unending excitement; ongoing suspense and a 'no wasted words' writing style.

And who of us does not relish the 'bad guy' getting his just deserts!?Moreover, our author has the ability to incorporate a dash of humour with all the gore.

With all of the supernatural, paranormal, subnormal and abnormal literature flooding the marketplace, it's great to 'hit' upon a skillfully written series such as this. Sure hope there are more!!!

Publishers Weekly in describing Book 1: 'The Turning': "This fast, furious novel is a squirm-inducing treat." Believe me when I say that this comment could apply to all four of these books.