The Night Inside: A Vampire Thriller [First Edition, First Printing]

Ardeth Alexander’s life is the wholly predictable one of a graduate student. She lives by schedules – for papers due, classes to attend, small jobs of research to complete for extra income. Ardeth is the responsible one – steady, dependable, maybe even a little boring.

One day, when she is out for her customary early morning walk, all that changes. Ardeth is abducted by two men, blindfolded, gagged, and taken to a dirty, dank prison cell.

Even more terrifying than the abduction itself is the purpose for her presence there – to sustain with her blood the life of another prisoner. But as she observes the strange grey-haired man who is kept mad with torture and hunger, and the men who force her to do their will, she begins to fear and despise her captors even more than she does the man in the next cell. Slowly, tentatively, she talks to him and tries to reach behind the madness to the man she believes is hidden within. As her relationship with Rozokov develops, the nightly feedings become sensual celebrations. Then, filled with desire for the man, fuelled with a desperate urge for revenge, and lured by the promise of immortality, Ardeth takes the final step.

From the moment the vampire’s slumbering body pulsates to life until the shocking conclusion in a crumbling old mansion, The Night Inside is a thrilling and erotic tale of the thirst for blood and the lust for revenge.

Debut fiction, vampire-style, set in and near Toronto. Graduate student Ardeth Alexander finds herself kidnapped and imprisoned with Dimitri Rosokov, a vampire who's recently awakened from a century's sleep and who is now hungry. Ardeth is his meal, periodically, while their captors film Rosokov killing prostitutes for snuff films. A bond arises between Ardeth and Dimitri, and she explains the modern world to him--he's been asleep a long time! She grows weaker but foresees that she too will be used in a snuff film and, like the dead prostitutes, be taken to the woods, have a stake driven through her heart and her head lopped off. How to survive? She asks Dimitri to do the full job on her and change her into the undead. He agrees, seemingly kills her, and when her ``dead'' body is taken to the woods, the gravedigger--at Dimitri's posthypnotic suggestion--fails to behead or stake Ardeth. She awakens underground, arises as a new being, and, as the two had planned, helps Dimitri escape. In Toronto, they separate and go underground while Ardeth learns the ropes about feeding and Dimitri accustoms himself to city life. But they're intent on vengeance against whoever hired the snuff-film team, and it turns out that that same person is still looking for them. That happens to be a wealthy woman with AIDS who needs Dimitri's blood both to live and to make millions with an AIDS cure--and even more millions by granting immortality... Enjoyable characters but narrowly focused story that doesn't advance the genre. May Baker take a bigger bite next time she feeds. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.