The original series follows Kate Daniels, an irreverent and impulsive swordswoman, mercilessly trained from childhood to operate as a lone wolf, cutting down her opponents without hesitation. She supports herself as a for-hire mercenary, living paycheck-to-paycheck in purposeful obscurity in Savannah, GA, until her former guardian is murdered in Atlanta. As she finds herself pulled deeper into the politics of shapeshifters, necromancers, witch covens and law enforcement organizations that hold power in the city, she must come to terms with her upbringing, and that it is ultimately up to her to define her life's purpose.
Main Series Novels
Magic Bites
Kate Daniels's former guardian is murdered; she risks raising her profile in exchange for vengeance. Always a loner, she must cooperate with the Pack, Atlanta's shapeshifters, and the People, an organization dedicated to piloting the dead like drones. Kate discovers that an upir murdered her guardian and has been targeting shapeshifters and the People in order to set off a factional war. His true target is Kate, whose power he needs to reproduce. Together with Curran, the Beast Lord of Atlanta, and Nick, a member of the Order of Merciful Aid, she kills the upir, though they barely escape with their lives. Impressed by her performance, the Order gives her a full-time position, ending Kate's financial insecurity.
Magic Burns
An unusual surge in magic, called a flare, hits; magic runs wild, digging in deeper against technology and enabling gods to walk the earth. Kate is hired by the Pack to investigate a vanishing crossbowman who has stolen their scouting maps. While investigating, she encounters a street kid, Julie, who hires Kate to find her missing mother.
Kate learns that the crossbowman, Bran, is the Hound of the goddess Morrigan, able to disappear into her mist, and is working to prevent an invasion of Atlanta by Bolgor the Shepherd (a fomorian) and Morfran. Kate realizes that Bolgor is after a necklace that Julie had been wearing, which she leaves in the Pack's care. Julie is kidnapped by Bolgor, who arranges to trade the necklace for Julie - Curran doesn't know that the necklace is the key to unleash the invasion. It's a trap, and Curran loses both Julie and the necklace.
Kate, the Pack, Bran, the People, and the witch covens come together to face the invading force. Bran retrieves Julie, who has seen her mother murdered by the fomorians, but he dies on the battlefield. The Atlanta force is victorious, and Kate takes the orphaned Julie in as her ward.
Magic Strikes
Kate's werewolf friend Derek is in a coma after a brutal attack; the healing magic of his shift has not kicked in. Jim, the Pack's security chief, had assigned him a forbidden mission: infiltrate the Midnight Games, an underground gladiatorial tournament. He and his crew are in hiding from Curran because participation is illegal. Kate discovers that Derek was attacked by the Reapers, a team in the games who are rakshasas, shape-shifting demons. They prevent their shift to maintain their cover as humans via stolen shards of the Wolf Diamond, the top prize in the Games. Shards are found in Derek and removed; he recovers.
Recognizing the threat of the stone to the Pack, Kate and Jim's crew form a team to enter the Games. Enraged, Curran finds them and, shocking them all, joins their team. They make it to the last round of the Games against the Reapers, who now have an unbeatable weapon: a sword made by the sorceror Roland, who is secretly Kate's father, given to them by Hugh D'Ambray, Roland's warlord. The sword can only be destroyed by their shared blood, so Kate sacrifices herself on it, realizing that she is revealing her identity to Hugh. Recognizing they've lost, the Reapers escape with Kate, demanding the Wolf Diamond as they go. Curran and the Pack track them, rescuing Kate and recovering the stone. After she recovers, Kate and Curran arrange a dinner date.
Magic Bleeds
Kate is called to investigate a bar fight where a man has been killed, his body infected with a strange, magically-sentient virus. A second attack occurs at the Mercenary Guild. Both victims are shapeshifters, who are normally resistant to infection. Kate must cooperate with the Pack, which is awkward after Curran had stood her up for their dinner date. After a public confrontation, they resolve their differences and sleep together. In the morning, he demands she move in with him at the Pack's keep; she refuses and he leaves, unwilling to compromise.
Kate learns that behind the attacks is Erra: plague-bringer, Roland's sister and therefore her aunt. Erra pursues Kate relentlessly, destroying her apartment, attacking her at work, and then targeting the Pack after figuring out Kate's relationship with Curran; Kate is forbidden from assisting the shapeshifters by her boss, so she resigns. Recognizing that she is now a risk to his people, Kate agrees to return to the Keep with Curran. She admits to him that Roland is her father, which will always make her a target. He tells her that his family was killed by loups, and that he built the Pack and the Keep to keep his future family safe.
United, they prepare for battle with Erra. She is a greater threat to men and shapeshifters; Kate warns Curran to stay out of the fight. Curran jumps in anyway and is stunned by Erra's magic. Kate kills Erra and passes out; she wakes in a cage with Curran, who has gone wild and carried her back to the Keep on foot. He falls into a coma; Kate refuses to leave his side. She is forced to defend her position as consort, killing dozens of shapeshifters when they challenge her. Curran finally wakes, his humanity restored and feeling betrayed that the Pack hadn't supported Kate, his chosen mate.
Magic Slays
Kate - who, now unemployed, has started her own private investigation firm - is hired to investigate the kidnapping of an inventor and the theft of his top-secret work. It comes out that his device removes magic from its surroundings: created in grief after the death of his wife when her dialysis machine failed during a magic wave, it will incidentally kill any magic users in its range. The device has been stolen by a gang of human-supremacists, the Lighthouse Keepers. With a miles-wide range, it is a weapon of mass destruction.
The Keepers have activated their sleeper agents, including an elite Pack combatant; she attacks Kate's office, biting and turning Julie. Her shift fails; she is put in a coma, but is doomed to go loup and will need to be euthanized. The Keepers set off a device in a market, killing everyone. Kate and the shapeshifters capture them as they are transporting the device out, and learn there is a second, larger device that could reach all of Atlanta. With the used device in hand, Kate theorizes she can channel its concentrated magic to power the ritual Roland used to create the first vampire, to cleanse Julie's blood with her own.
In a rare show of cooperation, the entirety of Atlanta's magic community unites to find the Lighthouse Keepers. The volhvs had captured the inventor before the Keepers could; he provides instructions to disarm the device. The coalition tracks down the Keepers and attacks their compound, killing everyone; Kate deactivates the second device. Some days later, Kate performs the ritual on Julie, cleansing her of the shapeshifter virus. This comes with a terrible cost: Julie is now bound to Kate and cannot disobey her.
Magic Rises
Kate, Curran and a team of pack members sail to Gagra, Georgia, in hopes of obtaining panacea, a tightly-controlled treatment to prevent shapeshifters from going loup during childbirth and puberty. There, they stay as guests of the local lord, their objective to guard the werewolf Desandra, who is pregnant with twins by two different fathers belonging to two different powerful European packs; the children's birth order will determine a desirable inheritance, putting Desandra and her babies at risk. However, Kate and Curran's united front is soon torn apart by the European packs' politics, attacks from mysterious winged monsters, and the flattering attentions of the Alaskan pack princess, Lorelei, towards Curran.
The Atlantans discover that the monsters are lamassu, created when genetically-predisposed shapeshifters commit cannibalism. Furthermore, one of Desandra's children is lamassu, meaning the attacks are coming from one of the fathers' packs. Kate is despondent that Curran is responding positively to Lorelei. At the end of her rope, she is goaded into a sword fight with the lord of the castle, who is actually Hugh D'Ambray living undercover as a benevolent local patron. She wins, and takes as her prize a man named Christopher, who has been held captive by Hugh and seemingly tortured, his mind fractured. Curran admits that he knows Lorelei is a trap, but he is going along to keep Kate from becoming a target of the European packs. However, she is still not safe, because Hugh is determined she will stay with him in Georgia.
Hugh threatens them: if Curran leaves without Kate, he will leave with panacea, because Hugh secretly controls the supply. If he does not, Hugh will kill them all. They refuse, and Hugh declares war. The Pack escapes with Desandra, her newborns, and Christopher, though they lose Aunt B, the Alpha of the Hyena Clan, who is murdered by Hugh's goons. Curran nearly kills Hugh, who teleports to escape after his back is broken. Kate and Curran are trapped as the castle burns around them; Curran proposes, and they are saved by a shepherd deity of the mountains. Once on their ship, they discover the casks of panacea that had been loaded when Hugh made his offer have been sabotaged. Sensing Kate's despair, Christopher tells her he can make more, which he does. They return to Atlanta and start producing panacea under Christopher's guidance. Curran proposes to Kate again, with a stone cut from the Wolf Diamond.
Magic Breaks
Hugh appears in Atlanta having framed a shapeshifter for the murder of a Master of the Dead. He tells Kate (operating solo while Curran is away) that she must turn over the perpetrator or the People will declare war. Kate enters vampire territory to determine the truth. They find the scene and discover the murderer is a wolf, Dorie. After narrowly escaping Hugh, her companions grievously injured, Kate decides to hand Dorie over to local law enforcement, sidestepping Hugh's manipulation.
The People and Hugh approach in force. As law enforcement arrives to arrest Dorie, a werewolf douses Kate with a bottle of water, also hitting Ghastek, the local leader of the People. Curran returns just as Hugh speaks a word and Kate and Ghastek are magically transported to a well prison. Hugh lets them starve, only communicating with Kate via her dreams; he wants her to visit Roland with him. She refuses, confident that Curran will find her.
He does - it's been many days; they are in Roland's prison, Mishmar. Christopher led them; he was once Roland's Legatus, the top leader of the People and equivalent to Hugh, before being imprisoned and tortured. Mishmar is mazelike and takes days to navigate. They finally enter a cavern filled with powerful magic, emanating from a large stone room; only Kate manages to approach. She discovers it is the grave of her grandmother, Semiramis, who allows the group to pass. Outside, Hugh is blocking the bridge out, however, they are soon overrun by unpiloted vampires. They escape because Christopher knows how to operate the gate; he and the Rat Alpha, Robert, sacrifice themselves to save the others.
Overnight, Kate is approached by the current Legatus. He has been given the same task as Hugh, to get Kate to meet Roland. He does this by simply asking, saying she can have Christopher and Robert, who had been saved by Roland, if she is able to walk out with them; Kate agrees. At Roland's palace, Kate is challenged to display her strength. She reaches Roland, who is behind a blood ward; she breaks it. Realizing she could kill him now and fulfill the task she had been raised to do, she instead claims her people and leaves.
Back in Atlanta, Roland attacks, attempting to claim the city. Kate rebuffs him, claiming it herself. The next night, Roland walks into their quarters, having enchanted the Keep's security: he will allow Kate to keep Atlanta, but she cannot remain Consort. Curran agrees, shocking her; she assumes this means they are done. Roland leaves and Curran tells her he will step down as Beast Lord.
Magic Shifts
Eduardo, the mate of Curran's foster sister, George, has disappeared. Kate and Curran track Eduardo's car, which has been abandoned; they can see he was magically transported elsewhere. Later, Kate visits the Mercenary Guild and finds a giant attacking. She uses a power word, but it backfires. She notices it is wearing a jewel, but after it's dead, the jewel is gone. She suspects another merc, Lago, of stealing it. The magic falls and suddenly Kate is overcome and passes out. She wakes in the med ward, profoundly disabled from a stroke. The next day she undergoes a risky magic procedure and walks out afterwards under her own power. However, she has blacked out on everything after the giant died, including the missing jewel.
Kate refocuses on the hunt for Eduardo. The magic at the scene of his car and of the giant were both bronze, which indicates a djinn. She talks to Mitchell, a friend who was once a human but is now a ghoul; he can feel the djinn calling, and knows it has a man in a cage - Eduardo. Outside the Casino, she is approached by Lago, who appears younger and is better dressed. The djinn bespells Rowena and Lago kidnaps her. Lago loses control of his car and emerges a giant. Kate sees the jewel pierced to his skin and remembers he took it. She had promised Curran not to use power words after her stroke, so she forms a solid disc from her blood and throws it, nearly beheading the giant. Nick, now the Knight Protector of the Order, arrives at the scene, claiming jurisdiction. He takes the jewel back to the Order, ignoring Kate's warnings.
Roland has cornered her into a family dinner. She prods him for information on the djinn: her magic bounced off the giant because their family had once intermarried with them; and they are vindictive. Later, Christopher explains to Kate that ghouls are lesser forms of djinn. They require an influx of magic to reach the next level of being.
When she returns home, Nick is there - the jewel is gone, stolen by the expert called in to examine it. There is a knock on the door: it is Bahir, Eduardo's estranged father. The djinn, Shakush, has a vendetta against their family; Bahir knows how to capture him. Because of the djinn magic in her blood, Kate can help Mitchell ascend; he swears to fight Shakush in exchange. With her blood and magic, he transforms into an ifrit hound, asking to be renamed. She chooses Adib.
With Adib's help, they find Shakush. After killing his latest victim, they face the challenge of the jewel: the enchanted box that will trap it cannot be moved. Kate and Curran carry the jewel step by step, tempted by the djinn. George takes the last steps, and Eduardo slams the lid of the vessel shut; it disappears, absorbed into the earth.
Magic Binds
Roland kidnaps Saiman, local businessman and demigod, refusing to negotiate for his return. Meanwhile, Kate and Curran are planning their wedding. The Witch Oracle presents her with a vision: if she marries Curran, he will die by Roland's hand. If she doesn't marry Curran, he and their son will die. The pivotal battle can happen in as soon as two weeks. Kate devises a plan: she will obtain a flying horse and return to Mishmar. Curran will rescue Saiman in her absence.
The local sheriff asks for a favor, sending Kate after a missing elderly woman, who is actually a land spirit who feeds on children. Her head, according to the witch oracle, is an anchor, or a crossroads, in Kate's future. They kill the creature; as they are leaving, Kate is challenged by a woman who has been brainwashed by Roland and trained as an assassin: a sahanu. The woman nearly dies, but Kate saves her, breaking Roland's claim.
To learn how to mount a pegasi, she contacts Teddy Jo, who is actually Thanatos. He needs a favor too; the next morning, Christopher senses him approaching and transforms into his suppressed self, a winged avatar of Deimos. Later, Christopher explains his past to Kate; Roland had forced him to absorb Deimos, so he fractured his own mind so that Roland would never benefit from his cruelty.
That night, Kate departs by pegasi for Mishmar. She enters the prison and returns to her grandmother's grave, presenting her with the remains of Erra. Her aunt's spirit agrees to help as long as Kate abandons her claim to Atlanta once Roland is dealt with.
In Atlanta, Curran has rescued Saiman. Kate gets a call that Andrea's newborn is the next anchor. As Kate reaches for the baby, Jezebel, her longtime friend and advisor, attacks; she, too, is sahanu. She misses the baby, instead critically injuring Dali, Jim's Consort. Saiman agrees to reveal the script Roland wrote on Kate in the womb: it is poetry, binding his life to hers. The next day, Kate and Curran receive word that Jim has destroyed Roland's base outside of Atlanta while he was away; it is effectively a declaration of war.
Erra helps them devise a strategy - they need an army. Kate and Christopher, now recognizable as the former Legatus, go to the People to convert them to their side. Ghastek swears himself as Kate's Legatus. Five days later, they prepare to face Roland at the Keep. Without Hugh, Roland defaults to primitive battle tactics; Kate's forces overcome his with ease. He transports himself from the battlefield before Kate can reach him.
Kate and Curran marry as planned. Two weeks later, she learns she is pregnant.
Magic Triumphs
Kate gives birth to a son, Conlan. Roland tries to take him, but Kate, exhausted from birthing, blocks him with her magic. A year later, she is back to work, balancing the demands of parenthood and her role as Guardian of Atlanta.
