QUESTION 1: At the end of Hunt the Moon when Cassie reaches out while disembodied and yelps because something “bit” her hand what was that? What caused the pain, Pritkin or the fae spirit or something else? I’ve read it over and asked my girlfriend who also loves the series and we can’t figure it out.

Yes, it was Morrigan, trying to stop her from finding her body again.

QUESTION 2: I was just wondering…Does Dory use Basarab as her last name? I know the series is known as Dorina Basarab but does she actually use Mircea’s last name? I mean she obviously has some issues with him and with thinking she was illegitimate for so long. If so does she do it to be a smartass?

Yes, Dory goes by Basarab, at least these days. Originally, she didn’t go by anything, because before Napoleon went on his rampage through Europe, most people didn’t have last names. Very few travelled, and a peasant in a village he never left didn’t need a surname (everybody knew who “old Tom” was). At most, you might be Tom, son of William, if more than one person had your given name.

But because of Napoleon’s OCD, and because industrialization was making people more mobile, last names became important. Most people took that of their village or province, or of their profession (Baker, Miller, Carter). But Dory didn’t have a home village, never having been able to settle anywhere for long, and her profession was vampire killer. So what are you going to do with that?

She finally went with her family name because a) her mother hadn’t had a last name, b) it’s a fairly common name in Romania, and c) she thought it was funny to go around killing vampires when named after their first family, so to speak.

QUESTION 3: Speaking of last names, what is Louis-Caesar’s?

That was actually a difficult question for him. His father was the Duke of Buckingham, whose family name was Villiers. But Buckingham was a playboy who never even realized he’d sired a son in that little fling with Anne of Austria, and probably wouldn’t have cared if he had. And for her part, Anne found it politically expedient to hide the child born on the wrong side of the blanket and to forget about him as soon as possible. So taking either of their names was distasteful.

But de Bourbon, the last name of the then royal line of France, wasn’t much better. Louis-Cesare wasn’t actually related to them, since he’d been the queen’s bastard. And his half-brother had had him imprisoned for having the bad taste to exist, which doesn’t give a person warm fuzzy feelings.

But there was more to consider than hurt feelings when choosing a name, because vampire society is not immune to celebrity-worship. Mircea, for example, isn’t the senate’s chief diplomat simply because of his ability. It’s a factor, but just as important is the glittering allure of his name, which sometimes gets him concessions no one else would have been offered. Anyway, that’s a long way of saying that Louis-Cesare goes by de Bourbon.

QUESTION 4: Do vampires who are not emancipated from their masters use their sires’ last name once they turn? I mean does Marco use Basarab?

Many new vampires do adopt their sire’s name, although that was not true in Marco’s case. He was one of the vamps he told Cassie about, who end up being traded around like playing cards. And they are rarely as starry-eyed about their masters as those who are always part of one family line. Nonetheless, he did adopt a few of his masters’ names in the beginning, but after the third trade he said screw it and took Carales (after the town in Italy where he once lived). And after using it for hundreds of years, he saw no need to change it once he came into Mircea’s service.

QUESTION 5: I have a question about Mircea and when he was a baby vamp. Most baby vamps are pretty useless and weak. I know Mircea was ‘cursed’ but how did he manage to function post turn? How did he know what to do? How did he avoid any masters? And how did he do all of that with Dory and without her remembering any of it??

You’ll have some of these questions answered in Masks.

QUESTION 6: Alright, I know it’s a little early, but is there any chance we could get a little information about Masks? Nothing too spoilerific, just something other than it’s from Mircea’s POV.

It involves Mircea and Cassie returning to sixteenth century Venice. They are there to obtain blackmail material on a senator who is opposing the alliance (of vampire senates for the war). But, as always, things do not go quite as planned.:-)