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I had to place my faith in Ms. Cole that this premise of a ghost falling in love with a vampire would work. I just couldn't see how this would go well at all. My faith was rewarded. I loved this book. It starts out so beautiful and even gothic. Neomi Laress is brutally murdered by a spurned lover in her house that she has just bought at a grand party she is throwing to celebrate her retirement from the ballet. She is a beautiful dancer in the early 20th century who has decided to leave her current beau. He stabs her in the heart and kills her. I was like, "Wow." This book already managed to stand out from the previous books, just with the prologue.

Things only get better. We meet Conrad, the long-lost Wroth brother. In the first few books you always hear that there are four brothers alive still (or undead rather), but that Conrad ran off, angry that his brothers had turned him into a vampire. Finally we get to see him, and things aren't pretty. He has become a mercenary/assassin and a vampire killer. He kills by taking their blood, thus having given himself over to Bloodlust. He vows to kill his other brothers for what they have made him. Kill them and anyone they love.

But fortunately, Nikolai, Murdoch, and Sebastian have not given up on their brother. They manage to capture him and have decided to keep him imprisoned until the Bloodlust wears off. Well, they end up keeping him prisoner in the property owned by the deceased Neomi. Unbeknownst to them, her disembodied spirit is still in her beloved home.

Neomi has been alone for so long. There have been people who came and went from her home, leaving her alone again. But none have captivated her like Conrad. Despite his blood-red eyes and his insanity, Neomi is very attracted to the brawny and beautiful vampire. Conrad sees her, which is very unusual, since most of the people who have come through her house cannot.

Thus begins the seduction of Conrad by Neomi. Neomi is a sensualist, she loves beautiful men and their bodies. It's the worst sort of torture to be around a beautiful male like Conrad and not be able to touch him. Conrad is a virgin, never having loved or made love to a woman. He sees the beautiful ghost and believes she is part of his raving insanity. With each person he killed by draining them, he absorbed their memories. This drives a vampire insane. Since Conrad killed the worst of all kinds of demons and vampire, he is violently insane. But somehow the beautiful spirit manages to calm his raving madness. He falls for her very quickly, and determines to find a way for them to be together.

There are problems with this relationship from the start. He wants to feel the same intense desire for her that she feels for him, but because he is a vampire, he cannot feel desire until he is blooded. He feels in his heart that Neomi must be his bride. However, she's a spirit, so she cannot truly 'blood' him. And even if she could 'blood' him, since she's a ghost, they really couldn't get physical anyway.

This story really captivated me. I was so sucked into it, that I remember sitting at dinner trying to eat with one hand and reading the book held in the other. My mother was so curious about my fixation with the book, she ended up reading it herself.

I liked the way Ms. Cole turned the tables, making Conrad the innocent (sexually) virgin, and Neomi the seducer. I loved the glimpses into other aspects of the Immortals After Dark universe, the Lore, inhabited by all sorts of immortal creatures. Ms. Cole has a way of making these books laugh-out loud funny, but also intense and poignant. Conrad is the type of hero that gets under your skin and you feel for him. Although Neomi had some hardened aspects to her that I typically don't care for in a heroine, I ended up loving her as well. I loved her intense feelings for Conrad, almost from the start. They weren't just lust, but a sense of ownership like he was dear to her. I also appreciated her passion for life and culture, and how much she loved her home. She had a good heart and was kind to the good people who stopped through her home. So it was easier than I thought to come to like her as heroine. Even though Conrad was insane and technically a murderer (really just of bad creatures), I loved him from the start. Seeing his madness and his loneliness really opened my heart to him. Despite the outer wrappings, you could see a deep sort of innocence in him that was more than just sexual.

Even with the obvious issues in their relationship, Conrad and Neomi really came across as soulmates, and very early in this book. I really rooted for this unlikely couple to be together, and the way in which this comes to pass was very well done. I must say, my respect for Ms. Cole as an author went up another notch at how she brought Conrad and Neomi's happy ever after together.

Despite my misgivings when I first heard the storyline for this story, I came to love Dark Needs at Night's Edge with the same passion that I loved the prior stories (and possibly more). Conrad was a new favorite hero, at least until Cadeon and Rydstrom came around.