The Dhampir: Book One
An ancient power reawakens. The undead gather for war.
And humanities only hope struggles to hold on to her humanity.
Synopsis
FBI Special Agent Nicole Lange is closing in on an elusive international arms dealer. Harlon Cord is the exact kind of criminal monster Nikki has spent her career fighting. But Cord now possesses something far worse than illegal weapons: an ancient, debased magic that Nikki’s ancestors fought generations ago.
The Unholy Grail of Judas Iscariot has reappeared. And with it a hidden world of true monsters and dark necromantic magic.
The Grail bends every vampire to its will and corrupts every human to its hunger. If Cord uses it, he will rise as emperor of the undead, and their armies will march across the Earth, ushering in the apocalypse and the end to humankind.
To stop this, Nikki must awaken her unrecognized dhampir heritage — awaken as half-human and half-vampire the only being capable of destroying the Grail. Now she walks a knife’s edge between two worlds, and each time her power grows, so does her terrifying hunger. And the temptation to take the Grail’s power for herself.
The fate of the living will depend on a balance of the sacred, the dead, and the cursed.
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The Fresh and the Familiar
Authors are obligated to express timeless ideas with some fresh spice or spin. Ideas can’t be stock-colored Lego blocks, perfect and uniform and snapping together with no stress, strain, or gaps in the characters’ lives. You assemble erratic pieces glued together in irregular ways, Kinstugi style.
Nikki’s a ‘Chosen One,’ for instance. An idea we all know. But Nikki doesn’t embrace her destiny because she’s noble. She embraces it because she’s desperate. Justice, revenge, fear of failure, and duty become so tightly entwined that even she struggles to separate them. In fact, any notion of world-saving destiny kind’a blurs into the fine-print for her. At least until she’s able to shoulder it. This strikes me as a more adult kind of step into the new, hidden world.
To save the world, she must use her powers and let them grow. Every evolution of this increases the addiction and temptation by which she loses herself. Whispering into her ear is a devil on her shoulder (rather literally sharing her body). Her duality makes her another foe, but one she cannot survive without.
Nikki’s enemies actually have valid worldviews. They’re not just monsters to be slain, they want objectives she herself wants — protecting humanity, preserving order, preventing our world’s destruction — but they disagree on the methods used, qualities emphasized, and givens built-upon. Making the ‘right choice’, though, comes as much from recognizing the damage of not doing Option A as it does from accepting the flowery grandeur of doing Option B. Yet Option B might work better.
World-building in the book also nuances familiar territory. Vampires here are terrifying less because they’re strong than because they quietly bend human judgment. For Nikki, an FBI agent who values evidence, reason, and free will, that power is as terrible as teeth and claws. Terrible, yet attractive. Meanwhile, holiness and faith in God are crucial weapons, yet prophecy that hems in choice and free will becomes terrible in its own way.
Content Notes
The Curse of the Unholy Grail is an urban fantasy novel featuring an FBI agent protagonist swept up in a hidden world of vampires, warlocks, and the children of fallen angels. In this supernatural thriller of ancient prophecies and arcane relics, our federal agent learns she has a dormant bloodline that, if she accepts the price, will make her a bridge between worlds — mortal and vampire — she will become a dhampir.
The story explores many themes of identity, inner duality, obligation versus meaning, justice versus vengeance, power versus corruption. It looks at its characters as a light-and-dark / yin-and-yang whole, a gestalt greater than either alone … as long as balance is maintained. Free-will, embracing imperfection, goodness vs. orthodoxy, … there’s grown-up issues involved in deciding how far to go to stop the Apocalypse!
While there is a low-key, slow-burn romance, the book would not be considered “romantasy”. We concentrate on how a morally-gray, bad-ass heroine comes to grips with being a chosen-one gifted with vampiric powers and an apocalyptic deadline. “Dark fantasy” might describe this better, as there is violence and temptation. Although you will also find some humor and some speculative ideas on religious mythology.
The book was not made from generative AI. While I feel AI has its uses, crafting a story is personal, crafting a prompt is not.
Reviews
Coming soon.
For a flavor, see Sample Chapters and Cut Scenes.
About the Author
(photo by Dunraven Photography)
N.L. Bryar is a mechanical engineer turned software developer turned fiction author. He sometimes jokes that this career progression reflects a lifelong search for truth in increasingly abstract forms. More honestly, it reflects an enduring love of imagination, language, and stories that speculate about ideas and grapple with choices.
Originally from Seattle, he now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he applies significantly more sunscreen and wears fewer dark color shirts.
The ‘Curse of the Unholy Grail’ is his debut novel. It grew from an interest in questions of identity, power, obligation, and what happens when our ambitions begin to reshape us. Wrapped in vampires, prophecies, and supernatural intrigue, the story ultimately asks how much of ourselves we can surrender before we become someone else.
Copyright © 2026 — N.L. Bryar
Reviewers, bloggers, podcasters, and journalists are welcome to quote brief excerpts from The Curse of the Unholy Grail when discussing or reviewing the book. If you need higher-resolution cover art, author photos, longer excerpts, or interview materials, please contact me.
