His eyes are as dark as the depths of space. His smile sheds rainbows. And, his coldness melts when he falls in love. He is John Quinn.

A summary of The Chosen.
And then he told her that he’d chosen her...

A very detailed summary of The Chosen follows.

When Rashel Jordan was five years old, she saw her mother being killed by a vampire whose eyes shone like gold. Rashel managed to escape from the handsome vampire but since then, she decided to learn how to fight, to protect herself and to seek revenge for her mother’s death. Now, this tough seventeen-year-old, black-haired, green-eyed beauty has become a much feared vampire hunter, known to Night People only by her alias, The Cat.

One night whilst on a stakeout to investigate a rumour about teenage girls being kidnapped and stashed in a warehouse at Mission Hill (in Boston), Rashel helps to capture a dark-haired vampire. As she clubs the vampire on the head, he cries out in pain and falls unconscious. The undignified attack bothers Rashel and when she learns that the other vampire hunters plan to torture this vampire, she decides to stake him, to give him a swift death. Just as Rashel prepares to kill the vampire, he opens his eyes. Rashel pauses in hesitance but he demands she go through with the kill.

Annoyed that a vampire is giving her orders, Rashel instead, allows herself to converse with him. Oddly, she finds him charming but when she learns that he is Quinn – a vampire considered by vampire hunters to be the most dangerous made vampire in all the Night World because he is as cold as ice, holds humans in utter contempt, and wants them wiped out of the Night World for good – Rashel asks if he wanted to become a vampire. Surprised that he is confiding in a human, Quinn tells his veiled capturer that he wanted to kill Hunter Redfern, the influential lamia who’d made him a vampire because he’d fallen in love with, and wanted to marry, Dove Redfern, Hunter’s youngest daughter.

But when Rashel persists in knowing why Quinn and Dove were never married, Quinn savagely announces that when he breaks free of his cuffs, he will rip out her throat. Alarm courses through Rashel but she cannot deny the sympathy she feels for Quinn. So, Rashel decides to let him go. But Quinn wants to fight and Rashel accepts his challenge.

Quinn breaks free of his restraints; he gets up to face Rashel. They begin to fight but the instant they make skin-to-skin contact, their minds explode. They are both telepathically plunged into each other’s minds. Rashel loses all sense of the outside world. She feels Quinn inside her mind, seeing her vulnerability. Rashel tries to resist him at first but soon he is holding her scarf, ready to unwrap it and reveal her face. Rashel wants him to see her but before he can finish, the other vampire hunters Rashel was on the stakeout with, confront them. The hunters are surprised to see Rashel ‘fooling around’ with a vampire. They are even more unimpressed when Rashel helps Quinn to escape.

Later that night, feeling increasingly shameful for letting Quinn get away, Rashel wonders how many humans will suffer because of her actions. This is when she decides to try to put a stop to the recent kidnappings. Rashel also decides that the next time she meets Quinn, she will have to kill him, to keep her honour as a vampire hunter. Two nights later, Rashel is on another stakeout at Mission Hill – by herself – when she saves a petite girl from being kidnapped by vampires. From Daphne Childs, Rashel learns that girls visiting an underground club called The Crypt get ‘chosen’ by Quinn and are invited for a more intimate meeting with him only to disappear.

Rashel believes Quinn is secretly helping to revive the slave trade, a practice illegalised by the Night World Council. Rashel formulates a plan to get herself ‘chosen’, thinking she will be taken to a vampire enclave, where she will have the opportunity to get rid of an entire island of vampires. She seeks help from other hunters but her credibility has plummeted since word has got around that she is a ‘vampire sympathiser’. Daphne offers to help Rashel though, and both girls visit The Crypt to get ‘chosen’. Inside the club, Rashel spots Quinn. Watching him makes her heart beat faster and when he laughs, she feels a pang in her chest. Rashel sets towards him, ready to seduce him, to get herself ‘chosen’.

Rashel recites a poem about fire to capture Quinn’s attention. She finds seducing him is easy and quite enjoyable. Though Rashel notices he seems aloof, she gets herself ‘chosen’, as does Daphne. Quinn arranges to meet the girls the next night. The next night, in a deserted parking lot, Rashel realises the full extent of Quinn’s telepathic abilities, when he stuns her and Daphne into deep sleep. As Rashel comes to, she is aware of being carried into a warehouse. Two other captives occupy the warehouse, along with Rashel and Daphne.

Later, the girls are shipped to an island, where they are escorted into a cellar full of other imprisoned human girls. Fayth, a Circle Daybreaker, informs Rashel they will be used as food for a blood feast to be held for seven of the most powerful made-vampires, to celebrate the anniversary of the first made-vampire. The feast is to occur the next night, the night of the spring equinox, when, thousands of years ago, the first made-vampire was created.

With the help of Daphne and Fayth, Rashel plans a prison break, to take place on the night of the feast. The escape led by Rashel is carefully carried out and almost succeeds until a werewolf has Rashel pinned down. The wolf lunges at Rashel’s throat but the bite never comes. Rashel gets up to discover a silver knife in its back. Standing above the dead heap is Quinn. Pretending to be thankful for saving her life, Rashel holds out a hand to him. Quinn automatically reaches for it but Rashel, instead, grabs his wrist and pulls him into a fight.

She ends up straddling him with a wooden knife at his throat. But she cannot bring herself to kill him. With Daphne and the other girls watching them curiously, Rashel tries to explain to Quinn – and herself – why she has to execute him. Not for revenge but for all the humans who have suffered at his hands. Rashel closes her eyes to gather the determination to kill him, when Quinn tells her to go ahead and do it, because she should have done it the first time they met. Rashel’s eyes fly open.

Quinn continues, telling her he should have realised she was the vampire hunter he’d met at Mission Hill. And now that he has seen her face, he can’t stand the sight of himself in her eyes. Rashel still can’t bring herself to kill him and when Quinn admonishes her to do it already, she knocks him unconscious with her knife. Confused about her feelings for Quinn but not wanting to deal with it, Rashel pleads for Daphne to leave the island without her. Daphne tries to make Rashel comprehend that she can’t possibly kill all the vampires attending the feast without getting killed herself! Rashel says getting the ‘client’, the scum who organised the blood feast, will be enough.

Daphne and the girls leave the island on the last functional boats while Rashel heads towards the cottage where the feast is to take place. She is spying on the vampire guests, waiting for the ‘client’ to arrive, when Quinn grabs her from behind. Rashel struggles but he warns her he will stun her if she fights. Closing her in a room, Rashel turns to face him.

Quinn gives her one of his unnerving smiles and announces that he is going to make her a vampire. Dumbfounded, Rashel refuses to allow him to do this, which makes Quinn blurt out he is doing this because he loves her! He has loved her since the first night they met. He’s never met a human as brave as she, with strength and compassion. Rashel knows she loves him too, that’s become excruciatingly clear to her now, but she still refuses to become a vampire.

Perturbed by her resolve, Quinn is adamant not to let her die, so he bites her and begins to take her blood. And just like before, they are telepathically plunged into each other’s minds. Only this time, they each let the other explore their dark pasts. Rashel discovers that Dove, the girl Quinn loved when he’d been human, was killed by his father. Quinn’s hatred for humans becomes understandable to Rashel now, just as Quinn learns of Rashel’s mother’s death at the hands of a vampire. Quinn now understands why Rashel refuses to become a vampire. And, just as suddenly as he bit her, he tells her he loves her just the way she is.

The two remain preoccupied in telepathically exchanging their love when Rashel suddenly remembers why she was brought to the island. She tells Quinn the blood feast must be stopped and prevented from happening again in the future. Quinn thinks he can persuade the guests to leave the island quietly and refuse future invitations to blood feasts by threatening to tell Hunter Redfern, his adopted father, who could then report the illegal practice. Their plan almost works until the ‘client’ – Hunter – arrives. Quinn is shocked; his adopted father represented to him a man of great honour. He was just now finding out it was all a lie. But Rashel’s fury horrifies him even more.

Rashel recognises Hunter as the man who killed her mother. His eyes still shone gold, like an animal’s. Rashel confronts the old man, who tells Quinn to step away from the human girl. Quinn tells his ‘father’ that Rashel is his soulmate and they are leaving together. Taken aback, Hunter recovers quickly. He orders the vampires to attack the couple. Rashel braces herself for the biggest fight of her life. But just as the fight begins, despite the anarchy, she smells gas. And standing before her is Nyala, one of the girls Rashel helped to escape off the island, holding a burning rag. Nyala tells Rashel by burning the cottage, they can kill all the vampires at once. She throws the burning rag at Hunter’s feet. The house is immediately ablaze.

Despite the chaos, Quinn is able to lead Rashel outside the cottage but Nyala remains trapped inside. Rashel sets towards the burning house to rescue Nyala but Quinn stops her and goes instead. Once outside, Quinn directs them to the wharf where he steals Hunter’s yacht and sails them away from the blazing island. In the cockpit of the yacht, Rashel comments on how much Quinn has changed by saving Nyala for her. The couple embrace, lost in thought. Rashel wonders where a reformed vampire and a burned-out vampire hunter go when they fall in love. She is bemused when she realises they belong with Circle Daybreak.

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