Maladict: Suave, sexy and off "the b-vord" for the last two years. (Illustration by Tealin)

Our last vampire is fighting an undeniable thirst. The kind of thirst that leads to hallucinations when left unquenched. And they’re not just ordinary hallucinations. They’re flashsides — someone else’s flashbacks. Maladict, from Terry Pratchett’s “Monstrous Regiment,”  is a lance corporal in Borogravian infantry, but his flashsides are full of jungles, Charlie and the whopwhopwhop of helicopters.

He’s not thirsty for blood, though. As a Black Ribboner — a member of the Uberwald League of Temperance — Maladict has forsworn blood and taken up coffee. The Uberwald League of Temperance is like the Discworld’s Alcoholics Anonymous, and many of its other members have similarly transferred their addiction to blood to something less monstrous. Some of them, including Otto Chriek, iconographer for the Ankh-Morpork Times, appear in more Discworld books than Maladict does.

So what’s so awesome about Maladict that he winds up in the top spot above his beribboned compatriots? He has the smooth elegance of the classic vampire. He’s educated and superbly dressed, and he can subtly persuade people to do what he wants. And he hasn’t given up violence just because he’s given up blood. When Maladict and some of the other new recruits overpower some enemy soldiers, here’s what Maladict has to say:

Good evening, gentlemen! Please pay attention. I am a reformed vampire, which is to say, I am a bundle of suppressed instincts held together with spit and coffee. It would be wrong to say that violent, tearing carnage does not come easily to me. It’s not tearing your throats out that doesn’t come easily to me. Please don’t make it any harder.

But one thing about Maladict really sets him apart from Otto — and from the other vampires on this list.

It’s also a major spoiler.

Are you ready?

Maladict is a woman. She winds up joining the Borogravian army at the same time as Polly, the book’s protagonist. Polly has disguised herself as a boy to try to find her brother, and during the first third of the book, she discovers that many of the other enlisted men are really enlisted women. Maladict — aka Maladicta — keeps up appearances as a man until the very end, although before that point some of the women wonder.

This is not at all to suggest that one sex is better than the other. When it comes to vampire characters, though, the men often outnumber the women.  And there are some abstinent women vampires — Alice and Rosalie from “Twilight,” Jessica of “True Blood” — but they’re overshadowed by their male counterparts. So in that sense, Maladict stands alone.

Previously:
No. 5 — Angel and Edward Cullen (Tie)
No. 4 — Bill Compton
No. 3 — The Citizens of Purgatory
No. 2 — Blade

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