Santino is a major leader of the Children of Darkness. His leadership nearly destroys Marius and twists Armand into a viscious vampire. He appears in The Queen of the Damned (1988), The Vampire Armand (1998), and Blood and Gold (2001).
Santino is turned into a vampire between the years 1346 and 1349, sometime between the outset of the Black Death and its climax. In the year 1349, Santino comes to believe that vampires must be like the Black Death itself: their fate is to be a dreadful, irrational, inexplicable plague upon the human race to make mortals doubt God’s love, mercy, and help. He becomes a member of the coven of the Children of Darkness, an ancient organization that has many covens and has been terrorizing vampires and mortals alike for more than a millennium. Ancient vampires such as Marius, Avicus, and Mael have destroyed many members of the Children of Darkness in Rome up until its fall. Already a part of that Roman coven are vampires like Allesandra, Eugénie, Eleni, Everard, and Benedict—each having been captured and forcibly converted from Rhoshamandes’s coven. Over the next hundred years, strictly adhering to the five Great Laws that govern the Children of Darkness, Santino becomes the leader of the Roman coven, where he hears many tales of the great and powerful Marius. The coven lives in the catacombs beneath Rome. They sleep among the remains of mortal corpses surrounded by skulls and skeletons and numerous other sights that remind them of their utter depravity and their role as a plague upon humanity. The Children of Darkness fully believe that they are inheritors of Satan’s role in God’s plan for the world: they will hurt God’s mortal creatures made in his Image and Likeness until they beg for mercy and miracles, and then they will kill them.
When Marius returns to Rome in the middle of the fifteenth century, after hiding Those Who Must Be Kept in a shrine in the Alps, Santino approaches him and promises to forswear his leadership of the Children of Darkness if only Marius will take Santino’s place as their leader. Marius is disgusted with Santino and with all the Children of Darkness, for Marius adores beauty and art; he cherishes fine clothing and beautiful homes; he loves the world with all of its sensual pleasures, all of which the Children of Darkness renounce, sleeping in squalor, wearing shabby clothes, and feeding off destitute mortals on the streets. Marius could have destroyed Santino, the way he destroyed many Children of Darkness hundreds of years earlier when Rome was an empire. But detesting such violence as much as he detests Santino and the Children of Darkness, Marius rejects him utterly.
When Marius leaves Rome and makes his home in Venice, where he creates a house for young boys to study art and beauty, Santino remains in Rome for a few more years, where he encounters Marius’s former companion Mael, who—feeling abandoned by Marius, Avicus, and Zenobia—is only passing through Rome as he wanders aimlessly around the world. With an invitation similar to that extended to Marius, Santino invites Mael to join him and the Children of Darkness. Mael informs Santino that, alongside Marius, he used to destroy Children of Darkness and scum like Santino and that Santino should leave him alone or else Mael will destroy him, too. Santino implores him urgently, trying to entice him by informing him of Marius’s dwelling in Venice, but Mael will have none of it.
Santino and his coven go to Venice, burn Marius’s palazzo to the ground, burn Marius severely, and kidnap Marius’s new fledgling, Amadeo. They bring Amadeo back to Rome, where Santino and Allesandra teach him the Great Laws. When Amadeo refuses to submit to his new coven life, Santino imprisons and starves him until Amadeo surrenders. In time, Amadeo becomes Santino’s apprentice and such an exemplary member of the coven that Allesandra changes Amadeo’s name to Armand, and Santino sends him to Paris to begin a new coven house of the Children of Darkness. Armand leaves Santino and takes with him Allesandra, Eugénie, Eleni, and Everard.
Not long after, Santino loses faith in the Great Laws and in the religious practices of the Children of Darkness. He abandons his Roman coven and begins living a more opulent lifestyle. He wears beautiful clothing and enjoys the sumptuous delights of the mortal world. During his more lavish travels, Santino encounters Eric, the fledgling of the nearly six-thousand-year-old Maharet. More than four centuries older than Santino, Eric has knowledge, experience, power, and beauty, which immediately attract Santino, and they become fast companions into the twentieth century.
Together they visit Maharet’s compound in Sonoma, California, where the vampire Mael also resides as Maharet’s companion. Santino and Eric discuss many issues with Maharet, sometimes peacefully, sometimes forcefully, but it is always clear that Maharet has the greatest power. Santino and Eric return one final time to Maharet’s Sonoma compound when the rock music of the band the Vampire Lestat awakens the ancient Queen, Akasha, whom Marius has moved to the frozen lands in the Canadian north. She has risen from her throne, killed her six-thousand-year-old husband, King Enkil, and then buried Marius under many tons of ice. Santino accompanies Marius’s fledgling, Pandora, to the frozen north, where they free Marius from his icy tomb and bring him back to Maharet’s compound. Marius wants to destroy Santino for burning his palazzo and capturing Armand, but instead decides to spare his life.
After Maharet’s twin sister, Mekare, destroys Akasha, Marius looks to Maharet and Mekare as the new leaders of the vampire nation. On numerous occasions, Marius seeks to destroy Santino, even when he and Santino cooperate to clean up the evidence left behind when vampires commit suicide by going into the sun after beholding Veronica’s Veil, which Lestat brings back from his journey with Memnoch the Devil. Finally, after long-suffering Maharet refuses to allow Marius to kill Santino, Maharet brings Santino, Marius, and her fledgling Thorne to her new compound in Java, Indonesia. As soon as Marius sees Santino, he again begs Maharet to let him kill Santino, but once more Maharet refuses. Because Marius and Thorne have recently exchanged their life stories, learning that Marius desires revenge against Santino, and Thorne seeks revenge against Maharet for turning him into a vampire and then abandoning him, Thorne takes his revenge for both of them, killing Santino for Marius and doing so under Maharet’s roof. Santino first feels Thorne’s vicious attack with the Mind Gift, blasting him so hard that he falls to his knees, crushing him and twisting him. And as Thorne utterly immolates him until he is nothing more than a blackened scorch mark on the earth, Santino’s final cries are merely “Thorne…Thorne…Thorne!”
For more perspectives on Santino in the Vampire Chronicles, read the Alphabettery entries Akasha, Allesandra, Benedict, Coven, Coven Master, Eleni, Enkil, Eric, Eugénie, Everard, Great Laws, Mael, Maharet, Marius, Mekare, Pandora, Rhoshamandes, and Thorne.