Valentine Hardgrove

Summary
Valentine is the main antagonist of the story. She's a cold and ruthless woman. At the climax of the story, Aaron finds out that Valentine doesn't actually kill the victims of the Rot but is actually doing experiments on them to try to find a cure.

Valentine talks with a warm caringness, calmness, and soothingness in a smooth-talking manner to mask her true intentios and meet her goals.

Physical Appearance
Valentine is a woman who often dresses rather nicely and pretentiously with bright red lipsticks and hair always in the same fashion. As the story goes on though, her skin loses color and she begins to care less and less about her appearance.

Personality and Traits
Valentine appears as just an annoying women and leader of the Sacramento Faction. She greets the main characters than practically forgets about them, however when the characters finish their blood tests she shows a much greater interest in them.

Valentine is a cold and evil woman who tends to show ruthlessness when it comes to getting her goal. She's a intelligent lady when it comes to getting her goal and often tends to be extremely manipulative, often manipulative and cruel when it comes to other people, using things they feel guilty and personal parts about their past to get their goals, such as when she tried to use Jasper Wright and Lena Mercury to try to persuade Scott into turning against Ryker.

Valentine often has no problems with using things like children to manipulate people as long as the child doesn't get harmed. This is primarily shown when she tried to use Jasper Wright as a tool to manipulate Scott Green into turning on Ryker.

When under pressure or stress, Valentine tends to not act violent but more deppressed than anything. After a blood transfusion from Aaron revealed that the Rot attacking her heart was spreading to the rest of her body she broke down crying in Lawrence's arms.

As the story goes on, Valentine seems to care less and less for safety precautions when it comes to her blood transfusions, originally hesitant to do them when Aaron had a unbandaged open wound, but towards the end of the first book having grown desperate to stay alive, disregards any issues that may arise when Aaron's blood for transfusion may be compromised, especially when she believed Aaron was under the influence of alcohol, however this was actually Aaron with the Brain Rot coursing through his blood stream causing him to appear drunk, and this ends up resulting in Valentine's Death and poison.