The Innocents

For thousands of years, they have roamed the darkness, subsisting on the blood of men - the deraphs - though most people would only know them as vampires.

For thousands of years, they have been hunted, pursued in secret by scores of men who tried and failed to exterminate them.

For thousands of years, the fight has been fair.

Now, a group of North Atlantic hunters have discovered a weakness - the synjuments - a subspecies of humans with whom the deraphs share a mortal link. Far more vulnerable to attack, these innocents pose an imminent threat to the clan of Haydn, a thousand-year-old deraph whose unsettled history with Lilith poses its own pressing complications.

To prevent their extinction, Haydn and her clan are forced to take on a paradoxical assignment, as guardians of those they are inclined by their very natures to seduce and consume.