She carries a novel virus in her blood. One that rages against a peculiar parasite curled in her heart. Foul-mouthed and bloodthirsty, Elira Dukagjini should have died 500 hundred years ago. Instead she left her Albanian homeland at the start of the 16th century to fight as a stratiote, a mercenary. She wears a gruesome keepsake in a leather pouch around her neck and a telltale scar on her breast. Driven to enforce the primal Blood Law written in human DNA, Elira spends her days running a café and bookstore in a modern Boston suburb while hunting human prey at night. Until one fateful night when