When innocent vampires are found murdered, the city's most powerful vampire hires Anita Blake, a vampire hunter known as "The Executioner, " to investigate the crimes.

When vampire hunter Anita Blake agrees to do a favor for Jason, her werewolf lover, she becomes caught up in the middle of a scandal that makes her a pawn in an ancient vampire queen's rise to power.

Anita Blake is worried that her careers as a Federal Marshal who raises the dead and as a vampire executioner may be jeopardized when she realizes that she may be pregnant--and the father could be a vampire, a werewolf, or someone else entirely.