Mankind has won the Vampire Conflict. But the cost of victory is that a few humans have been turned into vamps–half human, half vampire. Prejudice against the vamps is high so finding work is near impossible. Plus, the slightest infraction could send any one of them back to the Pens, a place that's as awful as any place on Earth.

Nick is a loner who walks a narrow line between legal and illegal to make ends meet. He begrudgingly shares his home with a woman and her young child and finds work doing odd jobs suited only to vamps. When a chance encounter seems like it could lead into real work, Nick discovers he's in more danger than ever. The military is trying to kidnap him, and something old and hungry has begun to roam the streets preying on his kind. To fight this ancient evil, he has to reach out to his own kind for help–and decide how human he is after all.