Touch of evil

Kate Reilly lands in a Denver emergency room after a minor traffic accident, and there Monica Micah attacks her. Monica is the Queen of the city's Thrall, vampire parasites who have fed on humans and used them as hosts for thousands of years.

The Thrall's own rules should protect Kate. She killed a Thrall Queen, which earned her the status of Not Prey, and Monica ought to keep clear of her. Monica ignores that. She wants Kate dead in the end, but first she means to turn her into the thing Kate hates most: a new Thrall Queen.

The rules bind only one side. If Kate hides or runs, she forfeits her Not Prey status, so she has to stay and face the threat in the open. Running is not a serious option anyway. She owns an apartment building and answers to its tenants, and she looks after her brothers.

Her ex-boyfriend and his unpleasant wife are also part of her life, and she has promised to find a missing sixteen-year-old girl before the Thrall do. Tom, a handsome werewolf, has just moved into the apartment below hers.

This is urban fantasy with a vampire-like menace, a werewolf neighbor and a heroine who chooses to fight on her home ground in Denver.