He paints in blood. He can drain your life with a single kiss. Doud is a queer new kind of vampire, the likes of which the world has never seen - and he's desperately lonely. He yearns for a partner to travel through the centuries with - but his relationships always end in destruction.

When an ex-lover returns - a being of bitterness and fury he believed was long dead - Doud, with his friend Shelly in tow, begins a terrifying chase that begins in Los Angeles and ends in a blistering confrontation in the desert's baking wastes.

There, in the heat and the dust, Doud will confront what he is, what he's become - and will get what he's always wanted out of his long, strange life.

"With this impressive debut novel, one of our best short story writers shows why he is tops in his field; this book is fascinating, original, creative and can't be put down till it is finished. I cannot recommend it highly enough." - Greg Herren, author of Murder in the Rue Dolphine and Bourbon Street Blues