Dru Anderson has what her grandmother called “the touch.†(Comes in handy when you’re traveling from town to town with your dad, hunting ghosts, suckers, wulfen, and the occasional zombie.) Then her dad turns up dead—but still walking—and Dru knows she’s next.
Even worse, she’s got two guys hungry for her affections, and they’re not about to let the fiercely independent Dru go it alone. Will Dru discover special she really is before coming face-to-fang with whatever—or whoever— is hunting her?
Sixteen-year-old Dru, raised mostly by her witchy grandmother, lives with her father a hunter of creatures from the Real World. It’s hardly the life of a typical teenager as Dru and her father frequently move around the country, honing their skills while tracking nightmarish creatures.
The nightmare strikes home when Dru is forced to kill her father after he returned from a hunt zombified. Now something strong and deadly has located Dru’s residence, forcing her to flee in the midst of a winter storm without a plan, a vehicle and no one to turn to for help.
Graves, a gangly Goth boy from high school finds Dru at the mall food court and offers her a temporary bolthole, an act of compassion that gets him bite by a werwulf. Like it or not, Dru feels responsible for Graves being so dramatically exposed to Real World but more troubling, clearly something or someone is hunting her and they are getting dangerously close.
When Christophe appears at the house, Dru realizes there is much more to her father’s failed hunt and her own past then she realized. Christophe is a djamphir, product of the union between vampire and human, one of the elite hunters that stalk the night beasties.
Dru has become the focus of a concerted hunt by the same party who destroyed her father and fears what she could become should she be allowed to grow into her full potential. Wits, skill and unexpected assistance will all be needed if Dru is to get herself and Graves out of this alive.
Marketed to young adults, this snappy paranormal tale with plenty of action and a certain amount of teenaged angst will likely appeal to adults as well. The slightly different take on werewolves and vampires coupled with a suitably confused and floundering yet practical heroine make for a good yarn while establishing the groundwork for what promises to be a strong series.