The Akasaka Palace reception hall is playing host to a summit welcoming the leaders of Japan's five governmental Areas. The Seitenshi, host and head of Tokyo Area, greets her equivalents from Osaka, Sendai, Hakata, and Hokkaido, and few are willing to lend a sympathetic ear to her attempts at brokering peace. The conference falls into chaos, the Seitenshi shocked that someone leaked out a state secret. The fallout soon brings the two Areas down the path to all-out war with each other--just as the Seitenshi vanishes from the palace!

Rentaro is still a fugitive, running from the law for a murder he didn't commit. He and Hotaru are bruised, bleeding, and barely on speaking terms, but they're equally desperate to uncover the identity of Suibara's killer. However, Police Superintendent Hitsuma hasn't given up on pursuing Rentaro! With Hitsuma's impending marriage to heartbroken Kisara advancing closer and closer, will Rentaro clear his name and rescue her in time? And what does saving Kisara mean for their future?

The near future. A terrible battle against a parasitic virus called "Gastrea" has been fought...and lost. Humanity is cornered and lives in despair. Rentaro and Enju face constant danger in their work as a team of specialists working for the Tendo Civil Security Agency, one of several groups dedicated to fighting Gastrea. Enju is one of the "cursed children," who survived the virus and gained superhuman powers as a result. A crazed top-hat-wearing terrorist is on the loose, but Rentaro's got his hands full just dealing with his fellow civsec agents!

One of the giant Monoliths that protects Tokyo Area from the virally superpowered Gastrea creatures has been destroyed. And right on schedule, the Stage Four Gastrea Aldebaran leads an invading army of the monsters into the city. The elite self-defense forces are sent to face them, and the terrible sounds of war echo across a newly christened battlefield--but soon a tense silence falls. What is it that appears before the eyes of Rentaro and his friends? The near-future thriller of post-apocalyptic survival continues!

The monstrous mutants created by the Gastrea virus have driven humanity to the brink of extinction. The only thing keeping them out of Tokyo are the giant Monoliths that surround the city and the efforts of civil security officers like Rentaro and Enju. But when they accept a strange mission from the Ministry of Defense, they uncover a plot by Kagetane Hiruko that could end in the destruction of humanity!

Watch a video The music came back up and the next group of little girls, slightly older, came out. There was a lot of that in the next hour and change. I liked dance, and it was no reflection on the kids, but my will to live began to seep away on about the fifth group of sequined children... Anita Blake is back in St. Louis and trying to live a normal life-as normal as possible for someone who is a legal vampire executioner and a U. S. Marshal. There are lovers, friends and their children, school programs to attend. In the midst of all the ordinary happiness a vampire from Anita's past reaches out. She was supposed to be dead, killed in an explosion, but the Mother of All Darkness is the first vampire, their dark creator. It's hard to kill a god. This dark goddess has reached out to her here-in St. Louis, home of everyone Anita loves most. The Mother of All Darkness has decided she has to act now or never, to control Anita, and all the vampires in America. The Mother of All Darkness believes that the triumvirate created by master vampire Jean-Claude with Anita and the werewolf Richard Zeeman has enough power for her to regain a body and to immigrate to the New World. But the body she wants to possess is already taken. Anita is about to learn a whole new meaning to sharing her body, one that has nothing to do with the bedroom. And if the Mother of All Darkness can't succeed in taking over Anita's body for herself, she means to see that no one else has the use of it, ever again. Even Belle Morte, not always a friend to Anita, has sent word: "Run if you can..."

With the chaos of the Third Kanto Battle subsiding, peace is finally returning to the Tendo Civil Security Agency, and Rentaro, Kisara, Enju, and Tina are taking full advantage of the quiet. But when an old friend from Rentaro's childhood reappears, their bright days turn suddenly dark--and Rentaro finds himself imprisoned for a senseless murder. He plans a desperate escape, but his enemies keep coming, and they are like nothing he's ever fought before...