as usual, after being struck in the heart by a piece of flaming wood from the explosion that destroyed her home. She hears of a group of vampires in Los Angeles that have been brutally murdering people in the area. As she is the oldest vampire now that Yaksha is dead, it is up to her to figure out what is happening. She runs into the group, and quickly kills most of them only to find herself out-matched by the leader, Eddie Fender, whose vampiric abilities rival those of Yaksha himself. Surprised, she flees, and with Ray's help, deduces that Eddie must have found the remains of Yaksha from the explosion and used his blood to change himself. When she attempts a sneak attack to destroy Eddie and his group during the day at their hideout, Eddie instead springs a trap on her. Ray, her lover, then lights his "fuse" and kills himself in an attempt to kill Eddie and save Sita. The explosion forces Eddie to flee, and seriously injures Sita, who is rescued from the flames by Joel, an FBI agent whom she had met earlier in the book. Joel, unable to believe his eyes as Sita heals right there in the car, takes her to a motel, where she admits what she is, but leaves after admonishing him to never seek her out. She finds Yaksha, who had survived the explosion, stored in an ice-cream truck. Vampires hate the cold. Though they can still withstand Antarctic-like temperatures without protection, the cold slows down the healing process and hampers their mental functions. The explosion blew off Yaksha's lower torso as it turns out and Eddie had been keeping him in a weakened state in order to continue feeding off him. Comforting Yaksha as he dies, she does what he asks; she drinks the rest of his blood, increasing her abilities far beyond what they were, hopefully putting her on a par with Eddie. Eddie kidnaps Joel and in retaliation Sita kidnaps his mother, with whom he has a strange relationship, though her tactic fails. Eddie tricks her into releasing his mother, mortally wounds Joel, and then breaks his mother's neck. With Joel bleeding to death, Sita gives in to Eddie, who starts to drain her of her blood. As she eases in and out of consciousness and lucidity, she remembers a song Krishna once played on his flute,