Visited by otherworldly beings from childhood on, Alley, a young punk musician, has experienced a life-altering transformation granting her immortality while forcing her to prey on humans. In this prequel to Revenance and Toxicosis, Alley relives the terrifying encounters and dark, brooding obsessions that led to her Awakening as a vampire.
On the evening of a successful performance, Alley is hit by a car and lapses into a coma. After she is resurrected from her deadly coma by a vampire, becoming one of the undead, Alley remembers the moments shaping her former mortal life and her desires to escape what she considers her imprisoning flesh.
She recalls her childhood visitations with the beautiful, seductive being she calls the Tooth Fairy and the sinister, skeletal entity known as Morbidy Graham, experiences, that from a young age, heighten her feelings of alienation from her peers while inspiring her creativity. When she enters puberty and witnesses a relative's battles against cancer, Alley's fascination with vampires and other supernatural body-transcending creatures intensifies. Repulsed by her changing female body as well as the horrors of human mortality, Alley develops obsessive self-destructive behaviors while also channeling her rage by writing angry poetry and forming a punk rock band with her best friend, Nadia.
Once she reaches adulthood, Alley casts aside her former life, moving away from her Michigan hometown to pursue a new identity in New York City as a punk performer. In NYC, she experiences for the first time a world of transgressive creativity and forms a mutually toxic friendship with the addicted musician Spitz Nevus. Driven to a reckless mania, she takes the fatal plunge that leads to her vampiric transformation and the beginning of her new life, as described in the sequels Revenance and Toxicosis.