The Darkwing Chronicles: In the Blood by Savannah Russe

Daphne Urban is young, beautiful, and a vampire. Currently, she's a vampire in love, in love with a human man named St. Julien Fitzmaurice, also known as Fitz. So much in love, in fact, that she is thinking about marriage, for the first time in her long life.

But if she's happy and in love, her job, as a secret agent member of the Darkwing Team, is making her very unhappy. Started with five members, two have been lost in previous missions, taking the team down to three: Daphne, gay vampire Cormac, and Benny, a southern belle. And after the heavy mission they just finished, they were promised at least a week off each, but a problem comes up leading to them being called up before they can get more than a bit of rest.

But the situation is dire: terrorists have invaded the slumber party of a girl whose parents have the ear of the US President. They are willing to exchange the girls for a Buffalo. Daphne is confused. They want an animal? Until her boss, J, tells her that the "Buffalo" is the most superior armored vehicle out there, even more so than the Hummer, but it is kept secret because too many people would want one, and the US Military is the only group that gets them. One of these vehicles in the hands of terrorists is unthinkable.

So Daphne and the others are set out on the trail of these terrorists. First, they interview the servants of the house where the party was being held, and the people who owned the house: a judge and his wife. They ask questions, but the judge seems to know more than he is telling. Unfortunately, they can't call him on it... yet. But Cormac decides to call in some backup for them, two other vampires who have the skills they need to make this job work.

The first is a female librarian named Audrey. She is indeed a vampire, but she isn't rich and has a hard time finding blood on her own. The second is a vampire only known as Rogue, a hard-ass biker who Daphne despises on sight. Rogue is pretty contemptuous of her as well, and the two butt heads over and over as they search for clues to the whereabouts of the kidnapped girls.

As proof that they have the girls, the terrorists send an ear belonging to one of the girls, as well as a photo showing the girls and a current newspaper. But who could have snatched them, and where are they keeping them? And what does the judge know that he is unwilling to share? Can Daphne finds happiness with Fitz when her mother tells her to make him a vampire or she'll have Fitz killed? With everything else on her plate, how can Daphne deal with her mother and her love life?

I like this series. Daphne is a smart young urban vampire who knows her own strengths and weaknesses, except for one: She doesn't seem to realize that she can't connect, romantically or sexually, with another male vampire. Every time she's fallen in love with a man and turned him, he turns into a prick and runs off on her. Can she stem this tide with Fitz, or will she be dicked around again?

I found the terrorism plot to be very exciting, and it provided a real challenge to the vampires of Team Darkwing. While there is no one better at combat than a vampire, let's face it, detection isn't really their strong suit. Not most of them, anyway. But the Darkwings have good minds, and know how to use them. It's not usually their cases, but their personal lives that end up causing them the most problems, and Daphne is no exception.

In truth, I did have one problem with this book. At the beginning, Daphne is struggling with bloodlust after having bitten someone and drunk their blood in the last book. She'd assumed she'd conquered this battle long ago, but the headiness of drinking directly from a vein has caused her some serious problems. Like a junkie, she craves more, and the bagged blood she buys from a company just hasn't had the same jazz, But by the middle of the book, the problem seems to go away, because it isn't mentioned again, and it doesn't seem to bother her any more.

Is it because she was drinking blood from Fitz? It didn't seem to be, and the plot thread dropped with an audible thud, but it wasn't until the end of the book when I noticed its absence, that I realized it was just abruptly gone. There wasn't even a mention of it at the end of the book. It's troubling only in that it's sloppy plotting, and I expect better from Savannah Russe.

Would I recommend this book? Hell, yes! But the other books have no dropped plot threads, and its better served by reading the other three books in the series first. So read this series, but read the other books, hopefully in order, first.