Burnt Offerings (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) Book

When the vampire Master of St Louis starts an affair with the city's most notorious necromancer and executioner of vampires, it was bound to cause comment.Anita Blake finds out, in Burnt Offerings, that there is something even her lover Jean-Claude fears--and that is the Council, the body of old and magically powerful vampires who decide policy and can condemn those who question their authority to a lingering undeath of supernatural torture. Among their servants is Jean-Claude's ex Asher, who blames him for his disfigurement at the hands of the Inquisition and for the death of the woman they both loved--and Asher has a perfect vengeance in mind.As Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series proceeds, Anita becomes ever more powerful in her magics and her capacity to control supernatural entities; she also becomes ever more sexually magnetic, and the books more erotic, as she learns to cope with life as boss of a pack of were-leopards with a taste for SM and snuggling. And as the books proceed, the stakes get higher and higher--Laurell K. Hamilton does a nice line in sheer terror, whether fear of decay or fear of the preternaturally hot fire a pyrokineticist can throw at those who offend him. --Roz KaveneyRead More