“Hey... you,” the man looked at him again. -Are you fighting? Right? — his lips pursed, his eyes studied Nick’s chest and arms. -...You look like a fighter. Honestly, of all the vampires I've seen here, you're the first one that looks like it's worth the entry fee. In response to Nick's even look, the man shrugged. “A hundred thousand for the fight.” Double that if you win.”

Nick finds himself drawn into the world of underground boxing - first to support a friend, then to help one of the homicide detectives in his precinct solve a case. Things quickly take a personal turn, and then... Nick himself is already involved in the game and comes to the attention of killers who seem to be targeting vampires - first they drain all the blood and poison from them, then they remove their hearts and throw them outside the dome. Formally, Nick is still suspended from work, but this is not prevents him from falling into the crosshairs of the biggest bigwigs in the criminal underworld who run New York's Secure Zone. And this does not at all reassure his new girlfriend, who is now convinced that he wants to bring about his own death or, at a minimum, will do anything that anything to avoid what's going on between the two of them.