"The music started again, and the next group of girls came out, this time older. And for the next hour or so everything continued in the same spirit. The older girls, sometimes the same ones, performed ballet, jazz and modern dances, and even a couple I love dancing, and it has nothing to do with children, but my patience began to wear out around the fifth group of glitter-covered kids."    Anita Blake is back in St. Louis and trying to live a normal life, as normal as can be for someone who is an official vampire slayer and a US Marshal. Lovers, friends, their children, school classes to attend. And in the midst of this human happiness, the vampire from the past reaches out to Anita. She should be dead, should have died in the explosion, but the Mother of All Darkness is the first vampire on Earth, the creator of all vampires. It's hard to kill a god. This dark goddess found her here in St. Louis, home of all those whom Anita loves most in the world. The Mother of All Darkness decided that it was now or never to act, that it was time to take control of Anita and all the vampires in America.    The Mother of All Darkness believes that the triumvirate created by vampire master Jean-Claude with Anita and werewolf Richard Zeeman has enough power to help her find a new body to emigrate to the New World. But the body she dreams of taking possession of is already taken. And Anita is about to learn a whole new meaning of sharing her own body, a meaning that has nothing to do with the bedroom. And if the Mother of All Darkness cannot take possession of Anita's body herself, she will not allow anyone else to take possession of it. Even Belle Morte, Beautiful Death, who was not always Anita's friend, sends a message:   "Run if you can..."