Hell's Warrior — Jaye Roycraft

Sequel to Half Past Hell. It's been twenty years since the vampire-mortal war known to the undead as "Hell" ended, but peace has been hard for Chicago's doyen, vampire Che Kincade. Beauty and power ensure that blood, sex and money come easily, but compromises and concessions are hard for a half-breed undead warrior whose roots run centuries-deep in violence. Still, he's managed at last to make peace bearable. A secret affair with his mortal counterpart, Chicago Mayor Deborah Dayton, ensures that their weekly meetings at city hall to discuss the vampire problems in the city are accompanied by wonderfully delicious clandestine sex. Cade's house-of-cards peace tumbles when, just hours after their usual tryst, news comes that a high-profile murder has taken place in the city. Soon Cade's very private and ordered world unravels when he's wanted first for rape, then murder. He goes on the run with no help but that given by Red, a blood whore whose bed he's in when the call comes that Chicago PD has a warrant for his arrest. The frame puts a whole new light on the assassination, and Cade tries to make sense of it as he dodges the police, mob assassins, and the vampire hunters known as the Brothers of the Sun. Was the murder politically motivated--a way to return the city to the old days of persecution and hatred, or was it a personal attack on him? There have always been those who would dispose Cade as doyen and force him out of power. Cade suspects that even Thor, his tyro and master-in-training, is among those who would see him destroyed. When the people Cade cares about keep dying, he sheds his peace chief mien to return to that which he knows best--killing...