In 1925 Gotham, New Jersey, former police officer turned private investigator Jackson Sergeivich Petrov must begin again after being convicted the prior year and recently pardoned for crimes he did not commit. Taking his first case from local retired railroad vice-president Joshua Sloane to shadow the old man's estranged younger wife, seeming like possible marital infidelity, Jack discovers something more sinister scratching the surface. Aided by intrepid social worker Annie Mertz, former Gotham Police Department mentor turned retired book dealer Willy Krauss, and former fellow patrolman promoted to detective Dennis Dooley, Jack shadows Helena Egeresi Sloane and soon discovers she is not merely a young femme fatale/golddigger. The lady is in fact a 331-year-old vampire who claims kinship with an infamous biological grandmother, the 17th Century Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory-Nadasy, continuing that aristocrat's vile tradition of drinking and bathing in human blood to maintain an extended lifespan and the bloom of youth. Helena practices kidnapping and murder to maintain her lifespan in the 20th Century, these acts concealed by Gotham's crime rate. Only hereditary Russian-American vampire hunter Jack Petrov can halt this woman's murderous blood legacy.