"Guilty Pleasures" by Laurell K. Hamilton as compared toBuffy the Vampire Slayer Anita Blake in an animator. She raises the dead, and occasionally puts them back. Vampire slaying is something she does on the side. In the world of Guilty Pleasures, vampires are no big secret. Their existence is well-known, and the United States is one of few countries in which vampirism is legal. A recent attraction in St. Louis is a place called the District, a vampire hotspot which attracts tourists from all over. The District is home to Guilty Pleasures, the world's only vampire strip club. In a world in which vampires do not have to hide, a wide array of mixed feelings exist. The book op ...view middle of the document...
The performance ends with a vampire coming out and, violently, drinking from Phillip.Anita's disturbed by what she's seen, and relieved when she gets paged by the police for an incident at the cemetery involving ghouls which have ripped apart a body in a normally ghoulless cemetery. When she's done there, she goes back to Guilty Pleasures to pick up Catherine and Monica, since she was their designated driver for the night. The vampire on the stage when Anita goes in to get them is Aubrey, who tries to enthrall Anita and almost succeeds. Aubrey hates it when fight him. He attacks Anita in the middle of the club and Jean-Claude has to step in to prevent them from killing each other. Jean-Claude ushers them offstage, revealing that the bachelorette party was just a ploy to get Anita where they could talk to her - Monica was employed the vampires, and Catherine was leverage. Since Catherine had been enthralled by Aubrey, an irrevocable link had been created between them. They tell Anita that if she doesn't do as they say, Catherine will die. Anita follows the vampires to an old hotel, further provoking Aubrey as she goes. Eventually, she pushes him a little too far and he knocks her unconscious. When she wakes, she is nauseous and concussed. Jean-Claude does something to "help" her - he shares his life force with her, taking the first steps to make her a human servant. This gives Anita immunity to a vampire's gaze, and makes it harder for them to play mind tricks on her. Anita is kept in a dungeon in Nikolaos's beneath a macabre carnival called the Circus of the Damned, waiting for Nikolaos, the Master of the City, to summon her. While down there, Nikolaos sends wererats to frighten Anita before their meeting, but the Rat King intervenes, having forbidden his people to do Nikolaos's bidding. Eventually, Jean-Claude fetches Anita for Nikolaos. Nikolaos was only twelve or thirteen when she died, but that was more than a thousand years ago. After frightening Anita into silence (a rare state for her), she tells that their have been six more vampire murders of which the police don't know about. The police only know of four. Nikolaos has a witness to one of the murders - a man who was killed by whatever killed the vampire, and brought back by an animator working for Nikolaos named Zachary. Anita's sure she's seen Zachary before but doesn't know where. Zachary tries to coax the zombie witness into speaking, but he presses too hard and the zombie's mind breaks. Nickolaos, incensed, orders them to leave. Out of nowhere, Jean-Claude challenges Nickolaos, and Zachary and Anita flee before they get caught in the crossfire. As they're leaving, Anita has a sudden image of Jean-Claude's eyes glowing blue. Anita's eyes suddenly flare blue as well, according to Zachary. She redoubles her efforts to get away, suddenly certain that if Nikolaos saw her now, she would kill her. Upstairs in the Circus she meets Valentine, a vampire she thought she...
