On the night of her eighteenth birthday, during a violent Auckland storm, Natalie receives an impossible visitor. A man named Lucien appears outside her fourth-storey apartment window – ancient, calm, terrifying, and somehow familiar. Natalie quickly discovers he is a vampire, and even more disturbingly, that he has been quietly watching over her for years. Lucien reveals that he has monitored vulnerable children in group homes for decades, drawn particularly to those surviving abuse, neglect, and loneliness. Natalie’s isolation, resilience, and refusal to completely break captured his attention long ago. Their connection becomes immediate, dangerous, and deeply intimate. That same night, Natalie chooses immortality. Lucien transforms her into a vampire, binding her forever to a hidden world existing beneath ordinary New Zealand life. But becoming immortal is nothing like the romantic fantasy Natalie once imagined. The transformation brings overwhelming hunger, heightened senses, emotional intensity, and the terrifying realisation that she can no longer safely exist among humans. To survive, Natalie must disappear.
