Book 1 - Gulity Pleasures

[Yoko]

"The sign was a wonderful swirling neon the color of heart blood.
The symbolism was not lost on me."

(Guilty Pleasures, page 11, paragraph 5)

Reference
A vampire strip club, located in the District
* owned by Jean-Claude

[Yoko]

Chapter
Summary
1 Willie McCoy tries to hire Anita Blake for the vampire murders. She refuses.
2 Coming back from an animating job, Anita tries to get some sleep but is awakened by a call from Monica Vespucci. She's invited to a bachelorette party for Catherine Masion on Friday night. Anita agrees to go.
3 It turns out the party is only the three women. They go to Guilty Pleasures, a vampire strip club, and meet with Jean-Claude, who trades quips with Anita.
4 They get a table. First, Phillip comes out to dance, then Robert. Robert ends up feeding on Phillip. Afterwards, Robert tried to grab Anita, but she is able to evade him, thus showing the other vampires that their slight mind tricks do not work on her as they do other humans. Jean-Claude proves he can still roll her mind, though, but her beeper goes off and she snaps out of the 'spell.'
5 The beep was from Dolph to investigate a crime scene. She goes to a cemetery to examine the bodies and speculates that it is a ghoul attack.
6 Anita returns to GP to find Catherine in a deep trance by Aubrey. He later gets Anita on stage and attacks her, but Jean-Claude intervenes and makes it appear as if it is part of his show. They all retire to 'talk.'
7 Catherine is under Aubrey's spell, and he helps to her forget everything after Anita's prompting. Anita, in turn, agrees to help the vampires find the murderer and to meet the Master of the City, Nikolaos. She also promises to kill Monica if Catherine ends up getting hurt because of her deception.
8 Catherine is sent home by cab and Jean-Claude walks Anita to the location. At one point, he has to kiss her in order to stave off suspicions from the police, but he ends up being just as shaken by the experience as she is. They enter a building and meet with Aubrey and another vampire who claims to be Nikolaos, but in actuality is Theresa, a lesser vampire. When Anita continues to smart mouth, she is struck by Aubrey and knocked unconscious.
9 Anita awakens in pain, but alive. The other vampires are scornful of Jean-Claude. In order to help Anita, he shared his life force with her. Essentially, the first vampire mark. Theresa is certain that Nikolaos will kill them both because of it. Anita is left in the dungeon-like room and locked inside it.
10 Anita tries to escape, but the door remains closed. She is attacked by a group of wererats, sent by Nikolaos to frighten her. While they did, Anita did not allow that to weaken her resolve and managed to stand up to them. She was aided to a degree by the wererat king. But he only did it to defy Nikolaos, who's animal to call is the rat. After they leave, the vampire return to bring her to Nikolaos.
11 Nikolaos tests Anita's abilities to be immune to her powers. Anita senses this is an old vampire and is nearly taken in by her mind tricks when she fends them off. But not without great cost to her resolve.
12 Nikolaos instructs her own animator, Zachary, to bring in a man believed to have information about the vampire killings. He's dead, but Zachary animated him. Zachary ends up questioning him too roughly and he destroys his mind. Nikolaos is infuriated, and begins to fly, ready to kill them all in her anger. Jean-Claude holds her off while Anita and Zachary escape.
13 While escaping, though, Anita finds herself being stalked by a pair of blue flames which slip into her own eyes. She can hear Jean-Claude's voice saying, "Forgive me," as this happens. Running upstairs, they bump into one of Nikolaos' human bodyguards, Winter. He leads them up and out of the underground lair.
14 It turns out that they were under the Circus of the Damned all along. Upstairs they meet up with an old enemy of Anita, Valentine. Threats are exchanged, but they are allowed to leave.
15 Anita arrives home only to discover that Edward has entered her apartment. He wants the name of the Master of the City so that he can kill him/her. Anita feigns ignorance at first, then agrees to get him information if he will give her a few days. He agrees.
16 Jean-Claude visits Anita in her dreams and she dreams of blood. The doorbell awakens her and she gets up, having forgotten she was supposed to work out with Ronnie. The two friends chat, and Anita realizes that she is hungry. An odd occurrence, as she tends to only have coffee first thing. She gets Ronnie to sniff around HAV and see if anything might point to the organization for murder.
17 Anita goes back to work, and ends up berating a fellow animator, Jamison, for counseling a mother who isn't sure about allowing himself to become a vampire. She talks to Bert about the case.
18 Anita tries to give a card of Raymond Fields, a vampire cult expert, to the client, Mrs. Franks, but Jamison takes it away and afterwards argues with her about harassing his clients. Later, Phillip comes to pick her up for lunch.
19 At lunch, Anita talks about the first victim, Maurice, and arranges with Phillip to meet the vampire's lover, Rebecca Miles. Anita had spoken to her before with police, and learned nothing.
20 Anita and Phillip visit with Rebecca, who thinks that Anita came to kill her new lover, Jack, and attacks Anita, eventually breaking down and crying. When calm, she reveals that they had both been to a freak party the night of the murder.

[Yoko]

21 Anita gets Phillip to arrange for her to go to the freak party. She drops him off at Guilty Pleasures and goes to Dead Dave's.
22 Since it is daytime, Luther is in charge. Anita tries to get information from him. While there, she gets a phone call from Ronnie on splinter group in the HAV. Later, she goes shopping for the freak party.
23 Returning to the apartment, Mrs. Pringle tells Anita she had a visitor. It was Edward and he left her a sawed off shotgun. Phillip left a message on her machine. He knows where party will be.
24 Anita picks up Phillip. They arrive at the party in a suburbia-type area.
25 Anita tries to "fit in", fending off partygoers. Edward walks in with a date.
26 Phillip ends up taking Anita into the bathroom to escape freaks, and he bites her on the neck.
27 Needing to cool off, Anita leaves the house and finds Zachary trying to raise a 100+ year old corpse with vampires watching. He cannot. So she offers to help him By sharing power.
28 Anita discovers the reason he cannot raise Estelle is because Zachary himself is dead. A gris-gris keeps him alive.
29 Anita leaves and bumps into Nikolaos and Willie. She is able to see the master vampire's scar and Nikoloas nearly attacks her for it, but Phillip is there as well, standing up to the vampire. Anita is about to offer blood to Nikolaos to put Estelle back into the ground, but The Church of Eternal Life shows up. All scatter.
30 Willie drives Phillip to Guilty Pleasures while Anita talks to him about his standing up to Nikolaos.
31 Anita recaps to herself before going to bed and dreams of Jean-Claude.
32 Sunday morning. Dolph calls Anita to a crime scene before she can go to church. Anita finds Theresa dead.
33 Anita goes to Ronnie's office and meets up with Beverly Chin of HAV. She confirms possible existence of death squad in HAV. Anita gets Ronnie to come with her to question Church of Eternal Life.
34 Anita and Ronnie make an appointment with Bruce, Malcolm's assistant. Leaving, Anita is nearly shot by a 2-biter. She and Ronnie kill him.
35 Anita returns to the church that night and is escorted to his office. She checks his day timer and discovers a name. Ned. Possibly Edward. When Malcolm arrives, he denies involvement in the vampire murders.
36 It's Edward's night. So Anita accesses her messages from a telephone. She gets a cut off message from Willie, and then another from Nikolaos. Phillip is being tortured. Edward picks up her phone, as he is at her house, asking to help. Anita refuses and hangs up.
37 She goes to Circus of the Damned and is frisked by Winter for weapons, But he misses a knife at her ankle. She is taken to Nikolaos, who is bleeding Phillip with Aubrey's help. Phillip is chained to a wall. Nikolaos then takes Anita aside for a talk.

38
Nikolaos explains Anita has 2 marks and shows Burchard, her human servant, who has 4. She then sends Aubrey and Valentine to kill Phillip to show her power over Jean-Claude. Anita kills Winter to escape, but is too late to help Phillip. Nikolaos bites her and she goes into unconsciousness.
39 Anita wakes up in Guilty Pleasures. Robert tends to her wounds until she drives him away, grief stricken. She vows to kill Nikolaos and the others.
40 Anita returns home. Edward is there. She agrees to give him the name of the master of the city so long as he allows her to help kill her.
41 Anita must first clean Nikolaos' bite wound. It takes holy water, and usually about 3 days, because of the pain involved. Anita makes Edward do it in a few hours, lest Nikolaos is able to control her.
42 Anita dreams of Jean-Claude again, and he tries to force her in his dreams to drink his blood. She refuses and wakes to Edward's prompting. First she calls Irving Griswold in order to make a meeting with the ratking. She then gets a phone call. According to Craig, Thomas Jensen wanted her to lay his daughter to rest at last. He had her raised from the dead 7 years ago to apologize to her after she had killed herself 20 years ago to escape his molestation. She refused to forgive him, so he kept her undead. Anita went to the cemetery with Edward in tow.
43 At the cemetery, they walk into a trap. Zachary sets his ghouls on them both after informing them of his involvement in the vampire murders. He then leaves. Anita and Edward manage to elude the ghouls with fire and they return to her apartment.
44 Anita gets her meeting with the ratking, Rafael and gets him to lead her and Edward into Nikolaos' lair via the underground passageways.
45 Anita and Edward are led into Cherokee Caverns by there wererats, including Louis and Lillian. They are then left to kill the vampires as promised.
46 Edward kills Valentine in his coffin with silver nitrate. But they did not count on Aubrey awakening, and he grabs Edward and nearly kills him. But Anita shoots his head off with silver ammunition. But Nikolaos tricks them and with Zachary and Burchard, they capture Anita and Edward. Phillip is now a zombie.
47 Nikolaos forces Anita to fight Burchard. Anita tells her she knows who the vampire murderer is. Then she kills Burchard as Nikolaos rips out Zachary's throat. But he still lives. As Nikolaos tries to kill Edward, Anita chops her head off with a sword. She then "kills" Zachary by touching his gris-gris with human blood. She then frees Jean-Claude, and later, lays Phillip back to rest
48 Wrap up. Jean-Claude sends Anita a dozen white roses and invites her to dance. She refuses. And so... it begins. ^.^