THE OTHER STATE

THE “OTHER” STATE

Werewolves have taken control of a biker’s gang in the dreary western suburbs of Melbourne known as the Dog Collar Demons. In the process making themselves the most feared pack not just in Victoria, but nationwide. The Demons, led by the charismatic Buick, are not simply above the law, they are the law.

Over in South Australia the vampires whose forefathers invented the Internet are concealed deep within the IT industry as programmers. When Lizzie Madelena, a bored twenty-something from Melbourne with an eating disorder turns up at the Demon’s annual pool party looking for excitement, she gets way more than she ever bargained for, especially after Cobol, head of the SA vampires, spends one night in her company – rendering the accord of non-interference between the preternatural species obsolete.

Enter Stacey Wiley, stray from home middle-class wife to husband (ex-hacker Rob), and Arkan Lews, infamous fantasy novelist from Texas, who, as adulterous lovers hunt the “emergence”, the time when the preternatural break cover to clash over human involvement.

With a double murder in Adelaide and a zany news team in Melbourne, counterpart DCI’s Jon Bowles and Ray Fuges are drawn ever deeper into cases that can never be solved. Add forensic scientist cum anthropologist Alan J. Kay and a mysterious envoy known as Lucian, and the dark and desperate existence of the immortal begins to unravel.

With lust comes death, with emergence comes retaliation, with inter-state rivalry comes parochialism, and as Buick gets ready to mate and the vampire’s leader falls to a surprise coup, the only option left is the greatest show on earth. No vampire has ever defeated a werewolf in one-on-one combat, but to free Lizzie from Buick’s clutches, desk-jockey vampire Cobol will be left with no alternative other than to attempt the impossible . . . in the other state the world is a cage from which no victor ever emerges.