At fourteen, Nick Gautier thinks he knows everything about the world around him. Streetwise, tough, and savvy, his quick sarcasm is the stuff of legends. . .until the night when his best friends try to kill him. Saved by a mysterious warrior who has more fighting skills than Chuck Norris, the teenaged Nick is sucked into the realm of the Dark-Hunters: immortal vampire slayers who risk everything to save humanity.

Nick quickly learns that the human world is only a veil for a much larger and more dangerous one: a world where the captain of the football team is a werewolf and the girl he has a crush on goes out at night to stake the undead.

But before he can even learn the rules of this new world, his fellow students are turning into flesh-eating zombies--and he's next on the menu. As if starting high school isn't hard enough. . .now Nick has to hide his new friends from his mom, his chain saw from the principal, and keep the zombies and the demon Simi from eating his brains, all without getting grounded or suspended. How in the world is he supposed to do that?

Nick Gautier's day just keeps getting better and better. Yeah, he survived the zombie attacks, only to wake up and find himself enslaved to a world of shapeshifters and demons out to claim his soul. Being a teenager is no picnic either.

His new principal thinks he's even more of a hoodlum than the last one, his coach is trying to recruit him to things he can't even mention, and the girl he's not seeing, but is, has secrets that terrify him. But more than that, he's being groomed by the darkest of powers, and if he doesn't learn how to raise the dead by the end of the week, he will become one of them.

Go to school. Get good grades. Stay out of trouble. That's the mandate for most kids. But Nick Gautier isn't the average teenager. He's a boy with a destiny not even he fully understands. And his first mandate is to stay alive while everyone, even his own father, tries to kill him.

He's learned to annihilate zombies and raise the dead, divination and clairvoyance, so why is learning to drive and keep a girlfriend so dang hard? But that isn't the primary skill he has to master. Survival is. And in order to survive, his next lesson makes all the others pale in comparison.

He is on the brink of becoming either the greatest hero mankind has ever known. Or he'll be the one who ends the world. With enemies new and old gathering forces, he will have to call on every part of himself to fight or he'll lose everyone he cares about. Even himself.

The heat is on, and a new threat to humanity has risen . . . Nick has his driver's license and he's not afraid to use it. But turning sixteen isn't what he thought it would be. While other boys his age are worried about prom dates and applying for college, Nick is neck deep in enemies out to stop him from living another day.

No longer sure if he can trust anyone, his only ally seems to be the one person he's been told will ultimately kill him. But life spent serving the undead is anything except ordinary. And those out to get him have summoned an ancient force so powerful even the gods fear it. As Nick learns to command and control the elements, the one he must master in order to combat his latest foe is the one most likely to destroy him.

As the old proverb goes, fire knows nothing of mercy, and if Nick is to survive this latest round, he will have to sacrifice a part of himself. However, the best sacrifice is seldom the sanest move. Sometimes it's the one that leaves your enemies confused. And sometimes, you have to trust your enemy to save your friends. But what do you do when that enemy is you?

A battle-weary Nick is pulled into an alternate reality where his mother has married his mentor and his Atlantean god best friend is a human geek who helps Nick realize the relative nature of pain and the benefits of his powers.

Being a teen is never easy... Zombies, demons, vampires, shapeshifters-another day in the life of sixteen-year-old Nick Gautier-and those are just his friends. But now that he's accepted the demon that lives inside him, he must learn to control it and temper the very emotions that threaten the lives of everyone he cares for.

Something that's hard to do while trying to stay off the menus of those who want his head on a platter. And no one wants him more than the dark gods who created his race. Now that they know where he is, they will stop at nothing to reclaim him. And without knowing it, Nick has just embraced the one person he should never have trusted.

The one person who will hand him over to his enemies to get back the life they lost. Nick has finally accepted his fate, now he must learn to defy his destiny, and the dark, deadly forces that will stop at nothing to destroy everyone he loves so that they can again return to the world of man and own it.

Think you have a lot of pressure on your shoulders? Nick Gautier was born to bring about the end of the world . . . it's not easy being the heir of a demon overlord. But Nick is determined to thwart his destiny and get into a good college. To be more than his genetics and prophecy foretell. No one is ever going to tell this stubborn Cajun who and what he really is. Or how to live his life. Not even the Fates of the Universe.

But now that he and his team of ancient gods and demons have claimed the Eye of Ananke and he sees the missteps of the future, he has to battle the demons within that are far deadlier and more treacherous than any he's battled before. All the while his arch nemesis is back and determined to reclaim his place as the harbinger for Armageddon. Even if it means killing Nick and barbecuing everyone he loves to do so.

It's a demon-eat-demon world. Just when Nick Gautier thinks he's finally gotten a handle on how not to take over the world and destroy it, Death returns with an all-star cast that is determined to end the Malachai reign and lineage forever. Worse? Death and War have found the one, true enemy Nick can't find, and even if he did, it's one he could never bring himself to banish or kill.

Now framed for murders he hasn't committed, and surrounded by new friends who might be turncoats, Nick is learning fast how his father went down in flames. The heat in New Orleans is rising fast, and Nick's threat-level has gone into a whole new level of intensity. He's learning quickly that when War and Death decide to battle, they don't take prisoners.

They don't negotiate. And they're immune to both his biting sarcasm and Cajun charm. To win this, he will have to embrace a new set of powers, but one wrong step and he will belong to the side of Darkness, forever.