This is a prequel to the Guild Hunters series. But in fact I think it won't make much sense unless read after book 1, as it's too short to go into much detail about the world, and would be confusing if you jumped straight into it.

In the Guild Hunter world, Angels are real and in charge. They're powerful and immortal, and have been around a long time, hence they're prettty much running every city in every country. And they're not all harps and clouds, due to their longevity and inbred feelings of superiority, they're mostly very jaded and sometimes malevolent characters. Angels create vampires to serve them, they choose only among the very elite of the favoured families, and the vampires must serve them for 100 years in exchange for their gift of immortality.
And then we have the Guild Hunters, who are a company of humans hired to deal with vampires that disobey their Angels, break their contract or turn rogue.

Ashwini is a Guild hunter, and Janvier is a cajun vampire whom Ashwini has had to hunt many times, but each time he has gotten himself let off. This time she needs his help on a mission. An Angel wants one of his missing vampires found, but its more than just a simple case, it's part of a larger scheme of powerplay within the vampire and Angel circles. And for Ashwini and Janvier it's more than just a simple job, long used to working against eachother, Ashwini is having trouble resisting her long-time attraction for Janvier now that they're working together.

I thought for a short prequel it was very good, despite the lack of follow through to all the sexual tension, but I expect there'll be more of them in one of the later novels. I did like hearing more of the intricacies of vampire/angel interaction and contracts etc. And I love Nalini Singh's characterisation of her Angels, they're so far removed from humanity that they're almost unable to interact normally with humans, and there just so creepy..

See my other reviews of the Guild Hunter series:
| #2 Archangel's Kiss →
(sorry, #1 not yet reviewed)