In this thrilling novella that’s both outbreak and survival horror, award-winning Bulgarian author Elena Pavlova reimagines humanity’s relationship with vampires, for fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series and Guillermo del Toro's The Strain. Urban predators hibernate between November and March. At least, they used to. A mytho-ecologist out of Sofia University, recruited into Urban Predators Without Borders, never imagined being one of the only living inhabitants in Block 10―observing a Bulgarian nest while living in a rundown apartment, tranquilizer gun loaded with silver nitrate by his bed. With a species-collapsing outbreak spreading from nest to nest, any variation in local vampires’ habits is extremely bad news. Science and politics collide as the symbiotic relationship between predator and prey is forever altered. Between a deadly fungus and a system set on extermination, one burning question emerges. Is this infection just biological―or is it institutional?