A strange plague has struck Abbesstown, NH, a sleepy farming village in the foothills of the White Mountain: Fever, the vomiting of blood, wild night terrors that wrack the victims. No medicine seems to work against it, and so the Reverend Josiah Abbess, believing something infernal is at work in his flock, begins his campaign to root out the evil. What follows becomes known as The Abbesstown Vampire Panic.

200 years later, and the peace is once again violently shattered when a man drives his truck into the side of city hall, attacking those who come to assist him with an ax. Wild eyed and sweating blood, ranting of a coming storm, he is finally taken down by the town’s police and brought to the hospital.

In the following days, a familiar old plague follows. In the midst of the ensuing panic, Jury Havock, scion to the Havock business empire, appears. He is cool headed. Pragmatic. Determined to get control over the sickness overtaking the population. But Corinne Abbess, the last of her disgraced bloodline, is suspicious of this would-be messiah, and becomes determined to uncover the truth about his sudden appearance in town, and all of the unbelievable events that follow.