Zeke Dunbar meets a woman at a bar and talks with her, when she notices a comic book Zeke was reading. The woman is about to leave until Zeke mentions his relationship with Cole MacGrath, persuading the woman to stay and listen as he begins to tell her a story involving Cole during the events of "Pyre Night", a fictional celebration in New Marais.
During the event, Cole investigates a nearby church after hearing screams, rescuing civilians trapped in its crumbling catacombs. As Cole ventures deeper looking for more survivors, he encounters a woman yelling, who is revealed to be a vampire. Cole is then cuffed and dragged to a tomb deep within the church, and awakens on top of the corpse of a vampire known as Bloody Mary. One of the vampires opens up a vein from Cole's neck and drips his blood onto Mary's corpse, awakening her due to its superhuman properties. She then proceeds to bite Cole, drinking his blood and turning him into a vampire, while her youth and powers are restored from Cole's Conduit blood.
When Cole comes to, he realizes his amp is missing, forcing him to create a makeshift wooden stake in order to fight his way out. Having escaped, he realizes, to his horror, that Mary can now invade his mind. She taunts Cole telepathically, saying that by dawn, he will complete his transformation and become her puppet forever. Driven by the need to drink blood, he feeds on a random civilian. At the same time, Mary's followers surface and begin rounding up other civilians, taking advantage of Pyre Night to blend in. Seeking a solution, Cole contacts Zeke and both begin researching Pyre Night, the celebration commemorating the burning of Bloody Mary by town hero Father Ignatius centuries ago. They eventually find out the folklore surrounding Father Ignatius, including a weapon he crafted to kill vampires, the Barbed Cross.
