Surviving a late-night car wreck on a desolate stretch of highway, a teen runaway is left with a backpack and a dying request from the driver, a young man escaping servitude from a sect of vampire’s intent on getting back what he took from them. 

SYNOPSIS:

Jewell, a world-weary teen runaway, is hitchhiking across the U.S to her grandmother's place in small-town Sloan Nevada, just outside Vegas. On her way, Jewell encounters a young, paranoid man, with the chosen religious name of Caleb, who is taking an unusual cargo to a professor of anthropology at U.C.L.A. And despite the intense Nevada heat, won’t remove a thick woolen cap.

After a late-night car wreck, Caleb leaves Jewell with a bulging backpack containing an ancient book, a strange “human” skull, and a dying request from Caleb, who explains to Jewell about the existence of vampires and his role as a willing “slave” in protecting them and guarding the skull of the first known vampire, which he possesses. Now seeing an elaborate tattoo covering Caleb’s balding head, he reveals the vampire's sudden betrayal against him when his "secret mark", the tattoo he received in part as a test of loyalty, begins to show.

Keeping Caleb’s secret, for the time being, an uninjured Jewell makes it to Sloan and finds her grandmother, better known as "Gram's, an ex Vegas showgirl, now living out her retirement in a small apartment above a storage shed facility she manages.

Later that night, a young man, Jed, shows up in a moving truck needing to store his things in a shed. Finding out the truck needs a major repair, Jed holes up in the local motel until nightfall, then returns to the shed to let out what’s locked in.

Jewell, still hiding the skull and book and very nervous from her previous encounter with Caleb, takes the ancient book to a Las Vegas library and seeks advice from a supervisor, who upon examining it, reveals it's a rare priceless diary, filled with supernatural lore, detailing the origins of the first vampires that appeared during the black plague.

Not realizing what Jewell has, the supervisor takes it upon himself to notify Gram's, who finally gets the whole story and puts Jewell's mind at ease, while Jed continues his nightly visits to unlock the sheds. Watching Jed one night, Jewell sees him planting several shrubs with lush white flowers near the interstate. Curious to know why Jed explains to her that only certain “people” can smell their scent and lets others like them know they're nearby.

Within days, lifetime residents of Sloan, not only change their sleeping habits but where they sleep. Speed traps are set up on the interstate and tourists vanish, while Gram's comes to realize coincidences with the diary are now a reality, including a second bizarre test of loyalty that connects Jed and Caleb both with a former slave mentioned in its pages.

Cut-off from the outside and in hiding, Jewell, Gram's, and two remaining residents can only watch helplessly as most of the storage sheds are emptied out and inhabited by a new breed of night people. With daylight their only Allie, and, Jed de-programmed in a very unusual manner, the last residents of Sloan learn secrets that will protect them and find resources that will ultimately destroy the new evil taken over their town.

A sense of normalcy is restored, but something has survived: The single white blossom of a small tenacious flower... Night Blooming Jasmine.

NIGHT BLOOMING JASMINE