If Angels Burn - Lynn Viehl

Brilliant Chicago plastic surgeon Alexandra Keller has been harassed by wealthy Mr Cyprien to come down to New Orleans to perform unspecified surgery on him - and he's raised his offer to $4 million. After several refusals, Alex is kidnapped, but not before a run in with her brother-turned-Catholic-priest John, and after a couple of expositions - multiracial, orphaned, raised by Catholic foster parents who died, abandoned by said brother who chose his God over her...
Wealthy, servanted Michael Cyprien was tortured, his face destroyed, but he heals unbelievably quickly. After performing (well researched, if tediously detailed) reconstructive surgery while in a kind of induced trance state, Alex becomes part-Darkyn: when she dies she will rise again.
The plot then becomes increasingly complex - Catholic conspiracies; inter-vampiric power plays; torture of Father John by his own, unsanctioned, Order; yet more detailed surgery on other vampire (sorry, Darkyn) victims of the Church; Alex's struggles to identify what she's convinced is an infection rather than a curse from God...
At first I couldn't work out why I found this novel so irritating. It's clearly the first in a series, but the cover notes that it is "A novel of the Darkyn", so I knew that going in. And I can handle complexity, so I don't think it was too hard for me to follow. I just didn't care.
There's some sex (though I strongly disagree with the cover review by Holly Lisle that it's "erotic, darker than sin, and better than chocolate") but it's - at least initially - non-consensual, and very purple:

His hand joined hers, used it to reposition the full, plum-shaped head until it was stroking at the top of her mons, the ridge of his cock scraping back and forth over her clit...
He was already there, the head half buried in her vagina, and then he pressed in, past the spasming elliptical opening, into the brimming, aching slot of flesh, filling her to the point of actual pain...
Alex didn't climax. She detonated...
Riding it was impossible. Surviving it seemed improbable.

And so forth.
There's a lot of sadism and torture, and a lot of angst. There are a number of loose ends, clearly left for the next book/s to tie up, but I won't be finding out what happens next. None of the characters seemed halfway real to me, the relationship between Alex and John is unnecessarily fraught, and the relationship between Alex and Michael is incoherent and inexplicable. To whit:

Alex held him as he shuddered over and over...
She stared up at the canopy, exhausted, throbbing, and very close to turning on the tears.
No tears. No regrets. She loved him; he loved her. They'd all but said the words. They'd gotten their rocks off together. Now they could play master vampire and helpless little love slave for the rest of eternity.
No way in hell she was staying under his roof another god-damned second.

Uh-huh. Don't know what happens in the rest of the series. So far beyond caring that if you try to tell me I will stick my fingers in my ears and chant that I can't hear you. - Alex