In this terrifying, brilliantly imagine novel, Jeanne Kalogridis returns the same dark, sensual territory she visited in Covenant with the Vampire. Once again she explores the breathtaking battle waged in the hart of the Family Dracul--as the innocent take up arms against the monster. In the flickering gaslights of Vienna a brother watches--as a woman of alabaster beauty, his sister, takes two lovers at once. Then she pours her passion into the most forbidden act of all . . .  In the streets of Amsterdam a young man, the secret lover of his brother's wife, is whisked into a waiting carriage for a long journey into darkness and reunion with his father . . .  They are a family bound my an ancient curse, one generation pitted against another, taboos shattered, their firstborn's blood sipped from a silver chalice. In his stony fortress waits Vlad the Impaler, while his heir, Arkady, cries out to his sons: "Let the curse end with me!" "Jeanne Kalogridis has launched a vampire hero who will haunt my nights for decades--or lifetimes--to come."--Jacqueline Lichtenber, author of Those of My Blood