LOST IN THE SHADOWS WHERE LUST MINGLES WITH LUNACY . . . Ancient legends whisper of the demonic strigoi, a Bloodthirsty creature that once plagued the earth. For centuries, the last of the strigoi race was confined to a hellish limbo - until master occultist Aleister Crowley called her forth to stalk the living once more. On the eve of her greatest triumph, the strigoi was banished again to the dark hell of the Void, taking her enslaved priest-magician with her. Decades later, neurotic actor Miles Mackenzie finds the spell to summon the strigoi. He only wanted an authentic-sounding incantation to use in his Dracula play, but hidden in the writings of a long-dead black magician, Miles discovers the key to another world - a dark world of lust and horror. The magician whose secrets Miles purloins had shadowy secret ties with "the Fingerman," a serial killer whose ritual slayings were done in honor of the strigoi. When Miles inveigles his costar (and lover) Cassandra Bishop into substituting the magician's spell during the next performance, it unleashes a wave of grotesque murders that baffle homicide detective Matthew Drake with their resemblance to the Fingerman killings. Matt knows those killings all too well, for as a boy, he was the only survivor of the Fingerman's last mass sacrifice to his dark goddess. Now Miles, Cassandra, Matt, and the audience that witnessed the spell are all marked for death, but they are only the first targets in a maze of madness and murder, lust and lunacy, that traps the innocent as well as the guilty. Miles' spell has done more than liberate a monster. He has released the doom of every man, woman and child on earth. For the strigoi's desires are many - and she lusts for more than blood . . .