Detective Benjamin Kramer's quest to find his long-forgotten Great-uncle Jonathan led him to a secretive attorney in Cincinnati, an esoteric monastic lover, a professional dominatrix, and a murdered temple priestess. Along the way he discovered his family's secret: his mother and her ancestors were Dionysians, members of an ancient, and supposedly defunct, fertility cult that worships Dionysos, the god of wine and ecstasy. From the attractive young monk who teaches him the secrets of Tantric sex to the professional dominatrix who shows him the whip-induced path that leads to visions of gods, Benjamin probes, questions, and discovers a hidden Alliance with immense wealth, power, and influence. When they turn to him to solve the ritualized murder of Chicago's temple prostitute, the verse from the Book of Ezekiel ("And the harlot shall be slain by the sword") is the only clue to the perpetrator. Is it a modern day Salem witch hunt or a Bacchanalian rite gone terribly wrong?