"His silhouette immersed deep in the shadows of the room, sitting in the chair in the farthest corner from where I lay. A stray ray of light filtered into the pond of darkness where he skulked, and then I caught a glimpse of his vacant eyes, their surface white and opaque and devoid of any speck of life." -Silvana G. Sanchez, WRITTEN IN BLOOD. Ivan Lockhart cheated death for the last time. When Ivan escapes a fatal tragedy and another dies in his stead, victory leads to damnation. Haunted by the ghost of his guilt, Lockhart seeks refuge in the arms of forbidden love. But desperate to break away from his past, he flees seventeenth-century Winterbourne and embarks for the city of Venice, where ancient secrets sleep and legends rise from their graves. Poveglia, an island cast deep in the shadows of the Venetian horizon, conceals a rare lineage of immortals, the Sartie Mangiatori, obscure creatures that feed on human blood-Vampire's predecessors. Lockhart's unforgettable journey will offer more than he ever expected as he travels through the darkest corners of Europe's elite destinations in a pilgrimage to the remotest depths of the human heart.