Mikki

Some places seem too beautiful to be touched by horror. Summit Lake, nestled in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, is that kind of place. But two weeks ago, Becca Eckersley, a first-year law student and daughter of a powerful attorney, was brutally murdered there. Now the town is reeling with grief, and the police are baffled.

Torin Mardak came to Zarhab Groht to hunt. Some idiot's been selling Callidum weapons on the black market, and he's been tasked with finding the traitor. The illegal trading station isn't exactly Torin's favorite place in the Nine Galaxies. It's dirty, chaotic, and full of thieves and murderers, but as an elite Kordolian First Division warrior, he's the most dangerous thing on this floating cesspit, and he won't let anything stand in his way.

The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or "alienist." On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels.