Russia 1855. After forty years of peace in Europe, war rages. In the Crimea, the city of Sevastopol is besieged. In the north, Saint Petersburg is blockaded. But in Moscow there is one who needs only to sit and wait - wait for the death of an aging tsar, and for the curse upon his blood to be passed to a new generation.As their country grows weaker, a man and a woman - unaware of the hidden ties that bind them - must come to terms with their shared legacy. In Moscow, Tamara Valentinovna Komarova uncovers a brutal murder and discovers that it not the first in a sequence of similar crimes, merely the latest, carried out by a killer who has stalked the city since 1812.And in Sevastopol, Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov faces not only the guns of the combined armies of Britain and France, but must also make a stand against creatures that his father had thought buried beneath the earth, thirty years before..
Vein and sinew and even bone could clearly be seen in the deep laceration beneath the chin, ensuring that neither Dmitry nor Shulgin could doubt what had happened.
Half the man's throat had been torn away . . .
1855. War rages in Europe once more. Sevastopol is under siege, Saint Petersburg is blockaded, but in Moscow, someone waits: for a tsar's death, and for the curse upon his blood to be passed to a new generation.
As Russia grows weaker, a man and a woman - unaware of the hidden ties that bind them - must come to terms with their shared legacy.
In Moscow, Tamara Valentinovna Lavrova - an agent of the tsar - uncovers a brutal murder. It is not the first such death. Similar killings have been committed by one who has stalked the city since 1812.
And in the ruins of Sevastopol, Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov confronts both the British and French guns, but also another foe - an enemy his father thought he'd buried beneath the earth some thirty years before?
