Mansions of Darkness

Ambitious in its scope and provocative in its content, the saga of the undying Count Saint-Germain is a monumental feat of the imagination that rivals the Vampire Chronicles of Anne Rice. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's powerful and evocative novels have captured Saint-Germain throughout his long existence, from the temples of ancient Egypt to our present century. Now the Count's endless travels bring him to seventeenth-century Peru, where he finds passion, as well as solace for his loneliness, in the arms of Acanna Tupac, daughter of the vanquished Incan royalty. Mighty Spain has conquered Acanna's people and brought the dreaded attention of the Holy Inquisition to the New World, and both the vampire and the Incan noblewoman find themselves trapped in increasingly precarious times. But even greater torments await Saint-Germain when he is forced to flee Peru into the uncharted wilderness to the north. Far from civilization, he encounters a bizarre and enigmatic people who practice a strange and distorted form of Christianity. There, accompanied by his faithful servant and a superstitious native maiden, he must face the most agonizing ordeal he has ever endured.