Houses of the Holy

Prologue

Three monsters stalk 1930s Berlin.

Reinhart Fohl is a senior clerk in Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, who’s recently made a dizzying discovery: the party gives its loyal servants so much support and so much latitude that he’s functionally omnipotent.

Basilisks--reptilian in infancy, close to human in adulthood--turn to stone in their dotage. ‘Welcome’, a basilisk in its final sessile stage, has become an old patrician house, complete with portico and gables.

Immortal vampire child Magda Bescu has to live--and to feed--otherwise the tumor in her brain, which is every bit as immortal as she is, will eat more and more of the healthy tissue and leave a bigger hole in her sanity and her memories. And in this place and this time, Magda has one other pressing problem: racially, she belongs to the Roma, the gypsy peoples. The eugenics laws of inter-war Germany have effectively declared open season on anyone of her race.

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