It began as a game, a treasure hunt in an old German castle. For the beautiful and brilliant Vicky Bliss, it was also a challenge, a chance to bring an arrogant young man down a notch or two. And all things considered, it would have been no contest.

The prize was a centuries-old shrine carved by Tilman Riemenschneider, probably Germany's greatest master of the late Gothic period. The place was the forbidding Schloss Drachenstein, where the stones were stained with ancient blood and the air reeked of evil.

The problem was that someone was targeted, and the game was soon being played in deadly earnest.Vicky Bliss must face two equally perilous possibilities. Either a powerful supernatural evil inhabits this place—or someone frighteningly real is willing to kill for what Vicky is determined to find.