Part of Series
The conquest of Europe by Attila the Hun is one of the great stories of history. The swift-moving bands of warriors, the inventive military tactics, Attila’s commanding personality—all are the stuff of legend. But to the ordinary people who lived in the Huns’ path, Attila and his men were the stuff of nightmare. Slaughtering entire villages, laying waste to crops and livestock—the Huns were a terrifying force that destroyed everything in their path. Concealing his vampire nature, the Count Saint-Germain has been appointed the regional guardian of a small village on the outskirts of the failing Roman Empire. When word comes of the Huns’ approach, the villagers—like the residents of many other towns—flee, seeking sanctuary at a nearby, high-walled monastery. The monks are none too pleased about being invaded by the outside world with all its complications, but the Abbot reminds them of their charitable duties. With the help of Saint-Germain, the leaders of the refugee camps, and a small contingent of warriors, an uneasy peace is established in the crowded monastery as winter approaches. Among the refugees is a strange, silver-eyed woman whose secret might cost her her life. She hides away in Saint-Germain’s infirmary and soon becomes the vampire’s lover—and now she has two secrets to hold close, for if word of Saint-Germain’s true nature were to spread among the monks and the villagers, his long life would soon be cut dramatically short. As tense months pass and tempers grow ever shorter, Saint-Germain begins to fear that no one—not even he—will escape the monastery alive.
Author
A professional writer for more than forty years, Yarbro has sold over eighty books, more than seventy works of short fiction, and more than three dozen essays, introductions, and reviews. She also composes serious music. Her first professional writing - in 1961-1962 - was as a playwright for a now long-defunct children's theater company. By the mid-60s she had switched to writing stories and hasn't stopped yet. After leaving college in 1963 and until she became a full-time writer in 1970, she worked as a demographic cartographer, and still often drafts maps for her books, and occasionally for the books of other writers. She has a large reference library with books on a wide range of subjects, everything from food and fashion to weapons and trade routes to religion and law. She is constantly adding to it as part of her on-going fascination with history and culture; she reads incessantly, searching for interesting people and places that might provide fodder for stories. In 1997 the Transylvanian Society of Dracula bestowed a literary knighthood on Yarbro, and in 2003 the World Horror Association presented her with a Grand Master award. In 2006 the International Horror Guild enrolled her among their Living Legends, the first woman to be so honored; the Horror Writers Association gave her a Life Achievement Award in 2009. In 2014 she won a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. A skeptical occultist for forty years, she has studied everything from alchemy to zoomancy, and in the late 1970s worked occasionally as a professional tarot card reader and palmist at the Magic Cellar in San Francisco. She has two domestic accomplishments: she is a good cook and an experienced seamstress. The rest is catch-as-catch-can. Divorced, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area - with two cats: the irrepressible Butterscotch and Crumpet, the Gang of Two. When not busy writing, she enjoys the symphony or opera. Her Saint-Germain series is now the longest vampire series ever. The books range widely over time and place, and were not published in historical order. They are numbered in published order. Known pseudonyms include Vanessa Pryor, Quinn Fawcett, T.C.F. Hopkins, Trystam Kith, Camille Gabor.
