Sergei Volek awakens on a lonely California beach--naked, injured and without any memory of who he is. Or, worse, what he is. He doesn't learn the truth until the first full moon when he changes. He struggles to conceal and control his malevolent inheritance as he tries to find a place where he belongs.Harried by humans afraid of his kind, he travels from Gold Rush California to New Orleans, to Michigan, the killing fields of the Civil War and finally back to the fortress he's built in California to protect his family. Sergie and his family are safe within the fortress--until a long overdue debt forces him to invite danger inside the fortress walls...