Rulers of Darkness - Hardcover

Spruill, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312131631 ISBN 13: 9780312131630

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1995

Synopsis

On the grounds of Washington's National Cathedral, during a fierce midnight windstorm, the police find a young woman with her throat shredded by human teeth. Soon, other victims follow. When hematologist Dr. Katherine O'Keefe examines traces of the killer's own blood left on the grisly wounds, she makes a strange discovery: The cells refuse to die. Even more troubling, the evidence mirrors the symptoms of one of her patients, a young girl desperately ill with what seems to be leukemia, but isn't.
Dr. O'Keefe's former lover and father of her child, police detective Merrick Chapman, suspects he knows who is slaughtering these women - a hemophage, the victim of a bizarre medical phenomenon in which the body craves infusions of fresh blood. And the reason for Chapman's conviction? Unbeknownst to anyone else, he himself has the condition.
When Dr. O'Keefe is called in to help with the investigation, she puts herself in terrible danger as she edges closer to uncovering the killer's identity - and Chapman's secret. Determined to prevent the woman he loves from becoming the next victim, Chapman must find this carrier of the ancient curse. It may be someone closer to him than he realizes.

About this title

Reviews

Spruill continues his string of medical horror novels (My Soul to Take; Before I Wake) with this slight variation on vampires: he calls his bloodsuckers "hemophages" and suggests scientific explanations for their preternatural abilities and peculiar dietary needs. The hero, Merrick Chapman, is a centuries-old hemophage who, like many of his brethren, refuses to kill for the blood he drinks and is looking for a cure. The story is set in and around contemporary Washington, D.C., where Merrick uses his position as a detective to find and trap other hemophages. His son Zane, however, is a homicidal hemophage without guilt; he becomes Merrick's nemesis. The bloodsucking cop is both aided and hindered by his human associates, who include police colleagues and Dr. Katie O'Keefe, his recent lover and a specialist in blood research. They don't know his true identity and, in the tradition of superheroes with dark secrets, he's not going to tell them. The plot is intriguingly complex, incorporating matters of love and paternity as well as the central problem of how Merrick will handle Zane. By adding a noir-crime spin to his medical-horror formula, Spruill manages to grab hold of, and ride reasonably high on, the cape-tails of Anne Rice and the current vampire craze.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312131631
• ISBN 13: 9780312131630
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 357