Three of Anne Rice's most popular characters, the vampires Lestat, Louis, and Claudia, are introduced to the world of her Mayfair Witches series in this fascinating history that traverses between New Orleans past and present, the jungles of Guatemala, secular Mayan ruins, and the hearts of civilizations not yet discovered by man. Merrick is a beautiful descendent of les gens de couleur libres, a voodoo sect that surged from New Orleans's mulattos, born of African women and their French colonists. But Merrick does not yet know that she has inherited the extraordinary powers that made her ancestors, the Mayfair Witches, so famous in centuries past.