Venice, 1865:Everyone knows the tale of Poveglia. The lonely island has been haunted since the time of the Red Death, the vampire plague that swept across the Continent in centuries past. Five hundred years ago the island became a mass grave, the pyre of thousands upon thousands of half-transformed victims. No Venetian will sail within sight of it. It’s said that Poveglia’s very soil is made of ash.
But sixteen-year-old Unnatural Ayanda Draculesti doesn’t believe in curses or ghosts. She’s learned well enough that the dead don’t return as spirits, they return with fangs.
It’s been a fortnight since she, Yurei, Jette and Belle battled the fiend in the Doge’s Palace and stopped her army from ravaging Venice. But their scars have hardly begun to fade when a new menace emerges from the cursed island, new creatures as mysterious as they are vicious.
Creatures that rob Ayanda of her vampiric powers. That leave Yurei at the mercy of a hideous ghost from his past. That invade Jette’s soul and tear it in two. That force Belle to discover their secrets alone. That threaten to rip Venice and its people to bloody rags.
Creatures that aren’t vampires.
For, as Ayanda and her new family learn, the Dead aren’t the only monsters lurking in the dark.