The Lamia of Paris

The ancient texts reveal that she existed before ever the Phoenicians visited North Africa, before the Romans conquered Tripolitanium. For the past eighteen centuries, she has been seen at widely-spaced intervals - in Spain, in Germany, and in France. Most recently, in 1670, she was apprehended in a decrepit tenement after three infants had gone missing. She was executed at the Burning Court in Paris, revealed as a thing half-woman and half-serpent, a creature called a Lamia, which the ancient Greeks named "The Gullet" - for good reason.

But now, sixty years later, she seems to have reappeared in that same building, now a hospital for the poor that is close to shuttering its doors.

Because many hospital staffers have already left, medical students have been enlisted to help, among them young Sacha Athenois (who in future would change his name to SETH ATHENOR). He is still an untested medical apprentice but has already fought The Timber-Witch of the Mountain Forest in British America. So, it is unsurprising that he is the second person to suspect that the Lamia has returned. The second person - because the first has mysteriously died. But not before imparting what he knew to Sacha.

Now, one by one, patients and workers are vanishing with little trace. The hospital administrators dismiss the disappearances and Sacha realizes he cannot convince them of the ghastly truth. Who would believe him? He can scarcely believe it himself.

No, it is up to him alone to try to unmask the night-feeding monster and figure out a way to battle her and not join the others in her gullet...her black and bottomless gullet.

But even as he follows the clues and winnows down the suspects, he gradually realizes she has become just as aware of him as he is of her...