The Dark Goddess, Chapter One (spoilers, be warned!)

"If you serve me well, I shall teach you the true nature of all things. If you do not, your bones will be my bread and your blood my soup."

Baba Yaga the witch. The cannibal. The wise woman. Tales of her have been around since man first told stories. All cultures have seen her shadow, passing by in the dead of darkness. She is Kali, dancing around the funeral pyres on the banks of the Ganges. She is Hecate, leading her howling hounds across midnight. She is the Morrigan, feasting on corpses on the battle-field.

They say she is the mid-wife of Mankind. If she’d known what he would become, perhaps she would have smothered him in his crib.

"My name is Ivan Alexiovich Romanov."

Great-grand son of Princess Anastasia, now last of the Romanov royal line. Ivan aspires to be a Bogatyr, one of the noble knights of Russian myth, but is bound by oath to serve the sorcerer Koshchey the Undying. His world is one of unimaginable wealth and luxury. His ever demand met without question and has been raised to see the world as his, to be used as he sees fit. Then he meets Billi SanGreal. Together they may save the world. But only if they don’t kill one another first.

"Come with us, sister. Howl with us. Eat man-flesh with us."

Herodotus called them Androktones, killers of men. They are the legendary Amazons, descendents from the tribes of warrior women that lived in ancient Sarmatia, now southern Russia.

The best of them, the most blessed, have the power to transform into wolves. This is gift of Baba Yaga, their dark goddess.

Led by Old Grey, a canny and deadly warrior, the Polenitsy have come to London to hunt. They know of the Knights Templar.

And they are hungry.