The Silver Skull A Novel of Sorcery
In this chilling novel of sorcery Les Daniels brings back from the dead Don Sebastian de Villanueva--wizard, vampire, explorer of the darkest mysteries--and transports him to the New World, sixteenth-century Mexico. Into Montezuma's fabulous golden realms comes Alfonso Martinez, a Spanish alchemist, bearing Don Sebastian's silver skull, the magical source of power that will open the heavens to him and make him the master of the gold-laden Aztec vaults. But the skull slips away from the alchemist, into the hands of the beautiful virgin priestess, Toci, the sensuous leader of an Aztec cult. In an awesome scene of occult ritual and human sacrifice Don Sebastian de Villanueva is reincarnated as Smoking Mirror, a god of black, hallucinatory magic whose power the Aztecs urgently need to defeat the army of Cortes and his revengeful Indian allies. Don Sebastian's hatred of Spanish ruthlessness drives him into the arms of Toci and into the exotic rites of the Smoking Mirror cult. Together, and with the aid of a Mexican tribe of vampire worshipers, they set out to break the Spanish siege of the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. But as the love between the unworldly priestess and the vampire deepens, the Spanish assault intensifies, and the two lovers, in a supreme effort to invoke the power of Smoking Mirror, seek their final consummation, an act of terrible and magical transcendence.