"The Vampire As Metaphor"

Book One

At a dinner party given by London's reigning young Queen of Society, Miss Cicely Addams, in 1880, struggling for freedom from a grim working-class existence poet and scholar William Soames Walthrop reads his curious tale of an American Vampire Slayer and the British dentist she becomes entangled with on her way to prevent the fiendish Master of Vampires from securing the power of the infamous portal to Hell in the distant land of California. As the current secret Slayer, Miss Addams herself, fearfully senses danger for the one she loves in the wanderings of his tale. Will his story provide clues she can use to save him or prove a grim premonition she and he cannot escape?