The Red Winter

Set in eighteenth-century France with roots stretching back to antiquity, the novel follows Sebastian Grave, an immortal occult practitioner who shares his body with an indwelling demon called Sarmodel in a theoretically impossible union. Sebastian supports himself as a doctor, scholar, and undertaker while practicing what he calls the Arcane: a supernatural system of binding pacts, exorcisms, and demonic power. In a 2013 foreword, he explains that he is writing this account after rediscovering a chest of evidence in his Florence office, prompted by a bloodstained glove belonging to Antoine Avenel d'Ocerne, a man he once loved.

The main narrative begins in 1785, when Jacques Avenel d'Ocerne, Antoine's son, arrives at Sebastian's estate near Turin. Jacques carries an old contract committing Sebastian to hunt the Beast of Gévaudan, a mysterious creature that terrorized the rural French province two decades earlier during a catastrophe Sebastian calls the Red Winter. Jacques claims the Beast has returned and that his father has summoned Sebastian, offering a bounty of 600 livres. Sebastian agrees, sensing dangerous unfinished business.

The journey westward reveals Jacques's dire condition: His escort robbed and shot him, leaving him penniless with a festering wound that Sebastian treats with surgery and alchemy. As they cross the Alps, Jacques transforms into a monstrous, wolflike creature, kills his horse, and devours its heart. Sebastian subdues him with an explosive Arcane trap and chains Jacques until he reverts to human form. Jacques remembers nothing but confesses to hearing a voice urging violence. Sebastian suspects the curse stems from his own unfinished dealings in Gévaudan.

To pass the journey, Sebastian tells Jacques the story of the Red Winter. In 1766, he traveled to Gévaudan to claim the king's bounty on the Beast. At the assignment ceremony, Bishop Fontaine of Mende denied him entry as a foreigner, but Antoine, the baron's handsome young son, intervened and claimed Sebastian as his employee.

Interspersed with Sebastian's account are addenda written by Livia, his succubus housekeeper. These trace the Spirit's history. In 1425, a French peasant girl named Jehanne, later known as Joan of Arc, unearthed an ancient Roman shield containing the anima, or soul-essence, of the Spirit of War called Avstamet. The Spirit bound itself to Jehanne, masquerading as the Archangel Michael and feeding on the conflict waged in her name. After Jehanne was burned at the stake, Avstamet escaped into a bone fragment. Sebastian and Livia spent years pursuing the relic across France, clashing with agents of the real Archangel Michael, before losing the trail when a summoning ritual collapsed into chaos.

In 1766, Sebastian and Antoine grew close during months of hunting the Beast. Antoine was a daring young nobleman who questioned the Church's authority and embraced Enlightenment ideals. They became lovers. When the Beast attacked the village of Saint-Julien in broad daylight, Sebastian recognized the creature as Avstamet inhabiting mortal flesh. During the battle on the village bridge, the Beast bit Antoine's hand, planting a fragment of its essence in the wound.

Antoine began transforming at night without memory of it. Sebastian sought help from Dayane, an ancient water nymph who tended a sacred mountain pool. Dayane agreed to remove the curse in exchange for a price she whispered privately to Antoine. The healing succeeded, and Antoine awoke cured.

Sebastian discovered that the Beast inhabited Jean Chastel, the publican of the Bow and Brace hunting lodge, through a bone relic of Jehanne d'Arc concealed in Chastel's cane. In the climactic battle at the lodge, Sebastian surrendered his body to Sarmodel's full possession and chased the Beast up the mountainside. Cornered at a crevasse, Avstamet threw himself into a torrent rather than be consumed. The victory came at a terrible cost: Returning to the burning lodge in a state of bloodlust, Sebastian lost control and fed on surviving hunters while Antoine watched in horror. Sebastian was quietly banished from Gévaudan.

The 1785 narrative resumes as Sebastian and Jacques arrive in the impoverished province. They visit Cecile, the village midwife and Dayane's mortal priestess, who reports that the killings have returned, animals are growing savage, and violence is spreading. Dayane has stopped communicating, and Cecile warns that a broken bargain is "the root of it all." She introduces her daughter, Lorette, who is secretly in love with Jacques and involved in organizing revolutionary meetings.

Soon after, Cecile is found dead on the path to the river, her heart eaten. Sebastian suspects Jacques transformed during the night. Using Cecile's hagstone, a powerful Arcane artifact, he enters a vision that reveals the truth: Dayane's price for curing Antoine was his firstborn child, Jacques. Cecile was sent each year to collect, and each year Antoine refused, breaking the bargain.

Sebastian takes Jacques to Dayane's pool, hoping she can help. The glade has become a slaughterhouse, and Dayane is grotesquely corrupted: antlered, bloated, and maddened by the Beast's essence, which took root in her when she removed it from Antoine. She reveals she has returned Avstamet's curse to Antoine's bloodline tenfold, condemning the House of Avenel to produce monsters in every generation. Unable to reason with the maddened nymph, Sebastian kills Dayane with his silver blade.

Antoine returns to Gévaudan accompanied by Bishop Fontaine, having pledged himself to the Church in exchange for an exorcism to cure Jacques. Sebastian escapes with Jacques using a Tartaric Word, a destructive command in Sarmodel's demonic language, to strip the soldiers' equipment apart. He sends Jacques to the château with a message asking Antoine to meet him at the ruins of the Bow and Brace.

Antoine comes, but it is a trap. After a painful reunion, Antoine closes a Choking Braid, enchanted manacles that suppress all Arcane ability, around Sebastian's wrists. Fontaine and soldiers emerge to arrest him.

At a witch trial hastily convened in the château parlor, with the now-pregnant Lorette imprisoned and coerced into testifying, Sebastian warns that everyone is about to die. The peasants have risen in armed rebellion, their rage stoked by discord spreading through Gévaudan's water via the corrupted Dayane. An explosive destroys the doors, killing the bishop. Jacques, overwhelmed by bloodlust, transforms and slaughters everyone in the room, including his wife, Eloise, and his mother, Lady Ocerne. Lorette escapes into the mob.

Sebastian drags the mortally wounded Antoine through the shattered windows. He silently offers the Archangel Michael a Contract of Obligation, any price, in exchange for a few more moments of Antoine's life. Michael grants it. Antoine opens his eyes and speaks the phrase to release the chains: "Sim Sala Bim," the nonsense magic words Sebastian once taught him to light campfires.

Sebastian carries Antoine to a stream where they shared their happiest moments. Antoine sees Sebastian clearly for the first time in 20 years, expresses his love, and dies. At the boundary between life and death, both Michael and Sarmodel claim Antoine's soul. Sebastian refuses both, casting Antoine's anima into the void to dissolve into the natural cycle of creation, lost to everyone but belonging to no one.

Sebastian finds Jacques sleeping in the ruined château, tells him his family is dead, and sets the building ablaze as a pyre. They leave for Sebastian's home near Turin to search for a cure. In a closing reflection, Sebastian connects the uprising to the broader French Revolution, arguing that Avstamet's seeds of discord bore fruit for generations. He notes that Michael eventually collected on the Contract of Obligation and that the Spirit of War continues to feed.