The mysterious death of an archaeologist lures disease-control researcher Dr. Bailey Harrison deep into the jungles of Costa Rica. There, in the hot zone, an unknown and potentially devastating new virus has made its first lethal appearance. Yet a more horrifying evil awaits Bailey at the end of her quest. For in a lavish estate carved from the savage wilderness, an extraordinary man rules, the master of a forbidding world. And he himself is slave to a centuries-old hunger.