A line of Priests, descendants from a cult surrounding the medieval and murderous Countess Bathory, are hunted down by the churches they infect.

SYNOPSIS:

Elizabeth Bathory was terrifyingly real - a descendant of Vlad The Impaler (from which ‘Dracula’ is drawn) she was the niece to the Polish King, and first cousin to the Hungarian Prime Minister.

She, like Vlad, was insanely cruel. She murdered thousands of beautiful young women in her pursuit of ever-lasting youth. In the dungeon torture scenes, where Bathory bleeds the women and bathes in their blood (historically true) she is assisted by a fanatical order of priests who drug and direct her.

Aside from the historical backdrop of the famous Bathory legend, there are two contemporary storylines separated by a 12 year period. They are of a child descendant to Bathory, and her adult character when she becomes a young woman. These storylines eventually merge.

The young woman, Beth, works in a church orphanage during the day and in a bookstore, nights. She is also studying part-time for a degree in literature. Into her life comes a handsome but mysterious young man, Raif, and he asks her to procure old books on Bathory.

Unbeknown to Beth Raif is shadowing her every move. For reasons she does not

understand, when she collects the books on Bathory she begins to have disturbing

flashbacks of distant memories. As time progresses Beth appears to be involved in a series of violent and bloody murders of young women. She suffers headaches, terrifying hallucinations, memory loss, and fears she is losing her mind. She feels she is being hunted and so seeks the help of her friend and long time mentor, Father Michaels.

The second storyline, when Beth was a child, deals with a series of gruesome and puzzling murders which take place within a large metropolis, and to the audience these initially seem to be the murders associated with Beth (as the possible murderer). Detective John Mason is assigned to the case and shares much of its history with his small daughter, an eight year old (going on forty-five), who, like her father, is stimulated by puzzling crimes. Confiding in his daughter as he goes, John conflicts with his deeply religious wife, Shaunna. Aside from her objections to his influence on their daughter, his wife staunchly defends her religion and constantly attends church, where she has a close relationship with a certain Priest. Shaunna, as with Beth later, suffers headaches and hallucinations and is seeing a series of doctors.

They are unable to diagnose her illness. As storylines converge it is revealed that the child was Beth when younger and the Priest who so influenced her mother was the same Father Michaels, the Priest who is now a father-figure to Beth. He helped raise her in the church orphanage after her parent’s were murdered.

As her memory returns, Beth recalls the many murders her father was investigating and that her parents were killed as a result of her mother’s psychosis. It is through Raif’s investigations that we learn the truth: There is a secret order of Priests, stretching back through centuries, who have followed the Bathory bloodline down through the ages, re-perpetuating her evil deeds wherever they go and using her descendants as vehicles for their trade. These Priests are in many churches, many orders, like parasites living inside benign hosts. Investigator-assassins, like Raif, have been engaged to hunt them down and eliminate them. This is but one story in that ongoing war.

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THE BLOODLINE