Book excerpt: In eighteenth-century Venisalle, faith governs life and death, and the guilty hide their shame behind masks, showing their faces only in the secret rites of the confessional. It is to this stronghold of the Inquisition that the souls of Hell have escaped to possess the living, spreading sin, murder, and chaos. Amid the carnage, one man is blessed with the clarity to recognize the demons that prey on his countrymen — and the means to return them to the fires of Hell. But as the stakes rise, the lines separating good and evil begin to blur, and the Marquis — the dark avenger whom even demons fear to cross — finds himself torn between the blind faith that has defined his life and the bitter truths exposed under his new sight.