Cade investigates a series of disappearances of young women with help from a romantic fiction writer whose sister is the latest to vanish.

Quatrain 21, Century 8: "On the fields of revolution / Where England's traitor king runneth / Passion's dew is stolen from opulence / The undercroft keeps the salve of enemy wounds".

An alien experiment involving bare knuckle fighters draws Cade Foster and an old prison friend to enter a boxing competition.

Quatrain 63, Century 9: "In a city risen from blue grey ash, gladiators vie for blood stained glory / The fabric of man undergoes lethal alchemy / A patron of his own destruction".