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Hundreds of years after the first, man-made spacecraft orbited the Earth, new technology has allowed for the colonisation of the first of many new worlds. Kato started as a wonderful new world of opportunity, but more than 150 years since first settlement has seen many of the old sins come to the fore. Corruption and crime vie with mining for the most profitable lines of business….and business is booming. Here we find Darius Cade, perhaps the most successful, and most wanted, interstellar criminal and mercenary that has ever lived. This is his natural environment and the only place that he has ever called home.

As comfortable as he is here, his line of work isn’t for the faint hearted and Darius isn’t as young as he once was. After more than 30 years on the run, his body and mind aren’t nearly as sharply honed as he needs them to be. Barely escaping a bounty hunter’s attempt to collect the price on his head, was the last straw. He can’t reverse the effect of time, but there is a way to enhance his prowess….not through technology, but religion. The burgeoning Earthdawn religion started on Earth and has gained an immense following across the inhabited worlds. Their Deity, the Light, is said to manifest blessings on followers that enhance their physical attributes, and ease disabilities. Most potent among those blessings, are tattoos, artfully crafted onto the skin and embodying a fragment of the deity.

Despite rumors of some tattoos killing their recipients, Darius agrees to have one etched into his arm. Instead of bringing in the Earthdawn deity though, a completely different and much darker entity attaches to the artfully tattooed snake. They make for a very unhappy coupling, neither accepting the other at first, and only seeing each other as a liability.

Darius isn’t the only one with issues…the Earthdawn religion have been rocked by a series of macabre murders amongst their hierarchy. Giving up on the local police, they target Darius as the best criminal option to get answers. He gets the answers of course, but they aren’t going to be the answers that anyone wanted, and there will be no shortage of casualties along the way.

The rest of the book progresses through the interaction between these two main characters, Darius the wanted criminal, and Lisha, the feminine entity bound to the tattoo, as he investigates the killings. In doing so he navigates a brutal criminal world to slowly piece together the answers. She needs to learn and understand just what she is capable of, while reveling in the depraved and violent world that Darius lives in. He needs to accept what she brings to their binding and make the most of the supernatural skills that she has at her disposal. In the end, there is no undoing the connection, so they will either learn to co-exist, or fail to exist at all.