The City of San Francisco is locked in a grip of fear. A series of occult murders has lead, Inspector Thomas James to a crime scene similar to a murder committed 90 years ago in the once grand Aleris Hotel. A place where power barons of the early 20th Century engaged in witchcraft. And silent film stars indulged in the most wicked of sins. A place where no one questions the black smoke that rises from the hotel's incinerators in the middle of the night