The Wizard of Rue Morgue — Simon Hawke

A gorgeous model, murdered. An artist, famed for drunken rages, jailed. But who carved ancient runes all over the dead girl's body?

DARKNESS IN THE CITY OF LIGHT

Responding to an ally's plea, the bearers of the runestones--Wyrdrune; Kira; Modred; and Billy Slade, the Cockney punk possessed by the spirit of Merlin--must outwit the gendarmes to free an innocent man. Meanwhile, Parisian street children are disappearing as a chain of bizarre slaughters brings a new horror to the Rue Morgue.

And beneath the streets, in the sewers and Catacombs filled with the bones of the guillotine's victims, the immortal Dark Ones prepare a gruesome trap to destroy the runestones. Their plan: unleash a bestial army on Paris and drown the city in a sea of blood...