The Show is About to Begin...When a mysterious ballet theatre surfaces in Paris, people are drawn to the stage productions with a magnetic force. Captivated dancers hastily audition for the grand creations with a sheer disregard for the terror which is rumored to reside within the theatre. A sense of dread permeates the company as the lines between illusion and reality are obscured, when one of the performers is thought to be a danseur de la crypt...a nefarious villain who carries out justice for the immortals. As the company prepares for the spellbinding production of Les Ballerines de la Crypte, members of the company start to disappear. Rumors of "The Crypt Dancer" soar through the performers, and throughout the world, as an increasing amount of immortals are banished to "coffin sentences" for centuries; tormented in crypts, bound in chains with beating hearts, fully aware of the darkness and solitude which surrounds them. At the center of the story is Ramiel, an alluring immortal from Rome, raised in Italian culture and Catholic traditions. He travels to Paris to pursue his artistic dreams, and after, to America, to fulfill an immortal doctrine, The Code of the Immortals. In America, he finds fellow immortal, Antoine, struggling as his sector is in turmoil, overrun by a coven of witches whose true purpose is shrouded in secrecy.Ramiel must return to his past...back to the days when he performed the Ballet of The Crypt Dancer...to raise the immortals back to their renewed strength. A.L. Mengel returns to the enigmatic world of The Tales of Tartarus with a tale of phantoms and masquerades, voodoo and witchcraft, juxtaposed with the enigmatic impression of immortality.