Looking for a monster hunter who files paperwork, rides ghost trains, and negotiates with cemetery staff by payphone? Meet Laszlo. He is a 900-year-old former king of Hungary who now works as a gargoyle operative for a shadow outfit called The Hand. His toolkit includes a saint’s mummified hand in a glass tube, a bottomless demon-skin bag, and a coin that can shackle souls. His beat starts in Dubuque and runs west on rails you cannot see.
Cold open in space: The book kicks off inside a TR-3 black triangle spacecraft. A squad of little green aliens, an anxious sorcerer named Belshazzar, and a dragonkin gargoyle named Draco run a timed recovery on an Eastern European battlefield. Their target is a fallen king: Ladislaus of Hungary. Translation for new readers. That is Laszlo before he became a gargoyle. The crew hauls his corpse, jump-starts it with sparkly gargoyle blood, and races the clock as a sky-ripping vortex closes. A demon prince named Asmodeus notices the theft and promises payback. That is the energy level on page one.
Meet The Hand: Cut to present day beneath St. Raphael Cathedral in Dubuque. Kirby Brink, a field director with a smoking habit that involves a very alive centipede, lays out terms. Laszlo either captures Werner Gottlieb the Clairvoyant or faces retirement in a tormentor’s crystal. Carrot. Stick. Deadline. Kirby issues two key items:
- Holy Dexter: the relic hand of Saint Stephen in a sealed cylinder.
- Demon bag: flayed from a bile demon named Grarmol. Bottomless. Creepy. Useful.
Kirby removes Laszlo’s shackles. The mission begins.
A suicide returns: Laszlo needs leverage fast. He breaks into a morgue and revives a young woman named Laura. The dynamic is tense and human. Laura wants her mother. Laszlo wants a chance to survive a battle with a clairvoyant who always seems one move ahead. He promises to seek a better path, then aims for an immediate score.
Payphone to the underworld: Fun worldbuilding beat. A payphone doubles as an Edison Trans-Dimensional Communicator. Tap the receiver. Ask the cemetery. Get inventory. The dead pick up. They have watches. They also have a guardian. Laszlo and Laura step through an apple tree and into an ossuary market. The ask is specific. A vintage Cartier Tank rumored to stop time for three seconds. The price is steep.
The Gatekeeper: The overseer is not a corpse. It's a masked demon. Words turn to sound weapons. Sound turns to a cave-in. The demon breaks free and bolts for the living neighborhood. Laszlo tackles it. The demon tries a possession. Things get loud and messy. The outcome is classic Laszlo. He rips the invader back out, finishes the fight in a convenience store, pops the demon’s soul like a grub, then stuffs the empty shell in the demon bag. He also grabs a box of candy. Field work requires sugar.
Ghost Zephyr boarding call: Laszlo and Laura make for the Chicago, Burlington & Northern depot. The ghost train rolls in with vampires, werewolves, and a union-grade conductor who does not want demon cargo on his manifest. A quick negotiation and a promise later, they ride the Ghost Zephyr toward Omaha and the Durham Museum. Goal. Find friends, stash problems, and upgrade gear.
Meanwhile, in a very bad prison: Over in Utah, Werner Gottlieb sits in solitary with a notorious Bellesario tarot deck. The cards do more than tell fortunes. They bend outcomes, nudge probability, and talk back. Guards hate him. Systems fail around him. He performs an existential “near-death” test to scout the other side and makes contact with a name from the prologue.
Enter Draco the Black: Gottlieb calls down a staircase inside a Vatican abyss and hears an old monster answer. Draco. The same dragonkin who once resurrected Laszlo on that battlefield. The same one who paid for that theft with an eternity in crystal. Gottlieb breaks the spell. Draco rises. The board now holds three players with history and grudges.
If you like supernatural noir with working parts, grab your ticket. The Ghost Zephyr boards on time. The conductor is strict. The gargoyle keeps his promises.