The tragedy of December 1st is still fresh in the minds of Sam, Nathan, and Trent. As Sam adjusts to his new life of becoming a father after losing his own to Nergal, he does not know there will be no respite for him or his friends. They believe their ordeal, which started in Talihina, Oklahoma, two years earlier, was over, and they had realized their triumph over Nergal and his grip on Southeastern Oklahoma.
With the deaths of the Choctaw elders, Addison, and Joshua, came a loss of wisdom and foresight into the true nature of their enemy. Nergal had established his dominion over the area thousands of years before the first nations people migrated in and began establishing their civilizations in the area. He would not give it up now, especially now that these humans were in possession of a prized relic of his.
The mysterious obelisk the men had manipulated to their advantage in the hills of Honobia was recovered from the smoldering wreckage of the helicopter that had become Paul Eastman's funeral pyre. Nathan and Trent alerted their commander, General Malcolm Henderson, to the relic and its mysterious properties. After an inspection by a Department of Defense physicist, the General knows of only one man who might have insight into the unique qualities of the relic. To their surprise, the obelisk had survived the inferno and seemed to repair itself.
Eben Maqor, a hyperintelligent polymath with his feet planted firmly in two of the world's most renowned intelligence agencies, is called to investigate the object. Immediately recognizing the exotic nature and properties of the object, Maqor has the object moved to the laboratory of an enigmatic aerospace tycoon who has been missing for two years. Under the scrutiny of the tycoon's daughter and an ex-WWII German fighter pilot, the object's true nature and its relevance to another ancient relic also become known.
Maqor knows the object's significance to Nergal and that the fallen angel will not rest until he recovers the obelisk. Realizing the danger posed to the men who recovered it and that the dizzying coincidences occurring, such as Trent's past romance with Jenna Weston, the daughter of the missing tycoon, are not coincidences at all. They are merely the residue of battles fought thousands of years earlier between God and his rebellious creations.
He knows Nergal, one of the most rebellious of the fallen, will use every weapon available to retrieve what he sees as his property. For Sam, there will be no rest between battles, no time to mourn his losses or celebrate his new son. As for Nathan and Trent, what they thought was a victory was, in fact, merely an opening maneuver. It will force them to battle new menaces. The most dangerous will come from institutions they should be able to trust, Congress, and the Pentagon.
These human enemies will ultimately kill them and ruin their names and reputations if they cannot figure out a way to counter them, but before they can do anything to save themselves from their government. They must defeat Nergal and his creatures inside his "Lair of the Ancients."
