Toward the end of the Twentieth Century-so say historians of the age of the Second Enlightenment-civilization died in a blaze of atomic and bacterial warfare. Barbarism followed the holocaust, the Dark Centuries during which humanity rested and prepared for a charge to new heights of development. Amid the ruins of one civilization, another and greater slowly grew. Old records were rediscovered, new knowledge was added to that of the Ancients. Then came the discovery of immortality, and Joaquin Smith and his especially beautiful sister, Margaret, began their search for power-and the story of the Black Flame begins. Black Margot, they called her, this most beautiful woman of the Immortals, a black flame blowing cold across the world. The Black Flame, loved by men, hated by women-vibrantly alive, yet bored with living-restless as though demon-driven-who did not age, who remains untouched by the passing of time. Contains The Black Flame and Dawn of Flame .