Mortimer Moorecook, retired Wall Street raider, avid collector, is losing his fight against cancer. With weeks to live, a package arrives at the door of his hillside mansion, an artifact he paid millions for ... a hominoid skull with elongated teeth, discovered in a farmer's field in the Romanian countryside. With Shanna, his beautiful research assistant looking on, he sinks the skull's razor sharp fangs into his neck, and immediately goes into convulsions.