1920s Nairobi. When two Africans are found gruesomely murdered, all signs point to John Wallace, a promising young plantation owner with a bright future ahead of him and a beautiful bride-to-be. What drove him to kill these men? His silence and a corrupt system lead to internment, without a trial, in a vicious Kenyan prison camp. But sadistic guards, conspiring cellmates, and harsh desert labor are no match for the suffering that Wallace feels inside over the life he lost, and how best to get it back. He's willing to do anything for revenge—even loose the mysterious beast lurking within...

Ostracized from society after committing a gruesome and seemingly unmotivated double murder, John Wallace has lost his fiancée and his future. But even a man with nothing left to lose has something left to fear: Naisha, the witch who wants him dead. On the run after breaking out of prison, Wallace joins a hunting party as a guide, but only to get closer to the highlands of Lake Tana, where a former fellow inmate claimed a treasure was hidden. Wallace plans to use it to beat his retreat from Africa... but will his hopes be dashed?

Wallace may have left Africa behind, but he hasn't escaped his past—or his strange plight. The past comes calling when a British civil servant, well aware of Wallace's crimes, offers him a devil's bargain: kill a man for queen and country in order to strengthen the Crown's hold on the region, and buy himself his freedom. The predicament? The tenacious witch Naïsha, who forced a lion's soul into his own. She's crossed the Red Sea after him, hot on his heels. But she becomes the least of Wallace's worries when her master, a far more powerful sorcerer, turns out to want them both.