Jean is on her way to Hawaii for a week of fun in the sun. But the vacation gets off to a gruesome start. The boy sitting beside her on the plane suddenly chokes and dies. Jean tries to push the incident out of her mind when she arrives on the island, but that's impossible. Part of the reason is because Mike keeps coming back to her in her dreams. Horrible dreams filled with cold blood.

Two of Jean's friends are waiting for her in Hawaii -- Mandy and Michele. They have already made friends with two young men who teach scuba diving at the hotel -- Dave and Johnny. Jean and Johnny quickly become friends. But there are problems in paradise. Dave and Johnny have recently lost a partner in the ocean. No one knows how he died. No one can find his body. But then Jean finds Mike's body. It isn't where it's supposed to be, and it seems as if it's still got some life in it.

Julia is a young woman with extraordinary powers. She has the ability to heal people with her touch. She also knows things that are happening in far-off places when she looks in water that has sunlight shining on it. She comes from a tradition of witches -- good witches. But before Julia's mother died, she warned her daughter never to look in water that had moonlight shining on it.

Unfortunately, almost by accident, Julia does. What she sees is a vision of the future, a scene in which a young man she doesn't know is shot in a hold-up and dies in her arms. Only later, when Julia attends a football game at school, does she meet the young man.

He is her girlfriend's new boyfriend.

Julia immediately falls for the guy, but it is an ill-fated love. He does not belong to her and he is supposed to die. Or does he have to die? Julia doesn't know if her vision of the future is set, or if it can be changed. She doesn't know why the gunman in her vision evokes such hatred in her, and why she feels she must destroy him at all costs. But using the supernatural powers at her command, and risking her own life plus the lives of her friends, Julia will find the answers to all these questions, at a terrible cost.

Shari Cooper is dead, the victim of a murderous attack. She is on the other side, in a place of spirits, an eternal realm of light and love. But she is given a rare offer. To return to Earth without having to be reborn. Into the body of a depressed teenage girl. A transfer of souls, they call it. Shari is given a chance to be a Wanderer, and to do a great service for humanity. It is an offer she gladly accepts.

Then she is back, in a human body. Yet she does not remember being Shari Cooper. At first she recalls nothing of the afterlife. Perhaps it is just as well. Not everybody on Earth welcomes Wanderers. Of the few who know of their existence, some want them dead. And others, the truly evil ones, wish them much worse than that.

Herb just wanted to photograph the cheerleaders in the school showers. He planted his camera high in the corner where no one could see it, and rigged it to a special homemade timer. He did that Thursday night, and he hoped that by Friday night he would have an exciting roll of film to develop.

But a girl dies Friday afternoon. On the surface it appears to be nothing more than a tragic car accident. But when Herb finally does collect his roll of film, he develops a picture that shows a shadowy figure sneaking up on the girl who has died -- sneaking up on her with a baseball bat.

It makes Herb wonder if the girl was dead long before the car accident.

But unfortunately for Herb, he doesn't wonder if the murderer knows he took the picture.

The dead alchemist's experiment has worked. Alisa is no longer a vampire, but a frail and confused human. Not only that -- she is pregnant. The baby grows in her at supernatural speed. As the stranger watches. The stranger from the past.

But what child will Alisa's seed produce?

A demon or an angel? Alisa does not know.

But the stranger does. He knows everything that ever was.

And he knows everything that is to be.

Then one special night a story of incomparable beauty and mystery comes to her. An ancient tale that speaks of the origin of mankind and the purpose of human life. Quickly, almost in a fever, Shari begins to write it down, sure that it is nothing more than a wonderful fable. But what Shari doesn't know is that her new book is true -- a mystical blueprint that warns of a great danger to humanity from creatures who despise all human beings, but who have a unique and terrifying hatred for Wanderers. Creatures who will go to any length to stop Shari's story from being published.

Creatures who wait unseen outside Shari's door.

Mary Blanc walked into the party with a loaded shotgun. In the blink of an eye she blew two people away. She wanted to kill more, but was stopped by her best friend, Angela Warner, and the police. The next day, when Angela visits Mary at the jail, she asks why she did it. Mary responds, "Because they were no longer human." Angela thinks she's crazy. At first.

Until she probes deeper into Mary's claims and discovers a horror so unimaginable that she thinks she is going crazy. She even gets to the point where she wonders if she should have let Mary keep on killing. While there was still time to stop the thing from spreading. The very old thing. The hungry thing.

Teresa Chafey is running away from home. Driving north along the California coast, she picks up two mysterious hitchhikers: Poppy Corn and Freedom Jack. Together the three of them tell stories: Teresa of her devastating relationship with her boyfriend, Poppy of a sad young woman she once knew, and Freedom of a talented young man with a violent temper.

Yet as they talk, a darker story unfolds around them. A story of life and death, of redemption and damnation. It will be the longest night of Teresa's life.

Maybe the last night of her life.

Dusty Shame was a high school senior, and a serial killer. Already he has murdered three young women, and he has more planned. Yet Dusty did not want tohurt anybody. There was something inside him, or perhaps outside him, that compelled him to kill.

Sheila Hardolt has lost her best friend to Dusty's insane attacks. It will be her task to probe the clues Dusty has left at the site of each of his murders. Clues that will point her into the past -- to a time when a large portion of mankind lost all sense of decency.

There she will find the seed of Dusty's evil compulsion, the Wicked Heart, and the reason why it did not die the first time it was destroyed.

Rela has just bought herself a new VCR. She sets the machine to tape a movie she plans to show at a party she is throwing. But instead of the movie she gets the news -- tomorrow's news.

Soon Rela is regularly recording next week's news, even what is to happen in the far future. It's fun, at first, until she sees herself on the news. And learns that there is no future for her.

But can she change destiny?

Can Rela survive what is meant to be?

It begins with an innocent young man being led deep into the woods by a mysterious young lady. There he is attacked by a cruel cult, stripped of his clothes, thrown naked into a coffin, and buried alive to the sound of strange chants.

It continues with a pretty girl meeting a fascinating guy. A guy who is not like other guys. Who hardly seems to blink...or breathe, and who emits a cool presence even in the midday sun.

It ends in a nightmare. In a weird realm of existence where life and death mirror each other. Where the grave no longer promises any escape, from pleasure or pain.

Mark Charm is a pyromaniac. Since the time he was a child, he loved to watch fires. But it is only in his senior year of high school that he takes his personal obsession citywide. It is a dry autumn in Southern California and the desert winds are blowing. Mark has a box of matches, and it is late at night. Would it be so bad, he thinks, if the whole state burned?