After making early gains on the battlefields, General Washington's struggling young armies are being relentlessly pressed back by British troops and Hessian mercenaries. Among the enemy's ranksis a mysterious force from the Covenant, a secret society of evil witches that for centuries has been pulling the strings of European history: a Hessian necromancer who drinks the power of other witches like a vampire andwhose allies include devils and ghosts. Now this man seeks to sap the fighting spirit of Washington's troops by means of a pernicious curse, chaining the souls of the dead to the spirits of theliving.
Against him stand Proctor Brown and Deborah Walcott, two young patriots who lead a ragtag band of witches as much in danger from their own side as from the enemy. Proctor and Deborah must find away to break the Hessian's curse before the newborn revolution is smothered in its cradle-and the Covenant extends its dark dominion to the shores of America, extinguishing forever the alreadysputtering torch of liberty. "From the Paperback edition."