What did Harry Potter know about magic? He was stuck with the decidedly un-magical Dursleys, who hated him. He slept in a closet and ate their leftovers. But an owl messenger changes all that, with an invitation to attend the Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches, where it turns out Harry is already famous.

From a sinister and secret government laboratory and into the lives of certain good and evil people come two escaped creatures, one murderous and willed with rage and the other benign and compassionate. They are the end products of experiments in genetic engineering and enhanced intelligence.

When Dr. Louis Creed, the new director of student health at the local university, is first taken by a neighbor friend to the pet cemetery in the woods behind his house, he thinks it is just an eccentric, if morbid, local site.