1927, Manhattan - Prohibition, Fitzgerald, Valentino, and the Cotton Club. 666 West End Avenue, pressed close to Harlem's roguish heartbeat, is a just another trendy apartment building in a swanky part of town when trendy motion-picture folk move in. Movie stars, drinkers, and hedonists, they summon a certain evil in, which casts a sinister shadow over the building and dims the light of its glittery tenants. Rumored to be Satanists into all aspects of the occult and truly black magic, drugs, and the darker aspects of sex, the cult's trend-setting ways breed disciples quickly. Soon 666 is home to thrill-seeking jazz babies drawn to the scent of sin like hipsters to hooch.
Little do these Jazz-Age innocents know how deeply they are flirting with the Beast at 666 . . .
2005, Manhattan - 666 West End Avenue is no longer the jumping jive house of the decadent 20s. Broken, degraded, and leering, it's now a blight in the center of its gentrified surroundings. The building's once great black marble staircase is still remains roped off. The once gleaming deco tiles in the hall are now dull and trampled. Despite the landlord's greatest efforts, 666 resonates heartache, disgrace, and foul luck. Stories of freakish deaths and ghostly inhabitants insure low rent in this revived part of town, so long-time tenants like ancestral skeletons cling to their leases while huddling in their apartments.
666 West End Avenue is a novel of horror and madness, murder, and the occult. For the purposes of the story it is assumed that black magic is black, and Satanism means just that.