By Alia's Blood

In the end, the Miami paper would nail it in their editorial. "This thing was about Alia, all about her, and her swim that fateful night." The story began 28 years ago with a reporter stationed at a Coral Gables hospital located hard by Biscayne Bay. It concerned the mysterious death of a pregnant Honduran female and a deadly curse they say followed her from the Bay Islands. Alia, descendant of a 17th-century pirate and a woman taken from a captured slaver, was island nobility but chose to flee her family and an arranged marriage to be with the man she loved. Her daughter lived. Rumor had it that it was predestined the newborn would carry the curse, pass it to her surviving firstborn female offspring, then die. So it would travel, daughter to daughter, down through the generations until the bloodline was broken. The attending doctor filled in the required blanks of the death certificate and moved on, duty complete, official cause of death listed as cardiac arrest. Then, as is often the case in legends of cursed bloodlines, the tale sank into the tapestry of local lore. Now, after years of silence, it surfaces, exploding into the public consciousness. Serena, woman child of Alia, must now face her mother's legacy--and break the curse or die.