November, 1914: Captain Henry Baltimore leads a night attack across the No Man's Land of a battlefield in the Ardennes Forest.

November 30, 1919: While a mysterious plague is sweeping all of Europe, three men - Sea captain Demetrius Aischros, English nobleman Thomas Childress, Jr., and surgeon Dr. Lemuel Rose - meet in a London pub, The Ugly Muse, each having received a summons from Lord Baltimore.

Dr. Rose recounts that, in the fall of 1914, before he met Lord Baltimore, he encountered a soldier who had been infected with some kind of malevolent spirit that caused him to shapeshift into a bear.

Deciding he was a danger to his comrades, the soldier deliberately let himself be captured by the Germans, then shifted and began wreaking havoc behind their lines, leaving behind his human skin, still dressed in his uniform.

When Baltimore arrives home, he learns that his entire family except his wife, Elowen, have been claimed by the plague, and falls into a delirious fever.

Aischros recounts an encounter he had in his youth in Cicagne, an Italian town haunted by supernatural puppets carved from a tree that had grown in a cemetery for criminals and suicides.

The three men decide to stay the night, but there are no rooms left at The Ugly Muse, so an artist called Bentley offers them space in his studio.

The three companions are attacked by skeletons; despite desperate fighting (including by Dr. Rose who sets the room on fire) it quickly becomes clear that the three are ill-equipped to fend off the supernatural forces arrayed against them.

Lord Baltimore easily cuts down the skeleton-wraiths and confronts Haigus, demanding to know why vampires have returned to plague humanity.

Haigus responds that it was not the vampires' choice; rather, he says it was the violence and death of the Great War that awoke them from their slumber, and humanity will never be rid of them now.

In anger and frustration, Baltimore slashes the painting of the Red King that had somehow remained untouched in the center of the room despite the intense fighting and roaring flames.

Then Baltimore reaches into his chest and pulls out his heart, which has become a lump of tin with his wife's wedding ring set in its side.

Mike Mignola came up with the concept for Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire and conceived much of the plot, though Christopher Golden penned the novel based on their joint efforts.

PopMatters called it "thoughtful (and) studied", and observed that Golden and Mignola "understand quite well (...) the simple thrill of a well-told spook story spun out in dramatic segments by shadowy characters in seedy settings.