Various characters meet each other along the way, all of them converging inexorably on the mysteriously named "New City" in Utah, a religious community founded by the Reverend A. Glorious Day.

Working with a team of professional mercenaries from the now underground Hanseatic League, Alexander (now Reverend Day) has commissioned the theft of the holy books from every major religion, hoping to perform a ceremony that will "destroy" God, and allow "the Beast" to enter their world.

The city's inhabitants, acting through a mix of religious fanaticism and mind control from Alexander, are unknowingly all meant to be slaughtered inside the tower as part of the ceremony.

The action ends with a bloody confrontation in the desert, as Jack, Doyle, and their allies fight their way into the tower to reach Alexander before the "Beast" is summoned, and to stop the massacre of as many townspeople as possible.

By this time he has become sick of writing the Holmes stories and killed him off the same way Jack died in real-life plunging over Reichenbach Falls.

At this time, Doyle's wife, Louisa, was suffering the debilitating effects of tuberculosis, which prevented them from being physically close.