After lightning strikes natural-born killer Leonard Ravnik and grazes famous novelist Renee Holland, a spate of brutal and ritualistic murders begin in Baltimore. Renee lapses into trances of auto-writing and records Ravnik's gruesome killings as they occur. Police lieutenant, Kent Elinger, who has solved Baltimore's most infamous crimes, discovers that Renee knows things only the killer would know. This makes her Elinger's prime suspect until Elinger discovers the staged murders form a cryptic pattern from another era. Elinger and Renee fall in love as they dig into the case and uncover its paranormal factors. The investigation leads Elinger and Renee to Baltimore's oldest graveyard where they uncover a 160 year-old secret linked to a founding family of Baltimore and Edgar Allan Poe. When Renee becomes the killer's final target, Elinger executes a macabre and dangerous solution that could kill them all if it fails.