Doug McArthur, hit in the face by a young friend at the age of seven is suddenly able to see a supernatural creature known as the Collector. Doug's life is turned upside down when he realizes that it's not just the creature he sees, but the atrocities it commits. Since marrying Annie his visions have been quiet, and Doug is grateful. Now Annie is pregnant with their first child-a child that promises to be special-and their world is in the process of coming apart, beginning with the destruction of their home and forcing them to run for their lives, back into the world of Annie's childhood, the De Roché dynasty, to a murdered mother and a cruel and enigmatic father. Doug, whose love for Annie borders on the obsessive has a deep and abiding hate for her father. He is nearly insane with grief over their plight, but soon finds that De Roché is the least of his worries when he begins the hear the pleading voice of a lost child that he cannot possibly save. And then, in the midst of Annie's mother's funeral, Doug is given a strange artifact along with a dire warning by a dying priest. He must leave Annie and his unborn child and begin a sojourn into the darkest regions of the human heart. In his attempt to save Annie and his unborn child, Doug finds that there is much more at stake than the lives of two people, perhaps the very salvation of the human soul.