The FBI calls on Ryan Hardy, a former agent with physical and emotional scars, when Joe Carroll, a notorious serial killer he apprehended years earlier, escapes from death row. Carroll, an English professor and novelist fixated on Edgar Allan Poe, mutilated and killed 14 women before he was imprisoned. Hardy and the FBI learn that while be was incarcerated, Carroll spent his time gathering a collection of cultlike followers. The recruits prove themselves willing to commit murder, facilitate abductions, and even sacrifice themselves in order to help Carroll with his deadly objectives and achieve his ultimate goal -- to exact revenge on Ryan Hardy.