Maggie O'Connor's (Kim Basinger) life revolves around her job as a nurse at a busy New York hospital, until one rainy night, her sister Jenna (Angela Bettis) abandons her newborn autistic daughter, Cody, at her home. Maggie takes Cody in, and she becomes the daughter she never had.
Six years later, Jenna suddenly re-appears with a mysterious new husband, Eric (Rufus Sewell), and abducts Cody (Holliston Coleman). Despite the fact that Maggie has no legal rights to Cody, FBI agent John Travis (Jimmy Smits), an expert in ritual murder and occult-related crime, takes up her case when he realizes that Cody shares the same birth date as several other recently missing children.
Cody, it soon becomes clear, is more than simply "special." She manifests extraordinary powers that the forces of evil have waited centuries to control, and her abduction sparks a clash between the soldiers of good and evil that can only be resolved, in the end, by the strength of one small child and the love she inspires in those she touches.