The dream never changes: a moonless, starless night without end. The road she walks is black, bordered with round, white pebbles or nubs of polished bone; she can't tell which but they're the only white in the darkness, marking her way through the night. In dreams and nightmares, Helen walks the Black Road. It leads her back from the grave, back from madness, back towards the man who caused the deaths of her family: Tereus Winterborn, Regional Commander for the Reapers, who rule the ruins of a devastated Britain. On her journey, she gathers her allies: her old mentor Darrow, the cocky young fighter Danny, emotionally-scarred intelligence officer Alannah and Gevaudan Shoal, last of the genetically-engineered Grendelwolves. Winterborn will stop at nothing to become the Reapers' Supreme Commander; more than anything he seeks the advantage that will help him achieve that goal. And in the experiments of the obsessed scientist Dr Mordake, he thinks he has found it. To Winterborn, Project Tindalos is a means to ultimate power; to Mordake, it's a means to roll back the devastation of the War and restore his beloved wife to the living. But neither Winterborn nor Mordake understand the true nature of the forces they are about to unleash. Forces that threaten to destroy everything that survived the War, unless Helen and her allies can find and stop Project Tindalos in time.

Their hair was bleached and matted, their chalk-white skin dry and fissured like sun-baked earth. Their eyes were near-black, glistening clots with a gleam of red; when they grinned their teeth were needles of bone. "Don't worry, Helen. We won't hurt you. But something will." In the haunted desolation of post-nuclear Britain, the Catchman walks. Spawned from the nightmare of Project Tindalos, it doesn't tire, stop, or die. It exists only for one purpose: to find and kill Helen Damnation, leader of the growing revolt against the tyrannical Reapers and their Commander, Tereus Winterborn. Meanwhile, Helen is threatened both from without and within. Her nightmares of the Black Road have returned, and the ghosts of her murdered family demand vengeance, in the form of either Winterborn's death or her own. And close behind the Catchman, a massive Reaper assault, led by Helen's nemesis, Colonel Jarrett, is nearing the rebels' base. Killing Helen has become Jarrett's obsession: only one of them can emerge from this conflict alive. With the fate of the rebellion in the balance, Helen faces her deadliest challenge yet, pitted in single combat against an unstoppable killer, commanding armies in a bloody and pitiless battle - and, at last, confronting the demons of her past on the Black Road.

"Helen Damnation's rebellion against the Reapers has spread. All across post-nuclear Britain, the fires of revolution are beginning to burn. But her old enemy Tereus Winterborn still intends to rule supreme, and has a new ally in Dr Mordake, the creator of Project Tindalos - now monstrously transfigured by the forces he unleashed at Hobsdyke. Their target is Helen's closest the last Grendelwolf, Gevaudan Shoal. The worst tortures of all await him in the cells of the Pyramid. At Hobsdyke, in the tunnels beneath Graspen Hill, the legacy of the Night Wolves is waiting for him - along with secrets about Helen that threaten to tear both Gevaudan and the resistance apart. With the Reapers poised to strike at the first sign of weakness, a series of brutal killings breaks out behind rebel lines - and the evidence leads back to Gevaudan's door. With all those closest to Helen turning against her, she faces her greatest challenge yet as Winterborn begins his bid for ultimate power."—Provided by publisher.