Chapter 4

Franklin Deluva Sr. slipped his hands into his pockets and glanced up at the starless sky. Better known to others as “Frank,” or “Ghost” for his uncanny ability to slip in and out of places unseen and unheard, his black leather riding boots pounded a nearly silent rhythm on the rain-dampened sidewalks. The darkened streets of Philadelphia were quiet and nearly empty at this time of night, and his business had wrapped up hours ago.

He should have been thrilled that everything had gone according to the book; he’d delivered the goods, and all money owed to the Silver Demons had been paid in full, right down to the last red cent. But he was far from thrilled. There were other things weighing heavily on his mind, shrouding his thoughts beneath a dome of static—static that would grow louder and louder until it would be all Frank would hear.

Frank was a man who liked order. He liked everything in its rightful place. He liked his hair just so, his clothing to fit a certain way, his wallet always in his right back pocket, and his keys in his front left pocket. Everything in its rightful place. Everything and everyone.

Frank liked his wife at home, caring for their young son. He liked coming home to a clean house and a hot meal. And he liked his club and all their business partners in their respective roles, working in perfect sync, the cogs turning like a well-oiled machine.

This madness inside him extended to all facets of his life. His clothing had to be folded a particular way, the different foods on his plate could never touch, and then there was his unexplainable aversion to even numbers. He typically did certain things in groups of threes—looked at something three times, said a word three times, usually silently, or touched something three times. It was a never-ending cycle of constantly counting, enough to drive a sane man mad… or keep a mad man sane.

He’d often speculated that growing up as a ward of the state, never having had a place to call home, might have caused this incessant, demanding need for order in all things. If it hadn’t been for his friendship with Preacher, the only constant in his hectic young life, who knew what kind of person he would have turned out to be?

Preacher.

Frank picked up his pace as the buzzing in his head grew louder, his heart pounding as a surge of anxiety-fueled adrenaline coursed through him. Preacher was not where he was supposed to be. Something was leaking inside Frank’s well-oiled machine. Cogs were rusting, and one had stopped turning altogether.

Frank hadn’t exactly minded when Preacher had gone and gotten himself locked up. In fact, in a lot of ways, he’d preferred it. For the two years Preacher had been in prison, Frank had known exactly where to find his friend when he’d needed him, and had been secure in the knowledge that, once Preacher’s sentence was up, things would return to normal.

Only… they hadn’t.

Preacher had been released from prison, and right off the bat, everything had been different. Angry and sullen, Preacher had refused to come to the club, refusing anything and everyone. He drank incessantly, slept constantly, and when he wasn’t drinking or sleeping, he was fighting with everyone. Then one day he’d upped and left. Vanished in the middle of the night without a word to anyone.

Weeks had passed, then months, and with every passing day without word of his whereabouts or his return, Frank had felt the crack in his control begin to splinter in every direction. His moods had been unpredictable lately. His usual methods for keeping control of himself weren’t working properly. Preacher consumed his thoughts day in and day out.

Where was Preacher?

Was he ever coming home?

Frank didn’t want to lose control. He liked being in control.

His hands clenched into fists, his short nails pressed painfully into his palms. His pace continued to increase.

He needed his fucking control. Because if his world couldn’t stay together, he couldn’t stay together.

If he was a drinking man, Frank supposed he’d be drinking right now, but he wasn’t. Booze, drugs… he didn’t like anything that messed with his head. If a man couldn’t think clearly, he wasn’t useful, and if a man wasn’t useful, that man had no business breathing.

What he needed was to figure out how to get Preacher home. Hell, first he needed to find Preacher. Without Preacher…

Blinking, Frank shook his head quickly. One, two, three, four—

He cursed and tried again.

He was already fraying.

A door slammed closed, echoing across the quiet street. Frank went instantly still, blending into the shadows as he observed a young black woman descend a nearby stoop. Wearing a slinky red dress and matching heels, she paused on the last step, rummaging through her purse.

Frank cocked his head to one side, a burst of excitement and anticipation heating his chest. It hadn’t been all that long since his last, and he knew he shouldn’t be craving it again so soon, but—

Frank calculated the distance between them, wondering if the door she’d just come from was locked. He glanced to a small alley some twenty feet away and wondered about the apartments above. Were they occupied? Were the windows open? He wasn’t a man who particularly liked taking chances. He liked plans. Carefully crafted, calculated plans. Spur of the moment shit like this was just further proof that he was losing his grip on control.

Unable to ignore the relentless beat of need pounding inside of him, Frank moved closer to the stoop. The move freed him from the shadows, and the woman looked up, her gaze widening.

Fear. That was fear gleaming brightly in her eyes. Another craving rippled through Frank.

The door opened again. A young man in a suit jogged down the stoop, offering his arm to the woman. Frank veered away quickly, crossing the street at breakneck speed.

Sloppy, he thought to himself. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

He turned down another street, still silently berating himself. A yellow cab blew past him, splashing his pants with water. Gritting his teeth, Frank quickened his stride.

Everything was wrong. The noise in his head was building to a crescendo. He could feel the beat of his heart in every part of his body. Even his skin felt wrong, too tight. His insides too cold.

Noisy. Everything was so goddamn noisy.

He slowed his steps to run a hand across his stubbled jaw. He needed to shave. He needed to shave right now.

The noise in his head intensified, so loud he could feel it. Pulsing and expanding, it pushed painfully against his skull. Frank slowed as he rubbed furiously at his temples. Amid the panic, rage—hot and white and quivering—was building low in his belly. He couldn’t control it; he couldn’t control anything anymore!

The sudden sharp, biting sound of heels clicking the pavement brought his spiraling thoughts slamming to a halt. Everything froze and then slowly started back up, sluggish at first, as if he were stuck inside a slow-motion action scene. The footsteps grew louder, faster, and then all at once everything suddenly sped back up, came into clear, crisp focus.

His breathing shallow and his heart racing, he started to jog. Anticipation was building again. That delicious warmth was filling him. His hands twitched. He turned the corner—

“Shit!” A slight woman teetered precariously on her heels before him. Frank reached out and grabbed her arm, keeping her upright. The smell of her hit him like a brick to the face. Stale beer and unwashed skin and something else—an underlying rot.

She was a working girl who looked to be in her late twenties, wearing a tiny little yellow number that left very little to the imagination. Not that there was very much of her to see.

She was too thin, wasting away. Black hair hung thin and limp around an angular face. Bloodshot eyes were ringed in smudged eye makeup. Red lipstick had smeared pink across one jutting cheekbone. There were dirt stains amid small scrapes up and down her pale legs, as if she’d spent the entire night on her knees in back alleyways.

She had been pretty once, maybe even beautiful, but the years hadn’t been kind to her. He turned her arm, eyeing the track marks along the crook. She hadn’t been kind to herself either.

“How much?” he asked.

She attempted seduction as she smiled limply. “Depends on what you want,” she slurred. “You want my hand, that’ll be ten. You want my mouth, that’s twenty. You want my pussy, that’s gonna run you a solid fifty.”

Excitement surged and Frank’s fingers flexed, digging into her arm. She didn’t appear to notice.

“I’ll give you a cool hundred to do whatever I want,” he said.

She blinked. “You an ass fucker? Or you wantin’ to piss on me?” She shook her head and sighed noisily. “Man, I want the money up front.” Dirty fingers, topped with cracked and broken fingernails, beckoned him to pay. A thin gold chain glinted from around her wrist, a small charm in the shape of a heart hanging from it. He took a half second to eye the jewelry. It looked real, and he wondered why she hadn’t pawned it. Did it hold some sort of emotional value, or had she stolen it?

Releasing her, Frank dug his wallet from his back pocket and drew two bills from inside. She made a grab for the cash, and he quickly flicked it just out of her reach and jerked his chin toward the small walkway between two nearby buildings. “In there.”

Following behind her, Frank observed the drugged sway of her gait, the way the straps of her dress kept falling down her arms, and wondered how many men had used her tonight. Not that he particularly cared, but he believed himself to be something of a people person. That is, when he could stomach the messy, unpredictable way so many people chose to live their lives, Frank enjoyed observing them. Often times it was his speculation that made what was going to come next all the more enjoyable for him.

For instance, Frank guessed that this whore had been working these same streets for the last decade or so, the last few years of which she’d started shooting junk. He surmised that her prices were cheap for two reasons. One, because she worked alone—there was no pimp holding a gun to her head, wanting his cut. And two, cheaper prices were more appealing to your average schmuck who wanted to get off and get home. Cheaper prices meant more customers, and more customers meant she’d be able to keep herself good and stocked with her daily dose of poison.

Partway down the alley the whore paused and swayed, turning to face him, half eclipsed in darkness, half lit by the moon. Frank approached her and pushed her into total darkness. His thoughts slid to the thick blade strapped to his belt, and a shudder of excitement rippled through him.

She’d had a family once, he supposed as he looked down at her. But whoever and wherever they were, they’d long since forgotten about her. There’d be no one to care, no one to grieve her. Hell, chances were she’d end up unclaimed, left to rot away in a nameless city grave.

Or maybe there was someone left. Maybe a grandmother or a sister. Maybe she’d taken off in the middle of the night, maybe they hadn’t seen or heard from her in years, and once they got word of her death, they’d—

Frank’s thoughts flickered, then dimmed, and then flickered again as an idea began forming in the deepest, darkest regions of his mind. At first he shoved the thoughts away, instantly dismissing them, and then…

He veered back and studied them, wondering…

“Pay up,” the whore said, her hand outstretched. Frank set the bills on her palm, watching as she tucked them swiftly down the front of her dress.

“How you want me—”

He grabbed her neck, cutting off her words and most of her air. While her eyes bulged with surprise and she clawed at his hand, he carried her the remaining several feet toward the alley wall, her shoes dragging noisily along the cement.

As he pushed her back against the wall, her legs flailed and she tore at his hand, gauging thin slices into his skin with her jagged nails. Frank hardly felt it. He was too focused, too ready, too excited for what was to come to care about half-assed scratches made by a dying whore. With his free hand, he gripped the handle of his blade and slid it from its sheath.

Staring down at her, his insides were on fire, his skin twitching, his gut burning with hot anticipation. But it was even more than that. What he was feeling, it was more than just some cheap thrill.

Slowly he dragged the tip of his knife up her side, savoring the precise moment that she realized she was going to die. Frank often wondered what went through their minds at that moment. Regrets, maybe? Did they think of someone they’d be leaving behind? Or were they simply consumed with fear?

One, two, he counted, and when he reached three, he plunged the blade into her side.

With each thrust of the blade, Frank’s breathing quickened. He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, watching with rapt delight as the flicker in the woman’s protruding eyes began to dull.

There was something so personal, so intimate, about watching another person die, even more so when you were the one to steal the life from them. Much like birth, death was every bit as beautiful, if not more so. And to be the reason… it was almost as if… almost as if you weren’t just witnessing a miracle, but causing one.

His head clear, his thoughts in perfect order, he released the whore, and her body folded quickly to the ground, her insides spilling out of her. Sheathing his blade, Frank bent down over the body and studied his kill, smiling faintly. Carefully lifting her hand so as not to disturb the rest of her, he yanked the gold chain from her wrist and slipped it into his pocket.

As he exited the alleyway, he began to whistle softly. The noise in his head was all but gone.

Frank had figured out how to bring Preacher home.

Even better, he knew how to keep Preacher home.