Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men 6)

He tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and stumbled.

I pounced, taking him to the ground so hard I heard the crack of breaking bone in his arm as we landed. He howled with pain as I turned him over and dragged off his hood.

I blinked down at the stranger, mildly surprised I didn’t recognize him. Bea wasn’t famous, despite the success of her podcast, and usually, stalkers were people known by their obsession.

I didn’t care that he didn’t fit the bill. I didn’t care about anything except discovering why he was targeting my girl, and then killing him.

I’d rip him open, cut him, bleed him dry.

My knife was in my hand, the blade digging into his throat so hard it punctured the flesh and blood leaked out like sap.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he begged, thrashing in my iron hold. “It wasn’t me.”

I ignored him.

“It wasn’t me,” he chanted again and again as I tipped the knife deeper into his flesh. “It was the Prophet.”

The idiotic moniker for the serial killer.

“If it wasn’t you, what the fuck were you doin’ at Bea Lafayette’s house in the middle of the fuckin’ night with a dead body?” I demanded, lifting him up by the throat just to crash his skull back into the pavement.

There were enough lampposts on Main Street to illuminate him now. A large cross fell out of his hoodie as I throttled him, the ornate gold glinting.

“A gift from the Prophet,” he insisted. “‘As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.’”

I knew the quote was from Peter 4:10 because it had been a favourite of Father O’Neal, a way for him to explain he was a messenger of God, and through him, we could receive His holy gifts.

“A dead body is hardly a gift from fuckin’ God,” I ground out, deciding that the man didn’t need his left ear. I began to slice through it methodically, knowing the cartilage took time to rend free of the skull.

He screamed manically. “Stop!”

“I’ll stop when you tell me who the fuck sent you if you aren’t the murderer yourself.” His ear was slippery with blood, the top gaping from the scalp.

“No,” he whimpered. “For He is divine, and He must be protected.”

“Fuckin’ crazy arsehole,” I muttered, tired of the religious babble.

I sliced his ear clean off.

Another magnificent scream.

“Why the fuck is he so fixated on Bea?” I ordered over his sobs.

“H-he thinks she is his holy wife,” he cried. “God s-sent him a vision.”

Fucking lunacy.

“Who is he?” I demanded, then when he didn’t answer, I slapped my open palm over his butchered ear.

His screams echoed in my blood, making it sing. I could do this all night long.

Caught up in the violence, I hadn’t noticed a few people trickle into the streets, including Stella from the diner with her phone pressed to her ear. As if on cue, the bleep of a police car sounded, dragging my gaze over my shoulder to see the vehicle pulling up.

“Put your hands up,” the voice demanded over the loudspeaker. “And step away.”

I didn’t.

The car doors opened, a gun cocked.

“Put your fucking hands up and step away!” someone shouted.

My knife was so close to his jugular, I could’ve swiped it cleanly across his neck without worry of reprisal until it was too late. But this motherfucker might have information I needed to keep Bea safe, so I growled and moved the fuck back.

“It’s fuckin’ Priest McKenna,” Officer Travers shouted as someone shined a flashlight in my face.

There was a chorus of swearing from the other three cops.

“I got a man here might be the serial killer,” I shouted to be heard over their idiocy.

They ignored me, too spooked by the idea of trying to arrest a man like me to do their damn jobs.

And the man I’d chased took advantage.

He staggered to his feet, holding his bleeding neck, and looked frantically around the street. I shouted at him, lunging to keep him still, but he was just too far. One moment, he was at the curb, and the next, he was throwing himself into the street.

In the path of an oncoming car.

I watched the impact as he cracked against the windshield, then bounced hard into the street, twitching but otherwise immobile.

“Fuck,” I growled, moving even though the cops were yelling at me to freeze.

His legs were broken badly, one so mangled it made an “S” on the concrete, and blood pooled from his cracked skull. He stared almost dreamily into the lightening sky and blinked as he lay there dying.

I rucked him up with two hands in his collar and snarled in his face, “Tell me who the fuck the Prophet is.”

Blood gurgled in his throat, choking him so that he coughed in my face and red spittle flew onto my cut, dirtying The Fallen MC patch.