1. Messiah

"Where is his penis?"

"Over there."

Mark points to the grass a few feet to our side. It is dark enough that I luckily can't see the mutilated member in its full state of gore. My dick twinges as I turn away from the bloody pieces scattered and look up at the corpse swinging from the tree in front of us. Whoever did this, they took their time. Blood is splattered everywhere, so this must have been where the killing occurred. The body is naked. A bloody ‘R' is just visible beneath the red covering his torso. There are slashes along his thighs and a bloody hole in the spot where his dick and balls had once been. Great, those are probably tossed somewhere as well.

"At least last time the sick fuck kept the pieces together," Mark notes, taking a long drag of his cigarette as he stares up at the corpse.

"I thought his dick got cut off, too?"

"Yeah, but it was shoved down his throat. Now, we are going to have to scour this area looking for tidbits and shit. Waste of fucking time."

I ponder the murder scene around us. Yeah, there is a lot of clean up needed. Thankfully, Mark and I aren't the ones to handle that bullshit. We were just called here to see if the random corpse mentioned on the police scanner was really our missing guy. Unfortunately, it was.

"I'll report back that it was nothing, and we can get our men out here," Mark tells me, reaching for the phone in his pocket.

Mark works for the police. Well, he works for the mob first and foremost; but if organized crime has taught humanity anything, it is to keep your hands in all aspects of the business. That means having men like Mark at the front line to ensure that "all is okay" when shit like this happens. It keeps the legal authorities from sniffing around.

"Who was this?" I ask, reaching for my pack of cigarettes as I point up at the dead body.

"James? John? I don't fucking know. Not someone high enough to take notice of."

We spend some time making phone calls. Mark leads the cops away while I call in the clean up crew. Charles isn't going to be happy about this. These attacks aren't random. The bodies are mutilated in a distinct fashion that shows this is personal. The only problem is we don't know why it is happening, or who the fuck might be next. Now that there are two bodies, we can start looking for connections between the victims. Charles doesn't like not knowing shit – same as me. And this is a personal attack on our faction; it is something we can't let slide. I take photos of the body as I smoke my cigarette. It only takes twenty minutes for the clean up crew to appear through the line of trees hiding us from the nearby parking lot.

"Take out anything noticeably human," I tell them.

I only stay for a few minutes to watch as they begin work. I have everything I need from here. I am walking back through the trees toward my car when my phone starts buzzing. I curse under my breath as I see Charles's name flash on my screen.

"Yeah?" I say, as I press the phone to my ear.

"Another one?" Charles snarls.

"Looks like it. I am on my way back now to figure out how the two are connected."

"Find this motherfucker," he growls. "And don't kill them quickly. Whoever is behind this shit needs to suffer."

"Of course."

Find them. Kill them. Those were the orders I usually got. Whether the death was fast or slow depended on whatever the unfortunate victim did to piss off Charles. The Consigliere wasn't exactly the most bubbly of humans. He was ruthless. People like us had to be to survive in this world. And if someone was coming specifically for Nightingales, then the Consigliere was going to want to know why.

I drop down into my car and start the engine, cranking up the music as I drive away from the scene and back to my apartment to start doing some digging.