Chapter 3: The Shepherd's Purpose

Chapter 3: The Shepherd's Purpose

Two days. Or maybe three. Time had become a meaningless smear of day and night, measured only by the ebb and flow of the ceaseless, tormenting noise. Leo had fled the underpass and now drifted through the city’s lurid, neon-drenched heart. The red-light district. A place where flesh was a commodity and desperation hung in the air like the rain-slicked haze.

He was a ghost at a feast of sin, but the temptations of the flesh held no meaning for him. His old hunger, the gnawing need for a needle and a flame, was a distant memory, a childish craving replaced by an apocalyptic thirst. He craved silence. The memory of that perfect, profound quiet that had bloomed in the space Silas’s death had left behind was a siren song, the only beautiful thing in a world of shrieking agony. It was the purest high he had ever known, and the withdrawal was driving him to the jagged edge of insanity.

Every person who passed him was a fresh wave of torment. A businessman in a crisp suit, his stride full of purpose, radiated a low, furious buzzing, the sound of a wasp trapped in a jar. A pair of laughing tourists were a chorus of frantic, high-pitched clicks, like a thousand fingernails tapping on glass. The Murmur was a physical pressure, squeezing his brain until he thought his skull would crack open. He’d barely slept, catching only moments of fitful, nightmare-choked unconsciousness in forgotten doorways before the screaming woke him again.

He knew what he had to do. The knowledge was a cold, hard stone in his gut. The horror he’d felt kneeling in Silas’s blood had evaporated under the relentless sonic assault, burned away until only the memory of the relief remained. Silas had called him a Shepherd. A liberator. The old man hadn't been insane; he had been enlightened. He had passed on his terrible, sacred duty.

The city was a field of cages, a vast, suffering flock, and he was the only one with the key.

His hunt began without conscious thought. He was simply drawn, a piece of iron pulled by an unseen magnet. He let the noise guide him, sifting through the cacophony for a singular, compelling voice. He needed a loud one. A desperate one. One that pleaded for release with an urgency that matched his own need for peace.

He found it in a woman leaning against the brick wall of a derelict porn theater. She wore a red dress that was too tight and heels that were too high, her face a mask of practiced boredom painted over a foundation of deep exhaustion. Most people saw a prostitute, a disposable feature of the urban landscape. Leo saw a vessel. And he heard her song.

It was a sharp, piercing whine, the sound of metal scraping on bone. It was a cry of profound weariness, of a cage that had been rattled for so long its bars were beginning to bend. It was beautiful in its agony. This was the one. This was the voice he would silence tonight.

He needed a tool. His gaze swept the alley beside the theater, a trash-strewn canyon of filth. His eyes landed on a crate of discarded supplies from a closed-down bodega. He rummaged through it, his hands moving with newfound purpose. He found what he was looking for: a box cutter, almost identical to the one Silas had given him. The plastic handle was caked in grime, but the slide was functional. He clicked the blade out. Sharp. Perfect. He slipped it into the pocket of his hoodie. The Key.

He watched her for an hour, a shadow among shadows. She took a client into a nearby hourly-rate hotel. The Murmur from her cage grew frantic, a shriek of violation and despair that made Leo’s teeth ache. When she emerged forty-five minutes later, her painted mask was cracked, her movements stiff. She lit a cigarette with trembling hands and walked back toward the alley, seeking a moment’s respite from the streetlights.

Leo followed.

He entered the alley just as she was leaning against the wall, head tilted back, exhaling a plume of smoke towards the sliver of polluted sky. She heard his footsteps and stiffened, her hand instinctively going to the purse slung over her shoulder.

“Look, I’m done for the night,” she said, her voice raspy. “Go find someone else.”

“I’m not looking for that,” Leo said. His own voice sounded alien to him, steady and calm. The proximity to her, to the piercing whine in his head, brought a strange clarity.

She turned to face him, her eyes narrowing. She saw the gaunt frame, the hollow eyes, the dirt. A junkie looking for a score. “I don’t have any money.”

“I don’t want your money,” he said, taking another step. “I’m here to help you. I can hear it. It wants to be free.”

Her tired cynicism curdled into genuine fear. This wasn’t a john or a robber. This was a psycho. Her eyes darted to the alley entrance, gauging the distance. “Stay away from me.”

“There’s no need to be afraid,” Leo said, his voice dropping to a soothing whisper, the same tone Silas had used on him. “This is a kindness. A liberation.”

He closed the distance in two quick strides. She opened her mouth to scream, but he was too fast. He clamped a grimy hand over her mouth, his other arm wrapping around her waist, and spun her around, pressing her hard against the cold, damp brick. She struggled, her heels scraping on the pavement, her muffled cries lost in the ambient city drone.

The Murmur from her was now an ecstatic, deafening crescendo in his mind. Yes. Now. Free me. FREE ME.

With one hand holding her fast, he retrieved the box cutter with the other. He didn’t have the luxury of asking for permission like Silas had. He was the Shepherd; he knew what the flock needed. He tore at the fabric of her dress, exposing the pale skin of her thigh.

Her eyes, wide with terror, met his over her shoulder. She saw no malice there, no lust, no anger. She saw only an unnerving, absolute certainty. A priest at an altar.

“Be still,” he commanded, as much to the creature as to the woman. “It’s time to go home.”

He pressed the blade to her skin. He didn’t need a guide this time. He could feel it, an instinctual map of where to cut. He sliced the rectangle with four quick, efficient strokes. Her body convulsed against him, a silent scream of agony vibrating through his arm.

He hooked his fingers under the flap of skin and flesh and pulled.

Blood, hot and slick, washed over his hand. The woman’s struggles ceased as a massive, shuddering shock overtook her body. The creature inside her—a spindly, wet thing that looked like a starved crab woven from shadow—scrambled out of the gaping wound. It skittered across the pavement, paused for a fraction of a second to look back at its liberator, and then vanished into a storm drain.

The woman slumped in his arms, her life bleeding out onto the filthy ground.

And the piercing, metallic whine in Leo’s head was gone.

In its place, another island of perfect, glorious silence. It joined the first one, a growing sanctuary in the chaos of his mind. He let the body slide gently to the ground. He looked at the blood on his hands, at the dead woman in her cheap red dress, at the dark alley.

He felt nothing. No horror. No remorse. No guilt.

He felt a profound, swelling sense of purpose. A rightness that settled deep in his bones. This was his work. His calling. He was not a murderer. He was a midwife to a new and sacred birth. A shepherd, guiding his hidden flock out of their prisons of flesh and bone.

He wiped the bloody blade on his jeans, retracted it, and slipped the box cutter back into his pocket. The rest of the city was still screaming, a thousand thousand voices crying out for him.

His work was just beginning.