PROLOGUE

Blood. Warm blood ran across the carpet. Blood, the essence of life was leaking away from the soulless body before him. It ran and flowed away, desperate to escape from the pain of the knife wounds.

Because of him.

He had killed. He had taken away the soul of one of the living. He had torn the precious soul from its shell.

Blood. Blood stuck to his hands confirming his guilt and hammering the fact into his head: He was a Murderer.

'God, what have I done?'

The heart is where all the strength surges to when one is dying. Every other organ sacrifices it's living juice to send to the heart and to keep it beating its soothing rhythm of life.

That beat was silent now and silence can be louder than anything as it shows what the world is truly like with the absence.

His own heart however, still thumped away its life in his own chest. His selfish heart lurched unnaturally at the horrific deed his hands had committed. The sin would forever stain his hands with the ugly mark of murder and would be observed by the angels on Judgement Day.

He had killed someone!

MURDERER!

The cry echoed about his body, but nothing would emerge from his trembling, soft lips. His voice could not say that dreadful word, even though it bore truth.

Him. A murderer.

He lived but his life had cost another his soul. His life would be tainted from now on with the blood of another.

The blood. It spilt onto the carpet leaving its filthy trail like a fat, bloated worm dragging its pathetic body through the wet mud. It trickled across the floor, escaping from the body it had so faithfully kept alive, until now.

'What have I done? What have I done!'

Murder. The death of another by his hands. He had stolen someone and destroyed their body. He had destroyed one of God's creations and now the full fury of that deity would come hurling down upon his own soul when he departed from this world himself.

'Oh God, he's dead! I killed him! I killed him!'

Warm blood stuck to the hands and oozed through the fingers. He stared at them with blue eyes as though he did not recognise the limbs. He did not know them. They were the hands of a killer. He was not a killer, he never had been.

But now he was.

Sickness. Sickness squatted in his belly forcing its vile away up his dry throat and trying to expel itself out of his mouth. Gasping. Choking. He felt it in his throat and he forced himself to swallow it and send it back to where it belonged.

Gasping.

Choking.

Just as the body had done before him while it died and bled upon the floor, and he had stood by and done nothing. There had been no concern for that which lie before him. Only fear. Fear for himself.

"Brian Littrell, you've killed someone," he whispered to himself.

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