Chapter 19
Serial Killer Soup
RIPLEY
Iwas so close. So fucking close and he just… ripped it away.
I’ve been doing my best to be normal, trying to be good, but mostly I’ve been walking around feeling like a frayed wire. I tried using my own fingers, but for some reason I couldn’t push myself over the edge.
Preacher said he wanted me to learn how everything works on Blackthorne Ranch, including meals.
So, I’m chopping up tomatoes for a beef stew while I watch him out of the corner of my eye.
He moves with ease around the kitchen, expertly dicing up a big hunk of meat before tossing it into the pot.
It’s been a whole day, but I’ve still spent the evening silently hoping he’ll bend me over the counter and fuck me.
“I told you, you had enough,” Preacher grumbles at Hades, pushing away the dog who’s been pawing at his thigh.
Despite his firm tone, it isn’t long before he’s tossing a few extra scraps on the floor.
“I never pegged you as such a softie.”
“Yeah, well, other than my brother, there ain’t many people who understand me.” He shrugs. “But the dogs do… on some level, at least.”
I can’t help but wonder if life has been as lonely for him as it’s been for me.
“Strange to find a serial killer who doesn’t hurt animals.”
“Well, I slaughter the cows,” Preacher replies. “But it’s humane. I knock ‘em out first and the kill is quick. They don’t feel a thing.”
“Did you ever hit your head as a kid?”
He flashes me an incredulous look followed by a huff that almost sounds like a laugh.
“Sweetheart, I work on a goddamn ranch and my daddy was a tyrant. ‘Course I hit my head… why you askin’?”
“I, uh, did a lot of reading, and there’s an interesting correlation between serial killers and head injuries. Skull fractures, concussions, car accidents…”
“Did you ever get a concussion?”
I flash him a deadpan stare and he nods.
“Right, I get it. Stupid question.”
Preacher hands me a bundle of carrots and some celery that he’s been growing out back in one of the gardens. One of the biggest surprises over the rest of the tour was finding out the ranch was so full of life. The biggest was realizing I’ve already started to think of this place like home.
“So, how much do you know about what you are?” He asks. “What I mean is, anything clinical? Doctor diagnosis, something like that?”
What I know is in 9th grade we got to dissect frogs, and I’d never paid so much attention to science in my fucking life. I pictured my father in the creature’s place as I slit open its soft little belly.
I dreamt about it.
“Well, like I said, I did a lot of reading.” I begin cutting up the carrots into bite sized chunks, one at a time. “At first, I was trying to prove I wasn’t predisposed to go down this sort of road, but…”
“You can’t escape destiny.”
I’m realizing that despite Preacher’s tendency to be a gruff and arrogant asshole, I feel surprisingly safe with him.
There’s no anxiety, no walking on eggshells, no plates or knives being hurled at me.
Sure, I’m here against my will, and sure, maybe he’ll decide to gut me for a decent meal, but I’d say in terms of captors, I kind of won the lottery.
I still have to wear this stupid tracking collar, and he locks my door every night to make sure I don’t escape, but right now? I’m content.
“So… did you always know?” I ask.
“To an extent,” he replies, soaping up his hands in preparation.
I love the way the water cascades over them, highlighting the large veins that pop out when he scrubs between his fingers. He washes like a surgeon, precise and clinical, and I have to keep pushing away some incredibly sinful thoughts or I’m going to cut another fucking finger off.
“And you kill for money, maybe bloodlust too, but what else? There’s got to be a deeper reason.”
“Does there?”
“I don’t think you’re that shallow.”
He grins.
“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said about me.”
I roll my eyes, choosing not to indulge his little quip.
“You could have made a small fortune in a few kills and gotten out of the game. Why go on for so long? Why not just let the cops handle the scumbags?”
Preacher flicks some of the water off his hands before grabbing a dish towel.
“How many times did the cops show up at your door when you called them?” He asks. “How many times did they get sweet-talked by that manipulative shitbag boyfriend, only for them to get in their cars and drive away?”
A pit forms in my stomach.
I don’t know how many calls I made at first. I don’t know how many men in blue saw my bloodied and bruised face. Maybe they separated us for a night here and there, but Gabriel had me so isolated that I had no other choice but to crawl right back to him.
That was the point.
“That’s why,” he murmurs, taking the meaning in my silence. “Because the cops don’t give a shit, and too many of these animals slip through the cracks. One less scumbag off the streets means someone like you or my mama sleeps safer at night.”
He’s doing something virtuous with his bloodlust. Me? Well, I’m not even sure I can control mine, but his confession makes me want to open up. Is this that empathy thing therapists are always yapping about?
“When I was a kid, I always felt like an alien. I never really had anyone who understood me, or what was going on in my house.”
“What was going on?”
“My, uh… my dad was, um--” I clear my throat.
I barely talked about it, never even with my mother, but I always wondered if she knew. The one person I told was Gabriel, and he used that fact to his advantage every time I’d try to leave.
You gonna crawl back to your daddy? I bet you like it, you sick little bitch.
I breathe out, trying to control my rage.
“He would come into my room at night when everyone else was asleep and...”
Suddenly, my eyes well with tears and I’m just that scared little girl.
It’s funny how saying it out loud makes it real all over again.
It means it really happened to me, and it wasn’t just a dream.
I have goosebumps just thinking about those nights, about the shame that poisoned me until it rotted out my core.
“He would, uh… put his hand— I mean, it started with just his hand. I remember the shadow—”
“Under the door,” Preacher murmurs, his voice closer this time. So close.
Before I can even consider turning my head, he’s gently sliding his fingers beneath my chin, forcing me to look at him.
“My daddy did it to me too.”
I wonder if his father was a violent drunk like mine, doling out punishment for the slightest offense.
“Did he hit you?”
“More than that.” His breath shudders. “He was nasty and cruel. I remember he’d stick our heads into hot bathwater and wait until we couldn’t hold our breath anymore.
And when we were right on the verge of death, he’d pull us out and perform CPR.
Raph and I had burn marks on our faces and inside of our mouths.
I learned what torture was long before I started doing this. ”
The tone of his voice makes this all sound so distant, but the pain in his eyes is loud, and unbearably close to the surface.
“So that’s why you did it,” I whisper. “What did it feel like?”
Preacher smiles.
“It felt like justice. He couldn’t hurt us anymore, and our mama lived out the rest of her days here in comfort. She passed away in her favorite rocking chair looking out over the ranch.”
His tenderness surprises me.
“I’m sorry.”
“Death’s just part of the cycle.” He shrugs, and that pain and vulnerability in his eyes vanishes as quickly as it appeared. “So, did you kill your daddy?”
“No.”
“Would you like to?”
I feel a thrill crackling in the air like an oncoming storm.
“Nobody’s ever asked me that before.”
“Well, I’m askin’ now.”
In my dreams, I was the one making him hurt. I felt truly powerful in those moments, only to crash back down to a brutal reality the next morning.
“Tell me his name.”
“Edgar Winter,” I frown. “Wait, why do you want to know?”
“Where’s he at?”
“Last I heard, prison. Don’t know for how long or how much longer.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Preacher wraps his arm around my waist, pulling me close to him.
It’s probably the most tender moment we’ve shared since he patched me up in my room.
I’m not sure what the two of us are meant to be at this point, but at least this is a far cry from me on my hands and knees in the cellar, begging him to kill me.
“Are you afraid of getting caught?” I ask. “In general, I mean.”
“If anything happens, we all go down. Me, the clients, Raph…”
“Me?”
“Sorry, little rabbit,” he murmurs. “But that’s just the way it’s gotta be. If it makes you feel any better though, we probably wouldn’t be going to jail.”
I guess that’s the risk I’m taking, getting roped into all of this, but he’s been doing it for this long with no issues. It’s gotta be more than luck.
Preacher returns to the stew, throwing in some herbs and spices while I finish chopping the rest of the vegetables. It’s actually a bit frustrating, taking a lot longer than I expected on account of the fact that I’m missing a goddamn finger. Who knew you actually needed your pinky for this shit?
“When’s the first time you realized you wanted to kill someone?” Preacher asks without looking up, pouring some red wine into the pot. “Was it your daddy?”
“Maybe? I don’t really know. I was abused, isolated, bullied in school… I’m not saying those were the causes, but every killer has different ingredients to their specific soup, right?”
He turns to me, brow cocked.
“Their… soup?”
“Yeah, I don’t know, that’s how I always thought about it. You have the vegetables, the meat, the broth, the seasonings… Separately, they don’t do much, but when you put them together?” I bring my fingers to my lips. “Chef’s kiss.”
“Never heard the soup analogy before.”
There’s something about Preacher that makes me want to tell him all of my secrets. I wonder if his victims feel the same way; how many sins get confessed before a final, haggard breath?
“I do remember the first time I saw a dead body.”
I watch as he perks up.
“Oh do you now?”
“I was walking back to school after free period and I saw this foot, just sticking right out of the bushes. It was white, covered in frost…” The memory is so vivid in my head, playing out like a movie.
“I thought it was fake. I remember I looked around to make sure I was alone before I crawled into that bush, and then I… I just stared at it. Him. My heart was pounding, I was sweating… and my jaw was tingling.”
“Your jaw was… tingling?”
He pours two glasses of red wine, walking over and setting one down in front of me, encouraging me to continue. The smell of bright berries and pepper floods my nostrils.
“I don’t know why it happens. I think it’s a reflex of some kind. I see blood, or I feel angry, or trapped, and… that’s when it starts.”
“So what happened after you crawled into the bush?”
My body is brimming with excitement, jaw tingling at the memory of staring at that beautifully marbled skin.
“He was nearly the same color as the snow, face down, and he had these blue veins that stuck out, clawing at the back of his neck, almost like they were trying to pull him underground. It was grotesque and beautiful all at once. I wasn’t scared or anything like that, but I, uh… I did have a pocket knife.”
Preacher licks his chops like a starving dog, desperate for more and more morsels of information.
“I thought maybe I’d take a piece of him. It was fucked up, and I knew it was fucked up, but I did it anyway. I opened him up, but there was no blood. It wasn’t pumping anymore, it had all pooled at the bottom of his body.”
Lividity is the second stage of death, invisible to the human eye until the person has been dead for at least three hours. I didn’t know that at the time, but it wasn’t long before I was devouring every little bit of information I could find.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Preacher asks, snapping me out of my walk down memory lane.
I already told him my deepest, darkest secrets. I don’t know what could be more personal than that.
“Ask away.”
He pushes himself off the counter, taking a couple steps toward me until our bodies are so close I’m sure he can hear my heart pounding. He’s got that look in his eyes, the same one he had in the barn.
“When you fuck, do you think about it?” He asks, his voice husky yet soft at the same time. “Killing, I mean.”
I swallow hard. For a while it was the only way I could get off, picturing oceans of blood… It took time, but my fantasies escalated, and now my old standby is riding a man’s cock while I tear into his heart like a pomegranate.
“Yes.”
Okay, maybe it escalated more than a little.
Preacher grins, reaching out to brush a strand of hair away from my face. His eyes are stormy and his touch is electric.
“Do you want to know a secret?”
“You’re full of them today,” I breathe.
The sound he makes is something you’d hear from a ravenous animal, and suddenly I’m pressed against a wall of solid muscle, the warmth from his body making the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.
“These days, the only way I get off is thinking about gutting someone.” His eyes flash with a terrifying, violent sharpness. “Memories of people I’ve already killed, fantasies of someone new, it doesn’t matter.”
I whimper, sliding my hands beneath his t-shirt, but stops me.
“Not until you learn to beg, remember?”