Introduction

A ghost in his own life, Franklin Brophy is a man who goes through each day looking forward only to the end of it. Like most of his co-workers at Uris & Parsons Financial, Franklin long ago grew into the habit of ignoring the human derelicts who occasionally gather enough courage to approach the employees and ask them for any spare change jingling about in their pockets. On a normal day he might ignore this one too, but there issomething about this man... maybe it is the two fingers missing from his right hand, or perhaps it is the way he declines accepting Dom''s change and instead stares Franklin right in the eye beforehissing, "I want yours."

The next day Dom is dead, and Franklin returns home to find that the man who answers the desperate, terrified cries of his wife and children is missing two fingers from his right hand, andseems to take a terrible pleasure from throwing Franklin out of his own home, to the streets.

From there Franklin embarks on a quest to reclaim his family from the clutches of a madman, a thief of lives whose body count stretches back centuries...