by Carver Pike
Seed of Sin
The Edge of Reflection Book 3
By: Carver Pike
Seed of Sin, The Edge of Reflection Book 3
2nd Edition
Copyright © 2016 by Carver Pike
Published by Erotic Mayberry Publishing
Written by Carver Pike
Cover created by Carver Pike
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Dedication
Hi guys! Before thanking everyone I want to give a fair warning. If you’re used to my erotica stuff, this is not erotica. It’s dark fantasy (dark urban fantasy I guess, minus the sparkly vampires and werewolves) with some very graphic sex and lots of violence.
That said, I dedicate this book…
To my family. I finally have my own office now and I know I’m in there a lot, so thank you for understanding that I’m really trying to make a go at this. I love you guys. It’s also kinda cool that my wife sat next to me and helped me pick the images (and font colors) for the book covers. Isn’t that the sweetest!
Also, thank you to my friends, readers, and fans who not only read and review my books, but also share and help spread the word. That all means so much. Thank you to my street team for always pimping my work. Love you guys too!
I’d like to thank my PA, Kendall, for giving up so much of her free time to help me and the other authors she supports. I don’t even know how she does it. I’m spontaneous and a pain in the ass sometimes when I come up with last second ideas, and she listens to me, moves her schedule around, and says, “Ok, let’s do it.” She’s simply amazing. I know we’re gonna do big things, my friend.
I’d also like to thank Alicia, Maureen, Chrisstine, and Caitlin who acted as beta readers this time around. Thank you so much for your help!
A new friend of mine, Caitlin Bennett, has been so much help with relaunching this series. Not only has she read and reviewed the books, but she’s also mentioned it on her blog and even acted as a beta reader for Seed of Sin. Thank you, Caitlin.
Alicia Reitz Huckleby, you’ve been telling me for a long time that you love my erotica but know that I have the potential to write something epic. You brought the biggest smile to my face when you read this book the other night and got so excited. You said I got you hooked on this series and that you think this will always be one of your favorites. That meant the world to me. Thank you for your belief in me.
I’d also like to thank my friend, Jennifer Cothran, for always backing me up, reviewing my books, blogging about them, and even buying a bunch of copies to give away. Jennifer, you rock!
If I didn’t thank you here, it’s not because I’ve forgotten, it’s because this could go on forever. It would be a hundred page dedication. So many people help me out on a daily basis. The ones I mentioned by name have had a lot to do with this specific book. Thank you, everyone, for all you do!
Chapter 1 - The Hawk and The Bear
Hot liquid ran toward Hawks’ mouth. He scrunched up his nose and felt a piece of bone fragment on his cheek. The familiar copperish tang of blood seeped through his lips. He needed to open his eyes, but to do so would mean accepting reality, and he wasn’t sure he could do that.
“Leave the piece of shit alone for a while to wallow in his pity,” ordered the deep, commanding voice of the local crime boss, Mr. Pontis.
“Fuckin’ Navaho,” came a second voice, one Hawks knew belonged to Gibbs, the henchman, the man responsible for the deaths.
The voice grew closer to Hawks’ face, so close he could feel Gibbs’ breath on his forehead. “You really thought he was gonna believe I stole the money from you?” He chuckled, damp and smokey, as he backed away.
“This is what happens when you don’t pay your debts, Hawks,” thundered Mr. Pontis. “Gibbs, give him a few minutes to sulk, then put a bullet in his head.”
Hawks heard footsteps, then the door slam shut, then only the harsh ringing in his ears. Pain throbbed through his aching head like rain slamming down on a tin roof. Each beat of his pulse lit up the darkness behind his eyelids.
Johnny Hawks had never been beaten so badly in all his thirty-five years. It wasn’t in his Cherokee blood to allow someone to get the best of him.
He was a fighter by nature. It said so in the Native American artwork tattooed on his chest, made visible by the ripped front of his white dress shirt.
The pain in his temples was excruciating, but nothing compared to the realization that he hadn’t dreamt the earlier events. His head swooned as he lifted it and tried to focus on the room around him.
He was alone with the bodies of his dead family members. He crawled one knee and one elbow at a time over to his brother’s side.
He’d nearly forgotten about the bullet hole in his thigh, courtesy of Gibbs, until the plastic tarp on the floor bunched up around it, lighting up his nerves. Hawks winced and pulled his leg free.
He reached Freddy first and pitched forward, burying his face in the boy’s stomach. There he wept for a long while, remembering everything from his brother’s birth to his death in the span of a minute or two.
Hawks cried with no tears. It was as if any fluids he’d had left in his body had boiled and dissipated with the raging fire in his blood.
He looked at the boy’s lifeless face and reached up to stroke his hair, brushing a few strands from his eyes. Freddy would have appreciated the gesture.
Hawks looked to the next body and found his grandfather. Raging Hawk looked strangely at peace, dressed in his traditional garb. Hawks imagined the hurt that must have overwhelmed the man when little Freddy’s life had been taken. Hawks and Freddy had been like sons to him.
The look of shame the old man had worn earlier that evening had been like a dagger to Hawks’ heart. Hawks had sworn he’d had the money to pay Mr. Pontis back, but it had been stolen, and nobody believed him.
Mr. Pontis had taken his fifteen percent interest, five percent at a time. The lives of Freddy and Raging Hawk paid the first ten.
Hawks crawled on. He reached Savannah’s sandaled feet first. Her toenails were painted a dark red, a fact that he would have never noticed had she been alive.
Somehow he’d always admired her beauty as a whole, but couldn’t remember ever seeing any of the minute details. Everything about her seemed to wrap up into one captivating blanket of beauty that had held his attention from the moment he’d recognized her as a woman.
He’d known her all of his life, as she’d only lived a few doors down from him. He’d grown up chasing her, dunking her head under the water in the lake, throwing pieces of clay at her. She’d been a childhood friend, a teenage lover, and the wife he didn’t deserve.
Hawks rested his head on Savannah’s round stomach, knowing the baby beneath was as dead as its mother. He looked up into her calm, lifeless face. She was an angel. She’d always been one f
or him, and now she was free to leave his world and make her way into the spirit realm.
Actual tears flowed from his eyes, from deep in some sort of tear reserve he’d never known existed. They stung his eyes as bile burned his throat. His left shoulder throbbed where he’d nearly dislocated it his last time falling to the floor, and the wound in his thigh was on fire.
None of this pain compared to the pain he felt in his soul. There was an emptiness in his chest, a sadness and fear that couldn’t be explained. A devastating hunger branched out to every limb and pulsated through each vein. Like his spirit was cramping up.
It reminded him of the feeling he had when he dreamed of slipping off the edge of a building and freefalling to his death below, only this time there was no solid pavement ready to end it all.
Savannah was gone.
Everyone that mattered was gone. All that remained was pain.
***
On the dark side of the mirror, in a world where the sun never shone, children never played, and maniacal images roamed free, a small campfire burned at the center of an Indian village. Huts, small cabins and wagons surrounded the fire, making up what resembled a community of sorts.
Savage Bear, Hawks’ image, a man who looked identical to the beaten native on the other side of the mirror, sat cross-legged in front of the fire.
Where Hawks was clean cut and dressed in fancy clothing, Savage Bear wore only a loincloth, scars from many wars, and a Mohawk. Blood stained his flesh, covering him completely, like he’d been painted red before a ceremony meant only for him.
Chigama Village was silent around him. In a place where nights were usually filled with the sound of community members singing the chants of their people in unison, the only sound now was the crackle of the fire.
A walk through the village would reveal a sad and gory picture. Inside one hut, a man lay on top of a table. His neck was cut open.
In one of the small cabins, a woman hung from a rope around her neck, while her feet swung slowly back and forth over the body of her dead husband, who’d been stabbed repeatedly in his chest and stomach.
On the ground in front of another hut, two more men and two women were dead. They’d been picked off from afar and were riddled with arrows.
Savage Bear looked to his right and smiled, then lifted his blood-stained hunting knife to his mouth and licked it, savoring the taste of the blade.
***
Hawks rubbed Savannah’s belly and said his goodbyes. He would never see the child that had grown inside her. Even that had been taken from him.
He held on to her stomach with both hands, afraid to let her go, knowing this was the last hug he’d ever get out of her.
Behind her lifeless body was a floor-to-ceiling closet mirror. Hawks stared at his own reflection and hated himself. The shaved sides of his head were turning black and blue, and his shoulder length black braid hung down and stuck to his neck, chin, and shirt with a mixture of blood and sweat. His black slacks and dress shoes were the only semblance of the man he’d been earlier that night.
He wished he had the guts to slit his own throat. He wanted to die and be with Savannah and the baby, wherever they’d gone.
“Savannah,” Hawks mumbled. “Please forgive me. Wait for me in the afterlife, where I’ll bring you their heads.”
Hawks pushed his head against Savannah’s body and slid his knees up underneath him. He rested there, feeling as though an arrow had been shot through his heart, then painfully got to his feet and stood over her.
“I can’t take it anymore. I will kill them all. I will bring you each of their scalps.”
His words echoed through the hotel room and bounced off the walls.
The word “scalps” sounded off again and again, then became muffled, but only on his right side, as if it had been caught in a wall of foam. He looked right and saw the mirrored closet begin to ripple and liquefy.
***
Savage Bear’s tongue bled under the blade of his knife. He laughed a deep, slow chuckle, but then stopped as his ears perked up like a wild dog’s.
He heard something.
It sounded like water, but he was far from the nearest river. Yet, he was sure it was water. It was liquid sloshing around, and it sounded as if it were right behind him. It reminded him of waves gently lapping at a shore.
Savage Bear turned to see a large, rectangular portal hovering in the air behind him. With childlike amusement, he watched as a man that looked exactly like him, only cleaner, leaned over a woman’s body in a fancy room on the other side.
Savage Bear was suddenly drawn to the strange, hovering doorway, with the urge to leap through and kill. He stood and approached it, slowly and cautiously, with his knife held out in front of him.
***
Hawks was looking down at Savannah when he heard the sound of the liquefied mirror. He turned his attention back to the glass and watched as it moved like a pond that had received a new coin, rippling out from the center to the frame.
For a moment he thought he was imagining what he was seeing. He stepped closer to the mirror and leaned forward, trying to get a better look.
Suddenly, another Native American, who looked exactly like him, leapt through the mirror, barreling face first toward him.
They crashed into each other, and Hawks tumbled backward, tripping over Savannah’s body, and fell to the floor. The man pounced on Hawks, grabbed his disheveled braid, and with a crazed growl, tossed him through the mirror.
***
Savage Bear stood hunched over in his loincloth, mouth agape, awestruck at the modern hotel room. He didn’t look twice at the dead bodies lying on the floor. They didn’t interest him in the least.
It was the warm glow of the room combined with the cool air flowing from the vent above that mattered most. He was oddly comfortable. The golden trim of the bed comforter and the gold maple leaf ashtray on the nightstand were luxuries he’d never seen in his life.
In his world, a hard cot and a cold dirt floor were more standard accommodation. Blinking red light reflected off his chest, and he turned to see the large open window, looking down at the modern town below.
He stepped closer and leaned against the glass, pressing his forehead and the fists of both hands against it. His knife-wielding left hand and tomahawk-wielding right clinked as the blades touched the window’s surface.
His lip curled up over his crooked teeth. The red light, coming from a restaurant sign across the way, continued to blink, brightening his face, and in the window’s reflection he saw that the whites of his eyes looked red, and he remembered what he’d come to do.
Savage Bear watched the town below for a few minutes, fascinated by the passing cars and the people walking freely through the streets.
He’d seen cars before. They existed on the dark side of the mirror, but they weren’t used for cruising the strip, like the people he saw below. In his world, vehicles were used for transporting goods, racing away from danger, or heading toward it when waging war.
“Yeah, I think this motherfucker’s had plenty of time to grieve,” Savage Bear heard from the other side of the door.
The harsh words brought him back to reality. He looked down at the dead bodies strewn across the floor and clenched his teeth in anger. The urge to kill overwhelmed him.
There was a pounding in his ears and his vision clouded over for an instant, then cleared. He twirled his tomahawk around in his hand and headed toward the door.
“Alright, enough of this shit,” a man announced as he burst through the door. “Time to be with your family again, Navaho.”
The large white man entered with his gun drawn. He stopped and scanned the room.
Savage Bear was dead silent as he stood next to the door, his back against the wall, watching the man. Somehow he knew the man’s name. He was Gibbs and he was one of the men Savage Bear needed to kill.
He grinned as he shoved his knife blade into Gibbs’ spine and twisted it around. A cry almost escaped h
is victim’s mouth before Savage Bear swung his tomahawk around and slammed the sharp edge between his teeth, shattering his mouth in an explosion of blood.
Gibbs fell to the floor, dropped his gun, and collapsed onto his back, his mouth a gaping, blood-soaked mess. Death didn’t find him quickly. Instead it waited, leaving Gibbs’ eyes fixed on the ceiling while blood gurgled out with each cough and desperate search for air.
Savage Bear dropped to a knee and watched with amusement. He considered scalping the man, but scalping a bald man was no fun at all. He liked tying a man’s hair to his belt, but this dying piece of shit had nothing but fuzz on his scalp.