Pieces of Hate (The Assassins Series)
Language: English
Pages: 160
ISBN: 0765388448
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
During the Dark Ages, a thing named Temple slaughtered Gabriel's family. A man with snake eyes charged him to pursue the assassin wherever he may strike next, and destroy him. Gabriel never believed he’d still be following Temple almost a thousand years later.
Because Temple may be a demon, the man with snake eyes cursed Gabriel with a life long enough to hunt him down. Now he has picked up Temple's scent again. The Caribbean sea is awash with pirate blood, and in such turmoil the outcome of any fight is far from certain.
Free bonus novelette:
Dead Man’s Hand
In the wilderness of the American West, the assassin is set to strike again. Despite his centuries-long curse, Gabriel is still but a man, scarred and bitter. The town of Deadwood has seen many such men... though it’s never seen anything quite like the half-demon known as Temple.
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"The action is cutlass-sharp and the encounters between Gabriel and Temple are both brutal and chilling." -- Publishers Weekly
chair tumbling, and the atmosphere in the saloon thickened. Hands dropped beneath tables. I heard more than one metallic snick as guns were drawn and cocked. “Mind your own!” Jack shouted, pointing at me with his forefinger, thumb raised like a pistol’s hammer. “Just leave Temple to me, and mind your own!” He turned, staggered into a table, and two men pushed him away so that he stumbled out of the bar. The doors swung shut behind him and the silence went on for a few long seconds. Heads turned
liquid onto the man’s cracked lips. The sailor gasped, coughed, spat water and blood. His throat was swollen with thirst, his tongue fat like a bloated dead fish. The skin of his face had sloughed off from the sunburn, and his eyes were milky white. “Can you talk?” Gabriel whispered. “Can you hear me?” The man coughed again, but his head moved slightly. “Is he still on board? The one that did this?” A shake of the head? Or perhaps only a shiver? “Is the demon still here?” “What demon?”
you keep yer hands off my treasure!” “I’m nowhere near your treasure, you heap of shit.” The man’s eyes grew even wider. A silence fell around them as those passing by sensed an imminent fight. More entertainment for the murderous masses, Gabriel thought. He could run, but that was not in his blood. He could pull his pistols and shoot this bull, but that would gain him no respect. Or . . . he could take him on and cut him down. Accept a few injuries. Then afterward, when he was inevitably
a huge vat of kill-devil and swapping them for pieces of eight. The tavern was filled with men, and there was the air of business being done amid the drunken shouting and wild storytelling. There were a few whores as well, mostly older women, and Gabriel was surprised that most of them looked relatively healthy. “Papa likes his women,” O’Grady said, “and he looks after them too. It’s said he has a fortune stashed somewhere, and there are a hundred stories about him . . . all strange tales. He
common criminal. There was much more to the fight between these two men than I could ever hope to understand. I tried. I had a pretty good imagination, able to shift myself away from the confines of my simple existence. But Jack’s face rose to haunt me from every daydream, both cross-eyed and straight-eyed, and I knew that Temple was way beyond my comprehension. As though fear held me tight like a mouse in a rattler’s jaw, I watched Gabriel disappear around the side of the hotel knowing that I