Highlight Affliction (Book 1 in the Hunter Series)
Title: Affliction
Author: Heidi Cieciura
Genres: Serial killer thriller, supernatural, crime, suspense
Available as an eBook for Kindle
Synopsis:
WHAT IF THE ONE ASPECT ABOUT YOURSELF YOU HATED WAS THE ONE
THING THAT COULD BRING YOU PEACE?
Hunter Cade is a hawk among blind birds… a visionary. He doesn't like to use the term
psychic, but there aren't many better ways to describe what he can do. His lover has been
missing for a year and a brutal serial killer targeting young men could be linked to her
disappearance. Hunter doesn't want to use his affliction, he'd rather forget it exists, but with
the detective investigating the killings taking an unhealthy interest in him, Hunter has to use
whatever resources available to him to finally bring about some peace.
The first in a series of psychological crime novels with dark sexual undertones, featuring
novelist Hunter Cade and Detective Inspector Jesse Rider, Affliction is a story of love turned
bad, and love transcending death.
Buy from Amazon
Excerpt:
The blowfly darts between oaks and hazels standing sentry in the shadowy wood. She
manoeuvres around their trunks, avoids their low branches with young leaves and sails over
the tops of bramble bushes both dense and prickly. Her transparent wings, threaded with
light brown veins, carry her closer to the scent she seeks – nothing more than the action of
bacteria on dead tissue, but to her the odour signifies life.
Blue-bodied, iridescent as carnival glass, she flits through the early morning light,
guided by the smell. A stone circle, the remnants of a fire inside still smouldering, beer
bottles, the ends of hand rolled cigarettes, snack food wrappers littered about, become a
memory as she moves quickly through the shadows.
A rabbit shoots out of the leaf cover.
Short brown fur as soft as velvet covers a lightweight body. Large black eyes are wide
and fearful. The rabbit is startled out of hiding by the loud crack of twigs snapping. But this
indication of something large travelling through the woods doesn’t bother the blowfly. The
magnetising scent lures her, overriding fear.
The rabbit and its alarmed journey across her path, and those sounds that do not belong,
are quickly forgotten. The bluebottle moves with speed and focused energy toward her goal,
wood garlic and the earthy-green bouquets of bark and moss have nothing on the fragrant
trail she follows.
Suddenly bird wings crack the air like gunfire, and echo around the trees until the sound
dissipates. Something startles the inhabitants but she is not disturbed. Her buzz is constant, a
comforting vibration. Rapid wings carry her forward and, ah, now she is rewarded.
It lies like abandoned statuary half inside a clump of brambles. Nearby, rising from the
earth with roots gnarled and twisted, is the lichen-coated trunk of an old oak tree. The
bluebottle is probably the first to arrive, but there will be many more of her ilk arriving soon;
this cadaver is large, as big as a deer but not the right shape. It resembles the large
lumbering two-legged things that swat at her, trying to chase her away - or destroy her. But
this one is still - very still, and she recognises the smell and what it signifies. She is safe here;
this one at least will not try to harm her.
Her tiny body hurtles down through the crisp morning air like a bullet.
She lands on the cold skin covering the zygomatic arch, walks over the curve of the
cheek, down the gentle slope to where the mouth is partially open like the narrow entrance to
a cave. The bristles on her black legs stick to blood still very red as she slips between parted
lips, between teeth. Her goal is to oviposit; the mass of yellow eggs add up to several
hundred and coat the inside of the throat and base of the tongue, a warm incubator in which
her children can develop.
When the blowfly has completed her task, she crawls back out through the cavern-like
mouth, pulling her legs free from the blood once more as she samples the air before taking
flight.
You can check out Heidi Cieciura's official author website by clicking here
Her blog: Holding up the Mirror
Or contact her on twitter @heidicieciura
You can sign up for Heidi’s mailing list to be alerted of updates and receive a free DI Jesse
Rider novella entitled Butterfly. Just click here
You can email Heidi at heidi.cieciura.author@gmail.com
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