Ed Sievking

Edward "Ed" Sievking, formerly Brad Severs, is an American horror writer and former assassin.

Early past
Ed enlisted in the army to put the difficulties of his teen life behind him. He made a few friends in the army, Bill Phelps, Abe Lambourne and Lars Liljegren. On Bill's twenty-fourth birthday, they all got drunk. In a bar, the four friends were sitting near two cadets they despised, Simon Dale and Parson McNally. A practical joke on them went wrong when Simon stabbed Abe in response. After, a fight broke out and McNally managed to run into the knife and also got stabbed. After this, Ed and the rest of the cadets involved, resigned from the army and went their separate ways.

Eventually, Ed ran into one of his old instructors, Carter Phell, on a bar in Mexico. It turned out that Phell had tracked him down and helped him get straight again, helping him off the booze. Eventually, Phell revealed that he was hiring people to become assassins. Ed initially turned him down but Phell told him the offer would always be there.

Ed traveled the world a lot after that and eventually ended up in Seattle. Here, he met Belinda Darnier, after he had been gambling and won a large sum of money. They dated for a couple of weeks but Ed thought that she would leave him once the money ran out. Ed got lucky again and won some more money which kept Belinda with him. One night, while Ed was high on coke, he told Belinda about his past with the army and what Phell asked him then she became even more interested in Ed. She started to respect him more, as if he was a celebrity. After the money ran out, Belinda stuck with Ed. Belinda eventually asked Ed to marry her and then they were married. Eventually, Belinda started to suffer from an illness. She came back from the hospital one day to tell Ed that it was cancer, before breaking down into tears. It turned out that it was a rare form of cancer in her brain. The doctor told Ed that the cancer could be treated but it would cost a few hundred thousand dollars for the treatment. Eventually, Ed decided to take Carter Phell up on his offer to get money.

Life as an assassin
Ed went through two months of tough training, leaving Belinda for this time. He was taught all the skills he would need and he took to these skills well. Even though Ed had doubts, he decided to go all the way with becoming an assassin. A few days later, he was given his first assignment, a businessman in Germany. Ed slipped into his apartment and drowned him in the bath and made it look like an accident. After this, Ed began to see the ghost of the man he had killed. He thought he was going insane and was scared. He started to lash out at the ghost and began to make appointments with psychiatrists, only to break them as that would mean revealing what he had done. He only survived by putting Belinda's needs first.

His second assignment was a reporter who had been waging war on a major drug cartel. Although Ed begged to not be given this, he reluctantly did it as he was told he would not get another assignment. He tracked her for a week and managed to get past her guard and target her. He paused and the woman begged for her life. Ed might have given in but she then tried to escape so he shot her.

After killing the journalist, Ed sunk into desperation. He hated both himself and Carter Phell. He even hated Belinda. He tried to leave Belinda but couldn't do it. He got another assignment, a gangster deserving of death, which went without a hitch. His fourth assignment broke him. He was sent to kill a minor Russian politician. He shot the rear wheel of his BMW as he was driving down a steep cliff, causing the car to veer off and crash. The next day, Ed read a newspaper which said that two had been killed in the "accident". It turned out that the politician wasn't alone in his car, his nine year old daughter was with him too, and had also been killed. Ed told Phell that he was quitting and Belinda understood too. Ed hated himself after this and started to withdraw from the world - until he got an unexpected visitor.

Lies come to light
Ed awoke one night to find himself staring into the barrel of a revolver. The man holding it was Simon Dale, the guy who killed Abe Lambourne. Dale told Ed that a woman had hired him to kill Ed. Dale looked her up and found out that she was a scam artist who took exotic risks. She had hired a fake doctor to fool her lover into thinking she had cancer. She persuaded her husband to become an assassin and took the money he earned for her treatment and spent it on other things. After he retired, the woman went to Dale and payed him to kill Ed. Dale decided not to kill Ed because that would be an easy way out for Ed. He instead left Ed to his emotional pain he had just received.

Ed tracked Belinda down the next day. He found her sharing her "doctor"'s apartment. He killed her boyfriend immediately but he couldn't kill Belinda. She didn't plead for mercy. She just sat naked on the couch in her dead lover's blood. Ed told her to give him the money, bound her then carved up her face before leaving. After this, Ed often thought about suicide but couldn't bring himself to do so. Eventually, Ed's will to live came back and he embarked on a quest to find out if the ghosts he had been seeing were real or just figments of his imagination.

His third book
Ed went to London to write a third book. Here, he was joined by Joe, a fan of his who he met over the Internet. Joe helped Ed come up with a few ideas for the book, including an idea about spontaneous human combustion. They explored London and went to meetings together to gather information for the book and Ed eventually told Joe that he would credit him in the book for his help. Ed eventually began to open up more to Joe and thought of him as a friend. Joe eventually invited Ed to a party on a boat. He convinced Ed to go, but then had to go to another part of the country to see a sick relative. Joe told Ed to go alone to the party as he needed some fun. He eventually did so.