Lost Vegas Series

by Lizzy Ford

  “Please sit,” the elderly man said and limped towards the fire.

  She trailed him. “You do not wish to imprison me with my brother?” she asked. “I am a Hanover. I lied about my identity.”

  “If you would choose a slow death over returning to your father, you are no enemy of mine,” he replied. “You bear the signs of his abuse too well to be insincere.”

  She flushed, embarrassed to be so easily read by strangers. “Is my brother well?” she asked.

  “He is being treated as an enemy.”

  “He despises my father as well.”

  “Perhaps. But is your father’s heir, which makes his guilt undeniable.”

  She sat and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Will you take him a blanket and tend his wounds?”

  The elderly man titled his head. “How … clairvoyance?”

  “Among other abilities,” she admitted. “His vision of the future is much better than mine, but I saw him freezing to death and bleeding. It’s why I left the city. To find him.”

  “And rescue him?”

  “Yes. I also hope to convince him to go north with me, to the Free Lands.”

  The elderly man was quiet, and she looked from the dancing fire to him. A flicker of warmth was in his otherwise hard gaze. “I will order my son to take him a blanket and tend his wounds.”

  “Thank you,” she said and started to smile. “May I see him?”

  He chuckled. “If I agree, you will stay with him in conditions befitting my blood enemy.”

  “I can survive anything,” she replied quickly. “I’ve been poisoned, stabbed, attacked by Ghouls, and starved.”

  “Ghouls,” he repeated, one side of his mouth pulling up. “You have no fear of death or torture?”

  She shook her head. “I will happily die beside my brother, if that is our fate.”

  The older man was quiet long enough that Tiana’s cheeks grew hot once more.

  “My guardian thinks I’m crazy,” she said, eyes on the bracelet.

  “You are not mad or daft, though you may appear to be both,” he replied. “Do you know what that marking stands for?”

  “No.”

  “Where is your guardian?”

  “I want to think in the city, but she may have followed me,” Tiana said. “She’s supposed to protect me, and I left her behind.”

  “This mark belongs to a tribe believed to be extinct,” he explained. “They were from the northern reaches, where the snow never melts. It was said they moved south after the Old World ended and were scattered across the eastern side of the continent. The members of this tribe should not exist, and she is the second whose path I have crossed lately.”

  Tiana listened, fascinated by the account. “She has no idea about her past or any living family members,” she said.

  “She does not know what she is?”

  “No. She is special, is she not?”

  “If this is hers, passed to her by her family and not bought at a market, then yes,” he stated. “Your father does not favor our people. He would not approve of a Native protector, if he did not know her capabilities.”

  “I do not know what he knows,” she replied and dropped her gaze to the fire once more. “But if he knew she is my friend, he would send her away. He wishes to punish me for what I am.”

  Another long pause stretched between them before the elderly man spoke again. “I will grant your wish to see your brother, but not tonight. Tonight, you will enjoy my hospitality, out of respect for your honesty.”

  The idea of dying beside Arthur terrified her. But she also believed that, if anyone could figure out a way out of this mess, he would. She would rather suffer with him than survive alone. She just needed a few minutes with him, to alert him to her presence and ensure he was alive. He had to have a plan of some sort.

  The older man rose and hobbled to the entrance. He left, and she released her breath. While his voice had remained soft, he had been evaluating her. She recognized the intensity behind his look from the few times she had dealt with her father. Both men had been trying to decide her fate, and she suspected both came to the same ultimate conclusion: Tiana Hanover had to die.

  She swallowed hard. Part of her hoped Aveline had followed her, for her fighting skills might be needed to escape, while another part of her was leery of the attention the bracelet drew. What did the older man know about Aveline’s past and her special ability? Tiana sensed the magic without seeing what it did. The last thing she wanted to do was drag her friend into a situation no one would survive.

  After several minutes, a woman with a tray of food entered and set it down beside her. Wordlessly, she left the small feast consisting of quail, squash, and bread. Tiana began to eat and was joined soon after by the elderly man.

  He returned to his seat across the fire from her. She glanced at him once then hunched over her food to eat quickly, in case he decided to send her to prison early.

  “Your brother will be tended to,” he told her, watching.

  Her mouth was too full of food to respond. She nodded her thanks. When she finished what she suspected was supposed to be her last meal, she sat back and examined her surroundings.

  “What wrong has my family committed against yours?” she asked.

  “Fifty thousand and four wrongs,” he replied.

  Her brow furrowed.

  “In the final wars between the city and its neighbors,” he explained. “Your ancestor massacred all but a few of the members of my tribe.”

  No atrocity committed by her family would surprise her, even this one. “I understand why you hate us,” she murmured. “And why you wish Arthur and me dead.”

  “It is not personal.”

  “I know. I just ask that I am allowed to die beside him.”

  “As much as this would please my people, my son in particular, another fate has been chosen for your brother,” he replied. “Someone has made me an offer I cannot refuse, one that will rebuild all we have lost. Your brother has been traded in exchange for the means for us to seek our justice.”

  Her breath caught.

  “Your value lies in the mark on your shoulder. No one knows you are here, little Hanover. My people would be pleased to see you take your brother’s place.”

  Tiana squeezed her hands together.

  The elderly chief studied her briefly once more. “You will face trial among my people for crimes committed against us by your ancestors. I believe, even if your father is ashamed of you, you are of great political value, more so once your brother is gone. I may have a use for you beyond the satisfaction your death would bring my people.”

  She waited, sensing he was not yet certain how best to use her against her father.

  “You will have a day with your brother to say your farewells,” he said finally. “I will consult several other tribal elders before I make my decision about your fate.”

  “I do not fault you at all,” she said earnestly. “Thank you for granting your enemy this small favor.”

  “You do not plead, do not apologize,” he said, smiling faintly. “Is your brother as brave as you are?”

  Brave? She had never in her life been called anything close to this! “He is braver,” she replied, puzzled. “Much braver. He hired my guardian, without my father’s permission, and she saved my life once already.”

  “For the sake of your spirits, I am pleased to know the Hanover madness was not passed to either of you,” he said. “Perhaps you will find the peace in the world beyond this one that you have not found here.”

  He is kinder than my father. A lump formed in her throat. How was he able to read her, when people like her father and Matilda had known her for years and never understood her pain the way he did?

  “Thank you,” she managed.

  “Rest. You may take my son’s bed this night.” He motioned to a pallet on one side of the tent, in the shadows, covered in blankets.

  Tiana rose and crossed to the bed. She sank down onto the soft
mattress and pulled off her boots before climbing under the blankets. The bed smelled of his son, and she snuggled in the fur and wool, soon dropping into sleep despite knowing her fate would be decided tomorrow.

  Rather than restful slumber, Tiana was assaulted by the familiar vision of the skinwalker lying in wait to attack her. The scene played over and over in her mind, each time a little different than before. More details formed with each iteration, and she made out the faces of the chief’s son, Diving Eagle, Rocky, Aveline, Marshall Cruise, two other Natives, and … Arthur, who had never been present in this particular vision before.

  Each time, the skinwalker morphed into a beast and massacred everyone, or killed most of them before the smaller skinwalker appeared to challenge him.

  Every recurrence, someone she cared about died in her arms. Sometimes it was Aveline and other times it was Arthur. The scenery never changed. Neither did the time of day, the position of the tent, the brush, the distance she stood from the others. The people were often different.

  Stuck in a lucid nightmare, she was unable to break away from the repeating vision, and likewise helpless to stop the skinwalker from slaughtering her friends.

  No vision had ever done this before. No vision had ever been this vibrant, where she could feel the cool brush of a spring breeze, smell wet earth, and feel the warmth of Arthur’s blood when he collapsed in her arms.

  Tiana ended each dream sobbing and shaken. As the night progressed, she managed to rein in her emotion long enough to think. In the seconds between iterations, she tried to make sense of what she saw and more importantly, why it continued to replay in her dreams.

  What am I missing? Why am I seeing this? Why does it change?

  She wracked her half-sleeping mind for insight and recalled how Arthur once explained that the visions changed when the circumstances leading up to them changed. If true, then was she seeing potential versions of the future? Had the future not yet been determined fully?

  Before she could process more thoughts along this line, the vision began again.

  Tiana spent the night trapped in sleep, reliving the events of a potential future she had been experiencing for several weeks over and over.

  She awoke crying and distressed by the idea of Arthur dying in her arms.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “What’s that sound?” Aveline asked and pushed herself up from the hard ground. She had been deep asleep when a loud thumping jarred her out of slumber.

  “What sound?” Rocky sat nearby sharpening a knife, his eyes trained on their surroundings.

  “That … pounding.” Aveline frowned. “Hmm. I don’t hear it. Guess it was in my dreams.” She settled back onto the ground and gazed at the sky. With no fire, she was warm beneath a thick blanket, though the cold winter night brushed the exposed skin of her face.

  Rocky shivered beneath his cloak, while Jose snored quietly nearby, oblivious to everything.

  Restless, Aveline sat up and huddled in the blanket. “It’s too quiet out here,” she muttered and shuffled over to Rocky.

  “I kind of like it,” he replied. “No one hunting for us.”

  “Except the Natives who murder everyone who leaves the city.”

  “Jose says that will protect us.” Rocky pointed to the three items the electrician had lain out on a boulder near their camp in a shallow valley between two hills. The tool and two metal objects meant nothing to Aveline, but Jose had insisted the Natives expecting him would understand what he carried and leave them alone.

  “I have to find Karl,” she said for the tenth time that day. She was constantly at war with herself about whether or not she should have left the city at all. Tiana was hers to protect, yes, but was vengeance not a priority as well?

  “We will,” Rocky said, unfazed by her persistence. “At this point, you know the city is locked down.”

  With both his children gone, Tiana’s father was likely burning people left and right for details about where either of them were. Every time Aveline thought about him, she frowned. “We can’t go back without her,” she surmised.

  “I’m wondering if we can go back at all,” Rocky pointed out. “You will be hunted like your father was.”

  “Like father, like daughter,” she murmured. Tiana’s father had made an identical statement, one that left her perplexed as to his meaning even after she had mentally reviewed the conversation several times. “Hey, Rock, did you ever hear any weird stories about the Devil’s Massacre?”

  “Weird?” He glanced towards her. “You mean, aside from the fact your father slaughtered a thousand people in three days’ time with his bare hands?”

  “Have you heard any variations on the story?”

  “Of course not. I heard the tale directly from him.”

  It has to be magic. How else had Tiana’s father managed to introduce such doubt into Aveline’s mind?

  “Why?” Rocky asked.

  “No reason.” Uncomfortably warm beneath the blanket, she tossed it off. For a split second, she thought she heard the strange pounding again, coming from the direction of Jose. She held her breath to listen, and it was gone.

  “How are we going to find your friend once we’re in the village?” Rocky asked.

  “Luck,” Aveline replied in a growl. “We’re going to have to break away and wander around until we find her. This might help.” She lifted her pendant. “It’ll glow brighter when I’m closer to her. Asking about her would draw too much suspicion, and Mohammed says these people are enemies of the Hanover’s.”

  “Who isn’t?” Rocky said with a smile. “Maybe we can use that to our advantage. You’re no fan of the Hanover’s either.”

  “Their father, no,” she agreed. “Tiana is different. I think Arthur is, too, though I haven’t spent enough time around him to know for sure. He did pay off my father’s debts as promised.”

  “You have a good sense of people. If you think he can be trusted, then I believe you,” Rocky replied.

  “I’m not sure yet. I do think he will do anything he can to protect Tiana. We can use that to keep him in line.”

  “I hope they feed us,” Rocky said after a pause. “I can’t eat any more of Jose’s bars.”

  Aveline snorted. Jose had brought enough food with him, but it was in the form of dense meal bars, each of which required a full canteen of water to choke down. They worked in that everyone was energized throughout the day, but the taste and texture had grown stale after their first full day of travel.

  “I wonder if your father ever thought we’d leave the city,” Rocky mused.

  “I doubt it. He always told me I needed to stay where I was.”

  “We had to try it once, right?”

  Aveline shrugged. “I keep thinking of everything I should have asked him before he died. About the Devil’s blood curse. The Guild. About my mother. Other questions I didn’t know I needed to ask. Karl. What he knew of the outer city.” She sighed.

  “He may not have known a lot of those answers, or he would’ve refused to tell you,” Rocky said. “No one, not even you, were allowed to mention your mother if he didn’t bring her up first.”

  “I don’t think he ever got over losing her,” she said. “You remember the shrine he built in our cabin?”

  “I do. The last shirt she wore, a few feathers, a candle, and a braid of her hair.”

  “I should’ve taken some part of her with me, but all I could think about was him,” Aveline said, recalling the night her father died. “He was my world. It wasn’t like I remembered her anyway. I think I cared about her, only because he did.”

  “I remember her. Glimpses mainly. I was super young when she died,” Rocky said. “But I do remember her giving me candy. She was really pretty.”

  “Shut up, Rock,” she said and rolled her eyes. “I was being serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “You can’t remember her! You would’ve been … what, two?”

  “I was four. My mother had just abandoned
me, and your father brought me to your home. You were big enough to crawl,” he insisted. “I remember everything for about a two week stretch.”

  “Rocky, please! My mother died during childbirth!”

  “What? No. Unless your father brought home some other Native to raise us, she was alive for a few months after they took me in, and then she was gone.”

  Aveline stared at him, seeking some indication he was jesting. It was not like him to joke about something this serious. His features were relaxed as he focused on his knives, without the telltale hint of humor always present when he told a joke.

  “You really think you remember her?” she asked at last.

  “I know I do.”

  What was she missing? How did Rocky recall a memory that should not have existed? Why did Tiana’s father also insist Aveline’s mother had lived through the childbirth her father claimed had killed her? What reason would her father have to lie about anything to her, let alone when her mother died? It could not have been more than a few months difference between Aveline’s birth and Rocky’s arrival to the family.

  “I’m going to sleep,” she said and rose. She returned to the small nest on the ground she had created earlier and rested on her back to stare at the clear, dark sky. Anger prevented her from feeling the chill of winter. “You swear you remember her, Rocky?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I remember her carrying you in one arm and me in another when we went … somewhere. Market, maybe.”

  This makes no sense. Aveline rolled onto her side, placing her back to him. Rocky could be wrong, but he would not lie to her. If her father had smudged the date her mother died by a few months, why did it matter?

  She breathed in and out deeply and closed her eyes, determined to rest. She needed to be at her best for the meeting Jose would have with the Natives’ scientist the next day. She and Rocky were supposed to be his assistants, brought along to help carry more of the metal tools and parts their bags were loaded down with. She had no idea what to expect of her first ever meeting with Natives and was hoping no one asked why he did not simply bring another horse to carry the supplies.

  Her mind skimmed through her worry over Tiana, passed her confusion about the different accounts of when her mother died, and rested on the heritage her mother had left behind. She had been raised to respect her mother’s Native religion and to be proud of her heritage, but she did not know the basics about her mother’s people: the name of her tribe, where they were from, or even why her mother chose to stay in the city, once her father bought her as a slave and freed her. Was it because of love? Did she not want to visit her family again?