Lost Vegas Series

by Lizzy Ford

  What if the Hanover’s had a much darker history to the deaths of family members?

  Ingram rose. “Stay safe, Arthur,” he said before walking away.

  “Thanks,” Arthur murmured.

  He returned his focus to his food. Nibbling on another piece of stringy meat, Arthur then pushed his plate away and finished his ale.

  The meeting with Ingram had revealed more than he thought possible. Arthur’s visions of Tiana’s death had been accurate. Now that he knew the source of them, he could not help feeling uneasy about trusting Marshall’s allies, even if they were the only people in the city willing to plot against his father. If they had planned to murder Tiana once, would they do it again, now that they suspected she was intended to replace the Hanover leader?

  How could anyone – including his father – ever believe her capable of becoming the kind of Hanover who repressed and burned her people at the stake?

  Or did the power corrupt every leader once it manifested? Would his sweet sister become like every other Hanover leader? Was this why she had crushed and flung the skinwalker five miles away?

  No. Arthur would not allow this thought to take root. Tiana was not the typical Hanover – and neither was he. Everything he had done the past few weeks had been to protect her. If anything, possessing a deformity this great would allow her to learn to protect herself.

  Maybe, she could help him depose their father and create balance and stability in a region that had never known either.

  Maybe she can heal Warner, he thought. Whenever he let himself think about his lover, his insides twisted, and his heart felt as if it were gripped in the vise of his chest.

  He could not, would not, allow his despair over anyone’s fate to prevent him from acting. His father had trained him since he could walk how to be an effective leader. The first rule was never to allow emotional entanglement to interfere with what needed to be done.

  Arthur would find a way to save Warner. And Tiana. And Marshall. But he needed help, and he needed a mind clear of the fatigue weighing him down.

  Arthur left the tavern and made his way through the city once more. By nightfall, he reached his quarters and locked the door then dragged furniture in front of the door in case Ingram was right, and Edwin Hanover planned on murdering his own son.

  Chapter Thirty

  The next morning, Aveline arrived to the city exhausted and anxious. Her first deep breath in the smoky city reeked of too many humans crammed into a small space – and it was the most comforting breath she had ever taken. She was tired of horses, of grass, of the forest. Lost Vegas was her home, and the moment she set foot in the city, tension released from between her shoulder blades.

  As little as she cared for horses, or the bruises riding them left on her behind, she understood the usefulness of their speed and remained atop hers until she reached a familiar part of the city.

  Aveline slid off the horse with a hiss and a groan in the ward known to house the Guild. She had been debating what to do for two long days during her journey back to the city. Long before fatigue fogged her mind, she had made the decision to go first to the Guild and reveal the fact she was alive, before pleading with her late father’s former friends to help her find Karl.

  Her time was short, and her plan to ambush Tiana’s father relied on her conducting reconnaissance tonight. It was Sunday, and she had to know if Tiana was correct about her father being in the hidden passages. With no guarantees she could enter the privileged Hanover’s apartments, she would need time to test the limits of what she could do before she began to explore the top floor of the pyramid to find other hidden entrances to the passageways where Tiana used to hide and spy on her family.

  Aveline straightened and looked around. The horse would fetch money or provide her a means to leave the city and check on Tiana. After a debate about where she could fit an entire horse comfortably, she began walking through alleys towards the streets of the city’s oldest market.

  Aveline walked until she reached a quiet part of the inner city where one of Rocky’s hiding places was located. The abandoned building served as a refuge for several criminals. She entered the shed behind it, whose door was marked in the lower corner by two crossed knives – the sign of the Guild – which Rocky had carved. While criminals were as likely to prey on other criminals as not, most were wise enough to leave assassins alone.

  Entering, she saw that none of Rocky’s clothing or sparse furniture had been disturbed. No one had bothered the discreetly marked hideout.

  The shed was barely big enough for the horse. Aveline pulled off its saddle and bridle before maneuvering around it to leave the shed. She closed the door behind her. Her nose wrinkled at the combined scent of refuse and smoke.

  The Hanover leader was burning more people than usual. The smoke rendered the grassland around the city cloudy and settled over the inner city in a thick fog. The sun was a glowing disk in the smoky sky.

  Unsettled by the smoke, and by the thought of facing Tiana’s insane father, Aveline left the shed at a jog with the intention of going to the Guild members and throwing herself on their mercy for help finding Karl.

  If something went wrong this week, if Tiana’s father used the deformities the Natives claimed he possessed to kill her, she wanted to die knowing she had found Karl or that the Guild would find him on her behalf.

  Aveline’s hands shook. She rubbed them on the leather material of her thighs, being careful not to rip her pants with the bear claw of her left hand. She wanted to write off her shakiness as exhaustion, but she could not take her mind off of what she had to do this night. She did not fear taking a life. She did not fear for her own life, either. But what caused her hands to shake and her heart to race? What filled her with urgency and wired energy when she had not slept in two days and was too tired to think straight?

  Aveline self-consciously draped the edge of her cloak over her forearm and hand to hide it. She continued walking, only half aware of where her feet took her. When she realized where she was headed, she slowed.

  She had intended to visit Guild Main and instead, was two wards away, near the home she had shared with her father.

  Aveline glanced towards the sky and wondered if her father were watching her now and if so, what he thought about her case of distraught nerves on the week of her first official assassination.

  She debated turning away from this direction and going to Guild Main. A thought stopped her, and she shook her head before continuing.

  She wanted to visit her favorite place in the city one last time, before she spent the week researching how to murder Tiana’s father. If she failed … she would never be here again.

  She continued through the fog until she reached the corner of the block where her father’s house once stood.

  The blackened shells of home and buildings met her gaze. Her breath caught, and she stared down the block where many of the high-ranking Guild members used to live or frequent.

  The entire ward had been torched. She began to realize the dense smoke in the city did not just emanate from the burnings at its center, but rolled off of other parts of the city as well. It was difficult to see from outside the city, when all the smoke seemed to coalesce at the middle of the city and rose towards the sky in one thick column.

  It’s unnatural. Smoke doesn’t move that way. The errant thought did nothing but muddy the scene before her. An area of the city known to harbor Guild members had been burnt to the ground. There was no way for her to know with certainty that the fire was created any other way than by hand.

  Except …

  Aveline closed her eyes to focus her other senses on the destruction in front of her.

  When Tiana used her magic, the air around her became charged to the point where Aveline was agitated by the strange energy. Tiana had charged the air around her without using her gifts in the Native village the night before Aveline left, leaving Aveline to conclude she was either growing more sensitive to the magic, or Tiana was bec
oming stronger.

  Aveline felt that same charge in the city around her. Had it always been there? Was she just now feeling it, after her own unique deformity manifested?

  Was this strange power the same causing the smoke to behave as it did?

  Or … had it always behaved this way in the city, and she was just now noticing the world around her instead of dwelling in the comfort zone of the place she had always been?

  She rubbed the fur on the back of her left hand absently, trying to make sense of the intensity of sensations running through her. She was more tired than she had ever been but felt compelled to run through the city or fight half an army. The charged energy racing through her blood would not abate enough to allow her to rest.

  The city had changed since she left it a week prior, or perhaps, she had. She did not know with certainty which it was, but she understood the source of the urgency in her blood overruling her physical exhaustion. She had always been affected by the Hanover power.

  Was she now feeling the power of Tiana’s father? Was it possible for her to feel him when he was several miles away at the other side of the city?

  Was he that strong?

  Opening her eyes, Aveline could not decipher which frustrated her more: not knowing why she felt the way she did, or once more witnessing the aftermath of Hanover destruction. The Natives believed Tiana to be her father’s heir, because of her demonstration of power in the center of their village.

  What if they were right? And Tiana’s power would one day rival her father’s, to be felt throughout the entire city no matter where he was?

  Would it drive Tiana mad, too?

  It’ll drive me mad if I don’t stop it, Aveline thought, agitated.

  She closed the distance between her and the remains of her home and stood in front of it. In her mind’s eye, she pictured it the way it used to be, and her father alive within it.

  She sighed, saddened by the memories and more so by the knowledge something very important had been kept from her.

  “You could’ve warned me,” she whispered to him. “You could have mentioned this.” She lifted her deformed arm. “Or told me never to leave the city.”

  Was his spirit listening? Was he capable of regret?

  If he were watching, he would want her to act like the daughter of the Devil. He would want her to respect her oaths, to fulfill all her duties with the discipline he had instilled in her. She had long since lost the envelope he left her that she swore to protect.

  I messed up once. I don’t want to disappoint him again. Leaving Tiana outside the city had not been ideal, but even her father could not find fault with assigning Rocky the protective duty for the Hanover girl. Rocky was her father’s own protégée, the youngest assassin ever accepted into the Guild. Aveline had not abandoned her friend and was not about to turn away from the deal she made to save Tiana’s life, and Jose’s, from the Natives who held her.

  Turning away, Aveline began walking towards the center of the city again. She broke into a trot then a run, needing to exert as much of the wired energy permeating the city and her body as possible.

  She was out of breath by the time she reached the area where Guild Main should have been. Halting, she breathed in the smell of fire and burning wood, refuse and bodies. She lifted a hand to block the brilliant flames that had all but decimated the buildings crammed into this ward.

  At the center of the fire was the hidden headquarters of the assassins. Dozens of people had gathered to watch the buildings burn. Few people spoke, and none of them wore Guild blacks.

  Aveline hid her deformed arm and approached the crowd – then stopped abruptly. A new sensation smashed into the base of her skull, a strange pattering. For a moment, the pounding overwhelmed her. She took one step back then two, then turned and bolted down the street, until the beating at her brain was at a tolerable level.

  Heartbeats. She had not noticed them in the Natives’ village, possibly because she was drugged up on pain medicines. She had encountered no one else on the path returning to the city, and she had avoided the crowds going to watch the public executions on her way to Rocky’s hiding spot.

  The crowd outside of Guild Main, her destination, erupted into heartbeats that slammed into her mind when she neared. She tested her ability to manage the discordant pattering at her brain. She could venture no nearer than ten feet to the gathered people without staggering from the pain of their heartbeats.

  A week outside the city had ruined everything!

  Hearing herself panting, Aveline scratched at the fur that covered her chest and neck. She retreated to the shadows of a nearby building while searching the crowd and passersby – whose heartbeats she heard before she saw them – for any familiar faces. She recognized many of the residents and frequent visitors to this part of the city without identifying any of the assassins who had worked with or for her father.

  First the section of town where the former Guild leader and all his lieutenants lived and then Guild Main itself. The destruction of two strongholds of the assassin organization could not be coincidental.

  Then again, she did not know the extent of damage done to the city by the mad Hanover leader. Judging by the smoke, more of the city was on fire as well. Were his attacks random?

  What had changed in the city while she was gone?

  Aveline glanced again towards the sky, this time to judge the time. It was early afternoon, shortly after midday. She would need days, if not weeks, to prepare for her assassination. She had only this night to determine if what Tiana said was correct about her father walking through the passages on Sunday nights. The Natives had given Aveline ten days. Two were spent in travel, and two Sundays fell within the timeframe they provided. If Aveline failed to reach the pyramid this night and conduct her reconnaissance, she would not know if she stood any chance at all at murdering the Hanover leader next Sunday.

  Her eyes remained on Guild Main. If not for Karl, she would have journeyed to the Freelands with Tiana to ensure her friend made it then returned to the city.

  She stalked away from the burning ward, mind racing between her two duties and the diminishing window of time she had to accomplish both. The throbbing collective of unharmonious pattering ease and stopped as she put distance between herself and the crowd. More heartbeats thrummed when she neared more gatherings and passed people. Individually, a person’s heartbeat was tolerable. She experimented as she walked to determine how close she could come to others, and groups of people, without feeling as if her brain would explode.

  How was she going to slip into the pyramid where Tiana’s father and the social elite lived? How could she possibly survive her own deformity long enough to remain in the city for a week?

  She wracked her brain to solve this problem as she sought out two more areas of the city where Guild members were known to hide out. Every area she went to was on fire or already embers, and she began to accept that the Guild’s secret locations had not been accidentally destroyed, but targeted, which put her in a more difficult situation.

  Their training, she knew from her father, would influence the assassins to scatter until the leadership determined it was safe to meet again.

  She would not find a gathering of assassins, or the council that ran the underground organization, but what if she found one Guild member? Someone who could fill her in on what was going on and maybe provide insight into where Karl had gone?

  After walking aimlessly for a few minutes, she found herself turning towards the center of the city. Her father’s most loyal ally had always been Karl. Karl’s brother, also an assassin, had lived close to the burn yard. Rocky had suggested finding Wilhelm. Aveline suspected he would be the last assassin to turn on Karl but could think of nowhere else to try.

  Hoping not to find his home burnt to the ground, Aveline treaded behind a small group people headed towards the center of the city. When their ranks swelled to a dozen, she fell back and touched her temple. Spotting the jammed streets ahead, Aveline
broke away as close to her destination as she dared go. She made her way down a quiet street lined with brick buildings, each of which housed two hundred people or more. The pattering of heartbeats was quiet but present. She listened to the instinct that warned her a few seconds before the intensity of the sensations increased and slowed or quickened her step in order to avoid coming too close to anyone.

  She had visited Karl many times when she was young and knew his brother to be located in the same building.

  Alert and wary, Aveline entered the building and headed towards the fifth floor, where Karl had lived before he took up residency in the street where she grew up.

  The beating at her brain grew louder, and she focused on sucking in deep, steadying breaths.

  Open bays and private rooms alike lined the hallway. Aveline walked slowly through the dilapidated building and peered into rooms as she went. The bays were mainly empty. She sensed no more than five heartbeats in any one bay, with many of the individual rooms empty.

  Passing a large bay, she paused to peer at the faces of the few men and women who had turned the open spaces into their homes before continuing on.

  The sign of two crossed knives caught her attention, and she paused in front of a closed door leading to a private room. The small marking was faded and worn.

  Aveline knocked.

  No one answered.

  A faint heartbeat came from within.

  She counted to five then pulled a knife free and jammed it between the door and the lock. Aveline wriggled it until the doorjamb splintered. Keeping hold of the knife, she pushed the door open and eased in.

  The ill-kept abode was well lit, though too cluttered for her to push the door open completely. Aveline squeezed into the living area and closed the door behind her. Was the state of the apartment a defensive mechanism? To trip anyone who tried to enter?