Lost Vegas Series

by Lizzy Ford

  Her nose wrinkled as the scent of human waste reached her. Outside of the outer city, no one had indoor plumbing. Alleys were for dumping waste and refuse, but it smelled as if someone had missed the open window or not bothered trying.

  “Wilhelm?” she called. “I know you’re here.”

  Aveline searched the floor visibly for booby traps before taking several steps deeper into the quiet apartment. As she neared the single door in the apartment, from which the heartbeat came, she heard a strange sound. Part rattle, part exhale. Both sound and stench came from the room off the living area.

  She gripped her knife and untangled her bear claw from the cloak, in case she had to fight.

  With a deep breath, she entered the darker space of the bedroom and paused in the doorway.

  Compared to the rest of the apartment, the bedroom was relatively orderly. Buckets of excrement and urine lined one wall, a bed the other, and piles of clothing and weapons were stacked neatly along the third.

  Guild Blacks.

  Her eyes went from the familiar clothing to the form on the bed. Pale, sweating and staring at her was a familiar pair of eyes. Wilhelm was younger than his brother by about fifteen years, but their features were similar enough for anger to light in her blood.

  Karl’s brother shifted onto his side as she stood in the doorway of his bedroom, but he did not reach for the weapons beside the bed. He rested an arm protectively over his abdomen.

  He spoke first. “Are you here to take me to the spirit world?”

  “No.” Aveline lowered her weapons. Whatever was wrong with him, he was no threat. Feet from him, his heartbeat was faint and irregular, on its last leg, if she had to guess.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Shame. I’m ready to go.” He eased himself onto his back once more with a groan.

  “You are ill or injured?” she asked cautiously. She was not about to contract a terrible disease during the few days she had to plan the Hanover leader’s assassination.

  “Injured. Had a run in with the Shield several days ago. They left me for dead.”

  “You’re not far from it,” she assessed.

  “Tell that to my spirit. It refuses to leave this crippled body!” His words came out with a rattle. He spat up blood, spit it into the nearest bucket, and then relaxed onto the bed once more.

  “If you speak truthfully to me, I will fetch a healer,” Aveline said and replaced her knife in its sheath.

  “I am beyond a healer’s ability to help,” he said. “Can’t you smell my leg from there?” He stretched to tug up one pants leg to reveal the black streaks originating from a deep slash that ran down his calf. The lower limb was consumed by gangrene and rotting.

  “Remove the leg, and you might live,” she said.

  “Except for the blood in my lungs.”

  Aveline shifted her weight between her feet. Did she owe him anything? He was a member of the Guild.

  But I’m not, she reminded herself. If his brother were present, he would tell her the same. She hardened. Tiana’s softness was wearing off on her, if she were considering helping Karl’s brother.

  “I went to Guild Main to find your brother,” she said.

  “The Guild is gone.”

  “I know. I saw it burning.”

  “No, I mean, the Guild members are gone. We received the order to leave the city. The Hanover leader caught wind of an assassination plot and sent his Shield to track us all down and murder us,” Wilhelm explained. “Hence my wounds.”

  “It was not the first time our people had been hired to assassinate them,” she stated. “Why act now to take out the Guild?”

  “Have you been in hiding?” Wilhelm’s blue gaze settled on her.

  “Assume I have,” she said.

  “The city has been in chaos for over a week. Water shortages, missing Hanover children, riots and mass burnings. It’s been madness, with the Hanover leader at the center of it all,” Wilhelm explained. “The Guild, every last member, was hired to ambush the Hanover leader and failed, and he retaliated.”

  “Who could afford to hire everyone?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “It was handled by the leadership. What does it matter? We failed. Those who tried were burnt, murdered or disappeared. The rest of us were ordered to scatter once the Shield began hunting us. I can’t move. I was assigned to get the message every Guild member passing through to leave the city.”

  “You remain loyal to the Guild?” she asked skeptically.

  “Of course.”

  “Even after your brother left.”

  Wilhelm sighed.

  “Why remain?”

  “My brother and I are different people,” he said curtly. “I owe the Guild my life, and so does he. He always resented your father for taking the leadership role. Karl was in line to become the leader, until the Devil’s Massacre, after which your father brought in a benefactor who paid off the leadership council. He was voted in unanimously. Karl resented him for it.”

  “Karl was my father’s friend. He helped raise me,” Aveline said, unable to reconcile the man who helped raise her with the one Wilhelm described.

  “Karl is complicated, but he never got over being passed up for the position,” Wilhelm said. “I suspect the Hanover leader used Karl’s knowledge to find us all.”

  “Karl betrayed everyone,” she murmured.

  “Or he was forced to reveal his secrets in the Hanover dungeon.”

  “He defected after my father’s death and tried to turn me against the Guild,” she retorted. “If this is his doing, he did it to curry favor with his new masters in the Trench!”

  Wilhelm coughed again before answering. “Karl petitioned the Guild leadership to make him the leader the night your father died. The Guild rejected him the next morning,” he reported. “They promised him the position if he helped the Guild eliminate your father. Then they betrayed him.”

  Aveline went still. “Say that again.”

  “Your father was becoming a liability to the Guild. He became reclusive and secretive and controlling. He eliminated all the benefactors supporting the Guild, except for one, whose name he would not reveal. Everyone accepted his decision, until the money stopped flowing. Your father went into debt. The Guild did as well. It scared the other senior assassins.”

  She listened, not wanting to believe her father had been anything other than the strong, powerful leader of the criminal underworld she knew him to be.

  “The Guild leaders went to Karl, who they thought knew who this secret benefactor was. They manipulated him for a second time.” Anger entered Wilhelm’s voice. “No one can forget the Devil’s Massacre, and no one would oppose a man with your father’s reputation. Poison was the method of choice, and Karl became your father’s executioner.”

  Aveline had always thought her father’s sudden death strange. He was healthy and strong. To die of a small cold? It had not made sense at the time, and now she understood why.

  “Karl betrayed my father, then the Guild betrayed him,” she said. “There is some justice in that.” It did not help her feel any better. Acutely aware of the fur creeping up her arm, in response to her emotions, she struggled to contain the anger boiling deep within her. “Where is he now?”

  “I’ve had much more pressing concerns,” Wilhelm said and motioned to his leg. “I haven’t seen my brother in weeks, since he walked out of Guild Main after they rejected him for the leadership position.”

  She half-heard his answer. Instead, Aveline was reviewing her interactions with Karl throughout her life, wondering if the answer had been in front of her all along. Had she been as naïve as Tiana to trust the man who seemed like an uncle? Had her father known Karl resented him enough to betray him completely one day?

  How could anyone believe her father to be worthy of an assassination? The most celebrated assassin in the city’s history? Surely he had an explanation for what he was doing!

  Her harr
owing experience after her father’s death, when she was pursued by debt collectors and sold to a brothel, coupled with the skinwalker secret, left her doubting the father she used to worship.

  “Why did the Guild lose faith in my father?” she demanded. “Everyone admired and respected him! If he made these decisions, he had a reason. Why didn’t they just trust him?”

  “You are naïve if you believe him above making a bad decision,” Wilhelm replied.

  Aveline’s cheeks burned hot with embarrassment. Had she been blind to what her father was doing? Or had everyone else lost faith in a man who kept a secret he could not entrust with anyone else?

  Raw pain trickled through her, last felt when she stood over her father’s dead body.

  Why had her father placed her life in danger? Why had he never shared the secrets of what she really was? Why had he lied about her mother’s death? What was in the envelope he made her swear she would protect?

  Why had he kept so much of the truth from her?

  Had she ever really known her father at all?

  There is a reason for all of this, a tiny instinct reassured her. There had to be. Perhaps there were topics he could not share with his daughter. Did he fear her judgment? Fear the truth would place her in more danger?

  She blinked and noticed the tears in her eyes. Aveline wiped them away, not wanting to appear weak in front of Karl’s brother, a full-fledged assassin.

  “It’s irrelevant at this point.” Wilhelm coughed up more blood. “He’s dead, the Guild is gone for now, and the Hanover leader is burning the city to the ground. All we need now is for the Natives to sweep through and murder every last one of us.”

  His words held more truth than he knew. Regaining her composure, Aveline flexed her bear claw. “You think Karl is involved with the Hanover leader.”

  “Or imprisoned.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Or imprisoned. Either way, you believe them to be connected.”

  “I do. The strikes on the Guild’s members began a week ago. The Shield went from not knowing our identities to tracking and attacking us in a day’s time. It’s not coincidence.”

  “No,” she agreed. “It’s not.” Her thoughts grew darker as she thought of Karl and the extent he went to in order to punish those people who had not wanted to promote him.

  Then again, should she care about the Guild, when its members had participated in her father’s murder? They had always been her extended family. She accompanied them to training and spent hours upon hours in her father’s office at Guild Main. Many of the assassins played with her when she was younger, and many more gave her tips on how to fight and kill.

  “Speaking of Natives … what are you wearing?” Wilhelm studied her clothing quizzically.

  Aveline did not respond.

  “Take my blacks,” he said and pointed to the clothing in the corner. “You won’t be mistaken for a Native and burned.”

  Her eyes lingered on the clothing. Her whole life, she had dreamt of the day she would wear them, after a ceremony presided over by her father, and upon gaining the distinction of becoming the only official female assassin in the Guild.

  After hearing Wilhelm’s explanation behind her father’s death, she found herself gutted at the thought of wearing the clothing belonging to those who betrayed her father.

  Aveline glanced down at her Native clothing. “My mother was a Native,” she said. “I’m not sure I know who my father was anymore.”

  A pattering of heartbeats sent pain ricocheting in her head.

  Aveline left the bedroom to peer out the window.

  Dozens of people were passing the building. She touched her temple. Spots appeared in front of her eyes. She left the window but could not escape what the presence of people did to her.

  “Do you have pain medicines?” she asked.

  Wilhelm snorted. “If I did, I would not be miserable and confined to my room.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Wait!” he cried as she turned to the door.

  She did.

  “Will you ease my passing?” he asked. “A favor from one assassin to another?”

  Aveline considered it. She held no warm regard for any member of Karl’s family, and his death would not cost her a moment of thought. However, he was Karl’s only living relative. If she did not find the traitor, she might need to speak to Wilhelm again or to use him somehow to lure Karl out of hiding.

  “I’ll return,” she said. She then hurried through the trashed living area to the hallway.

  More heartbeats smashed into her skull. She ran through the apartment building without seeing where exactly she went. Exiting into the street, Aveline sprinted away from the crowds, down an alley, and ran. She ran until the pain subsided, and she became aware of her mind once more.

  She slowed and stopped, breathing hard. “Burn …me!” she cursed and gripped her head with one human hand, one bear claw.

  What was the extent of her deformity? Why was it affecting her mind? She clenched and released her bear paw and stared at it. What did hearing heartbeats have to do with being a skinwalker, or half-skinwalker? Were the two talents connected?

  Aveline stood in silence for a long moment. This time, her thoughts turned in a direction she had not wanted to think about.

  Tiana, Diving Eagle, Rocky … even Jose … had suggested she spent some time talking about her family past, and what she was, with the skinwalker Tiana had tried to kill. Aveline had shunned the Native side of her for her entire life, content to be her father’s daughter without ever knowing anything about her mother.

  But what if she needed to know something about her mother in order to survive what was happening to her?

  She lowered her deformed arm and straightened with another look at the sky.

  What did it matter who her mother was, when Aveline had no guarantee she would survive the week? The afternoon was creeping on.

  Struggling with what she had learned, Aveline made the decision to focus first on this evening and verifying the Hanover leader’s vulnerability. She would then have a week to gather the weapons and supplies she would need, find Karl and verify Wilhelm’s account.

  She began walking again towards the pyramid in the outer city. Assassins were trained to do one run through minimum to work out the details and account for obstacles or environmental factors which could not be planned for from a distance. If she did a dry run this night, and spent the week looking for Karl as well as finding out what she could about skinwalkers, perhaps she would be in a better position the following Sunday to execute Tiana’s father.

  Would the charged energy of the city allow her mind and body to find enough peace to sleep?

  Better add painkillers to my supply list, she thought.

  Fur crept up her shoulder and across her chest. This question, above the others, caused her the most distress. Lost Vegas was her home, no matter how much of it was burning or who controlled the city. Would she have to drug herself for the rest of her life to stay in the city she loved?

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Tiana followed the instinct guiding her towards the skinwalker until nightfall. The early spring temperature dropped without the sun to warm the air, and she was soon shaking from cold. She hugged herself and continued onward, pausing occasionally to listen to the sounds of brush and branches rustling. The forest was as alive at night as it had been during the day. She lifted her eyes more than once to catch glimpses of the stars between pine needles. When she reached a small clearing, she stopped in the center and released a puff of air, watching it climb towards the stars.

  The cold night was cloudless and moonless, a beautiful canvas of black sparkling with stars. She found herself fascinated by the combination of light and dark and how the two complemented each other. Neither stars nor sky overwhelmed the other; they lived in harmony.

  The same could not be said for any part of her life.

  I miss Arthur. And Aveline, she thought. The absence of her only two ad
vocates in the world was acutely felt on a night like this. She tried not to imagine Aveline in her father’s prison or being burnt at the stake, tried not to imagine Arthur falling back into line and overseeing the burning of any more families.

  Two nights ago, she had experienced one vision of her brother in the city. Since then, no other visions of either of them had ventured into her mind, leaving her fearful for both. Chases Deer seemed to think Arthur was returning to confront their father, which placed him in more danger than Tiana was lost in the woods. And Aveline … Tiana could not bear to think of what happened to her friend, if Aveline failed in her attempt to murder Edwin Hanover.

  The only two people she cared about in the world were in the city, and she was out here, relatively safe in the forest.

  Whenever she thought of her father, she wanted to cry or run or hide. She did not have the strength to oppose him. She was not Arthur, who was strong and fair and compassionate. She was not Diving Eagle, who seemed as if nothing could scare him, not even Ghouls.

  Did Aveline and Arthur think she was a coward? Aveline had been trying to toughen her up since they met. Arthur would never reveal his true feelings, but he hired Aveline to protect her.

  If they did not believe her to be a coward, they at least both seemed to find her weak.

  The worst part: she was weak in a way no one around her was – in her heart. How did she fix herself? Was it even possible?

  The distant scream of a Ghoul interrupted her melancholy thoughts.

  Tiana sighed and dropped her gaze to the forest. Ghouls were terrifying – but she had already faced them once and survived. Still, she had no desire to test her deformities again and began walking quickly in the direction of the skinwalker once more.

  The sense at her mind told her his direction without offering any insight into the distance separating them. She grappled with this, uncertain how far she was willing to go to find him and prove to herself, if not the others, she was not a completely useless coward. Hungry and thirsty, she did not know how long her body would last her or what she planned to do when she found him or how to find food …

  “Diving Eagle would not think of such things,” she lectured herself in a whisper. “He would do what was necessary.”