Lost Vegas Series Read online

  “Stay alert. I’ll see you at dawn,” Aveline said and stepped outside the building. Listening once more, she decided to go left, towards the center of the city.

  Aveline deftly wove through forgotten and abandoned routes, across streets and crossing the different wards dividing the sprawling inner city. Passing through the slave ward once more, she paused at one point and let her senses fill with the late night sights and sounds.

  From one of the buildings near her, a man had been seized by a round of coughing. Music on ill-tuned instruments floated from another direction, while the movement of the vermin living within the city came from several directions. A rat was dragging what appeared to be a human hand towards the sewers, and larger scavengers were tossing inedibles from heaps of refuse in their search for food.

  And then the faint scent of metal polish reached her.

  She took off once more, vowing this would not be the night she joined her family as a spirit.

  Whipping around a corner, Aveline was halfway down the street before she realized it had been recently rerouted. Streets often were dammed and changed in attempts by the Shield and city leadership to curb crime in the worst parts of the inner city. She had been at her father’s side the past week instead of exploring the streets as she normally did.

  The sounds of pursuit grew louder. She hesitated too long, her mind racing to find an alternate route. As she tried to decide what to do, a low whistle reached her from above.

  Aveline looked up. A figure in dark clothing was framed against the night sky, crouched on the edge of a roof of the building flanking the alley. The figure stood, revealing the tall, lean form belonging to a man. He tossed a rope down towards her and motioned for her to take it. The figure was too wiry to be Rocky, but it was difficult for her to determine anything else about her rescuer.

  Aveline snatched the rope and began to haul herself up the side of the building, pushing and bracing herself with her legs.

  “Hey!”

  She glanced down and saw two dozen men had jammed up the entrance of the alley. Her thoughts went again briefly to why she and Rocky rated a search party before she concentrated on climbing. When she reached the top, she slung one leg over the edge of the roof and hefted herself over. Her heart flew, and she yanked the rope up before any of the men below could grab it.

  Aveline leaned over, trying to identify something about her pursuers that might tell her who they were or why they were so doggedly chasing her this night. Rocky had seen the Shield members as well as the men working for the largest debt collector in the inner city, Miguel. She fully expected both to show up the night her father died. Miguel would sell off her father’s possessions – which included her – to the highest bidder to settle the debts of the Guild, and the Shield had an interest in confirming the assassin leader was dead. Why the latter insisted on chasing her, though, was not something she understood at all. What was one orphaned street dog to the Shield?

  These two parties were joined by men in maroon she did not recognize. There were four of them. She ducked back from the edge of the roof when the men on the ground spotted her peering down at them. It was better to find safety first then spend time debating who was chasing her.

  “You’re welcome,” a low, unfamiliar male voice said from nearby.

  She had nearly forgotten the man who threw her the rope. Aveline whirled to face the shadows cast by the neighboring building. The man was there, hiding from the night. She breathed in deeply, using all her senses to pick up any clues as to who he was.

  No smells, no sounds, no impressions. He was being very, very careful.

  “Do you work for my father?” she asked.

  “Sort of.”

  She frowned and ran through the voices of every assassin or client who had ever crossed the threshold into her father’s cabin.

  “You are for hire, are you not?” the man asked. His accent was polished, the rhythm of his speech slow and enunciated.

  He was from the outer city. What was he doing here?

  Wary, she shifted one hand to the knife at her thigh. “Why do you care?” she replied.

  “Because, if you are, I would like to hire you.”

  “Hire.”

  “You are a seventh generation assassin, are you not?”

  If he were one of her father’s men, he would know she was not allowed to call herself thus yet, because she had not completed her final trial.

  “I assume you need a benefactor of some sort. Or were you running through the inner city for exercise?” he asked.

  “Thanks for the help, but I’m not interested,” she said.

  “You have not yet heard what the job is or what it pays. I have never met an assassin who did not wish to know how much I was willing to donate for my wishes to be carried out.”

  “There are dozens of assassins. Hire one of them,” she said shortly. “I’m not currently looking for employment.” Aveline started away, towards a ladder leading up to the roof of an adjacent building. Roof walking was dangerous. She had done it before but generally preferred not to risk falling through anyone’s ceiling. With her current route blocked, she had little choice.

  “You bear the devil’s blood, do you not?”

  She stopped in place at the polite question. It was not chance that placed this man in her path. Devil was her father’s nickname, earned from his actions during the single deadliest massacre ever to occur in the inner city of Lost Vegas. Those who coined the nickname did so out of a sense of admiration, claiming her father had to have the blood of the devil flowing through his veins in order to kill a thousand people in three days time.

  They did not know how accurate they were, and very few outside the two of them knew the truth about the curse she bore. Her father’s family really was touched by the devil. To relinquish one’s control over the blood curse was to become possessed by the spirit of the devil himself, and by a rage that burned so hot, it turned everyone in its path to ash. After he witnessed for himself how lethal his curse was, her father had raised her to control it at all times and forbidden her from ever unleashing it.

  “Only you can complete this task,” her rescuer said.

  “Who are you?” she asked, facing him once more.

  He remained in the shadows.

  “Why are you hiding?”

  “The girl possessed by the devil wants to know why I do not wish her to see my face?” he retorted. “My name has no meaning here, but my money does. I know enough about the Guild to understand those who bring in benefactors often advance more quickly than those who do not.”

  It was true the Guild relied upon funds from outsiders to maintain its locations and care for the families of those assassins caught or killed during their missions. Assassins earned their place in the Guild by the merit of their ability to fight and kill. In payment for blindly obeying orders, they received a stipend, along with free living quarters for the rest of their lives. Those who purchased assassinations paid the Guild rather than the individual assassin. The Guild was a large family; money went where it was needed, and it was understood among the Guild members that no one would be rewarded more than his brother or sister, no matter what the circumstance.

  Except when someone brought in the kind of grateful benefactor who could fund stipends for a year or build a dozen new living quarters. The assassin favored by a wealthy benefactor received none of the money but moved up the ranks faster.

  She would need a benefactor, if not before she appealed to the Guild’s board to take her trial, then soon after to gain status.

  More importantly, she would need a benefactor to settle her father’s debts. There had been a dry spell in assassinations the past three years caused by the emergence of a second group selling similar services to the wealthy. Her father had taken out large loans from Miguel to fund the Guild, loans she was now either responsible for repaying or dying for.

  The timing of this stranger’s appearance, however, coupled with the death of her father, left
her suspicious. He had not been waiting for anyone to come through the alley. He had been waiting for her.

  To accept a mission when she was not a full assassin would not only earn her a reprimand but hinder her ability to find a sponsor and take the final trial. How could she justify potentially spending days, weeks, months on assignment, and disobeying the Guild’s council, when she needed to focus on drawing the attention of a Guild sponsor?

  Her future was shaky enough without the added challenge.

  “Find someone else. The Devil’s blood died with my father,” she said and spun away. Reaching out to grip the wooden ladder, she was trying to figure out how this man, and the others, had found her this night when the stranger spoke.

  “We will discuss this again.”

  Something stung her neck, and she slapped it, expecting to feel a mosquito squish beneath her palm. Instead, her fingers met the long, slender arrow of a blow weapon. Before she could react, the world slid out of focus, and her body grew too heavy for her to stand. She sank to the ground, helpless to move or speak.

  “I apologize for this,” came the low male voice. “You have forced my hand.”

  Alarm spun through her mind as darkness swallowed her.

  Chapter Two

  A woman’s shout awoke her.

  Aveline’s eyes snapped open, and she stared at a wooden ceiling. A cacophony of activity pummeled her groggy senses. The events of her night were clear; the world around her less so. The splashing of water, strange moans, and at least two women barking orders were joined by the sound of knocking at a door and someone else stomping across the floor.

  Where was she?

  She started to stand up only to realize her body was unresponsive. She tried again. Nothing happened.

  Aveline attempted to lift her hand next, then her foot, then her head. Not even her lips would form a word or part for a sigh.

  She was paralyzed, with the exception of her eyes.

  Panic surged through her. She strained against her wooden body, unable to make sense of what was going on around her. Gradually, she realized she was not staring at the ceiling but at a wall, and her back was to the activity. She smelled nothing, and her skin was numb to the roughness of the wood beneath her.

  “Bring the mixed one next!” one of the women shouted.

  Seconds later, hands gripped her ankles and yanked her onto her back while another woman bent over her and lifted her upper body beneath the shoulders. They jostled her; she felt none of it. Her head fell helplessly back against someone’s torso, and she was relieved to see she was not missing any limbs or wounded.

  But she was completely naked.

  The person supporting her torso dropped her. She heard her head smack hard against the ground without feeling anything. The woman cast a quick, worried look towards someone before hastily lifting her again.

  Aveline struggled to contain her panic. She was a prisoner of her body and could not scream for help or fight off these people as much as she wanted to. She was all but flung onto a table on her side long enough to see a row of four other young women lying helplessly on tables. The girl beside her was little more than thirteen, and a woman was at the bottom of the table. The girl’s legs were apart, the woman sticking something into the sacred pocket between them that only women possessed.

  “Virgin. Clean her up and put her in the pile,” the woman ordered two others standing by. She rose and moved towards Aveline.

  Brothels. She was in the processing line to be assigned to a brothel. Aveline knew the brothel ward as well as any other ward in the inner city. She had seen the creepy displays of beautiful girls and boys at the front of each prostitution house meant to entice clients into the brothels. They appeared more like living dolls, and she had wondered in passing how these kids managed to stay so still. There had always been a chance she would have been sold to a brothel to work as a whore in order to repay her father’s debts, but she had taken comfort in the smug knowledge she could kill anyone who tried to touch her.

  Realization sent a streak of fear through her. She could not defend herself, or escape, if she could not move.

  She was shoved onto her back and stared at the ceiling before wildly trying to look around at what she could with the only part of her that worked. Whatever was done to her, Aveline felt and saw none of it until the woman in charge rose and towered over her.

  “Virgin. But mixed,” she said, peering down critically at Aveline. “How’d the other mixed girl do?”

  “Forty ounces,” someone else answered.

  “Decent,” the woman said. “Clean her up. Put her in the pile.”

  What the hell was going on? Aveline screamed the question at the people who could not hear her. She was hefted and half dragged across the floor, through a doorway into a bathing room consisting of six wooden tubs filled with murky water.

  She was shoved into one.

  Water closed over her head, and she started to panic as water entered her lungs. Unable to breathe or move, Aveline strained against the prison of her body once again. This time, she lifted a finger. But one finger was not going to save her.

  A blurry form reached into the tub and hauled her up. Her upper body was pushed over the edge, and the sound of her bather slapping her back was followed by the involuntary expulsion of water. Able to breathe again, Aveline sucked in as much air as she could.

  Her bather went to work scrubbing her with movement born of routine. Had she been able to, she would have grimaced at the amount of force the older woman put into scouring every inch of her skin. Aveline’s skin blazed red from the harsh scrubbing. Instead of spiraling into panic, she closed her eyes to block the surreal world and focused instead on moving her body.

  Two fingers lifted when she ordered them to.

  Burn me, burn me, burn me! she chanted mentally, frustrated by the weak progress.

  “Lori!” a man bellowed.

  Aveline’s eyes cracked open to see a large man missing most his teeth standing in the doorway.

  “Yes!” Lori, the woman in charge of the other room, entered.

  “Which are these?” he gestured to the floor.

  “Rejects. Send them to the butcher!”

  He grunted and bent. When he straightened, he had both fists wrapped in the hair of two girls around the ages of ten.

  Aveline stared at them, horrified to witness the circling of their eyes as they struggled to take in what was happening to them. Her bather dragged her out of the bath, severing her view of the girls being dragged away to be slaughtered. Aveline was dropped onto a pile on top of several other women stacked like logs and dripping from baths.

  Faced with another truth, Aveline was not certain what to think.

  Food in Lost Vegas was heavily rationed, with the outer city receiving the fresh meat and the inner city left to fight over rotten scraps. It was an unwritten rule that no one in the inner city ever asked where fresh meat came from, whenever it was available. She had always hoped only the worst criminals were put down to feed the rest of the inner city.

  Residents of the inner city would starve without a steady supply of fresh meat, but those girls were too young for such a fate. Aveline had met too many dishonest grown men and women for children to be sacrificed to feed the rest of the criminals in the inner city.

  Caught in her own perilous position, all of her training and skills were not going to help the girls when she could not move.

  Frustration mixed with anger and fear, and Aveline continued to fight her body.

  Four fingers.

  The activity around her remained at the same level as more immobilized young women and men were bathed and then stacked by the wall. Every once in a while, she heard one of those around her moan or utter some other kind of panicked squeak, but no one could speak.

  The longer she struggled to move, the more disappointed she became with her slow progress. When she had managed to lift all five fingers on one hand, another body was stacked on top of hers, pinning her h
and between them.

  While discouraged, Aveline was not ready to accept her involuntary fate as a whore. How much time passed, she had no way of knowing. She used the mental discipline her father had instilled into her to prevent her panic from consuming her and instead, channeled all her focus on moving the fingers on her free hand.

  She watched the shadows on the wall, unable to track the movement of the bathing room any other way. Only when the mound of shadows began to decrease did she start to become unsettled once more. The boys and girls stacked around her were being removed, one by one. The sounds of bathing soon quieted as well, signaling a change in her environment.

  Enough time had passed for her to coax all five fingers on her free hand back to life and even to straighten her palm. Her wrist was still frozen by the incapacitating drug they had given her, and she concentrated on moving it next. Aveline doubted she would have a chance to do anything without at least one arm and her legs in working order. Her toes and feet had yet to respond to her mental orders. With one arm free, she would feel slightly less vulnerable. If anyone armed came within reach, she could snatch their weapon and …

  This part of her plan, she had not yet figured out. One arm free could stab as many people as she could see, assuming they remained directly in her line of vision. The thought of spilling blood stirred her Devil’s curse but provided her no real means of escape. The devil was not interested in anything but blood. Once she attacked, she would be easy to subdue, and the element of surprise would be completely gone. They might even inject more of the numbing drug into her.

  Wrestling with what to do, Aveline fought back the urge to act without reason, to kill – or try to – without caring how she was going to escape. Fleeing this place was more important than revenge. When her body was itself again, she would find this place and mete out the kind of revenge that made the devil in her gleeful.

  Determined, she urged her body to free more of itself as her eyes stayed trained on the diminishing shadows on the wall. The body atop hers was lifted, the one beside her, and finally, it was her turn to be picked up and slung over someone’s shoulder. She hung helplessly and watched the flooring. Her captor left the room and walked down a narrow hallway flanked by several open doors before he descended a set of stairs at a jog and left the building. He walked down a short alleyway and to what she judged to be the rear entrance of the neighboring building by the muddied stairs and flooring.