Aveline

Aveline

Book One

Lost Vegas Series

By Lizzy Ford

www.LizzyFord.com

Smashwords Edition

Published by Captured Press

www.CapturedPress.com

Aveline
copyright ©2016 by Lizzy Ford

www.LizzyFord.com

Cover Design ©2016 by Lizzy Ford

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information
storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from
the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote
short excerpts in a review.

This novel is a work of fiction. Any
references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or
to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of
reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents
either are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life
counterparts is entirely coincidental.

The corpse on the makeshift dais at the
center of the two-room cabin was still warm when the dreaded knock
resounded off the walls.

Not yet,
Aveline thought.
I’m not
ready.

She gripped her father’s lifeless hand. His
scarred features were serene, as if he had found the peace in the
afterlife he never experienced in the ruthless criminal underworld
of Lost Vegas. She studied his aquiline nose, silvery hair and pale
features. Death did little to lessen his commanding presence, and
for a moment, she was unable to accept the demise her own eyes had
witnessed.

They had both believed he would die in a
fight or in the prisons of the Shield, the police overseeing the
inner and outer cities making up Lost Vegas. His illness caught
them both by surprise, and his unexpected death left her feeling as
if her entire world had been swept away by nothing greater than a
sneeze. It did not seem possible for a child to die from a minor
illness, let alone someone as strong as her father.

Would he wake up, once this stage of his
illness was over?

She felt for his pulse, already knowing it
would not be present but desperately wishing she had been wrong the
previous dozen times she checked it.

The knock came again, this time harder, and
dashed her hope. Many people were waiting for her father to pass.
One of them must have paid a clairvoyant to know the exact time,
for Aveline had not left her father’s side in a week or spoken of
his condition to anyone. The men at the door had come as much for
her as for her father’s body.

At seventeen, a half-breed with no family
would not last long in the city that readily devoured the lost,
friendless, or weak. Her father was gone, and her survival depended
upon her accepting this and moving on, before she followed in his
footsteps. She could almost hear her father lecturing her to be
practical, logical, to think of her own life now that his was
over.

But I don’t want to leave him.

Aveline reached for the knife at her waist
and glanced over her shoulder to ensure the door remained locked.
Either she stayed and faced those sent to enslave her, or she fled
and left her father’s body exposed to those same people. Fresh
organs sold for the same price as a newly orphaned teen in the
city. They’d strip his clothing and hack apart his body and then
destroy her home in the search for valuables.

The thought of anyone dishonoring him stoked
her anger, and she yearned to disregard her father’s insistence she
always control the hereditary curse she bore, the part of her
touched by the devil. In a moment such as this, she wanted to let
the devil’s wrath free upon anyone who drew near her father’s
body.

“
Avi! Come on!” The urgent
hiss came from the direction of the crawlspace leading under the
back wall of the cabin and into an alley. The black-haired head of
her closest friend, Rockford – known as Rocky – poked out of the
crawlspace, and his dark eyes settled on her.

Her fury fizzled, and the devil’s hunger for
blood loosened its grip on her. Aveline’s mouth went dry. Her heart
pounded loudly enough to fill her ears. Part of her understood
Rocky’s urgency, but moving did not seem possible when she realized
she would never return here, never see her father again. This was
their last time together, and the infuriating knocking was ruining
it. The door bucked beneath the fists of the fate awaiting her, if
she did not flee.

“Avi!” Rocky insisted.

Wiping warm tears from her cheeks, Aveline
sucked in one last breath laced with her father’s familiar scent
then leapt to her feet. She hurried to the lopsided dresser where
they stored their weapons and yanked open the bottom drawer. Her
father had drilled into her the importance of never allowing their
only possession of value to fall into the hands of anyone outside
their family. More than once, he had shown her the envelope in the
drawer and reminded her how dangerous his position was, and how
likely it was that she would one day need to protect his
treasure.

Those coming to dismember her father would
take his body, but not his only treasure. The small gesture was all
she could think to do to honor him before he was lost to her
forever.

Shoving the envelope into her pocket, she
dropped to her knees in front of the crawlspace and shimmied
beneath it just as the front door splintered under the blow of an
axe.

Waiting for her, Rocky reached in and hauled
her out of the hole into an alley reeking of rotting refuse and
human waste.

“There are ten of them, including the Shield
and Miguel’s men,” he whispered to her. “They were arguing over who
decides what goes to who. Hopefully it will be enough to distract
them, so we can run.”

Aveline barely heard his words. Rocky’s eyes
darted up and down the alley, aware whereas she was numb. The sting
of winter nibbled on her ears, fingers and nose, and she shivered
reflexively. Her breath floated over their heads in tiny puffs
towards the night sky, away from the alley, from the damned city.
Was her father up there somewhere, looking down upon her?

What remained of the thick wall that used to
surround the city formed one side of her father’s cabin, which was
the last dwelling in a line of shacks and cabins. With the
crumbling wall to one side, the intruders on another, and the cabin
on a third, there was only one direction for them to run: across a
wide road and into the city’s criminal underbelly.

Her focus, however, was not on escaping but
on the sky. The stars and moon were hidden behind the puffy gray
clouds which covered the skies for the greater part of three months
every winter. Was her father able to see her through the clouds?
Was he finally free of the devil’s curse? Of the hunger for blood
and death?

The sound of people ransacking her home made
her wince. If she let herself envision them ripping his body apart,
she would lead the second greatest massacre the city had ever
known.

Rocky was at the corner of the cabin,
peering around to the front. Those who came for her father’s body
and possessions held torches that sent shadows dancing across the
dark features of her best friend. “Six inside, four outside. Now’s
our chance,” he whispered.

“I don’t want to leave him,” she said. Tears
further blurred her surroundings.

Rocky approached her and gripped her arms.
“You remember what you told me when my Papaw died?” he asked.

Aveline swallowed hard and nodded. “Crying
is a weakness.”

“That, too,” Rocky said with a tight smile.
“You told me your mother’s people believe the dead return to where
we all came from, and they’re happy spirits again. This,” he
motioned to their surroundings, “is probably hell.”

“I don’t think I said that,” she said, a
small smile tugging up one corner of her mouth despite her
tumultuous emotions.

“You said the first part.
I’m declaring this hell,” he answered. “Your father is happy and he
wants you
not
to be
caught by those bastards. You deserve a chance to start a new life.
It won’t happen if we stay here.”

Less than two years older than she was,
Aveline often wondered how Rocky had become so wise. She suspected
it had something to do with the scars running down the side of his
body, from the tip of his scalp to his toes, stemming from his run
in with the Shield last year.

“Maybe we should let them catch us, so I’ll
match,” Rocky added and motioned to the side of his face without
scarring.

“Burn you, Rock,” Aveline replied, though
she appreciated his attempt to lighten her mood. She shook off his
hand and then rolled her shoulders back. “I’m ready.”

Energized by the cold, she became more
cognizant of their danger as her emotion was pushed back in favor
of surviving the next hour. Rocky was right. She could mourn her
father later. For now, she needed to hide. It was not possible to
guess how many of her father’s enemies would seek her out. As the
former head of the Assassin Guild, he had collected enemies for
twenty years and was wanted by the Shield and city leadership for
thousands of deaths. Trained by him secretly, possessing the feared
curse, she would be hunted by hundreds, if not thousands.

She hoped some of the Guild members would
remain loyal to her father long enough to help her apply to the
Guild’s council for permission to complete the final trial required
for her to become a full-fledged assassin. Her plan had been to one
day lead the Guild as her father had. As an assassin-in-training
whose sponsor was now dead, she would have to appeal to the new
leadership for consideration, alongside hundreds of other
applicants eager to join the elite, discreet organization.

This morning, she had confidence in her
father’s recovery and her fate. Standing outside her home, without
her father to guide her, she no longer knew where she belonged.

“Almost time,” Rocky said. He lowered the
assassin mask over his head.

At least I have one
friend,
she thought.

Despite his warm eyes and ready humor, Rocky
was second in lethality only to Aveline’s father and one of his
favorite students. Her friend carried a bone machete and wore his
full Guild blacks, the coal-hued uniform of the assassin. She
envied him for his position as a newly sworn in member of the
exclusive Guild. She had become an outsider the second her father
died.

Rocky peeked around the corner of the cabin
once more then motioned for her to follow.

Aveline shifted to the balls of her feet,
ready to sprint when he did. She watched him calculate the movement
of others she was unable to see from her position. With a quick
nod, he focused on their destination – crossing the wide road on
the other side of the men – and then ran.

She sprinted after him. Small and agile,
Aveline caught up to him quickly. No sooner had they reached the
point where they were fully exposed to their pursuers than a shout
came from the direction of the cabin.

Aveline risked a look over her shoulder and
almost tripped. The door to her home was open. Her father’s body
had been dragged off the dais she built and was in the process of
being dismembered.

She stopped, unable to take her eyes off his
form.

“Avi!” Rocky shouted from across the street.
“Happy spirits, remember?”

It was her mother’s belief, not her
father’s, though her father had been diligent about teaching her
about the woman who died in childbirth. Would it matter if he had
not believed in spirits? Would he still become one, if he were
touched by the devil, as she was?

As if to reassure her, the clouds above
thinned until the moon spilled silvery light around her feet. She
glanced up.

“Happy spirits,” Aveline repeated, wanting
to believe the rare sighting of the moon in winter to be a sign
from either her father or mother.

With dread heavy in her stomach, Aveline
turned and ran, joining Rocky on the other side of the street. The
heavy footsteps of pursuers sent both of them bolting for the
relative protection of the shadows.

They plunged into the dark alleys making up
the inner city of Lost Vegas and filled with criminals, the poor,
orphaned, and anyone else who did not fit neatly into the strict
social castes of those privileged few who dwelt in the outer
city.

“We’ll lose them in the markets!” Rocky told
her.

She nodded. It normally did not take more
than five minutes to shake any kind of pursuer, and evading the
Shield members was a skill every child on the street had learned by
the time he or she turned five.