Vegas Knights (39 page)

 

Vegas Knights

  Two teenagers sit across from each other at a table in a hotel room, playing poker. BILL CHANCEY deals the cards to his friend ERIK WEISS. Bill goes all-in. Erik calls. They show their hands.

  Bill grins as he produces four aces. Before he can collect, Erik throws down his hand: five aces, all spades. The two laugh at each other. They're ready.

  Bill and Erik strut into THE CAMELOT, a Las Vegas casino with an Arthurian theme. They sit down at a blackjack table and win big. They take almost every hand. They cannot lose. 

  That night, the boys party large. They have hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the casino has comped them a highroller's suite, free meals, and admission to their top nightclub. 

  The next morning, as the boys recover, MERLE – a handsome man in smoked, John Lennon glasses – barges in, backed by a trio of dark-suited legbreakers with Camelot security badges. He explains to the boys that he know they've been cheating, and how. They're going to play again today, against him.

  Merle and the others leave, and the boys try to run. Security blocks them at every door. They give in and agree to play. 

  The boys do their best in the game, but Merle beats them at every hand. Soon he cleans them out. He offers them a marker, which Bill insists on accepting. Erik watches as Merle polishes off that as well. In the last hand, he calls Bill's best effort, then peels off his cards one by one for a devastating win.

  As the game ends, the leg breakers converge on the table and escort the boys from the casino. On their way out, Merle informs the boys that they've been banned from the casino for life. If they return, they're sure to lose more than mere money.

  Sitting on the casino's curb, Bill is ready to leave, but Erik refuses to go down so quietly. They're going to get their money back and then some. He just doesn't know how.

  A limousine pulls up, and MORGAN beckons to them from the back door. The boys recognize her from the blackjack table last night and join her.

  Morgan already knows all about the boys' problem. She can help them win back their money – and Bill's marker. The boys start to refuse, but Morgan asks what they think Bill backed up his marker with. It turns out to have been his soul.

  Erik's all for leaving anyhow, as he doesn't believe in souls. Bill's less sure and begs his friend to help him out. Erik relents, and they discuss with Morgan what to do next.

  Morgan uses her magic to disguise the boys. (They'll need all their magic to play in the casino game.) They look the same when they look at each other, but in a mirror they can see the images they show to the rest of the world. 

  Morgan fronts the boys a gambling stake. She insists on Erik signing for the marker. At first, he balks, but Bill begs him. 

  Erik asks Morgan for a partnership instead. She gets half of what each of them win while they're in Vegas. With a smirk, she agrees.

  The boys go back to Camelot and play blackjack again. They're up over a quarter million dollars when they notice the security men closing in on them. They get up and race for the door.

  The boys manage to lose the guards by tossing some chips into the air. In the chaos that ensues, they drop their disguises and saunter out of the casino. When they reach the exit, they find Merle waiting for them.

  Merle holds out Bill's marker, and the boys try to buy it back. Merle laughs at them. This marker's worth more than money. He flexes it in his hands, threatening to break it, and Bill falls to the ground, writhing in pain.

  Erik dares Merle to play him in poker. Merle agrees, but only if Erik's willing to put up his own marker against Bill's. Erik nods yes.

  Erik and Merle face off in a heads-up (two-player) game of No Limit Texas Hold 'Em. They start out playing with money, but the game goes down to the wire fast. Soon Merle goes all-in, but instead of taking the challenge Erik folds. 

  This happens again, then again. Merle snarls that the boy will run out of cash eventually. Then he'll have to play the marker.

  On the next hand, Erik goes all-in, putting everything but his own marker into the pot. Merle bears his teeth at him like a hungry tiger, then matches Erik's bet and tosses Bill's marker into the pot. Erik puts in his own marker, then tosses another dollar from his own pocket in for good measure. Merle calls.

  Erik shows his cards. He has a decent hand, but it's far from unbeatable. Triumphant, Merle peels his cards off one at a time, forming a Royal Flush. As he reveals the last card, though, it comes up a 2 of Spades.

  Erik waited for the right moment, then used his magic to affect Merle's hand instead of his own. The boys win the game and leave with a half-million dollars of Merle's money, half of which they give to Morgan, just before they drive off into the sunset.

 

THE NOVEL PROPOSAL

I actually had two versions of this proposal that I worked up for showing around back in 2008 and early 2009. They're substantially the same, but for the final one I trimmed off the last paragraph. That was the version that Angry Robot liked enough to offer me a contract to create this book. 

  In the course of writing the actual book, I changed many things around. Notably, the names of the casinos involved are all different. Okinawa became Bootleggers. Reservations became the Thunderbird. Marko Hedeon transformed into Ben Gaviota/Bugsy Siegel and from the leader of Chernobyl to Houdini's right-hand man.

  Of course, the book's themes also differ a lot. To make the stakes more personal the conflict went from being about controlling magic to restoring lives – or not. A lot of the ethos behind the way magic works survived into the book, but I never bothered to call it out. I preferred to show you those details rather than tell you, and I hope you enjoyed the difference.

 

Vegas Knights

High Concept

A college freshman and his best friend go to Las Vegas on spring break to see if they can bust the casinos with the best kind of luck: magic. They discover that the casinos have already beat them to it.

 

Magic has always been with us, but those who use it have often been shunned, hunted, or killed. Many successful wizards either turned to crime or had criminals exploit them for their amazing talents. Some of them took to the stage, while others tried to live quiet lives, but magic has a way of calling attention to itself.

  In the 1940s, the Mafia decided to open the Flamingo in Las Vegas and bring serious gambling to the desert. It did so at the behest of its greatest wizard, Harry Houdini. 

  Since faking his death in 1926, Houdini had worked full-time on his greatest labor, to master utter control over fate. To that end, Houdini needed to set up the greatest magical laboratory ever created, a place in which hundreds of thousands of people could believe that anything could happen. Las Vegas became that place.

  Las Vegas's nature pulled in magicians like moths to a torch. Houdini and his heirs demanded their full loyalty and put them to work, unaware of their true places in the master plan. Eighteen years ago, one of these men, who goes by the stage name Luke Wisdom, abandoned his girlfriend and their young child to join one of the many factions now battling over Houdini's legacy.

 

Erik Weiss:
Hotheaded student wizard with something to prove to the world.

Bill Chancey:
Another student wizard, and Erik's best friend. 

Rishi Ultman:
Erik and Bill's professor in wizardry. 

Luke Wisdom:
Yakuza wizard, also Erik's long-lost father. Although he's
gaijin
, he works at Okinawa, a JapaneseAmerican-themed casino.

Marko Hedeon:
Leader of the Russian Mob's wizards. Behind the Soviet-themed casino Chernobyl.

Muatagoci Mamaci (Moon Woman):
Elderly Paiute shaman who wields a magic far older than the wizards of Vegas. She mentors Powie and is in charge of the Native Americanthemed casino Reservations.

Powaqa "Powie" Strega:
Italian-Hopi Indian witch who helps Erik and Bill. She works for Reservations.

 

Erik Weiss and his pal Bill Chancey arrive in Las Vegas for spring break. They've been studying magic – and real magic, not the stage stuff – under Rishi Ultman a professor of the paranormal at the University of Michigan. Despite their teacher warning them to never mess with games of chance, they make a run on the tables at the Chernobyl casino and end the night up a quarter-million dollars.

  The next day, the boys go down to the tables to try the same thing, this time at Reservations. They dare far too much this time, and casino security – along with Powie – comes after them. They run.

  That night, the boys hit the Strip to party instead of worrying about money. They take in a magic show at Okinawa and see Luke Wisdom in action.

  Disguising themselves with magic, the boys take another shot at the tables at Chernobyl the next day. They do fine for a while, but when a new dealer shows up they hit a long losing streak. Scared about what this means, they try to leave. Instead, security grabs them and hauls them into a back room for interrogation.

  Marko Hedeon explains to the boys the kind of trouble they're causing. Rogue wizards – those not attached to a casino – aren't permitted in Vegas. They have two choices: join him or leave town forever. He gives them 24 hours to decide. 

  After the boys leave, Powie grabs them and takes them to a bar for a drink. She explains to them how things work in Vegas. 

  Everyone has some magical ability, but few can consciously channel it. Vegas is set up to get people in tune with their arcane power and then drain it from them. Alcohol dulls magical abilities, which is why the casinos always ply their patrons with free drinks. They realized she's gotten them drunk to keep them from using their magic against her. 

  Powie asks the boys to join Reservations and go to work for Chernobyl as double agents. If they refuse, Muatagoci Mamaci will have them killed.

  The boys take a room at the Revolution, an American patriot-themed casino. Luke Wisdom, sent by his own masters, finds them there. Erik reveals that Wisdom is his father. 

  Luke knows this. He'd left Erik as a child, hoping to insulate him from this sordid life. Now, he recommends that the boys run as far away as they can.

  As the boys try to leave town, Marko captures them and imprisons them in a suite high above Chernobyl. The Russian mob is about to make a big play for control of all the magic in town, and they need every wizard on hand that they can get – willing or not.

  Backed into a corner, the boys decide to take action. It's not just enough to stop the Russians from gaining control of Vegas's pent up magic though. To make sure no one else can get it, they're going to take it for themselves. 

  Erik and Bill play along with Marko's scheme as long as they can. With the help of Powie and Luke, they manage to defeat Marko and snatch control of Vegas's magic at the last moment. Realizing that this only makes them a target for every casino in town, Erik decides that he must return the magic to the players who brought it in. Every game, every slot machine, every video poker console pays out its top jackpot at once. In the resulting confusion, the boys and Powie get away, leaving Luke to take whatever advantage he can of the chaos.

 

 

 

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An Angry Robot paperback original 2011 1

 

Copyright © Matt Forbeck 2011

 

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ISBN: 978 0 85766 084 4 

EBook ISBN: 978 0 85766 086 2

 

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