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    Hollow Empire: Episode 3 (Night of Knives)
    Hollow Empire: Episode 3 (Night of Knives)
    Hollow Empire: Episode 3 (Night of Knives)
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    Hollow Empire: Episode 3 (Night of Knives)

    By John McGuire and J Edward Neill

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Episode 3 of a 6 part Season!

    Once, the empire of Vhur was the world's most powerful. But that was before the Lichy plague. Now, twenty years and millions of dead later, only a few cities remain. The survivors walk a fine line between staying alive and crumbling into the grave.
    Come the Night of Knives, even these last few might perish.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn McGuire
    Release dateOct 22, 2014
    ISBN9781310207884
    Hollow Empire: Episode 3 (Night of Knives)
    Author

    John McGuire

    John McGuire is an engineer by day and writer by night. He attended Georgia Tech to obtain a civil engineering degree. While his left brain absorbed information on E-mag, Calculus, Statics, Dynamics, Structures and Road Design; his right brain devoured the works of Jack London, Mark Twain, Anne Rice, Alan Moore, Kurt Busiek, and Mark Wade. Today, John is a registered professional engineer and professional writer.His love and collection of comic books began when he was 10, in a convenience store in Waycross, Georgia. It wasn’t long afterwards when he started writing his first comic related stories. This passion has continued throughout his adult life as he remains an avid comic book reader and collector.In 2002, he was a founding member of Terminus Media. It began as a writer’s collective in the back of the Dragon’s Horde Comic Book Store in Decatur, GA. Through the next decade Terminus, published anthologies in which John was both an editor and contributor. The Gilded Age, published in 2013, is his first on-going series. The relationship with Terminus also grew into some Work for Hire opportunities for both corporate and government entities.In 2009, John joined Headhunta Studios, a collective of Artists and Writers. In 2013, Tiger Style was published by Arena Comics. John currently has projects in production for Arena Comics.In 2010, John took the story telling skills that he had learned and applied them to the writing of novels and short stories. The Dark That Follows is John McGuire’s debut Novel.John McGuire currently resides in Suwanee Georgia with his wife, Courtney, and two cats: Westley, and Inigo.He maintains that he would have been a Marine biologist, if not for Jaws.

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      Book preview

      Hollow Empire - John McGuire

      Hollow Empire

      Night of Knives

      Episode 3

      John R McGuire & J Edward Neill

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Hollow Empire – Night of Knives – Episode 3

      Cover Design by http://amandamakepeace.com/

      Editing for John R McGuire: Editing by Janie from Lector's Books

      All rights reserved

      To my parents for teaching me that an imagination is to be used and that to create new things is magical.

      John R McGuire

      To the night, without whom I’d have little reason to suffer the day.

      J Edward Neill

      Table of Contents

      World Map

      The Ghost

      Vadim

      Nadya

      Cassidy

      Murgul

      The King’s Journal

      The Ghost

      With the lateness of the hour, the Othian streets no longer sung with a chorus of voices, and those who might have raised them up were long since behind shuttered windows and bolted doors. A small sliver of the moon illuminated the cobblestone streets leading up to the city’s Riverside section. Any nobility who wished to live within Othis chose to make his home in the Riverside. Even in the decades since the Lichy struck, this was the one area where its tendrils had barely penetrated. While the plague did not discriminate between those it visited disease and death upon, these buildings and homes showed no sign of the fires that had consumed so many in the more impoverished areas.

      A golden beacon of a forgotten time. Yet they haven’t forgotten any expense.

      Simon Harte clutched his hooded cloak tighter about him while the autumn wind howled through the alleyways. Black Mountain’s kiss would only turn colder as the days grew shorter and shorter, and Simon shivered at the thought of another long winter stuck in Othis.

      If Decker is right about those bastards, maybe this job will be enough. Enough to find myself on a beach south of Petryph, far, far away from this bleeding city. A place where the few winds would be warm ones from the sea.

      The pair had come to him much like anyone else looking for the Ghost, which meant through Decker. One of Simon’s oldest friends, the fiery redhead ran interference with any undesirables. Of course, to Decker undesirables meant anyone not willing to spend the coin necessary to gain an audience with the one man in Vhur whom no door could bar. The same man who, for a price, could pry any item from its rightful owner.

      As to the name, it was a silly nickname from his youth when the Lichy thought to drag him down under the dirt. The sickness left him pale, almost luminescent, like a ghost. Even after he miraculously regained his health and along with it his normal coloring, the name stuck. Still, his pale skin and dark hair seemed to add to the mystery, as if the Ghost were a part in a play and this was his costume.

      This job was a bit different though. He stood on the corner, inside the shadows cast by a brazier burning at the front of a three-story manor. He studied the stonework, analyzing each of the second and third story windows, but quickly realized there might be an easier way inside.

      This goes well and those poor devils may pay me double for the quickest lift ever.

      * * *

      We need you to liberate a necklace from the house of Tobias Eckart. His daughter sought to marry my brother and so he offered to give her an old family heirloom to seal the deal between their two houses. The man who spoke might have looked the part of a nobleman ten years previous. What once had been a chiseled jaw, intense green eyes, and flowing blonde locks was now masked by his nose’s red tinge, signifying a few too many sips of booze. His jaw had been replaced by jowls, double chins that threatened to consume the man’s face. Moreover, his hair drifted down into his eyes, dirtied by whatever bed he crawled from that morning. Then, a month ago, without warning, her father called off the wedding, and she refused to return James’ property back to him.

      It’s been in our family since before Lord Rowan. Though James spoke softly, this was someone who could bring noble houses together. Here sat the true dark-haired prince from the storybooks who would ride on the noble steed and rescue the princess from any monster.

      I’m sure. Simon bobbed his head up and down in an effort to appear interested. He had heard plenty of sob stories over the years, and this

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