Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2) by Aaron Schneider (best color ereader .TXT) 📗

features unnaturally bent into numb shock. “Why is she still bleeding?”

The Green Lady’s breathing was shallow, and her skin paled more with each heartbeat. More than mere death, Milo felt like he was watching the death of a star or ocean, the eternal fading impossibly but inexorably in front of him.

“Milo,” Rihyani said sharply to draw his attention. “Is there anything you can do for her? Our charms of mending aren’t working.”

“It’s cold,” the Green Lady sobbed. “So cold. What’s happening? Beli, hold me.”

Her trembling hands reached toward the metal-skinned titan.

Beli raised a stained hand to stroke her cheek.

“I’m here, my love,” he rumbled, his voice choked with despair, before turning accusing eyes to Rihyani and Milo.

“This isn’t supposed to happen,” he snarled, his words as hot as furnace sparks. “Do something!”

Milo snapped out of the grip of the tragic scene and reached into his coat, snatching up the healing unguent after a second of scrambling.

The Green Lady gasped and shuddered, rivulets of brilliant green liquid running from her lips.

“Milo, hurry,” Rihyani pleaded as somewhere out in the distance, the chatter of the MG 08 echoed beyond the trees.

Milo tore the wax seals from the vials with his teeth and knelt near the wounded fey’s abdomen.

“Move your hands,” Milo instructed, holding the vial at the ready as he drew his focus into a searing point of will.

“You better know what you are doing, ape,” the colossus warned, his voice simmering like molten metal. “If your witchery harms her—”

“Beli!” Rihyani snapped, her voice reverberating with wrathful command. “Do as he says.”

Beli shot Milo one more warning look before his hand came away.

Milo nearly froze at the sight of so much blood welling, but his burning will cried out to be unleashed. With a sure hand, he pressed down to stretch the wound open wide, drawing a cry of pain from the Green Lady as the other hand emptied the vial into it. Blood clung to the unguent, but driven by his will and the burning essence imbued from Milo’s own body in its preparation, it burrowed deep into the wounded flesh.

Like a seed springing to life, it mended and knit flesh together, devouring spare blood and dead meat as it spread. Milo took the gory hem of the fey’s garment and swept away the blood pooling on the skin to better watch and impel the unguent to work faster.

Before their very eyes, the wound began to shrink, and the Green Lady’s pained whimpers quieted.

“Thank Arawn.” Rihyani sighed. “Oh, praises, she’s okay.”

The wound had shrunk to no more than a pinprick, and Milo felt the urgent threat of his regenerative work overflowing the mended flesh. Like cutting a taut string, his will severed the essence from the ingredients. The backlash of unrooted energies crackled through the magus’ body like a live current, and he bit back a scream of pain. As quickly as it had come, it passed.

“Meinir, my heart.” Beli sobbed and bent to kiss her forehead before turning to Milo. “Thank you, Magus.”

“Glad to help,” Milo said, suddenly feeling self-conscious under the giant’s earnest attention. “I’m glad I got here in time. Did they shoot her out of the air?”

“I’m not sure what happened,” Rihyani said, wincing as a stray bullet cracked off a tree a dozen meters from them. “We were wind-riding as usual, and suddenly we felt the currents turn against us. I still don’t understand how it happened, but we knew we had to descend, and as we did, there was a gunshot—”

“Something’s wrong!” Beli cried, then Meinir’s body arched upward, and a weak cry slipped between her lips, along with more blood. With a lurch of his heart, Milo looked down and saw the wound coming apart like a torn seam, blood flowing freely.

“What is happening!” Rihyani sobbed, darting to the dying fey’s side. “Milo, what is happening?”

Milo opened his mouth to answer but then snapped it shut. He didn’t know.

Hunkering down, he held a hand over Meinir’s wounded belly and felt a pressure, almost a tangible force pressing back. It was like another will, different from the resistance a shade might give, but it was strangely distant like a voice coming from a long way off.

“Magus, explain!” Beli roared, and only an outstretched hand from Rihyani kept him from seizing Milo by his collar. “Why is this happening?”

Milo’s mind fractured with a million different theories, terrors, and insecurities. He wasn’t a doctor; he barely understood anatomy, and necromist healing was his weakest discipline.

His gaze moved from one fey to the other as the thunderous clatter of a machine gun moved away from them.

“I-I don’t know,” Milo admitted, holding up his hands hopelessly. “Something is keeping the wound from closing, even forcing it open.”

They all stared helplessly at each other until a drawling gravelly voice sounded at Milo’s back.

“Hot damn, you can’t tell I didn’t put her to bed now. That’s ten Lincoln skins you owe me, hoss.”

Milo’s daily dose of omnitongue, an elixir that let him understand all languages, relayed the meaning of the words, even as his ears bore the auditory assault of American English. Milo whirled in time to have the rusted bore of a six-cylinder revolver shoved in his face.

“Easy, partner,” warned the ragged voice belonging to the man holding the pistol. “Don’t go gettin’ yourself killed before I can put some money on it.”

Milo nearly choked on the smell of chewing tobacco, cheap whiskey, and oil smoke that seemed to radiate from the man who held the gun on him. He was short and slight, with a rangy bow to his legs and a hawkish face that was so filthy it was hard to know what was stubble and what was dirt crusted across his face. Eyes, jaundiced and bloodshot, met his glare with a wild stare while his mouth was split into a wide grin to display brown teeth and a few flashes of gold.

Milo broke off his glare at the leering face, noting first the worn and drooping cowboy