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

Ezekiel, reaching to tear at the retreating clouds of grit, took Milo’s foot square in the chest and went rolling head over heels into the bed of the Rollsy. He landed flat on his back with a dull thump, his head pointed toward the rear of the vehicle less than a foot from the fuel cans strapped there. With an almost boneless litheness, he rolled to his feet, a blood-soaked specter with a smile that gaped like a knife wound. Bulging eyes swept over Milo, and then the scalp hunter’s nostrils flared in a series of exaggerated sniffs.

“Ha-ha, there it is,” he crowed. “You do have my knife! Told Percy I could smell it. Good thing, since I’m going to need it.”

He then spread his arms so Milo could appreciate the scalps dangling from his slashed, gory buckskin.

Both men braced themselves as the Rollsy began to accelerate, ready to bear them out of the courtyard and down the looping track. Ezekiel turned his crouch into a spring, and Milo only had a heartbeat to react.

“Here’s the punchline!” he roared as he swung his cane up.

BURN

The skull yawned wide to vomit witchfire and the blast caught Ezekiel mid-spring, unnatural heat and the eldritch force driving him down and back. There was a bell-like clang as his burning body rebounded off the strapped-in fuel cans, then he was bouncing behind them as the Rollsy pulled away. Milo nearly gave a whoop of victory as he watched the flames lick over Ezekiel’s shrinking form, but then his mind registered what his eyes had already seen.

Emerald flames clung to the fuel cans strapped to the bed.

Seeing no other choice, Milo launched the mangled si'lat at the straps, their jagged forms ripping through with ease. Another command and the animated clouds of black sand hoisted the cooking canisters up and over the tailgate just in time.

The fuel canisters struck the paving stones of the courtyard entrance as the Rollsy flew onto the track, detonating in a cascade of natural and supernatural flame. Milo twisted away from the heat of the blast as his ears rang with the auditory assault of the detonation. The si’lat were not so lucky, hanging at the end of the tailgate, their abused essence matrices shattering under waves of heat and raw force.

When Milo looked at the mass of twisted metal and burning fuel in their wake, he breathed a sigh of relief he couldn’t hear because of his explosion-abused ears. The sigh caught when he saw a smoldering figure rise from the ground. One hand waved jauntily at them while the other slapped the clinging flames with a filthy, drooping cowboy hat.

“HAHAHA! Don’t worry!” Ezekiel hollered after them, his voice fading on the wind. “I’ll be seein’ you boys real soon!”

“Is he one of you?” Milo asked as he slid into the cab’s passenger seat. “Is he a Nephilim?”

Ambrose kept his eyes forward as they carved down the winding track, hands clenched on the wheel.

“I don’t know,” he shouted back to be heard over the wind and the chugging engine. “I don’t think so.”

Milo craned his neck to look over his shoulder. So far, there were no signs of pursuit, but he didn’t imagine that would last.

“We thought you killed him,” Milo said, pointing at Ambrose and then putting the same hand on his own chest. “I hit him hard enough to kill him three times over.”

Ambrose shook his head, and Milo saw his huge hands tighten on the wheel.

“But he didn’t stay that way, I know!” he growled, then he swung his head to one side, eyes narrowed. “Hold on, this is going to be rough!”

Milo latched a white-knuckle grip on the dashboard and door as the Rollsy swung hard left and began to rumble down the unformed slope.

“W-what the H-h-hell!” Milo screamed. His bones were about to rattle free from their jarring descent.

“Need to avoid the switchbacks,” Ambrose shouted back, then raised a hand where Zoidze’s map lay crumpled. “And this cuts a clearer path to where we’re headed. Just hold on and shut up!”

Milo could not shut up. He was too busy screaming in terror as Ambrose took them on a course that was one part high-speed off-roading and one part slalom, using an armored vehicle instead of skis. They rode the razor edge of rapid descent and flat-out plummeted for what felt like hours as Ambrose tacked and pitched the Rollsy like a boat in a storm. More than once, it seemed impossible for them to not go plunging off some ridgeline or plow into a rocky outcropping, but each time, the big man managed to skate by with a clearance of mere centimeters.

The last dive onto relatively level ground bounced the Rollsy hard enough that it knocked the wind out of Milo, leaving him gasping like a landed fish. Milo fought to force air into his lungs for several seconds before he realized that they were rolling along at an almost leisurely pace.

“See?” Ambrose muttered as he squinted at the map. “Nothing to worry about.”

Milo, his muscles still spasming from the strain of the descent, sat staring and twitching at his bodyguard.

“Next time you find a short cut,” Milo said slowly, hoping the hammering in his chest would slow down soon, “just say no.”

Ambrose frowned at Milo, shaking his head ruefully.

“Do you know how many people could have made it down that slope alive, much less with their vehicle in one piece?”

Milo stood up a little in his seat to look back up the hill, which might have been called a mountain had it not stood in the shadow of Mount Kazbek.

“Just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should.” Milo grunted and slumped back down to nod at the map. “You got that figured out yet?”

Ambrose nodded but had reached down under the seat to pull out his copy of Lokkemand’s maps. The Rollsy continued to crawl along as somewhere up above, there was the distant rumble of large