Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (classic books for 11 year olds .txt) 📗

Blinking but not resisting, Milo looked over and saw he was being led away by Percy Astor in a navy suit and a fedora.

“You!” Milo exclaimed as he followed. “What? How?”

“A moment,” Percy said as he half-led, half-dragged Milo behind a freestanding section of brick wall. “Yes, now, where were we? Oh, yes, what and how? Are particulars important at the moment, or can I summarize?”

A shot whined off a brick a few inches from Percy’s shoulders, spraying jagged fragments as the American lurched back. Milo spied a few soldiers moving through the ruins, whether flanking or making a fighting retreat, he wasn’t quite sure. No sooner had he spotted them than he was flattening himself against the bricks as more bullets hissed and zipped through the air.

Milo heard the clop of hooves on cobbles and then another scream, and he poked his head out to see Ezekiel riding down the soldiers. The pale light in the eye sockets of the unliving horse danced and flared as it ran men down. In the muzzle flares and the flicker of the Qareen’s eyes, Milo watched men die screaming in defiance as a hurtling body began what a hard hoof finished.

“He certainly has his uses.” Percy chuckled as he stepped away from the wall and brushed vainly at the brick dust staining his outfit. “Crude tools can still be effective, as I’m sure you understand. Sometimes all you need is a hammer, am I right?”

The grin the American gave Milo seemed to suggest they were sharing an inside joke, but Milo squashed the moment with a tremendous frown and responded with a question of his own.

“What the hell are you two doing here?” he asked hoarsely, raising a hand to his throat.

Percy drew back, looking affronted, but he gave a little bow as he swept his hat from his head. The man’s pate was noticeably balder than the last time they’d met.

“Oh, you are quite welcome for the rescue. It’s nothing,” he cooed, then gave a tart smile. “No trouble at all. Don’t worry about thanking us.”

Milo massaged his throat, wincing at the swelling and when he found places where Roland’s nails had cut his neck.

“You’re not answering the question,” he said, his voice rasping like a file over stone.

Percy raised an eyebrow before replacing his fedora.

“And you’re being very rude,” he replied archly. “Now, are we going to stand here making asinine observations about the obvious, or do you plan to reunite with your compatriots? Makes no difference to me.”

Milo spat at the man’s feet, then looked up the ruined street and saw no further sign of the soulless soldiers. His gaze swung back to where the confrontation with Roland had taken place and he loosed a stream of invectives.

The three shade-powered humans lay in a broken heap, but Roland was nowhere to be seen.

At that moment, Ezekiel trotted up from the other end of the street, still mounted on the unliving steed. This close, Milo could see that Ezekiel wasn’t just ragged but rotten. The flesh of his face and chest were pocked with gangrenous holes, while his hands were nearly black with dried blood around tattered skin through which the dirty ivory of tarnished bone showed. The wind shifted, and despite the cold, Milo could smell putrid meat.

“Dear God.” He coughed. “What happened?”

“I’ve been set free!” Ezekiel crowed, then threw back his head to loose a wild, undulating howl.

Milo frowned, trying to reconcile the nightmare before him with the broken man he’d left chained in the Marquis’s dovecote. Uneasiness stole over him as he stared at the cowboy’s eyes, still bulging from their sockets, yet without the malicious gleam. Milo had given Ezekiel the means to escape his curse and embrace death, which was the freedom Milo might have expected. Staring at the maniacal display, he wasn’t sure what new sort of freedom the scalp hunter had found.

As he stood staring at Ezekiel, Milo eased his will outward to probe the edges of the man.

“We should be going,” Percy pressed, stepping to Milo’s shoulder. “I believe there is stolen property to return to y—”

A rending scream cut Mr. Astor off, and it was half a heartbeat before Milo realized he was the source of the sound.

It was like nothing he’d ever felt.

Typical souls pressed back with their wills at varying strengths against the Art, defining themselves by their resistance. Practitioners of the Art like fey or Milo were dynamic, resisting but also moving, pushing back. The soulless were chilling in that they were absent, sometimes giving the bare sense of a depression or indent where a will might have been, and sometimes not even that.

This was different. It wasn’t resistance and it wasn’t absence; it was anguish.

Where a will should have been was a gaping cleft, threatening to swallow anything that came too close while bleeding pain and oozing oppression. It was an infected wound, yawning in the psychic space where Ezekiel Bouche should have been.

Milo’s eyes began to slide back into focus, but in that space between, he saw an alien light shining and twisting like a halo around Ezekiel’s head, forming strange shapes.

The symbols were writing, and as before, Milo could read them if he wished. If he dared.

With a blink, the physical world resolved before his eyes, only the barest after-image remaining. Through that fading panoply of dread, Milo saw the thing that had been Ezekiel smiling down at him.

“I see you too, little man,” it purred with a thick, liquid voice the cowboy could have never produced.

Milo blinked again, then looked at Percy Astor, who appeared to be extremely uncomfortable. The pieces, half-realized and hardly understood, began to click together in Milo’s mind, and in some primal instinct, his hands shot out. Percy was thrown back by the sudden assault, but instead of anger, there was only deeper discomfort in his face.

Shame, Milo realized. He was ashamed.

“What did you do?” Milo