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

“You finally givin’ up the ghost, boy?” Ezekiel asked with a smirk, and Milo stared deep into his eyes. Past the practiced leer, Milo looked hard, and to his dwindling shock, saw disappointment and sadness. How could anyone, even an immortal, be sad to be free of torment?

Milo kept staring, and a thought bubbled to the surface of his mind.

He wants to keep hurting because he hates his life, yet even as he gets what he wants, he knows it will never be enough. Why? Because it will never hurt as much as something else did.

Milo suddenly knew what he had to do.

“I’ve got one more spirit to conjure,” the magus murmured as he shifted into a cross-legged position on the stone floor. There was a decent chance this wouldn’t work, but Milo knew without looking up that sky was lightening. Time was slipping through his fingers, and this was all he had left.

He scooted closer until he and Ezekiel were eye to eye.

“You gonna braid my hair and tell me I’m pretty?” the scalp hunter asked with a sneer.

Milo shook his head and straightened his back as he kept staring into the man’s eyes.

“Not quite,” he said as his will remembered the night the wind was on fire.

Milo couldn’t have said why he chose to conjure that night using the Art, but as he drew Ezekiel into those moments seared into his soul and thus his will, Milo felt a familiar tremble inside. He pushed it aside as he and the captive scalp hunter moved together down the kindling streets and then turned to see the many-legged things with stars in their hands.

Milo let the fear he’d felt flow around Ezekiel, an experience shared, given as a gift, not an intrusion perpetrated.

At first there was nothing, the cowboy’s will like a stone in the midst of the stream. Then, little by little, as the pure, unguarded, unsullied fear of an innocent child saturated that stone, cracks began to form. Out of those cracks wept a truth that not even Ezekiel's despairing mania could contain for long.

“Run,” Ezekiel whispered, the words spilling from his lips. “Run, girl. Run, baby.”

Girl? Baby?

Feeling a ripple of Ezekiel’s will, Milo shaped the Art around it, forming it around the part of the scalp hunter that had been shaken loose.

The illusory scene bled into itself, and they stood in a field with a bloody sky glowering over red wildflowers. A little girl in a white cotton dress raced between the flowers, her hair whipping behind her like a banner of cornsilk, familiar dark eyes huge with terror. There was the sound of thunder, and Milo saw painted horses and painted men bearing down upon the child, bows drawn, lances leveled, pistols aimed.

From within Ezekiel’s skin, Milo felt his heart pounding in a heavy, sickened beat as more words tumbled from numb lips.

Thump-thump—the first pistol barks, and the little girl screams as the bullet hisses past her.

“Thought I got them all.”

Thump-thump—an arrow cuts her shoulder and the little dress sports a red bloom.

“Didn’t think they’d track me down.”

Thump-thump—the lance lunges forward, not slowing in its passage through the child until its point snaps on the dirt under her feet.

“Couldn’t imagine they’d find me with her.”

Thump-thump—her feet tangle and she falls, but the haft of the lance props her up, a broken doll with cornsilk hair amongst a field of red flowers.

The stone of Ezekiel’s will weeps once more, and Milo again gathers his Art around the wounded tears.

The blue sky is stained black with greasy smoke as wails and screams create a strange chorus amidst the thrumming crackle of flames.

Through Ezekiel’s eyes, Milo looks down from a saddled horse at a pile of blackening bodies. The pyre has been going for some time, but the features of the corpses are still discernible even as the flames lick higher, polluting the sky with more smoke. Tiny faces and little hands are among the mounded flesh, burning, splitting, and bursting like the rest.

Thump-thump—amongst the cacophony of despair and violation could be heard the laughing of men.

“It didn’t take much to rile ‘em up.”

Thump-thump—in one bloody, sooty hand, a torn and bloody white dress was held.

“The dress was a banner and an excuse for most.”

Thump-thump—with a single flick of the wrist, the dress rippled through the air to settle on the pyre.

“It wasn’t even the same tribe of savages.”

There was a howl of wind, keening and pained, and it slashed through the smoke and snaked down next to the pyre. Standing now before the fire, eye to eye with Ezekiel, was a gaunt and beautiful creature, her dark hair heavy with blades of flint hanging between the locks. Her golden eyes sparkled with tears as her lips spat words that stung and gnawed. A pistol was drawn, but not before a feather-thin dart of flint sailed through the air.

Milo’s perspective through Ezekiel’s eyes changed. He was staring up at the desecrated sky, feeling the stony blade scrape between his ribs as it sought a heart to nestle in. The beautiful creature’s golden eyes loomed overhead, hair and dangling flints prepared to descend.

Ezekiel’s horse had lost its nerve and bolted, hooves trampling and toppling one section of the bonfire. Bodies, fat running and bones cracking, tumbled free. Ezekiel’s gaze saw them flop awkwardly upon the ground a few feet from where he lay dying, and their marionette’s collapse struck upon a final ugly chord inside him. A laugh, long and broken and bitter, tore from his lips.

The beautiful creature narrowed her eyes, then with obvious disgust, reached down and pulled the flint blade from between the ribs. A few whispered words later, Milo knew the wound had closed as the curse was sealed.

Thump-thump—the beautiful creature laughed with him as he rose to his feet.

“She made me like her.”

Thump-thump—Ezekiel’s hand closed around the fingers that held the gory blade of flint.

“She said I could live as I willed now.”

Thump-thump—He drove the blade into her chest, laughing into