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

psychic as muscular, and Milo found he couldn’t move, couldn't breathe. He wanted to scream, to gasp, but all control was gone. For an eternal second, Milo was locked inside himself, powerless to perform even the most basic and automatic functions, even as he felt his body cry out for air.

Then a mind not his own slid up from that cavity inside him and took control. It expelled the stale air from his lungs and drew in a fresh breath before looking skyward at the zeppelins. Like clouds of steel and thunder, they’d flown low over the fortress, and Milo’s kidnapped eyes noted the way the barrels jutting from the gun turrets were now trained upon the fleeing informants.

“Perhaps,” the-thing-that-was-not-Milo called out in a magically enhanced voice, “you need further encouragement.”

Ambrose and Rihyani both looked at Milo, confusion written plainly on their features. Their questions were answered a second later when the zeppelins above opened fire. Everything, the flare of their muzzles to the hiss of the bullets cutting the air, even the spurts of dirt and dust they kicked up, were all illusory, but each of these elements heightened the terrified certainty of the fleeing men that they were being fired upon. Screaming, they put on speed and wove away from the intersecting sweeps of the chattering salvos.

“Milo,” Rihyani called, traces of her real voice slipping between the booming officer’s, “What are you doing?”

The men below were beyond frantic in their flight now, each pumping his arms and legs with a speed and determination born of mortal fear. Milo watched them through eyes he no longer controlled, his co-opted mouth twisting into a smile.

“Magus!” Ambrose barked, stepping toward Milo and grabbing him by the shoulder. “That’s enough!”

The-thing-that-was-not-Milo turned and twisted the stolen face into a cruel sneer.

“Let go of me, or by Iblis, I’ll burn you to cinders.”

The raptor skull flared to crackling life, and Ambrose stepped back in surprise.

“Iblis,” Ambrose muttered, his face knotting in confusion, but the usurper was already dragging his eyes back to the fleeing men. The zeppelins harried them, stitching lines of false fire, inching closer and closer to a strafing run that would prove fatal to the thoroughly convinced men.

“What is going on?” Rihyani demanded, shedding her disguise like shrugging out of an overlarge coat. “Milo, stop this!”

The farmer had stumbled, his leg turning under him as his foot struck a stone. The line of fire would sweep over him, leaving a terror-perforated corpse. It was only a matter of time, and the usurper was intent on watching it.

“It’s not Milo,” Ambrose growled. “IMRAH!”

The-thing-that-was-not-Milo swung kidnapped eyes toward Ambrose as the big man’s fist exploded across his face. Milo and his captor fell together in the prison of his flesh. The shared head struck the stone of the walkway, and darkness rushed up to claim them both.

He was back in the alley, Roland pulling on his hand. He was staring at the bricks but didn’t know why.

“We need to go,” Roland urged.

But he didn’t, he realized with a start. He didn’t need to go because he wasn’t a child anymore. Looking down at his hand, he realized that Roland’s was now the small one as he towered over him.

Roland looked back up at him, his voice plaintive in a way it had never been, perhaps never could be.

“I want to go, please.”

He shook his head to protest, but as he did, he watched scrawling lines of ink sprout across Roland’s skin. Tattoos years too early unfurled as child Roland began to swell in front of him.

“Come on, little brother,” Roland said, his voice cracking and then deepening as he spoke. “We need to go.”

He tried to pull away and felt a familiar, insistent grip trying to keep him there.

“You need to come with me,” Roland insisted, pressing forward so the nearly formed face was inches from him. After a second of hesitation, it became the cruelly beautiful face of the angry and ambitious young man he’d followed through Hell and the underbelly of Dresden more than once.

“I need you,” Roland murmured into his face, breath sharp with vodka. “You need me.”

He pulled his hand away and made to push the face away, but it was as insubstantial as smoke, a misplaced memory vying for attention it didn’t deserve.

He looked back at the brick wall and remembered the spaces between the spaces. His breath gathered in a single sharp inhalation, he drove his fingers between the memories.

It was cold on the other side, but not so cold he couldn’t feel the slippery, squirming thing. His finger clamped down even as it tried to wriggle away, digging into rubbery flesh with a strength he hardly recognized in himself. Something tried to bite him, but its teeth blunted and cracked on his skin. There would be no escape from him now that he knew it was there.

With a heave like a fisherman hauling a prize catch onto land, he dragged it through the bricks and onto the floor of the alley. Its dark form glistened red under the burning sky as it curled at his feet in the fetal position, his hand still fastened around its neck. Despite the ectoplasmic slime, he recognized the quivering thing.

“Imrah!” he snarled but then paused, thoughts flickering in his eyes before they narrowed once more. “No, not her. Just her shade.”

The creature writhed and snapped its teeth, but it was like a viper or some other venomous reptile gripped behind its jaws, gnashing at open air. He felt the phantasm’s fear throbbing against his palm, and both quickly understood that whatever vulnerability of Milo’s it had grasped was gone.

“You’re a parasite,” he snarled, stilling it with one hard shake. “And I think I’m going to do some exterminating.”

His fingers began to tighten about the thing’s neck, and he savored his strength. His might was born of focus, control, and will, constructed in the dreamscape, and he knew with a burst of certainty he could destroy the shade inside