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

“Information would seem the most important thing right now,” Rihyani offered, but an edge crept into her voice. “Though I would like nothing better than to feed him his own heart, slowly.”

Milo looked at the fey and saw the vaguest ghost of the feral creature he’d witnessed fighting Ezekiel among the trees.

“Everyone wants this one to die,” Milo said, not much caring that the sniveling prisoner could hear him. “Is there a particular reason?”

Rihyani and Ambrose shared a look.

While Milo had been fighting for his life, Rihyani had used the Art to conceal the villagers and compel them to flee before returning. She came back and helped Ambrose finish off the rest of the soldiers, who’d unnervingly fought to the last man without any thought of retreat. All except this blubbering man in a voenkom’s, or war commissar’s, uniform. He cut quite the pitiful figure, his uniform disheveled, glasses cracked, and his cap missing, leaving his sweaty dome of a head to gleam in the rising sun.

“This one’s pants were still around his ankles when he came stumbling through the smoke,” Rihyani explained. “The girl staggered out of the house he’d used. I could smell him all over her, despite the blood.”

Ambrose growled, and there was something wet in his eyes.

“Tried to get the girl to run toward where the rest of the villagers were,” he said hoarsely. “But at the sight of me coming toward her, she screamed and ran the other way. She ran right…right into…ri...”

Ambrose’s voice faltered, and his hands tightened into shaking fists.

“Right into the line of fire,” Rihyani said as she rested a hand gently on his broad shoulder. “There was a fireteam holding out in a stable, and they were shooting anything that moved. She was dead before she hit the ground.”

Ambrose nodded and, with a searing glare at the commissar, turned and strode a dozen paces away, where he began pacing in tight circles. His voice, a low and snarled stream of French profanity, became ambient noise to join the fading snap and pop of the smoldering village.

Milo was tired, but not so much so that he didn’t feel the flames of righteous rage spring up at this fresh atrocity. He banked them, forcing his mind to process questions that might be relevant.

“You said girl, but how old was she?”

Rihyani’s face was a mask of restrained disgust.

“Human ages are difficult for me to tell,” she began stiffly, her eyes remaining fixed in the middle distance, “but she had barely entered womanhood. She most certainly wasn’t old enough to be a mother.”

“So, you’re saying she was a child?” Milo asked, his voice a snarl as he turned toward the cowering thing not three strides from him. “A child!”

Rihyani might have said something, but a rush of disjointed memories played through Milo’s mind, pushing out everything except the sight of the commissar. Memories and feelings locked away long ago howled and rattled their chains, and before he knew what was happening, Milo had the man by the throat. His gloved fingers bit into the sweaty skin around the man’s neck, eliciting a choked gasp as Milo dragged him up so they were nearly nose to nose.

“I think a bullet in the head is too gentle,” he hissed into the man’s face. “As a magus, I can think of a dozen much more painful ways to end you.”

“P-please,” the commissar croaked. “I could be useful. Pl…ack!”

Milo’s grip continued to tighten, and the rapist began to paw at the hands around his throat. He managed to worm his fingers in enough to manage a desperate gasp.

“I’m Chief Commissar Beria!” he wheezed. “I can get you anything, please!”

Milo’s bore down on the man’s throat, and Beria’s knees buckled.

“I want to see you die!” Milo snarled, spit flying from his lips. “I want you to feel helpless, abandoned, powerless, and then I want you to die!”

Beria’s face was changing colors, his eyes losing focus behind his splintered spectacles, but in a last desperate twist, he pulled back enough to form another strangled plea.

“Please!” he cried, his voice barely above a whisper. “Stalin! I can give you Stalin!”

Milo recovered his grip, and for a single heartbeat, he didn’t care about what he’d just heard. The cries from the vaults of his mind were too insistent, too indignant, too real to ignore. He was going to kill Beria, knowing it was the right thing to do, Stalin and Nicht-KAT and the whole War be damned.

But then he smelled the acrid smoke of the burnt village and heard a lively patch of embers give a crackling pop.

Milo’s hands released the commissar, who collapsed to the earth, heaving huge sob after huge sob. He pressed his face into the sooty dirt as his hands covered his head.

Beria deserved death and worse, and if there was any justice in this life or the next, something horrible waited for him on the other side of the dirt, but there was more at stake than justice for one girl or even one village. Milo knew that the likes of Commissar Beria were a symptom, not the disease. They deserved eradication, yes, but there were always more to take their place.

“Listen to me very closely,” Milo began, grinding each word between his teeth. “The only thing keeping you alive is your absolute cooperation, do you understand?”

Beria’s bruised throat couldn’t manage a reply, but his head nodded exaggeratedly even as he stared at the ground. Milo reached behind him and picked up his cane.

“One argument, one lie, one hesitation, and I will make your end into folklore,” Milo snarled and drew a baleful light into the cane’s eye sockets. He shoved the raptor’s beak under the commissar’s chin, dragging the ash-streaked face upward. Beria’s eyes bulged as Milo held the glowing skull in front of the man’s face.

“Your name won’t be remembered, but they’ll tell stories how no man has ever before or ever will again suffer such a terrible end.”

Beria tried to turn away in