Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2), Aaron Schneider [accelerated reader books .txt] 📗

be slowing the brute in the slightest. Rihyani pranced away from another swing, but from her lack of counterattack, Milo could tell she was struggling with what to do next. If Milo hadn’t also given her the task of stopping the dwarrow, which must be what was thrashing in the tangled curtains, she could have brought her full power to bear against the golem. As it was, she was fighting the thing with her attention, and thus her will was divided.

To punctuate the point, the golem pulled its next stroke, and when Rihyani made to dodge the feinted swing, it reached out and grabbed her by her cloak. She snarled and lashed out with her claws, but they only spread more superficial gashes across metal limbs.

Unperturbed by the scratches, the golem slammed her down on the stage with bone-snapping force. For an instant, as Rihyani sprawled at the machine’s feet, the curtains ceased their mad dance, and Zlydzen’s nightmarish caricature of a face emerged from the folds, black eyes burning with hate at the fey.

“Kill her now!”

FREEZE

The frigid black ray snapped from Milo’s outstretched hand and struck the golem even as it reared back for the executing stroke.

“Rihyani! Get out of there!” Milo shouted before pressing more of his mind and Imrah’s essence into the enervating ribbon of unlight.

“Stop him!” Zlydzen hissed.

Milo only realized Rihyani had been thrown bodily by the golem as she came hurtling toward him, but he had time to break off the formula before she was caught in the crossfire. This did not, however, give him time to avoid being bowled over as he and the fey went down in a tangle of limbs.

Zlydzen cackled and Milo saw the golem stomping toward them, shedding flakes of frost with each step. He tried to draw on his mind for another burst of cold, but he was too dazed. Rihyani stirred on top of him groggily, and he felt her will clumsily pushing outward and only managing to swaddle the dwarrow in another layer of the curtain.

Get up.

As the murder-machine loomed over him, Milo fought to think, to will something to happen, but all he could do was watch the hammer rise overhead.

Get up, Milo!

The hammer descended, and a tremendous impact rocked the stage. The whole world seemed to tilt perilously; the golem’s strike had cratered the stage a few spare centimeters from Milo’s head. He heard the full-throated roar of a large engine hard at work, and another shudder shook the stage, forcing everything to tilt even further.

MILO! Get up!

The golem yanked the hammer out of the stage, and in the process, toppled backward. Milo realized that he and Rihyani would be joining it as they began to slide. The world came into sharper focus and he saw that one entire section of the stage had collapsed, and he and Rihyani were sliding as gravity relentlessly pulled them down the newly created slope.

His grip tightening on the cane, Milo drew on the strength and energy within. Snarling with the effort, he began to scrabble upward, one arm wrapped around the still-dazed Rihyani. Slivers of wood bit into his hand and scraped his knees, but with a growl and a heave, he dragged himself and Rihyani onto a level portion of the platform.

Looking down at the fey, her eyes half-lidded, Milo feared that her injuries were more severe than he’d first thought, but then a drowsy smile, free of her ferocious fangs, spread across her face.

“Thank you,” she murmured softly. “You saved me again.”

“I think that makes us even, right?” Milo quipped, not sure why now of all times, all he could do was look at her lips.

“Not even.” She laughed, but then her eyes flashed, and her hand shot out and gripped him by the back of the neck. “Look out!”

With more force than seemed possible for her graceful limbs, she pulled hard to one side, and together they rolled hard to the left. The golem landed heavily and nearly on the hem of their clothes from its herculean leap out of the wrecked half of the stage. Milo and Rihyani didn’t have time to disentangle themselves but kept rolling as the automaton came after them, hammer raised.

Milo was nearing the point of nauseous disorientation when the beautiful sound of a Gewehr cracking off shots rang through the air. The rolling stopped, Rihyani on top this time, and both looked up to see the golem lurching drunkenly as shot after shot slammed into its iron body. Three of the shots left heavy dents in the iron chest and face, but two of them bit deep, punching holes in the shoulder joint of the hammer-wielding arm.

The golem turned its malformed face toward Ambrose, who was advancing from the edge of the stage, already ramming another magazine home.

“Get Stalin!” the big man shouted, and Milo realized his prisoner’s icy prison had come apart with the stage’s destruction.

Milo found his lips meeting Rihyani’s as she bent toward him. The contact was so quick that had it not set his every nerve alight with a spark of desire, he might have thought he imagined it.

“We’ll talk about that later,” the fey said as she sprang off him, her predatory mien in place. “Right now, I’ve got a dwarrow to catch.”

Milo fumbled to his feet, his lips tingling oddly even as he searched for where Stalin had gone. Thankfully, it wasn’t far.

Dragging his wounded leg behind him, the Bolshevik warlord had managed to hop and crawl toward the back of the stage. As Milo watched the pathetic display, Stalin’s hands groped across the knotted curtains for support.

“And where do you think you’re going, Joe?” Milo hissed as he advanced on his quarry.

Stalin twisted at the taunting call and lost his balance, the thick curtains slipping through his sweaty, trembling hands. He tried to twist as he fell to spare his injured leg but only managed to have it be underneath him when he landed. An animalistic bleat of pain slipped past his