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

have you plunged into the dark? Far enough to start asking the right questions?”

Milo put on his best sharkish grin in reply and drew witchfire into the cane’s sockets.

“Come with us, and you’ll find out,” Milo said with a voice that was sinister and silky. “Come quietly, and I might even ask my questions politely.”

Milo, he’s raised wards around himself, Rihyani warned. No magic can touch him now.

Milo’s stomach twisted, and he wondered if that meant the ungainly little creature couldn’t work any magic either.

“Tempting though your offer is,” Zlydzen said, still smiling, “I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. As I said, work and all that.”

Milo took a menacing step forward, pointing with his cane.

“Just because you’ve warded yourself, it doesn’t mean I can’t beat you to a pulp and pour you into the trunk,” he growled before drawing the pistol from his belt holster. “Or I could put a round or two in some nonvital parts and drag you back to the car and hope you don’t bleed out. Your choice?”

Zlydzen’s smile widened until his mouth seemed ready to split his huge head in half.

“Brave words.” The dwarrow laughed from somewhere deep inside its chest. “For such a little fellow.”

Zlydzen sprang forward, and Milo opened fire.

The first rushed shot sailed over the dwarrow’s head, Milo’s aim not adjusted for such a low-slung target. His second would not have the same problem as the dwarrow erupted upward and outward in a chorus of sickening pops and cartilaginous clicks. Milo’s second shot struck meat, but not that of the squat, lumpy thing that had stood before him seconds ago

Zlydzen, like some monstrous jack in the box, had unfolded and was now a gaunt, looming monster four meters tall, coming for Milo with outstretched hands perfectly proportioned for his enormous stature.

Not seeming to mind the pinprick of a bullet hole or the second and third Milo opened, Zlydzen sprang at Milo, fists raised to flatten him. The magus, realizing this was certainly the reason why the fountain was the way it was, threw himself backward, calling on his coat to get him clear with a single black-winged beat.

Water and bits of shattered stone flew into the air, and Zlydzen gave a roar that combined the terrifying elements of an enraged bovine and ursine.

Milo came down from his soaring leap to land on his feet with a splash, but before he could snap off another shot, a chunk of broken masonry flew at him. He twisted away, but a corner of the missile clipped his shoulder and sent him spinning to the ground, his head striking stone with a wet thunk.

A shadow fell across him, and Milo realized the pistol had been knocked from his nerveless grip. He rolled over, trying to focus his impact-addled brain enough to draw on the cane’s strength, but his brain felt like it was clogged, his thoughts thick and syrupy.

Zlydzen loomed over him, one huge foot raised to flatten him.

I tried to warn you, Imrah whispered to him.

There was a flash of silver through the air, and then like a hellcat, Rihyani was savaging the dwarrow’s face. The crushing foot thudded down next to Milo’s arm and he feebly swatted at it with his cane, but all that managed to do was knock the fetish from his weakened grip.

Meanwhile, Rihyani ripped and tore at Zlydzen, sending up ribbons of flesh and sprays of brassy blood with each rake of her claws or snap of her teeth. The dwarrow staggered backward, tripped on a piece of the fountain, and fell heavily onto his back.

Hands slapping about in the water, Milo tried to snatch up his pistol and cane as Zlydzen finally closed his huge hands around Rihyani.

The trollish brute squeezed hard, but the fey only dug deeper into his face. Both screamed, mouths filled with blood, as Zlydzen tore her from his face in a ripple of flexing sinew, losing the end of his tuberous nose. With a pain-maddened roar, he threw the fey and his nose at Milo.

For the second time that night, Milo was flattened by the impact of Rihyani’s body striking him, and they both went down in a pile.

Zlydzen gave another bestial roar, but it was matched by the Rollsy’s engine as Ambrose drove the vehicle through the broken gates into the courtyard.

The dwarrow’s black eyes glared with utter venom at Milo as he lay soaking wet and panting with Rihyani, but then the huge mouth spread in another queasy smile made all the worse by the recent mutilation.

“Until we meet again,” Zlydzen said in a well-deep voice, then turned to run at a dead sprint for the columned vestibule.

The Rollsy skidded to a stop in the fountain water as the dwarrow leaped and began to clamber with apelike agility up the pillars and onto the roof of the Parliament building.

“We need to go!” Ambrose shouted as he stood up in the cab. “We’ve got to go now.”

Rihyani, on top of Milo once more, smiled down at him, her face smeared with the dwarrow’s metallic gore.

“Don’t tell me,” she whispered with coppery breath. “You want another kiss, don’t you?”

Milo stared at her, then his mouth hitched up in a smile.

“Would that make us even?”

25

The Arena

“Do you think you can raise one more toast to your victory?”

Milo turned from staring around the marquis’ ballroom and saw Rihyani approaching with a pair of crystal flutes. An amber liquor rolled gently in the vessels as she stalked toward him, flecks of gold sparkling within to match her eyes.

“I’m not sure you can call it victory,” Milo said, hating how sour he sounded. “But I don’t think it’ll hurt to have another drink.”

He knew he wasn’t being honest with himself about that.

Ever since they’d escaped Tiflis and headed north for shelter in the Lost Vale, it had been nothing but intoxicating celebrations. He thought the first time he’d had a drink shoved into his hand, he was still damp with fountain water, and everything since then