Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

The being gripping him by his shoulders and dragging him did not seem to much care that the stone steps were rough-edged and unyielding against Milo’s back, buttocks, and legs. It also didn’t seem to care that the entire trip was made in a darkness so complete that even when Milo’s senses began to come back to him, he realized he could not see his own feet as they thumped down the steps. Sometimes he thought he could glimpse the faintest shine of the thing’s eyes above him, or maybe that was its teeth, but then another steep spike of pain lanced up his lower body.

Just when he feared the abuse was going to lead to permanent damage to his ability to walk and considered another futile struggle, their descent leveled out. Milo felt the texture of the floor change beneath him to a soft, fibrous mat. With careless strength, the shadow rolled him onto his stomach. The fingers that had been biting into his shoulders disappeared and Milo hit the ground with a soft thud. The floor beneath him tickled at his nose and lips, almost hairlike strands sliding across his face.

“Get up,” the voice of the shadow directed. It was a step or two ahead of him. “I’m not carrying you all the way to court.”

Milo’s fingers took hold of the dense, tangled stuff beneath him and used it for leverage to get to a kneeling position. Everything was still black as pitch, and Milo, his body aching from a thousand short, sharp bounces down the steps, was in no hurry to comply.

“I need a light to see by,” he muttered, reaching toward his pocket for his matches.

The air stirred in front of him, and the rotten, icy breath washed his cheek.

“Meat,” it breathed, so close he could hear the air whistling between its fangs. “Draw that pistol, and I’ll see you carrying it on the inside of your flesh, understand?”

Milo nodded stiffly, sinking both hands into his pockets to hide their shaking more than to search for matches.

He took a steadying breath, drew out the matches, and made to strike one, but the dark and the closeness of the creature worked against him. Twice he tried to strike a match, and twice it broke, snapping off below the head without so much as a spark.

“Hurry up.”

The command sounded different, almost distracted, and Milo began to wonder what the thing could be waiting for. Its fellow shadow, the one who had attacked Ambrose, maybe? As if in answer, a snarling sound echoed from somewhere above them on the stairs. Milo felt a chill run through him as he heard that ancient, evil language used again. Then a distinctly human voice rumbled something he couldn’t make out.

“Don’t move,” his shadow said with more than a hint of a snarl in his voice.

Too late to stop, Milo’s third match caught, and there was a flare of light in the tunnel.

Milo had only a fleeting glimpse of a stretched figure darting past him. It had the graceless quickness of a pouncing spider and was wrapped in something like oily black skin.

He told himself it was the speed of the things passing that had knocked the match from his nerveless fingers, where it quickly smothered with a whiff of acrid smoke in the woolly gray material that covered the floor. Beneath his self-delusion though, Milo knew the truth. It was one thing to be told that there were beings dwelling in the dark and believe in their existence, and a whole other matter to experience them. He had felt, smelled, heard, and now seen, not just a play of shadows, but this entity who was other. No clever beast, no deviant human, this inhuman, alien creature was real, and Milo’s mind swam with the recognition.

“You wanted more, remember,” he reminded himself breathlessly as he fumbled for another match. “You were the damned fool who wanted more.”

Behind him were more wicked whispers in the strange tongue, much closer this time, and then a voice that was almost as sweet as sunshine in that dark, low place.

“None of that now,” Ambrose growled, his voice more annoyed than angry. “It was your fool idea to have it go down this way. If you wanted to play that game, you should have made sure everyone knew the rules.”

“It was supposed to be alone,” another shadow voice hissed, this one tighter and shriller but no less unsettling, “and we had as much cause for secrecy as you.”

“The risk is as great for our tribe as it is for your petty kingdom,” Milo’s shadow snarled as the voices moved closer. “What we are doing is without precedent in the history of our kind or any of the other shayati. There are many who would punish us for such blasphemous congress with meat like that one.”

“’That one’s’ name is Magus,” Ambrose rumbled. Milo was fairly certain they were on the level patch just a few steps behind him. “Now, move it before I take another hand.”

How was Ambrose, who seemed to be herding the two creatures, able to see in the dark? Milo saw no torch.

He had retrieved another match, but the sound of that unholy dialect made him shudder, and he paused before breaking it. He only had a few left.

“You are fortunate her maiming is not permanent, or this alliance would have ended before it began,” Milo’s shadow warned, so close he might have been able to twist back and touch it. “She is the get of our Bashlek.”

“And I’m the son of a shepherdess,” Ambrose replied flatly. “You all right, Magus?”

Milo shuffled about, still on his knees with the match and matchbox still in hand.

“I’m fine,” he lied, turning his head this way and that in a vain attempt to discern something other than utter blackness. “I see you are better at making friends than I am.”

Ambrose chuckled, and Milo heard the soft tread of his boots before a broad mitt slid under his