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

the revelation at the foot of the underground stairs. “Whatever is up ahead, you need to stay close to me. I don’t trust these troglodytes.”

At the word “trust,” Milo couldn’t repress a bitter snort.

Trust was growing scarcer.

“What?” Ambrose asked, sensing something off in Milo’s manner. “What’s wrong?”

Milo gave the big man an unimpressed deadpan stare.

“Oh come on, just spit it out already,” Ambrose growled. “Are you a blushing lady I’ve been courting? Just tell me what’s going on in that magical brain of yours.”

Milo ground his teeth together, shuffling the skull to one hand so he could knead between his eyes with a thumb.

“You complaining about trust just strikes me as funny,” Milo said in an overly precise manner, his voice icy. “Especially considering that we’ve been working together for weeks, and you didn’t mention that you aren’t human.”

Ambrose breathed out a long sigh behind Milo and muttered a few exasperated curses.

“Technically, I am human, or at least part of me is,” the big man reminded him, keeping close to Milo’s shoulder. “If your mother was Russian and your father wasn’t but you lived among Russians all your life, wouldn’t you just call yourself Russian? It’s the same with me. Especially if you know nothing about your father except he isn’t Russian.”

“I’m not sure it’s the same,” Milo muttered, but the parallels to his own story robbed some of his indignation. “But keep talking, and maybe I can find my way to seeing things your way. What’s your other half, then?”

Ambrose fell silent, and Milo imagined him chewing his lip beneath his mustache as he’d seen him do before.

“All right,” Ambrose said softly, his voice low and sullen. “I’ll tell you, but you have to remember that I know almost nothing. I’m a byproduct of this world, this darkling reality, not a guide through it.”

“Fine,” Milo said with a nod. “You don’t know much, but you know more than me, and right now, that’s enough.”

“My mother was a shepherdess near Toul in France,” Ambrose said, obviously making an effort to keep his tone level and calm. “My father is Oro’zion’Nrzim, former Keeper of the Tree, He of the Flaming Sword.”

Milo threw Ambrose a sidelong look meant to convey his confusion, but the big man was walking with his eyes fixed on the ground.

“Not to be rude,” Milo said, drawing Ambrose’s attention, ”but so far, the only part I understand is that you are half-French. That is ironic considering our current allegiance, but not particularly revealing.”

Ambrose chuckled, but it was a shallow, mournful sound.

“My father is an angel,” Ambrose said, his voice becoming as hard and flat as ice. “A fallen warrior of Heaven who took my mother on May 22nd, 1813. Same day Wagner was born, if you can believe it. I think Napoleon also won one of his great battles around then too.”

Another chuckle, this one even more hollow, passed the big man’s lips.

“Busy time in the world, I suppose.”

Milo gaped at his bodyguard, his pacing slowing so much the ghuls noticed and hissed for them to keep up.

“So, you are a century-old half-angel,” Milo breathed, the words coming out of his mouth feeling strange, almost wrong. “I suppose if there are things like magic and ghuls that live in the bowels of the earth, why couldn’t there be angels?”

Ambrose nodded, the two now walking side by side.

“The term used in the Bible and other Christian works is ‘Nephilim,’” he offered. “Though I’m not sure if that referred just to the ones in Genesis. You know, a specific breed of half-angels, or all half-angels. The ghuls have their own name for us, and obviously, they know enough to be scared.”

Milo looked ahead and saw the ghuls throwing sharp glances over their stooped shoulders. Whether it was fear or hatred or both on their faces was impossible to tell in the gloom, but there was no denying they’d heard what had been said, and they weren’t arguing.

“So, there’s a lot of you then?”

Ambrose raised his head and cocked an eyebrow.

“You’d figure one would be enough, wouldn't you?” he said with a grimace that couldn’t quite bring itself to be a smile. “There are obviously some of us from ancient times, but otherwise, no, there are not many of us. In the century of traveling and warring I’ve put in, I’ve heard about half a dozen others like me and only met two face to face. One seemed like the real thing up to the end, and the other could have been, but somehow he seemed so different I wasn’t ever sure.”

It was Milo’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“In the end, does that mean what I think it means?”

Ambrose looked ahead, pretending to scrutinize the ghuls.

“So, you’re the only one left?”

The big man shrugged and gnawed his lip for a moment.

“I suppose I am until the next time some godling decides a mortal is worth going to Hell for.” He gave Milo a sidelong look. “We’re a rare breed, true enough, but as long as there are pretty women, we’ll never go extinct.”

Milo gave a nervous laugh, but it was half-hearted, and not just because of the implications of angels and Hell and therefore Heaven and a God to rule it began to weigh on him. He knew many of the boys at the orphanage had been dogmatically orthodox by dint of their dead parents, while others had been violently atheist, again by dint of their dead parents. Milo, with no memory of his parents, had never picked a side. The truth was that given what he’d seen, when the chips were down, both types were the same. Like any outcast cynic, he’d taken to quietly mocking, but now, walking in the dark with ghuls and something like Simon Ambrose, his flippancy seemed more than a little cavalier.

They both fell silent as they trudged along, the ghuls’ voices ahead so soft they could barely hear them over their own scuffing footfalls on the turfed tunnel floor.

The weight of Milo’s thoughts along