Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (read me like a book txt) 📕

Milo looked at Mayr’s goons, their expressions slack, almost bored, and terror gripped him.

What if they’ve been hollowed out like the Soviets?

Then focus will be even more important. Now, attend to the situation before you are shot.

Milo hadn’t realized he’d been ignoring Mayr, who had not only been talking to him but now had a pistol in his hand and was walking toward Milo as his soldiers shuffled to one side of the aisle or the other. The passengers forced into proximity with the menacing Germans cowered back in their seats.

“Don’t tell me you’re losing your nerve,” Mayr growled as he came to stand in front of Ambrose, pistol held out at waist level. “I promised the Reich that you would be a valuable asset, but I’m afraid no one will believe me if you go all moonstruck anytime guns are involved.”

Ambrose gave a low growl and shifted to shield Milo from the pistol. Mayr looked at him as though just seeing him.

“Please move,” he said in a brittle, polite tone, twitching the barrel of the pistol to one side. “My business is with the warlock, not his imp.”

“You’re not worth the effort some devil took to wipe you from his ass,” Ambrose snarled back, one hand curling into a fist while the other settled into a claw.

Mayr met Ambrose’s stare, and as was the case with any mere mortal, he quickly looked away, but the man would not be so easily cowed. Shaking his head with a sigh, he ceased pointing his pistol at Ambrose and Milo and instead turned and held the pistol in the face of a small girl sitting next to her mother. Both were dressed in traditional Belarusian attire, and when the pistol was leveled, the mother hid her daughter’s face against her patterned apron. The child made small snuffling sounds as she shook against her mother, while the woman glared up at Mayr in tearful defiance.

“I feel that things are getting out of hand,” Mayr said flatly. “Perhaps you should convince me otherwise.”

Milo rested a hand on Ambrose’s shoulder and drew him back so they could trade places.

The big man resisted but finally looked at Milo and then beyond him. His eyes narrowed with predatory focus.

“Batch moving up five,” he reported in a clipped whisper as Milo shuffled past him. “They’re mine.”

Milo wanted to tell the bodyguard to not do anything so risky, but then he was standing in front of Mayr, who was pointing a pistol at the back of a girl's head.

“Well, I’m not dead,” Milo said with a practiced swagger as he gave Mayr a dismissive once-over. “So you must not want to kill me.”

The smile that spread under Mayr’s mustache was cold enough that Milo was amazed his voice didn’t fog in front of him.

“I do very much want to kill you,” Mayr said icily before turning his head to gaze at the cowering passengers. “As I’d like to purge the world of every one of these subhuman sheep and the parasites that cling to them. Even their would-be defenders, the simpering English and the limp-spined French, deserve only the shallowest graves history can afford.”

He glared at the mother who defied him with her stare, and Milo could practically see the hateful calculations playing out behind the man’s cold-blooded eyes. The wizard harnessed his will in preparation for what would come next and wished he could offer up a prayer, but nothing came to mind.

“But all things in good time.” Mayr shrugged, and in one fluid movement, holstered the pistol at his hip. “I’m not here for that sort of thing today.”

“Then what are you here for?” Milo asked and nodded to the man’s damp coat. “Besides enjoying the weather.”

Mayr eyed his dripping sleeves and gave Milo a small, self-assured smile.

“Well, obviously I’m here to recruit you, my little warlock,” Mayr said as though the wizard were a very silly schoolboy. “The Reich doesn’t necessarily need a creature like you, but you could certainly make certain aspects of our operations far more productive.”

Milo blinked, for an instant certain that he misunderstood.

“Well, your pitch could use some work,” Milo said, crossing his arms as he stared into the toadlike eyes that watched him. “But more than that, you seem to have forgotten yesterday evening where you called me a Slavic savage and a motherless Russian or something along those lines.”

Mayr flapped his hand at the words and shook his head before resuming his condescending tone.

“If you’re going to let that bother you, it won’t be easy working together,” Mayr said with a roll of his eyes. “I know you’re not like the rest of the parasites, that you’re a different sort altogether, but appearances must be kept up. If I hadn’t spoken up at that meeting, some might have gotten the wrong idea.”

“Wouldn’t want them to think you weren’t a raging xenophobe, would we?” Milo said with mock understanding. “That would be awful.”

Mayr again shook his head and waved his hand even more aggressively as though trying to dismiss an unwelcome smell.

“I don’t blame you for your ignorance of our organization and its purpose,” Mayr said, reaching up to flick rainwater from his mustache. “The nature of our operation has required secrecy, but now that we are preparing to take a great leap into the future, I feel we can start to lift the veil, as it were, and reach out.”

Milo looked pointedly down the aisle at soldiers still training their rifles on the seated civilians, then gave Mayr a long look.

“This is your idea of reaching out?” Milo chuckled, gesturing with his cane at the pistol on the officer's belt. “Again, your pitch needs work.”

Mayr shrugged and took a step back toward his soldiers.

“I want you to understand what we are offering, whatever your choice may be. Join us, and you buy yourself time to carve a place in the new world order as we build a better, purer world