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

they’d seen in the town. They’d quickly found the dining hall was the most comfortable spot, not only because of the ample seating but also because the large decorative window over the bar offered ample light from outside. Ambrose had done some pilfering of the choicest liquors and nonperishables from the bar and that parlor behind it, but that was consumed all too soon.

This left the three companions to sit in an empty hotel dining room and hypothesize what could have emptied the town.

“Maybe it was something like Kimaris,” Ambrose had suggested as he got up from where he’d sat on the hotel bar across from the passage to the front entrance. “Some sort of demon that swept through and swallowed up everyone.”

Milo shook his head as he twirled the cane to bore a hole through the thick dust on the dining hall floor.

That feels oddly pleasant, Imrah informed him, which was Milo’s cue to stop immediately. A decidedly disappointed impression radiated from the fetish.

“Something like that would have left some sign of its passing. Damage or something like it,” Milo said, looking at the caked dust on the wooden floor and wondering when feet had last scuffed these boards. According to the reports, it was only a few weeks, but it looked like ages.

“What do you think, Rihyani?” Milo asked, rocking back in his chair, which gave a slight squeak of protest.

Rihyani had been silent for most of the brainstorming, quietly moving around the tavern. She seemed to be looking for something to catch her interest as he and Ambrose chatted. She was currently standing next to a window, sliding her fingers down the drapes. Beyond the window was a veranda, where other tables looked out toward the forest that hemmed Gzhatsk in with a wall of evergreens. Staring past the fey for a moment, Milo couldn’t help but wonder if it was his imagination or the trees really were leaning in.

“Rihyani?” Milo called as he shook his head to dismiss thoughts of maliciously inclined trees. He had enough to worry about without making enemies of the vegetation.

“Yes?” the fey said without turning around.

Milo climbed to his feet, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t like Rihyani to be so quiet.

“Ambrose and I were discussing whether it could have been Kimaris or not.”

“What about Kimaris?” she asked, her voice rising with a subtle note of irritation. With more force than was probably necessary, she yanked the curtains to one side and began a minute inspection of the window frame.

Before Milo could press the question, Ambrose, who had wandered to a window on the opposite wall from Rihyani, thumped the wall with a fist.

“About damn time,” he swore and turned back to his companions with a grin. “Lokkemand finally decided to show up.”

The wizard shook his head at the announcement but stopped as he noticed Rihyani had pressed herself to the windowsill and seemed to be sniffing its length.

“I’ll go out and wave them over,” Ambrose said as he ambled his way across the hall, leaving Milo and Rihyani alone.

“What are you doing?” Milo said, trying and failing to keep the irritation and concern out of his voice.

“Something seems wrong about this town,” the fey said as she raised her head.

“You mean, besides the fact that it was abandoned?” Milo asked as he looked around the vacant room.

“Yes,” Rihyani growled, then raised a hand as her fingers grew wicked claws.

“Rihyani, what’s going on?” Milo demanded, feeling the need to look every direction at once. She didn’t reshape like this except when danger was about. He spun around to face the empty room, every shadow seeming to hold a dangerous secret.

“I’m not sure,” Rihyani said in a wet, leonine voice as fangs replaced her teeth.

“Then give me your best guess,” Milo hissed, looking over his shoulder in time to see the fey’s talons rake across the windowsill.

Milo had expected the sound of wood being gouged or scraped and thought he would see flecks of paint and splinters go flying. When there was a ripping sound like canvas parting under a knife instead, he balked. When blood ran freely from the rent windowsill, rolling down the wall darkly, he nearly cried out in surprise.

“Hiisi,” Rihyani snarled, the word sounding like a wildcat’s yowl.

When gunfire erupted outside the hotel and the window they stood next to exploded into a hundred glass fragments, Milo was almost relieved.

Being shot at was something he was intimately familiar with.

“Hiisi are Folk, right?” Milo shouted as he and Rihyani crept along the wall to the hotel entrance, thankful the exterior was brick. The crack of rifles could be heard as bullets came whining through the broken window.

“Yes,” she said. “They marked the building with their runes.”

“Are they shooting at us because you spotted it?” Milo asked as they neared the door to the front of the hotel. “Or just on principle?”

“I am almost certain this isn’t them,” Rihyani yelled with a look over her shoulder at the window and the forest beyond.

“We’re under fire,” Ambrose shouted as he burst back into the dining hall, chased by half a score of near-misses.

“Thank God you’re here,” Milo bellowed. “I might not have noticed all the bullets flying around.”

Ambrose swore and kicked one of the double doors shut as a trio of shots punched through the wood. Blood ran down one side of his face, and his eyes blazed like emerald stars in his face.

“We’re pinned down,” he rumbled, working the action on the rifle to chamber another round. “I popped two of the rats running around out there, but there's plenty more.”

“What about Lokkemand’s men?” Milo asked as more shots from outside gnawed the dining hall doors into mere formalities.

“Likewise,” Ambrose spat as he spotted the window, where the occasional bullet still whizzed through. “They had half a dozen rounds rattle off the lead vehicle and they circled the wagons, as it were.”

“They brought wagons?” Rihyani asked, a wild incredulous laugh bubbling out between