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

Staggering back, he slumped against the wall of the compartment.

“Not bad.” Ambrose nodded and scooped up the first corpse like he was made of straw. With a soft grunt, he parked the body across the open box while the other hand reached in to peel away the false bottom.

“Thanks,” Milo muttered as his chain-savaged fingers began to grope in his pockets for the key to his shackles.

“Want to take bets on what they’re building out there?” Ambrose asked as he drew out his pack, then Milo’s satchel. “My money’s on it being like one of those mind-control organs, only on a tank or something.”

“Really?” Milo laughed and then swore as the key fell from his blood-slicked fingers.

“Damn, help me out, please,” he growled as he flexed his torn digits. “I’ll be able to think better with these things off me.”

Ambrose fetched the key from the floor and had Milo free in short order. He was still rubbing his wrists when Ambrose held out the satchel.

“You got a better idea?” he asked after Milo took the case and before holding out the fetish cane. “Let’s hear it, and then you can put some money where your smart mouth is.”

Milo took the cane and felt the icy thoughts of Imrah coiling across his mind.

You need to repair your hands, she instructed archly, and he could almost hear her disgusted sigh. Why do you insist on handling problems like a ruffian?

Because I am one, he thought and reached into his satchel for a prepared batch of healing unguent.

“A fool and his money are soon parted.” Milo chuckled as he dabbed his fingers with the elixir. “You think we’re lucky enough for it to be as simple as some silly vehicle we could sabotage?”

Ambrose’s mouth settled into a grim line beneath his mustache.

“No.” He sighed as he checked the breach of his Gewehr. “I don’t suppose we are that lucky.”

A flex of focus and Milo’s fingers were set to mending as the unguent smoked and the smells of jasmine and formaldehyde rose to compete with Ambrose’s charnel house stink.

“So, how are we making our exit again?” Ambrose said as he peeled off the befouled uniform and its gore-plastered fetishes. With two heaves and a grunt, he plopped both bodies into the box and threw the discarded uniform on top of them before replacing the lid. He looked up from fishing his clothes out of his pack to see what Milo was doing.

“We’re going out with a bang,” Milo said softly as he drew a vial out of his satchel. What looked like a miniature storm cloud twisted and sparked behind the glass.

“You do like blowing things up,” Ambrose grumbled as he tugged on his trousers.

“Us ruffians have simple tastes.” He chuckled to himself as he held the vial up to his eye. “Ready whenever you are.”

13

These Misfortunes

The dark of the night was pierced by a rush of blue and green flame.

Less than ten miles south of Petrograd, a train rolling down the last intact railway in northern Russia saw one of its cars burst into unnatural flames. From the edge of the scorched city to the forests beyond, the burning car could be seen rumbling on like some demonic carnival attraction. For years to come, the few desperate souls clinging to survival in that desolate place would claim they saw strange, fearsome faces twisting in the bewitched fire, and they whispered that God had sent his judgment of the unholy construct being fashioned in Petrograd.

Others whispered it was because the last saint of Petrograd’s blood called out for vengeance.

Those who stood guard over Petrograd and its ramshackle foundries had less fanciful theories, mostly involving spies and traitors, but soon their theories would be whispered as confusedly as those of the scavengers around their fires.

Whether it was divine judgment or bitter sabotage, all human eyes were on the flames, and none noticed the two forms darting between the trees to get clear of the wounded iron behemoth. In a stand of trees, those same forms hunkered down and waited for the last of the train to pass.

In that deepening gloom, they held their breath and then smiled as a silvery shape as pale as a ghost alighted on the branches above them.

“Enjoy the show?” The broader shadow chuckled after a glance upward.

“We don’t have time for that,” the silver shape hissed. “We need to move now!”

“What do you mean?” the thinner shadow asked as he stepped into the moonlight, revealing Milo’s thin, scarred face. “They can’t be coming after us already.”

“Not the Russians,” said the silver specter as it descended and became Rihyani in the moonlight beside Milo. “Hiisi are moving through the woods. I had to wind-ride higher and higher to avoid the airborne ones, but they are teeming in these woods.”

Milo swore and stared between the night-blackened tree trunks. The broad shadow shuffled forward with a few choices phrases of his own, then it was Ambrose glaring out across the darkened wood.

“So, Zlydzen’s got them acting as watchdogs then,” Ambrose rumbled, then froze with his head cocked to one side. Milo and Rihyani froze as well, trusting the Nephilim’s unnatural acuity.

“Damn, they’re fast,” Ambrose snarled, and he jerked his head at the railway behind them. “I can hear something—several somethings—running after that train. Only a matter of time before one of them figures out they should check back this way.”

“Then we better get going,” Milo murmured. He looked at Rihyani. “What is the lay of the land?”

“I spotted a road cutting through the wood parallel to the track,” the fey said, pointing one long finger eastward between the trees. “If we reach that, we can follow it to a small clearing in the forest that is near the outskirts of the city.”

The Hiisi will pick up your scent from the wind, Imrah told him. Once they have it, they will find you.

“That’s not helpful,” Milo growled, and he shook his head as Ambrose and Rihyani looked at him quizzically. “Come