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

You promised not to care anymore! his heart wailed at him between the quiet sobs. You promised to never feel this. Never again.

The tears fell, and Milo could not move until they had. He cursed himself, Ambrose, the ghuls, the German Empire, humanity, and God, but it didn’t matter.

He knelt in the dark and cried for a fallen friend.

Then light came to the dark.

Burning, glaring, and hot.

Milo, confused and revived by fresh terror, scrambled back, covering his eyes. Jerking to his feet, he pressed down the panic at the sudden heat and light and tried to get his bearings. Through his swimming senses, he realized the blinding light was coming from Ambrose’s body, a living radiance that drove Milo back with its intensity.

It was red, but not the terrible crimson light that had crowned the guard in the tunnels days before. This was different—cleaner and brighter, yet no less terrifying than that previous alien glare.

Milo’s back was against the sour-smelling tunnel wall, and despite the stink, he turned his face away and hid it against the stone. The light pulsed and Milo felt the heat of it cut through him. He screamed.

Then the light left, passing beyond the gulfs between spheres, and Milo was in the dark tunnel once more.

Shivering and swearing, he turned back toward Ambrose’s body and beheld a new horror.

The corpse was sitting up, mangled face turned toward Milo, red stars glowing from its hollow sockets.

“ויאמר יהוה לא־ידון רוחי באדם לעולם בשגם הוא בשר” came the declaration from a ruined throat.

In Milo’s mind the words thundered, carried by the magic of the elixir Imrah had taught him to fashion to reveal all tongues to him.

And the Lord hath not spoken of a man in everlasting flesh!

Then the dead man rose and moved toward Milo, ruined hands outstretched.

Instinct took over, and Milo, gripping the heavy cane in both hands, swung out with a crushing blow.

One ravaged hand caught the shaft of the cane and stopped it dead. The shock of the sudden stop jolted Milo’s arms, and he staggered forward and lost his grip on the cane.

Off-balance, he stumbled into the corpse, rebounding off one sloped shoulder before sliding awkwardly to the ground. His former bodyguard and friend loomed over him, and Milo was certain the end had come. The hands descended toward him slowly, and as he watched them, Milo had time to curse himself.

This is what you get for caring, you damn fool.

The fingers closed around the front of his jacket, and Milo could feel the living heat coursing through them. That was strange. He would have laughed—his last thoughts were concerned with the temperature of an animated body before it murdered him. He’d heard that people’s lives were supposed to flash before their eyes, but since no such thing happened, Milo assumed his wretched life was simply not worth the trouble to remember.

As the hands, still possessed of that terrible strength their former owner had in life, dragged him upward like a rag doll, Milo remembered the tarot card in his pocket. Suddenly desperate to see it one last time, he snaked his arm around to rummage in his breast pocket.

His fingers had just brushed its worn surface when the grip on his jacket tightened, trapping his hand inside his coat.

Hope is for the disappointed fool, Milo chided himself with what he was certain was his last thought.

Whatever gripped him easily bore his weight as it reached for his throat.

Milo thought about fighting, part of his mind telling him not to surrender, but black despair and powerlessness had sapped his strength. He would stare into the hellish glimmering sockets that had once belonged to his only friend and let the end come. In a perverse way, the cold certainty of it was a comfort, or at least an anesthetic.

The fingers slid under his jaw.

Then along the jawline to his ears.

Then across his cheek, gliding to his nose, where forefinger and thumb traced the shape of it before moving to brush across his eyes and brow.

The grip holding him upright was as hard as steel, but the fingers mapping the contours of his face were as gentle as any human hand that had ever touched him. Milo, whether in fear or surrender, had let his eyes slide out of focus as he waited for death, but in the face of such odd behavior, he looked at Ambrose’s ruined face in confusion.

Raw, bloody lips twisted into something like a smile over pitted pink-smeared teeth.

Milo gawked, but not at the horror of such a smile. Seconds before, there had been nothing to smile with.

He stared for a few seconds longer as flesh filled the mutilated visage. It was like watching some gory flower bloom. Fractured bones set, sinews reattached, and after almost a minute, skin began to appear in bald pink patches.

“Ambrose,” Milo said tentatively. “Ambrose, can you hear me?”

The big man’s head bobbed, though he cocked his head to the side as though he struggled to hear. Milo could see why: even as they repaired themselves, Milo could see that where the man’s ears had been were ragged pits in the sides of his head. That he could hear anything was a miracle.

And the miracle wasn’t done.

The man was regenerating before his eyes, and not just his face. Looking down, Milo saw bones lurching back into alignment and the body straightening. Beneath his tattered clothes, the wounds in his flesh filled with fresh meat before sheathing themselves in bright new skin.

Inch by inch, Ambrose was being made whole.

Less than three minutes from when he’d laid hands upon Milo, Ambrose was restored. His iron grip transformed into a crushing hug.

“Ho-ho, it’s good to see you, boy!” he chortled as he squeezed Milo until he saw spots. “I knew you could do it! Knew down to my boots and back!”

Milo frantically slapped his free hand on the big man’s back as the other hand, trapped between their bodies,