Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2) by Aaron Schneider (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📕

and in its light, Milo and Ambrose saw the source of the blood and drag marks outside.

Ezekiel Bouche knelt in the center of the floor, wrapped in graven chains that had been anchored to rings in the floor.

“Howdy, boys,” he cooed as Milo and Ambrose followed the marquis in. “I was wonderin’ where you two had run off to. Should’ve known you’d get busy makin’ friends with king o’ the old castle here.”

Ambrose rounded on the marquis, his words coming out hot and hard like shell casings.

“What the hell is he doing here?”

The marquis drew himself up to his full imperious height in response, an unhappy frown on his features.

“I told you there would be a test that, if passed, would give you the answers.” He sniffed. “This is it. The magus shall use the Art to discover how to save Contessa Rihyani. I will give him until dawn to extract the information from the cursed one.”

Before Ambrose could protest, Ezekiel burst into a fit of hysterical laughter. It rang off the walls until Milo’s ears ached.

“You think this milk-drinkin’ greenhorn’s got what it takes to break me?” he wheezed between snorts of laughter before turning his manic grin on Milo. “Boy, you better kiss your fey lover goodbye because even if he gave you a month of sunrises, you still wouldn’t have the gumption to make me sweat.”

Ambrose’s fist balled up and he made to go for the leering cowboy, but Milo put a hand on his shoulder. Ambrose looked at him, green eyes afire, but when he saw the hardened intent in Milo’s expression, he nodded and stepped back.

“Can I only use the Art, or are any other means open to me?” Milo asked, locking his eyes on the scalp-hunter’s wild stare.

“You are free to do as you will,” the marquis said before adding, “but I will tell you that the Art and the knowledge I’ve given you are your most certain path to success. Perhaps there are other ways, but I doubt it.”

“Oh, now we’re talking,” Ezekiel said with a dark chuckle.

Ambrose unlimbered and put down his rifle in one smooth movement before he began rolling up his sleeves.

“If it’s a matter of interrogation, I’ve got ideas that might make him a bit more talkative.”

“Oh, don’t tease me, fat boy.” Ezekiel giggled. “Come on over here and let me have it. Come on now, give me your best shot. Don’t hold nothin’ back!”

Ambrose was standing over the cowboy, hands curled into claws, when Milo stopped him with a word.

“No.”

Ambrose paused, glaring down at the tittering cowboy.

“The marquis gave me this test,” Milo said evenly, taking a step forward into the pool of moonlight. “This is for me to do.”

Ambrose tore his gaze from Ezekiel to meet Milo’s stare.

“And if you can’t?”

The question hurt.

Milo knew it shouldn’t. He knew it came from a place of deep concern, of love even, for Rihyani and him, yet it still stung. Pride, defiance, and anger rushed to inflame the wound and swell it in a vain attempt to protect himself, but he clamped down on the instinct, thinking that way wouldn’t help anyone. Instead, he reached out and squeezed the big man’s brawny shoulder, looking deep into his troubled gaze.

“Then I die trying,” he said.

Ambrose’s eyes swam with his own maelstrom, but staring into Milo’s, he found what he needed. He nodded and stepped back.

Ezekiel’s jeering snigger drew Milo’s gaze.

“Had a pair like you in a scalpin’ posse I used to run with,” he said. “One of ‘em used to ride the other so much we wondered why he didn’t get his boy fitted for a saddle and bridle.”

Not deigning to reply to the taunt, Milo turned to the marquis and Ambrose.

“I’m ready,” Milo said, appreciating that he sounded confident even as his stomach began to squirm. “Dawn?”

The marquis nodded, his expression inscrutable as he led Ambrose out, leaving Ezekiel and Milo alone.

For some time, the two men brooded in relative silence. Milo drew slow, even breaths, while Ezekiel muttered and giggled to himself in a low, broken voice that Milo couldn’t understand.

Then the air rippled with spectral winds.

“Here we go.” Ezekiel tittered in anticipation.

Milo’s will ranged outward, groping toward the septic wound that was Ezekiel’s psyche. Pushing through his disgust at the contact, Milo pressed in, drawing upon the dark corners of his recent memories.

The ghostly winds congealed into the mewling, many-limbed visages of shades, grasping and crawling up from the floor. Twisted, unnatural simulacrums of humanoid shapes wrapped in oily, ectoplasmic flesh, they excreted themselves out of the stones like huge, hellish maggots. Splintered, bony fingers scored the stones of the floor, and the temperature in the room plummeted so both men’s breath was visible. The shades groaned and wailed with the heart-stopping voices of the damned as they turned too-bright eyes upon the bound cowboy. As they manifested around him, Milo had to remind himself that they were his own conjurations.

In a way he never could have apart from this experience, he began to appreciate what the marquis had said. Just because it wasn’t physical did not mean it wasn’t real.

“Spooky.” Ezekiel chuckled as he watched the lurching advance of the illusory shades. “But it’s goin’ to take a lot more than this, kid.”

The shades were now gathered around the cowboy, leaning forward and eagerly snuffling. As one, their gleaming eyes turned to regard Milo, their puppet master. Milo’s gaze hardened, and he felt rime spread across his heart. He knew he was not a cruel man, but life had been cruel to him, and for Rihyani’s sake, he was willing to do many terrible things. That knowledge encased his soul like frozen armor, even as Ezekiel laughed louder and louder.

“I’m sure knowing you can’t die seems like a comfort,” he said, meeting Ezekiel’s gaze with a chilling stare as the cowboy guffawed. “But that only means I don’t have to worry about you surviving anything I do to you.”

Every shade’s malformed mouth twisted into an obscene smile