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

Ambrose slurred as he staggered over to the keg to refill his stein. “Heard it when you were talkin’ to Jorge on that new contraption they had wired up in the hall. What did they call it again, Magus?”

“A telephone,” Milo said without bothering to look up.

“Telephone,” Ambrose intoned as though the word was the start of an incantation. “As much magic as anything our boy can do, eh, mon chéri?”

Hardly, Rihyani whispered and leaned her head against Milo’s shoulder.

“You were saying you heard something, Simon,” she cooed. “Don’t be such a tease and tell me already.”

Ambrose turned from the keg and wove his way back to his seat, fighting a fit of giggles as he did.

“I heard you talking about the Reich. Sounds like Jorge, the wily ol’ cat, has been usin’ ‘is time to chase those bastards down. Isn’t that what I heard you two talkin’ about?”

Milo nodded absently and felt Rihyani nudge him with her elbow. With a grunt, he craned his neck to look over her head at Ambrose as he cleared his throat.

“Yes,” Milo said, trying and failing to sound as exuberant as Ambrose looked. “It seems that after Mayr reached Berlin, the rest of the rodents got the hint and went into hiding. Resignations, retirements, and plain disappearances happened very suddenly across several branches of the Empire’s military and governmental offices.”

“Suppose havin’ your boss sent back in a box will do that.” Ambrose chuckled into his beer. “Didn’t sound like Jorge was goin’ to let us in on the fun, was he?”

Milo shook his head, striking his best frown for Ambrose’s drunken benefit, the look coming much more naturally to him.

“Not at the moment,” the wizard said. “But I imagine by New Year, he might have something to throw our way in the matter of ‘cleaning house.’ At least, he intimated as much when we talked.”

Ambrose drained the stein, belched, and sank a little deeper into his chair. As a Nephilim, it took an ungodly amount of alcohol to get him drunk, but like any mortal, he was prone to sudden collapse when his limit had been reached.

“I sure would’ve liked to roast some o’ those pricks wi’ my chestnuts,” he muttered, his eyelids fluttering as the stein slid from his hand to clang on the floor. “But I suppose there’s no finer way to start the new year.”

“A year of peace,” Rihyani said, watching Milo from where she rested her head on his shoulder.

“I’ll drink to that.” Ambrose yawned and sank a little lower in his chair. A moment later, content but bellowing snores resounded as his mammoth chest rose and fell rhythmically.

On a whim, Milo’s fingers found the handle of his untouched stein. Smiling at his slumbering friend, he raised it.

“I’ll drink to that too,” he said, and without too much trouble, drained the stein in one go.

Rihyani sat up and watched him for a moment, golden pupils dancing in the light of the hearth’s fire.

“You don’t seem so afraid to me,” she said softly, leaning forward so her lips brushed his cheek. “Or are you getting better at hiding it?”

Milo chuckled and, borrowing a little of the strength in the cane resting against his knee, he swept her up in his arms and drew her into his lap.

“I’ve nothing to hide from you,” he said, drawing her close for a fierce, crushing kiss. Lips and tongue danced together to a voiceless song of desire. When they parted, their breath was coming heavy and hot.

“When I’m with you, I know there’s nothing I need to be afraid of,” he declared, a throaty, needful growl in the back of his throat.

As Rihyani plunged back into his hungry embrace, he felt an icy thought prickle at the corner of his mind.

Liar, Imrah chided, her presence still weak but growing stronger with each day.

With a shift of his knee, Milo let the cane tumble to the floor, then scooted it beneath the table. He didn’t need an audience for what came next.

Epilogue: Memento Mori

Cold water splashed across his chest, and then he was being hauled to his feet.

The sack they’d thrown over his head collected water from the rude awakening, and he started choking and coughing as he struggled to breathe through the damp cloth. He doubled over to retch, but the hands gripping his arms refused to let go. Instead, his body curled with a painful seizure of muscles. He gagged as a thin stream of bile squirted up his tightening throat, fouling the sack, but nothing else came.

He had nothing else to give; it had been days since he’d eaten.

With staggering steps, he was half-marched, half-dragged under a series of pale yellow lights he could make out through the weave of the sack. He could hear the tramping steps of the men dragging him echoing off of a hard surface.

Was he in a hallway or corridor of some sort?

He told himself he should count the steps from where he was being kept to where they were taking him, but at the moment, breathing took serious effort. More than once, the world took on the sub-aquatic quality of the unconscious, and with a start, he realized the lights overhead were a glaring orange-white. With a grunt and a guttural curse, he was deposited in a chair, then he felt the sharp chill of steel against his wrists binding him to the legs.

Mercifully, the sack came off, and Percy Astor was left sucking in breaths with a single, bare bulb burning overhead.

He heard a door close with a metallic squeal and then a thunk as it latched.

For a few moments, Percy seemed to be alone, seated in a wooden chair on a concrete floor in a pool of electric light. Everything beyond that pool was dark, though as his breathing steadied, he thought he heard the thrumming whine of heavy machinery somewhere over his head.

He tested his bonds half-heartedly and was unsurprised that they were secure. He didn’t suppose he could be that lucky.