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

bayonets as the horror-stricken men sent their useless fire downwind. Eventually, someone called for a withdrawal up the slope, and instant consensus seemed to be reached that this was the best course of action. The mangled but undaunted German forces still only halfway up the rough hillside, the enemy infantry scuttled back as the artillery covered their retreat.

In all the madness, no one noted two figures darting from cover to cover in the draw, pausing every so often to search among the dead.

“Imrah!” Milo hissed as he slewed to another nest of jutting rocks. “Imrah!”

The sound of the enemy venting their fearful fury on the dispatched Qareen was moving farther away, but he felt dreadfully exposed as he surveyed the draw.

The dead soldiers lay in patches and clumps, some blasted beyond human resemblance, others looking no worse for wear than they had when they’d set out that morning. It was the sight of these unmolested corpses that filled him with the most dread.

If the shades had lapsed like that, there was a good chance that Imrah was at best unconscious.

“Milo!” came a hoarse bark to his right.

Milo dared a look around his rocky cover and spied Ambrose waving him over from a narrow crease in the earth. Taking a furtive and futile look around, he sprang from cover and raced toward the shallow gully, certain either a bullet or a shell was headed his way.

He threw himself flat, sliding the last few feet into the earthen crevice, to come down next to Ambrose. The big man crouched over a small form, rifling through his pack for bandages.

Imrah lay on the ground, her breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps. Patches of dark ichor blotted her ravaged clothes, and one arm was a mangled mess that flexed and twitched with feeble movements that violently twisted Milo’s stomach. On the same side as her wounded limb, the skin-coat had been rent from crown to clavicle, so Milo could see her jagged teeth and wrinkled throat moving with every breath.

“Hang in there,” Ambrose said, his voice unnaturally calm as he drew out clean strips of cloth and a length of leather cord. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Shuffling around, the big man moved to her dangling arm and nodded at the spot he’d just vacated.

“Over there, Magus,” he said, his voice still smooth and even as he set to work. “Just hold her hand and let her know we’ve got this under control.”

Milo shuffled over and took Imrah’s limp hand in his. He tried to form words, but his throat knotted up, refusing to work. He wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay, but the lie refused to come.

Imrah’s half-human, half-ghul gaze swung over to him, her eyes sliding in and out of focus.

“My...coat. Milo, my...coat…”

“It’s okay,” the magus said, the words sounding dead and flat even to his ears. “I’ll...I’ll make you a new one when we get back.”

She shook her head, the movement frighteningly boneless.

“No...inside. Inside...my coat.”

Feeble as her grip was, Milo felt her drawing his hand toward her wounded side.

“Inside…” she wheezed, and her gaze sharpened for an instant as she croaked, “Kimaris comes!”

The ghul princess collapsed in a senseless heap.

Ambrose swore, and Milo looked over and saw him struggling to fashion a tourniquet with the leather cord as he blotted ichor away with the bandages.

“Damnation,” he muttered softly. “Can’t tell which part of this mess is her and which part is the skin-coat.”

Milo stared at the gory body, trying not to let his mind linger on any one detail too long, but something caught his eye. He spied a curl of seemingly human flesh hanging near the collarbone like the eared dog page of a book. At first, the grotesque sight nearly convinced his stomach it was time to vacate, but then he remembered a vaguely similar sight in the sitting room just outside the Bashlek’s court in Ifreedahm.

Inside...my coat.

Gripped by a sudden realization, Milo grabbed the flap of flesh and began to pull.

“What are you doing?” Ambrose cried, his cool demeanor fracturing under the horrific sight of the flesh peeling back like paper.

As the flap folded over, Milo saw seams across the expanse of ichor-splotched skin. Freeing his hand from Imrah’s unconscious grip, he shoved his fingers into the pockets and nearly recoiled in horror as his whole hand slid into a space that could not have been contained in the slim pouch. Forcing himself to remember Imrah’s hints about extra-dimensional spaces, he kept groping around until his fingers slid across something made of rounded glass. There were clinks as he gathered everything he could, and when his hand emerged from the enchanted pocket, he held three small vials.

Milo wasn’t certain, but he willed himself to believe they contained the ingredients he had seen her use when she regrew her hand before court.

“Get her mouth open,” Milo instructed as he yanked the wax seals from each vial.

Ambrose complied, though he nearly lost a finger when she snapped in unconscious reflex.

Hoping he wasn’t about to turn his teacher into an alchemical bomb, Milo emptied the ingredients into her mouth. As an afterthought, he sent a small pulse of his magical focus after them as they passed through her gaping teeth.

For a single eternal second, nothing happened, then Imrah’s chest ceased to rise as her body went limp, flattening against the ground.

Milo stared numbly as Ambrose shook his head slowly and slid an ichor-stained paw across his forehead.

Then, so suddenly both men lurched backward, Imrah gasped and coughed. A wet hacking sound came from her throat, then she rolled to one side to expel blue-black globules. She tore Ambrose’s failed tourniquet off since her arm had begun to steam and mend itself. The skin-coat still hung in tatters of fleshy fringe around her forearm and elbow, but within seconds, the whipcord sinew had returned. Imrah flexed her claws experimentally.

With a snarl, she sat up unassisted and turned her bifurcated gaze on the humans on either side