The shade clearly did not appreciate the instruction, flailing at itself with its too numerous limbs with a sob, pinching and clawing in a fit of masochistic defiance before surrendering. Like water taking the form of a vessel, it poured its umbral flesh into the shape of Milo’s former teacher.
Only this time, instead of donning Imrah’s ghulish form, it emerged from its roiling coils as she had appeared when wearing her human guise.
A small, shapely woman with dark hair and flashing black eyes had replaced the grotesque creature, but her midsection was painfully pinched in the box, flesh compressed beyond mortal endurance. An ephemeral gown of black gossamer lay lightly over her body, the spectral cloth rippling in an ethereal wind.
“I think you are happy to see me, Milo,” she cooed in a voice that was Imrah’s yet wasn’t, lacking her typical scorn and impatience. “Or perhaps it’s the form I’ve taken.”
Milo’s gaze remained icy as he reminded himself of what he was looking at and what it wanted. Shades were not souls, only the fractured echoes left by the violent dislocation of death. It was devious, hungry, and desperate, but it was not a true living thing or even an unliving thing. Rather, it was something longing for unlife.
“Shade,” Milo said, sending a twitch of irritation across the Imrah-esque face, “I need to know what memories you have that might tell me about Guardians operating in Russia.”
“Why should I?” it asked, lip thrusting forward in a pout Imrah would have never deigned to wear. “Come on, Milo, you can’t drag me out just to start making demands. Don’t I deserve at least some consideration?”
A ticklish feeling in Milo’s mind pressured him to give a little, offer a word or two of simple greeting maybe, but he squashed it. The shade was playing on his ingrained interactions, hoping to have him consider it a living thing, a person. That could be fatally dangerous; Spectral Ruminations had explained that manifested shades, especially potent ones like Imrah’s, could form bonds with the unwary. Those connections resulted in living things wasting away, their vitality drained by an ever-hungry parasite, or perhaps worse, their lives co-opted by an unliving will that took hold when the host was weakest.
The reminders sharpened Milo’s focus, and the sigils glittering in the witchlight flared with power.
“Answer the question,” he said, his voice low and unyielding. “Or you go back in the box, and who knows when you’ll come back out again?”
He pressed his will on the thing, the blast furnace of his determination washing across it. He was the magus and it was a parasitic memory.
There would be no contest.
The human Imrah disguise ran like wax from a lit candle for a moment, exposing the shriveled ghulish body beneath, all rubbery skin and jagged teeth. Milo glared into the dark eyes that melted into a ghul’s bulging orbs and through them to the greedy points of light deep within, which belonged to the shade alone.
REMEMBER
The command was not spoken, but the shade flinched as though struck. Hands that were human except where the flesh had crumbled away to reveal ghul talons flew to its face. Eyes glinting weakly between the shivering claws, it nodded jerkily.
“Yes, yes, YES!” it whined. “There was a Guardian! Many of them! The old forests teamed with Hiisi, who hate men! I knew many who still savored the wild hunts, who still decorated groves with the skins of men and hung the shoes of children above their caves. They were monsters of the oldest order, savages who—”
“No,” Milo interjected, cutting off the shuddering recitation. “This would be one who could stand to work with humans, or at least use them.”
The shade’s sunken gaze lifted above its jagged fingers, wild and terrified.
“They were so awful, taking twisted shapes as they chased the little ones between the trees,” it sobbed. “I was so scared when I met them, the air full of blood and howling. And the screaming—always the screaming.”
Milo felt a flicker of empathy for the pitiful figure trembling before him, but then his eyes flickered to the sigils shining on the floor.
“Enough of that,” he snarled, throwing off the subtle glamour as he bared his teeth in fury. “Tell me something useful, or the box is closed, and I start thinking about which ocean to send you to the bottom of.”
To punctuate the point, Milo bent and scooped up the lock from the floor in one fluid motion.
The trembling display held for a second longer, then the shade collapsed on itself to hang limply. Even its eyes fell to the floor in defeat.
“Fine,” it croaked in the cold, wicked tongue of the ghuls. “There was one that I knew who won me over to their cause. He understood the truth of what we face. He came down from the north in secret, and when I’d sworn myself to the Guardians, he took me back with him to meet others, including the Hiisi of the First Wood. Last I knew, he was still there doing his work.”
Milo heard Ambrose shuffle a step forward in interest, and the magus couldn’t deny he felt the same. This was the most coherent the shade had ever been, and it was revealing the most it ever had about Imrah’s descent into the fanatical group.
Still eyeing the warding sigils as a reminder to himself, Milo asked his next question in a carefully measured tone.
“How did he know to reach out to you?”
“Rumors and whispers,” it replied. “I can’t remember if I contacted him or he me, but either way, once it began, I became his pupil, almost his acolyte. He understood that it wasn’t going to be as easy as baring our teeth and scaring a few villagers. We needed tools and allies, even among the humans we went to war against. He was the one who gave me the knowledge to seek Kimaris and bind him. he…he—aghhh!”
The shade twisted sharply, the movement so violent and distorting it would have snapped the spine of a living creature. Its ragged arms flew over its head in a warding gesture as it shook and gibbered. Wisps of smoke curled up from its body and hair, and a shriek of blood-chilling intensity tore from its spectral throat.
“IT HURTS! STYX! IBLIS! I BURN! I BURN!”
Translucent ghostly flames began to bloom across its form, and the room filled with the faint smell of ash.
“Anything you can do to stop it?” Ambrose called from behind Milo, hands pressed to his ears. “You were finally getting somewhere!”
Milo shook his head as the shade began to flail and scrabble.
This was how all the interrogations ended. Anything that could remind the shade of Kimaris had a chance to connect to the traumatic memories of Imrah’s final moments of self-immolation before being crushed and devoured by the gelatinous demon. Once the shade began to burn, any further communication was pointless, the violence of the memory overwhelming everything else.
“REST,” he intoned, forcing the frustration out of his mind by raw will as he drove it back into the ensorcelled box. If he interacted with the shade’s essence with any strong emotion, there was a chance it could provide an anchor for connection even now.
“It hurts!” it sobbed even as it began to shrink and thin to translucency, drawn inexorably into the vessel. “Milo, please! It hurts so much! Help me, please! HELP ME!”
A few more seconds and Milo could see through the shade and into the box. The interior was plain wood enclosed a pitted skull and a few fractured bones, the last remains of Imrah Marid.
“I never could,” he said softly as he bent over the box, ignoring the fading image of the ghul’s fire-wreathed form. “She never let me.”
“What was that?” Ambrose asked.
“Nothing,” Milo said flatly.
With an effort both magical and physical, the magus closed the box and replaced the lock.
* * *
“Do you think it was true?” Ambrose asked the next morning.
Milo had been too drained to carry on much of a conversation after interrogating the shade. They’d emerged from the depths of the Shatili fortress, thankful the misdirection fetish he’d hung over the dungeon stairs had kept the other occu
pants ignorant, and headed back to Milo’s study. They hid the box again, stored the unused ingredients, and with hardly a word between them, Milo went to bed to endure dark dreams.
Milo had not known pleasant sleep many nights of his short, hard life, and becoming a magus had not improved the quality thus far.
After waking and going through the motions of getting ready for the day, Ambrose came in with breakfast, which the two had on the balcony of Milo’s study.
Milo sat munching bacon and considering Ambrose’s question as he stared at the green slope of the mountain arm sweeping around Shatili. Despite everything he’d endured, Milo could not deny that Georgia was a beautiful country, especially since the green of spring had taken hold. The land was rugged, with climbing outcrops of rock and steep cliffs in abundance, but it was a living land where wooded valleys nestled between the verdant carpeted slopes. He’d never felt at home anywhere, but he liked to imagine that here among the Greater Caucasus Mountains, he could find a little cabin or village to live for a few quiet years, maybe even a lifetime.
That dream would have to wait until he’d ensured this land wasn’t overrun by the Ewiges Reich’s cronies.
“I’m not sure how much was true,” Milo said at last. “But if there is a possibility that it is, we are dealing with a Guardian higher up the chain of command than Imrah.”
Ambrose grunted and took a drink of coffee, then grimaced before eyeing the bottom of his cup in disappointment.
“Which means he’s liable to be even more dangerous.” The bodyguard sighed as he lowered his cup. “Probably has a whole stable of demons at his beck and call.”
Milo gnawed through the last of his bacon, which was gristlier than he liked, but he savored it all the same. With a final swallow, he frowned upon seeing that Ambrose hadn’t procured some other flesh for him to savor. It turned out that magic was a tiring business, and about the only thing that seemed to put him right was meat and lots of it.
“Maybe.” Milo grunted, licking grease from his lips, the motion bittersweet in its intensity. “But last I checked, we were veteran demon slayers.”
Ambrose gave an incredulous huff as he drew out his pipe and began to pack the bowl with tobacco. “One hellspawn destroyed with pluck and good fortune does not a demon slayer make,” he intoned sagely before leaning forward expectantly, pipe stem between his teeth.
“You're telling me you don’t have matches?” Milo asked even as he reached inside his coat to nick his thumb.
Ambrose cocked an eyebrow and gave a meaningful look at the tobacco pouch sitting on the small table between them.
“You are telling me you won’t want some of my premium tobacco?”
Milo gave a resigned sigh, and with a snap, offered his burning thumb.
After gentle coaxing, the pipe was lit, and Ambrose settled back into his chair.
“I’ll be honest, Magus,” Ambrose began after sending out a pair of smoke rings to follow each other. “This whole business of chasing Guardians and working with the Shepherds makes me nervous.”
Milo nodded but didn’t speak as he fetched rolling papers from one of his coat’s many internal magical pockets. Ambrose took another draw on his pipe and let it spiral out in an impressive corkscrew before continuing.
“Maybe it’s because I’ve spent my long life fighting wars against men. Men are simple, fragile things, and I know what makes them tick here and here.”
His free hand tapped a thick scarred finger to his head and then thumped his chest over his heart.
“But these things, ghuls, fey, demons, and whatever in God names a Hiisi is, they work with different rules and have different plans, schemes, and ways of getting those things done. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure how much use an old soldier like me is going to be.”
Milo finished rolling his cigarette, then stopped and looked at his bodyguard, puffing on his pipe and staring at the mountains. The ache of regret and powerlessness in the big man’s words was palpable enough to strike at Milo’s heart, and as he stared, he found it hard to understand. Just to look at Simon Ambrose was to see a man of not only incredible physical prowess but enduring power. Like an old oak or mountain face, Ambrose seemed made to survive beyond mere mortal men, and given his half-angelic nature, he very well might. Yet, it was clear his friend was troubled.
Startled, Milo realized that survival wasn’t enough for Ambrose.
The magus had spent his whole life trying to survive, to stave off disaster and see one more day. To him, the power to endure was akin to the ultimate treasure, but now, staring at his century-old bodyguard, he wondered if he hadn’t been wrong all this time. Ambrose wasn’t afraid of surviving but of what would remain when he did.
Given the power he now wielded, Milo wondered if this was a question he should be asking himself.
His stomach growled, clearly unhappy with his focus on non-gustatory matters.
“You haven’t been totally useless thus far,” Milo quipped as he tucked the cigarette behind his ear. “But your continued usefulness will wax and wane, depending upon one important task. Really, the entire operation—no, the future of Nicht-KAT and the world of man—may hang upon this singularly important endeavor.”
Ambrose glanced up and fixed Milo with an incredulous frown.
“And that task is?” he asked warily.
“Finding some more food,” Milo replied as he stood up and grasped his belly. “What are these starvations rations? A growing magus needs his meat!”
Ambrose eyed his lanky frame disapprovingly and, placing the pipe between his teeth, heaved to his feet.
“Come on then.” Ambrose chuckled. “I’ve never been the type to leave a job half-done.
5
The Awaited
Jorge sent word through encrypted radio signals that Rihyani would be arriving within a week. She would be accompanied by two companions, which Milo expected would be the verdant woman and the bronze giant, her fey comrades from before.
For five days, Milo’s world was one of eager, almost painful anticipation combined with mounting anxiety. He suddenly became acutely aware of how the stains on his circulatory system from the nightwatch were slow in fading and how emaciated he looked since the whole debacle. He doubted whether a few days of ravenous eating and vigorous exercise would restore him to something closer to what he’d been, but he was determined to give it his best anyway.
He ate like a sow and sweated like an ox at the plow, engaging in a routine that was one part military calisthenics and the other parts getting bounced around while he had Ambrose teach him a thing or two about fighting. The idea had sprung up after the bodyguard’s confession on the balcony, but the moment he’d thought of it, he’d found the idea appealing.
Ambrose was less optimistic.
The big man had first complained that it was fruitless, not only because Milo was in his words, “hopelessly weedy,” but also because he felt Milo should be learning to do magic.
“Why waste time shooting or stabbing when you can kill with a word?” he asked as Milo dragged him down to the courtyard for their first session. “Jorge wants you doing magic, doesn't he?"
“I don’t always have the time or ingredients for necromist magic,” Milo said, shoving Ambrose ineffectually from behind. He would have had more luck pressing on the walls of the fortress.
“Besides,” Milo grumbled, refusing to be deterred, “this is as much about my recovery as learning to fight. Really, I’ve had more than enough practice.”
Ambrose gave an unimpressed grunt.
“That so, eh?”
Milo smiled like a shark scenting blood.
“Yeah,” he said, throwing a cocky swagger into his voice as he stopped pushing. “In fact, it will probably be exercise only because I don’t imagine there’s much I’ve left to learn about such things.”
Ambrose had turned and given Milo a supremely disapproving frown before heaving a sigh and letting it melt into a smile. Milo
had won, and they both knew it.
For five days, Ambrose had put Milo through the paces of his eclectic style of training to “end things,” as he put it. It was a strange combination of skills training, applied anatomy, mental attunement, and a relentless series of nearly abusive physical challenges. Milo was introduced to ways to kill and maim with his body, blades, and firearms, none of which he mastered, but he was more dangerous for it all the same.
Milo never said anything because he didn’t want Ambrose guessing why he had asked him to train him, but the truth was that Milo was coming to understand the considerable breadth of knowledge and expertise Ambrose had. Even as he learned a new way to break an arm, cut an artery, or shoot on the run, he understood that the big man was only revealing a fraction of the prowess he’d developed.
The magus was soon thankful that the big man’s skills were not limited to the realm of violence but also encompassed acquisition.
The effort was so intense that whenever Milo wasn’t engaged in the regimen, he was either sleeping or eating. By the fourth day, Ambrose had resorted to stealing rations to keep Milo sated and regaining weight on a fatty, protein-rich diet.
Daily Milo felt his strength returning and it was just as well, for the night of the fifth day since Jorge’s message the fey arrived.
The pair was in the courtyard, running through a blades drill, folding a closing parry into a diagonal elbow into a draw cut, when Ambrose paused mid-attack. Milo, on sheer opportunistic instinct, sprang forward, feinting the parry before smashing an elbow across the big man’s jaw. At that moment, Milo realized every time he’d struck the Nephilim, the blow had been rolled with. Distracted as he was, Ambrose did not bow with the blow, and Milo realized he might as well have struck a brick wall.
Pain shot through his elbow, and the knife tumbled from his numbed grip.
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 38
