The business with the Americans had been more dangerous than expected, and when their platoon's commanding officer had threatened to abandon the Americans, they’d doubled the offered fee, including the pay of those slain. Seeing as this driver had two cousins among the dead, this turn of events struck him as significant. The one man who might have done something was too busy trying to plan what percent would be fair to give to the men’s families and what percent to keep for himself to pay real attention to the trickle of glittering black that slid under his vehicle.
He was still trying to work out percentages in his head when a ribbon of congealing midnight slithered up the side of his truck, lanced through the door window, and tore out his throat like the other two drivers.
The shattering of glass could be heard even over the hellish wind, and it drew the attention of the men standing watch at the church door and by the Rollsy. As one, they turned, and after giving a chorus of piercing whistles, they slunk back toward the vehicles, rifles ready.
Seeing their fellows slumped in their seats, windows shattered, they took positions along the wall bordering the church, eyes searching for snipers. That ensured they had nowhere to run when Ambrose and Milo sprang on them.
Ambrose leaped on the first man, delivering a single punch that shattered the man’s jaw and left him senseless. Milo hit the man behind the first with a magically enhanced stroke of his cane that left him poleaxed. The last man had only enough time to open his mouth for a scream before his cries were suffocated by a blast of witchfire that instantly immolated everything from the shoulder up.
“Grab a carbine,” Ambrose growled as he snatched up the first two men’s strange firearms.
Milo complied, taking half a moment to wonder about the solidly built weapons' shorter barrel and the strange case for its ammunition. A quick glance showed labels and markings in English. The rifles must have been new American designs, which explained the impressive firepower the mercenaries had put out during their ambush.
Milo raised his head from inspecting the weapon to see if anyone was coming from inside the church, but it seemed those within had not been alerted.
“Ready when you are,” Ambrose whispered hoarsely, one carbine in hand, the other slung over his shoulder.
Milo nodded, and they both made a run for the Rollsy, which they could now see standing at the end of the formation of trucks.
“Let’s try and ease out of here,” Ambrose said as they both skidded to a stop and began to clamber up the sides of the vehicle.
A ragged figure rose from where it had been lying in the cab, a rust-flecked revolver in each hand, leveled at Milo and Ambrose’s temples.
“Now, now, boys,” Ezekiel Boucher said with a slow, chiding cluck of his tongue. “You ought to know by now, ain’t nothing easy in this line o’ work.”
13
The Harriers
Milo and Ambrose froze, transfixed by the black basilisk stares of the pistols’ barrels as they hung onto the sides of the Rollsy’s cab.
“Didn’t figure you’d be seein’ ol’ Zeke this side o’ Hell, now did you?”
Milo glimpsed the base pleasure shining in the scalp hunter’s eyes and felt a welcome and defiant anger blooming in his chest. He forced a fierce smile onto his face and tore his eyes away from the pistols’ menacing gravity to meet the cowboy’s gaze. The same wild stare waited there, more jaundiced and bloodshot than before.
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” he snarled at the man through bared teeth as his will sent out a rallying cry. Now he needed to stay alive until they arrived.
“You think you cornered the market on death, cowboy?”
As the jeer slid from his tongue, a voice in the back of his mind screamed that he’d gone too far and the end was nigh. To Milo’s utter shock, something that might have been fearful confusion crept into Ezekiel’s eyes before he threw back his head and gave that mad cackle that never quite touched his bloodshot eyes.
“You’ve got gumption, I’ll give you that, partner.” Ezekiel giggled and gave Milo a wink as he pressed the revolver against the magus’ forehead. “It’s been a while since I scalped one of my own kind, but you two make the cut. How does that sound?”
A growl that must have been felt in the tectonic plates rumbled in Ambrose’s chest.
“Sounds like you already forgot what happened last time,” the big man said in a tone so cold Milo felt a chill shimmy up and down his spine. “Take what’s coming like a man, and I might leave pieces big enough to find.”
The scalp hunter’s smile widened until Milo was certain the man’s face had stretched like taffy to accommodate the expression.
“W-eh-eh-ell, listen to the pair o’ you!” He chortled, leaning against the seat, both pistols’ aim remaining true. “Regular pair o’ comedians! You keep this up much longer, and I’m goin’ to be laughin’ too hard to put you down clean! Ha-ha, might end up taking me hours, I’ll be laughin’ so hard.”
In Milo’s peripheral vision, he caught the sable glint, and his smile in the face of Ezekiel’s threats was suddenly less forced.
“Not so sure about that, partner,” Milo said with mock solemnity. “I’ve got a feeling you're going to get bored with our act real soon.”
“Hehehe…why…hehe…why’s that?”
Milo threw Ambrose a wink before meeting Ezekiel’s eyes with a grave expression.
“Our acts always have the same punchline.”
Three ribbons of shimmering black sand lashed out from the back of the Rollsy, twisting mid-flight into a shadowy semblance of thorny vines. Two of the tendrils went for the cowboy’s hands, ripping the guns into the air in a spray of lacerating particles. The third tendril coiled around Ezekiel’s neck and yanked violently backward, man and si’lat tumbling into the empty gun nest.
Milo and Ambrose leaped into the cab, Ambrose rushing to get the vehicle started while Milo scrambled to follow the gurgling cowboy. His will called the two si'lat from battering the two revolvers across the courtyard to attend him as he surveyed Ezekiel Boucher’s struggle.
Still managing to force a choked, viscous laugh as the jagged black vine twisted and ripped at his throat, the cowboy never stopped thrashing and kicking. The heels of his peeling split-sided boots rang off the sides of the gunner’s station, a violent staccato beat. Bright arterial blood sprayed across the metal deck and was promptly smeared this way and that as Ezekiel continued to twist and squirm.
His thorn-ravaged fingers raked through the si'lat ineffectually, then somehow, he wrenched his chin low enough to bite down on a mouthful of black sand with stained teeth.
Milo reeled as he felt his connection with the shade-animated construct snap like a taut wire.
Swearing and batting ineffectually at the spots flickering across his vision, Milo’s mind loosed the two other si'lat. Cutting the air with a serpentine hiss, the vicious constructs flew down on the cowboy in a whirling, scouring cloud of black razors.
The Rollsy’s engine roared, and Milo felt the vehicle lurch underneath him with a snarl of gears engaging. His hands shot out to brace himself on the lip of the nest, and he was thrown halfway into the nest. One knee of his trousers soaking in Ezekiel’s blood on the metal-plated deck, Milo found himself within arm’s reach of the bloodied man, who tore at the black grit slashing back and forth across his body. As Milo struggled to stand, he felt a tremble in his magical awareness.
As impossible as it seemed, the cowboy’s raking fingers and snapping teeth were in fact draining and wounding the si'lat.
Milo had once emptied a pistol into a si'lat, and it had no effect on the creature. It had required magical fire to destroy it. It made no sense that the scalp hunter’s bare teeth could inflict such damage, but then Milo remembered the curse. Some aspect of it must have made anything he used to inflict violence exceptionally potent, even in the realm of the metaphysical.
The Rollsy swung into reverse, and Milo was thrown to one side as he watched Ezekiel struggle
with the weakening si'lat. The cowboy, despite his wounds, showed no signs of faltering, and Milo realized he had seconds before his constructs came apart like the last one.
Still gripping the lip of the gun nest, Milo recalled the si'lat, then threw his body into a thrusting frontal kick.
Ezekiel, reaching to tear at the retreating clouds of grit, took Milo’s foot square in the chest and went rolling head over heels into the bed of the Rollsy. He landed flat on his back with a dull thump, his head pointed toward the rear of the vehicle less than a foot from the fuel cans strapped there. With an almost boneless litheness, he rolled to his feet, a blood-soaked specter with a smile that gaped like a knife wound. Bulging eyes swept over Milo, and then the scalp hunter’s nostrils flared in a series of exaggerated sniffs.
“Ha-ha, there it is,” he crowed. “You do have my knife! Told Percy I could smell it. Good thing, since I’m going to need it.”
He then spread his arms so Milo could appreciate the scalps dangling from his slashed, gory buckskin.
Both men braced themselves as the Rollsy began to accelerate, ready to bear them out of the courtyard and down the looping track. Ezekiel turned his crouch into a spring, and Milo only had a heartbeat to react.
“Here’s the punchline!” he roared as he swung his cane up.
BURN
The skull yawned wide to vomit witchfire and the blast caught Ezekiel mid-spring, unnatural heat and the eldritch force driving him down and back. There was a bell-like clang as his burning body rebounded off the strapped-in fuel cans, then he was bouncing behind them as the Rollsy pulled away. Milo nearly gave a whoop of victory as he watched the flames lick over Ezekiel’s shrinking form, but then his mind registered what his eyes had already seen.
Emerald flames clung to the fuel cans strapped to the bed.
Seeing no other choice, Milo launched the mangled si'lat at the straps, their jagged forms ripping through with ease. Another command and the animated clouds of black sand hoisted the cooking canisters up and over the tailgate just in time.
The fuel canisters struck the paving stones of the courtyard entrance as the Rollsy flew onto the track, detonating in a cascade of natural and supernatural flame. Milo twisted away from the heat of the blast as his ears rang with the auditory assault of the detonation. The si’lat were not so lucky, hanging at the end of the tailgate, their abused essence matrices shattering under waves of heat and raw force.
When Milo looked at the mass of twisted metal and burning fuel in their wake, he breathed a sigh of relief he couldn’t hear because of his explosion-abused ears. The sigh caught when he saw a smoldering figure rise from the ground. One hand waved jauntily at them while the other slapped the clinging flames with a filthy, drooping cowboy hat.
“HAHAHA! Don’t worry!” Ezekiel hollered after them, his voice fading on the wind. “I’ll be seein’ you boys real soon!”
* * *
“Is he one of you?” Milo asked as he slid into the cab’s passenger seat. “Is he a Nephilim?”
Ambrose kept his eyes forward as they carved down the winding track, hands clenched on the wheel.
“I don’t know,” he shouted back to be heard over the wind and the chugging engine. “I don’t think so.”
Milo craned his neck to look over his shoulder. So far, there were no signs of pursuit, but he didn’t imagine that would last.
“We thought you killed him,” Milo said, pointing at Ambrose and then putting the same hand on his own chest. “I hit him hard enough to kill him three times over.”
Ambrose shook his head, and Milo saw his huge hands tighten on the wheel.
“But he didn’t stay that way, I know!” he growled, then he swung his head to one side, eyes narrowed. “Hold on, this is going to be rough!”
Milo latched a white-knuckle grip on the dashboard and door as the Rollsy swung hard left and began to rumble down the unformed slope.
“W-what the H-h-hell!” Milo screamed. His bones were about to rattle free from their jarring descent.
“Need to avoid the switchbacks,” Ambrose shouted back, then raised a hand where Zoidze’s map lay crumpled. “And this cuts a clearer path to where we’re headed. Just hold on and shut up!”
Milo could not shut up. He was too busy screaming in terror as Ambrose took them on a course that was one part high-speed off-roading and one part slalom, using an armored vehicle instead of skis. They rode the razor edge of rapid descent and flat-out plummeted for what felt like hours as Ambrose tacked and pitched the Rollsy like a boat in a storm. More than once, it seemed impossible for them to not go plunging off some ridgeline or plow into a rocky outcropping, but each time, the big man managed to skate by with a clearance of mere centimeters.
The last dive onto relatively level ground bounced the Rollsy hard enough that it knocked the wind out of Milo, leaving him gasping like a landed fish. Milo fought to force air into his lungs for several seconds before he realized that they were rolling along at an almost leisurely pace.
“See?” Ambrose muttered as he squinted at the map. “Nothing to worry about.”
Milo, his muscles still spasming from the strain of the descent, sat staring and twitching at his bodyguard.
“Next time you find a short cut,” Milo said slowly, hoping the hammering in his chest would slow down soon, “just say no.”
Ambrose frowned at Milo, shaking his head ruefully.
“Do you know how many people could have made it down that slope alive, much less with their vehicle in one piece?”
Milo stood up a little in his seat to look back up the hill, which might have been called a mountain had it not stood in the shadow of Mount Kazbek.
“Just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should.” Milo grunted and slumped back down to nod at the map. “You got that figured out yet?”
Ambrose nodded but had reached down under the seat to pull out his copy of Lokkemand’s maps. The Rollsy continued to crawl along as somewhere up above, there was the distant rumble of large engines and the squeal of brakes.
“What’s wrong?” Milo asked, not bothering to keep the anxiety out of his voice. “Why aren’t we speeding toward the marquis?”
Ambrose was alternating between the two maps, brows furrowed as his mouth worked at forming words he never got around to speaking.
“Ambrose?” Milo prompted, about ready to give the big man a shake of the shoulder when he threw both maps down on the seat between them and laid his boot into the accelerator.
“Just hope that old priest knows what he’s about,” Ambrose growled over the rising roar of the engines. “He’s got us heading into a wooded vale with a river, but according to Lokkemand’s map, that gorge doesn’t have a forest or a river. It’s just a bare gorge.”
Milo picked up the maps, more to feel involved in the process than to check Ambrose’s map skills. If he said things didn’t match up, they didn’t.
“It’s the only lead we’ve got,” Milo said as he frowned down at the maps. “And we can’t expect that Zoidze hasn’t given them the same information. The Americans could be heading there the same as us. That cannot happen.”
Ambrose nodded and turned back to the road for a moment before swinging his gaze back to Milo.
“About the cowboy,” he began, mustache wriggling like it always did when he was searching for words. “I don’t think, or my best guess is, that he isn’t a Nephilim like me.”
Milo sighed and slumped a little deeper into his seat.
He’d expected as much, though he couldn’t have explained why he’d intuited the same. Perhaps it was something about the utter difference between the two men. Ambrose seemed awkward, even bumbling, as he ambled about daily tasks, but in battle, he was a force of nature moving with a speed, sureness, and strength that could turn the tide of a fight in an instant. Even if Milo hadn’t known Ambrose to be half-angelic, he would have known he was inherently potent and glorious after seeing the man at war. Even if Ambrose had been a villain
and used his prowess for evil, it would have been a grand and spectacular sort of violence, the kind to cow cities and break armies.
Ezekiel Boucher was nothing like that.
Dangerous, extremely so, but it was all quickness, low cunning, and viciousness. It was a murderer’s way of violence—not the sort to rally allies and intimidate foes, but something which would seem cheap even to allies and abominable to the enemy. A man that rotten, and Milo wasn’t just thinking of the scalp hunter’s hygiene, couldn’t be heroic or tyrannical even if he wanted to.
That meant he was some other sort of dangerous being who was nigh impossible to kill, which currently was the last thing Milo needed on his list of concerns.
“What is he?” Milo groaned as he looked out and saw the sun sinking toward the mountainous horizon.
“Cursed,” Ambrose said with a shrug. “That’s about all we know about him.”
Being reminded of the curse brought the hexed knife to mind, and Milo felt where the knife lay in his coat pocket in a wrapping of greased leather.
“He said he could smell the knife on me,” Milo said, his skin crawling as he felt the blade through the fabric and hide. “I wonder if the curse has some kind of connection that he can track?”
Ambrose gave Milo a sidelong look that told him the thought was not a comforting one.
“You could pitch it,” Ambrose suggested, thrusting a chin to the rocky slope to their left. “Wing it hard enough, and you could send them down into that ravine sniffing for us.”
“I wish I could,” Milo murmured honestly. “But I need to make sure the marquis knows what kind of curse we are working with, and the best way I know to do that is by making sure we have something carrying the curse with us.”
Ambrose nodded, but his face was twisted like he’d smelled something foul.
“I suppose,” he agreed, shaking his head. “We’ll have to hope we aren’t bringing too much trouble to this marquis’ door. Not sure about the fey, but most people don’t take kindly to strangers showing up uninvited and making a mess.”
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 48
