A Plague of Wizards by Wesley Allison

Author:Wesley Allison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magic, wizards, dinosaur, steampunk, dragon, sorcery
Publisher: Wesley Allison

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Kieran Baxter stepped off the trolley in front of the shipyard. Beyond the loading area and the office building, he could see two massive freighters sitting at the dock. He really didn’t want to continue on to the desk that awaited him in the shipping office. His eyes still burned with lack of sleep.

He reached up and wiped away the perspiration that was forming above his brow. Then he looked at the moisture in the palm of his hand. It was already a hot day, but perhaps not hot enough to warrant so much sweat. He stepped over into the shade next to one of the warehouses.

Suddenly he stopped and looked around. The dock was over there. Up the hill near the Governor’s Warehouse… He stepped back up the hill to stop in front of the largest of the area’s many buildings. “This would have been right where we were standing when the tyrannosaurus roared.” He walked swiftly downhill again, cutting between two warehouses and then maneuvering through a lot overgrown with weeds and filled with broken and rusted equipment from the shipyard. Finally he stopped next to a shed, which was leaning over precariously. This would have been about where Zurfina had spoken to him.

He struggled to think for a moment. The dream had been so vivid that he could no longer remember if the sorceress had really said anything to him or not. He looked around on the grown, though he couldn’t for the life of him think of what he was looking for. Then he saw it, sticking out from beneath a broken piece of plywood, dirty and torn. Pushing aside the wood, he picked up a doll, with a cloth body and a porcelain head. Whatever dress it had once worn was long gone. Its head was damaged: there was a small crack just in front of the left ear and the hand painted mouth had been worn away.

“This can’t be Senta’s doll,” he said to himself.

Then the doll raised its hand to where its pink lips had once been and blew him a kiss.

Dropping the cloth demon, he jumped back, tripped over a piece of equipment and fell on his back. Agonizing pain shot through his side, causing him to pass out. He thought, though he wasn’t sure, that it was only a minute or so later when consciousness returned. He was looking up at a large fluffy cloud passing between him and the sun. His hand was wet and he lifted it up to see that it was covered in sticky red blood. Then he looked down to see a long pointed piece of rusty metal sticking out of his lower abdomen.

“Kafira’s twat!”

This was it. He was going to die. But then the image of a sweet face looking down on him from above changed everything. It was Bryony’s face. She was at home. She would spend the day cleaning the house and watering her flowers, stopping only for a cup of tea and a biscuit, and then she would cook a lovely meal just for him.

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