Deadly Wands by Brent Reilly Read Free Book Online Page B

killed by a child. So how does it feel to get tricked by a
little boy?” Sitting on his chest plate, Billy peered into his
face. "You know what I like most about a fair fight? The better
fighter always wins."
    Delirious, Billy popped up in the air and
blasted fire from all four wands, laughing like a lunatic. He
looked down to see the old dueler staring up at him in horror.
    “You can use boot wands!” Meaning, other than
for propulsion. “You’re the one who got Barchuk!”
    “And, after I destroy the Mongol Empire,”
Billy warned him, “I’m gonna kill Genghis Khan.”
    “Noooooooo!” the world’s most successful
general cried.
    “Billy!” William yelled out as he landed.
“This is the bastard who led the team that wiped out three
generations of our family in Prussia, so make him die hard.”
    “I’m busy transferring wands. You make him
suffer.”
    So while Billy absorbed the world’s most
powerful wands, William electrocuted the old man’s genitals. The
boy looked like a nympho enjoying her first multiple orgasm while
the general looked like he swallowed a pinecone. While the bandit’s
wands were incredible, they couldn’t compare to these
Millennials.
    They say you begin owning your wands and end
with your wands owning you. Feeding the world’s most powerful
addiction meant Billy would have to duel constantly. Fighting would
boost his wand power, which would increase his addiction, which
would force him to satisfy an ever greater thirst in a vicious
cycle that some called a Faustian Bargain. Every super-quad is an
addict, but never had so strong an addiction started in someone so
young. Nor armed with the world’s best wands. This addiction
determined Billy’s fate. He could never retire, never take a year
off. He had to fight until he died or the withdrawal would kill
him.
    What no one appreciated then was how the
world’s most powerful wands would improve a six year old’s ability
to heal. Because he’d use his wands constantly, Billy bathed in
wand juice daily, which fortified his capacity to recuperate. His
body grew, year after year, soaking up wand juice. Growing up in
healing energy did not make him invincible, but it did make him
very hard to kill. Billy would sleep off injuries that would have
killed others.
    “Watch this!” the boy told the general,
torching his new Millennials almost eleven meters. “You just gave
the world’s best wands to the Empire’s greatest enemy. I’ll now
join my father in targeting Mongol super-quads.”
    The old man tried to curse him, but Billy
just laughed in his face. Literally -- he landed on his chest
plate. General Subodei, scourge of lands from China to Russia to
Hungary, watched the boy watch him die. It seemed to take him
forever to bleed to death, but for Billy, it ended all too
soon.
    Billy savored the best damn day of his life.
And his week would only get better because they’d find thousands of
wands in Subodei's mountaintop home, including a backup set of
Millennial Wands that the general was long rumored to have. It was
the coup of a lifetime.
    Like most parents, William and Elizabeth
recorded almost everything their only child did. Unlike most kids,
Billy recorded himself since he sparked his first wand at age
three. He wanted a video of every memorable moment of what he
expected to be a tragically short life. So now he saved this
experience forever on his wand, careful to show Subodei’s dying
breath.
    Billy left his childhood behind without a
backward glance.
     

CHAPTER 8
     
    Dueling obsessed Billy, forcing the family to
visit hundreds of big cities so he could exhaust the world’s best
video libraries at night while exhausting dueling arenas during the
day. He even squinted at the oldest videos that had decayed so much
they had more gray than color. Billy lived, breathed, and bled the
sport like the worst fanatic. He spoke of ancient duelers like they
were neighbors and ran librarians ragged by demanding obscure
recordings