Southwest Days (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 2) by Kal Aaron (best book recommendations TXT) 📕

We need this incident downplayed as much as possible.” Lyssa kicked a rock out of her way. It splashed in the pool. “But we need to be sure, so this doesn’t come back and bite someone else in the ass. I mean that literally.”

She’d half-hoped to find the victim alive, even though her rational mind told her it was unlikely. Part of her believed a rogue who understood the usefulness of a hostage was sitting in the cave, exercising direct control over the monsters. But hope wasn’t a strategy, and she hadn’t felt anyone else’s sorcery since entering the mine.

“How will you track other potential monsters without asking Shadow scientists?” Jofi asked.

Lyssa stood. “Good question. I’m not willing to just poke around a couple of caverns and declare it over. I need to be sure.”

“Wouldn’t more monsters have come during the fight against the queen? Your gunshots and explosions were likely heard all over this tunnel system.”

“We don’t know they would have automatically shown up.” Lyssa headed back toward the hatchery. “The queen didn’t bust on through until I shot the egg. There could be a bunch of queens in hidden caverns for all I know. That’s what’s bothering me. It’s like somebody set this up that way on purpose.”

“This immediate area appears to be a dead-end,” Jofi said.

Lyssa nodded. “There are no monsters left, and I don’t think crawling through tiny tunnels on my hands and knees is the smartest way to go about things.”

“You claim there are no monsters left, but you don’t sound convinced.”

Lyssa chuckled. “You think so?”

“Yes.”

“It’s called being thorough. One person is dead, and another might die. I want to make sure no one else dies.” Lyssa sighed. “There’s another thing that bothers me about this, now that I think of it. Some rogue creating monsters makes sense, but it’s not like my public profile is low after the Houston thing. This wasn’t an overnight operation, which means this guy was risking me coming after him. Samuel didn’t make a big public announcement that I wouldn’t be taking on jobs.”

“This is an abandoned mine,” Jofi replied. “He might have suspected no victims would come until his plans came to fruition. Without victims, there’s no reason to send a Torch. The EAA staffing is grand compared to the amount of territory individual Torches must traverse.”

“Good point.” Lyssa tapped the remains of a small snake-roach with her baton. “It’d be nice if they branded these, but the victim thing makes me wonder more than before. Either Adams is wrong, and Lucky Nardi is the unluckiest guy out there, or they knew there might be something here when they decided to come.”

“What do you intend to do?” Jofi asked.

“My job.” Lyssa gave a firm nod. “We’ll sweep the mine, and if we don’t find anything, I’m thinking we’re done here for today. This will require a follow-up investigation before I’m willing to say we’re done forever.”

“I thought you weren’t going to travel through tunnels? How do you intend to sweep the mine?”

“I’ll do what’s needed to ensure there are no more unfortunate surprises,” Lyssa replied. “Trying to make an internet video shouldn’t be a death sentence. I would have preferred to find the guy behind our new monster friends, but that looks like it’ll be the hard part.”

Lyssa fished her phone out of her pocket and wiped gunk off the screen. Fortune smiled on her; it had survived. She checked the time. Three hours remained before sunset.

“Remind me to grab one of the smaller monsters on the way out.”

Chapter Thirteen

Lyssa emerged from the mine with a corpse of a small snake-roach in her arms and Jake Colmes' half-chewed driver’s license clutched in a hand. Adams and Ortiz were sitting in their cruiser, chatting. Ortiz laughed at something. Neither had looked her way yet.

They finally glanced in her direction and threw open their doors, wide-eyed. Ortiz stopped midway to grab a shotgun from a cradle above the dash. Adams pulled his pistol and swallowed.

“Halt!” Ortiz shouted. “Cochise County Sheriff’s Department! This is a restricted area!” He narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Is that you, Hecate?”

Lyssa stopped. She stank more than hurt, and a shotgun blast wouldn’t take her down, considering how little damage she’d suffered other than to her sense of smell. That didn’t mean she would prefer to end her day by getting shot and having to talk down two scared cops.

“Yes, it’s me,” she said, staying in the shadow of the mine in case she needed to assume wraith form. “Sometimes I don’t clean up well, especially when I have to fight monsters in a dank hole in the ground. So, can we calm down now? Don’t worry. This thing is beyond dead.”

Ortiz lowered his shotgun. “Sorry. You kind of look like a zombie with that skull mask and that stuff all over you. Just to be sure, you’re not, like, dead, are you?” He looked at Adams, who shook his head before turning back to Lyssa. “Can Sorceresses come back to life?”

“I’m still alive, and no, we can’t come back to life,” Lyssa replied in a weary voice. “This is mostly monster guts, blood, and water from some big pool a monster probably vomited in, and who knows what else. So, yeah, I’m not dead, but they all are, at least every damned one I ran into.”

“All?” Ortiz shuddered. “It was a lot of them, then?”

“Wow. That sucks.” Adams stared at her. “The sheriff said from the beginning, ‘Don’t screw with this crap. Call the EAA and get somebody. There could be a dragon down there for all we know.’”

“Good for him,” Lyssa said. “Re-elect that man for his wisdom. And I wish it was only one giant lizard to deal with. That would have been a lot less annoying.”

She was too tired and annoyed to offer grand, intimidating speeches about the power of Hecate, sorcery, and darkness. Sometimes being a Torch meant she represented the epitome of the Illuminated Society’s combat prowess and conducted herself