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

The trip to the queen’s chamber passed quickly. Antoine confirmed the main group of living creatures was in the same place as last time. Lyssa was grateful for the spell, though the memory of the awful smells still made her gag.

Aisha grimaced as she surveyed the decaying carnage from Lyssa’s earlier battle. “Such disgusting creatures. I don’t envy you having to do this more than once, Hecate.”

“Sure.” Ryan sliced a couple of rotting carcasses apart. “But this is mostly a numbers game. She said the small ones aren’t so tough.” Faint clicks sounded from his mouth. “Nothing nearby in any of the tunnels, and I can bounce to the end of them.”

“That’s good to know,” Lyssa said. “I wasn’t sure if the tunnels were connected to the other chambers somehow.”

Antoine nodded toward the wall. “Everything we want to kill is behind there.”

Ryan tilted his head and produced more clicks. “There’s a lot of movement over there, along with some other vibrations. I think they know we’re here. Surprise is no longer an option.”

“I should open it.” Aisha walked to the edge of the pool. “And give them their chance to die if they’re so eager to face us.”

“Save your energy,” Lyssa said, lifting her pistol. “I brought an extra explosives mag as a knocker. You’ll get your glory from roasting them.”

“And if your bullets prove insufficient?” Aisha asked.

Lyssa chuckled. This was one of those times Aisha’s pokes slid right past her ego. “Then you can prove what a badass you are, Flame Deva. It doesn’t matter as long as we get it open, but I’d prepare a nice gift for them.”

Antoine hefted his staff with both hands. “I’ll do my best to help you, but remember, I can’t do much if you’re dead.”

“That’s a stirring speech,” Lyssa replied. “Very memorable.”

Aisha snorted. “I will not be defeated by such pathetic creatures.” She rattled off a Sanskrit chant, and two circles of flaming orbs winked into existence above her. “Bring the weaklings to their slaughter. Let them know pain. Let them rue the day they faced off against Torches. We will be the last thing they see as we end their twisted, miserable lives.”

“Now that’s a speech,” Lyssa said.

“You’ve both got issues,” Antoine said.

“Yeah, I can’t argue there,” Lyssa said.

She aimed at the center of the wall and pulled the trigger. Her rounds blasted rock and dirt out of the wall. The chunks splashed into the pool, some landing in and on the body of the dead queen. She fired at the same spot repeatedly, deepening and widening the hole with each round.

Half the mag was spent by the time she blew through the wall. Her new hole exposed a writhing mass of eyeless chittering six-foot-long lizards covered in dark scales. The only thing they had in common with the previous monsters was the slathering jaws filled with dripping fangs.

“Huh,” Lyssa said. “I didn’t expect that. That’s a new model.”

With shrieks, the lizards surged through the hole.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Aisha didn’t hesitate to unleash an inferno of death. The fireballs from her first circle came down from above her and pelted the advancing monsters. The explosions rippled across the front line, burning, scorching, and melting all the unfortunate nearby targets.

Dead and charred creatures collapsed to the ground. Others screeched in their final moments before the flames took them. Those behind them paid little attention, jostling and charging and stepping over their fallen comrades or knocking the wounded aside.

Aisha released the fireballs from her second circle, and they pounded the surviving enemy. The scales of the lizards did little to protect them as her spells struck. The hungry fire and heat vaporized the monsters’ flesh.

Lyssa was impressed and glad she invited Aisha, but she couldn’t let the other Sorceress have all the fun. Aisha’s attacks had blunted the enemy advance. Now it was time to push them back. Lyssa brought up the pistol loaded with regular rounds and opened fire.

The growing pile of scorched lizards and the dead queen’s body formed a natural barrier for the advancing lizards, forcing them into two distinct streams and higher into the chamber, which made for easy aiming. Lyssa and Aisha instinctively targeted opposite sides as if they’d been working together for years. Their bullets and flame blasts struck the attacking lizards.

The monsters looked different from the snake-roaches, but they weren’t any more bulletproof or intelligent. With their more defined heads, Lyssa didn’t have to experiment with technique.

Her first few shots proved a bullet through the brain killed a monster lizard the same as a person, and the lack of explosions or disintegration meant their bodies became obstacles for their friends. Unlike the snake-roaches, the lizards bled red blood. It felt quaint and normal in a twisted way.

Aisha’s blasts continued to char the advancing enemy column and scatter their toasted bodies. Her use of fire didn’t frighten the survivors any more than the bullets carving through the other column.

Lyssa kept up her attacks, satisfied the newer monsters weren’t any cleverer than the snake-roaches. The last thing she wanted to deal with was an entire army of fast and dangerous monsters that demonstrated tactics.

Despite the solid efforts of the two specialist Torches, a lizard made it past the front line. It leaped toward Antoine, who brought up his staff and shouted in Latin. The staff hit the lizard, and a second later, the monster blew apart in bloody chunks.

“I thought you needed to be taken care of?” Lyssa shouted over her gunfire before laughing. “It doesn’t look that way to me.”

“It’s easy when I just have to stand here, and they come to me,” Antoine yelled back. “And this only works when I can get clear contact close to muscle tissue. If these guys had decent armor plates, it’d be useless.”

Lyssa gunned down two more lizards. She was starting to enjoy herself. Every dead monster was a kick in the shin of the rogue responsible. She was killing his time, money,