Southwest Nights (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 1) by Kal Aaron (large ebook reader txt) 📕

I will try to get him to surrender. If he doesn’t, we take him out, but that doesn’t mean we can heavily damage this port or fling spells wherever we want. You start throwing fire everywhere, and the next thing we know, we’ll have an oil tanker burning, and both Elders pissed, along with the entire state. We might be Torches, but I don’t want to take on the entire state of Texas.”

Aisha shifted to her knees, an eager look on her face. “You know I can be precise when necessary.” She rotated her wrists and stretched out her arms. “We’ll be fine. The criminals and the rogues will suffer.”

“Knowing you can do something is not the same as knowing you will do something.”

Lyssa stared at the giant crane moving the container. Serafina’s killer doll had been a product of dangerous experimental sorcery, but the Shadows had golems, dolls, and constructs with just as much power. A fusion of the best of both might be centuries off, but that would be a true Golden Age. Humanity just needed to get there first without one side killing the other.

Lyssa and Aisha waited for a couple of minutes as the crane lowered the container to the edge of the loading zone. Aisha turned, feeling her way along the edge of the bike until she found the back and hopped on, allowing Lyssa to extend the wraith form over her.

“I think my original suggestion of death from above would have had more impact.” Aisha sniffed. “Shadow thugs don’t like being attacked from the air.”

Lyssa chuckled. “I think we’ll stick to surprising them using my wraith form.”

“It lacks style and elegance, but so be it.”

Lyssa started the bike and drove down the rock pile toward a road. The bike revved under her skillful touch, accelerating and heading toward a sharp corner. She turned and cut across, which was easy without traffic. Her bike shook as they left the road and entered a grass strip before crossing it to another road.

The disguised Ducati zoomed down the new road before sharply turning again and heading toward the maze of stacked cargo containers covering the area. Lyssa sped up as a semi with a large empty bed pulled through an open gate. She slid to the side and drove past it. The driver glanced her way, frowning at the strange shadows moving into the field of cargo containers, but he didn’t stop driving.

Lyssa continued forward before making a hard right and heading toward three stacks of containers at the far edge of the maze. The crane had swung away from the ship minutes before and gone quiet. Beyond the man running the crane, she noticed dockworkers in the area inspecting containers, but none were close to the Torches’ target. That simplified matters and lowered the chance of collateral damage.

She maneuvered her bike between containers, following a narrow passage between two rows until she was around the corner from their target. She stopped, and Lyssa visually confirmed the cargo ID.

“That’s it, right?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Aisha replied. “But we didn’t need to know that number, did we?”

Lyssa took slow, even breaths. Aisha was right. There was no doubting the familiar pressure of sorcery in her chest. It had built far past anything she’d recently felt.

The container must have been jammed full of semi-active and active shards. Lyssa had clung to the hope that Sellers had represented the pinnacle of the smuggling, but now she worried Aisha was right, and he was just the beginning of a long, painful trail.

“I don’t see anyone yet.” Lyssa frowned. “It’s almost time for the pick-up.”

“Sellers could have woken up and warned them.” Aisha looked around.

“And have them drop a container full of shards that reek of sorcery and let us grab it? That’s a lot of money to throw away.” Lyssa sucked a breath through her teeth. “I doubt it. They’ll be here. We don’t know how punctual these guys are. Sellers is afraid of Nelson. Maybe he doesn’t care if his guys wait all day for him.”

The truck she’d passed earlier pulled past the target container and stopped one container-length ahead. Their target lay on the top of another container.

Two men in yellow reflective vests, hard hats, and heavy boots jumped out of the truck. One pulled out a phone and tapped something into it before looking around.

“No masks.” Lyssa peered at the men. “Nelson isn’t here?”

“Then he’s running,” Aisha growled. “He’s been warned. Sellers is living up to his name.”

“We don’t know that yet. Calm down.” Lyssa drew and expanded her batons, prepping them with her spells. “And we can still secure the shards. As long as we don’t kill everyone, we’ll be able to follow up on this.”

“Should you be doing that?” Aisha nodded at the batons. “If the rogue is here, he could sense it.”

“It’d be hard to sense that kind of low-level sorcery when he’s got that crate of shards interfering with everything. Let’s wait and see what happens.”

Lyssa and Aisha waited in tense silence as the minutes ticked past. Jofi remained silent as well. The two men from the truck readied chains and hooks for the load.

“It’s past 7:00.” Aisha hissed in frustration. “He’s not coming.”

Lyssa had to face the possibility that Sellers had somehow tipped Nelson off. Grabbing the container and warning the Society about a smuggling port would put an end to the shard business for a while, but as in Japan, the people behind it would wiggle away and try again in a different country. A half-victory would taste like ashes.

“If we follow up on the ship and the manifest, we might figure something out.” Lyssa frowned. “We can at least pass that on to the Elders. For now, we stick to the plan. We’re Torches. We’re supposed to burn away the trouble of the world, not make more.”

A lift truck arrived at the container, pushing its tines underneath the heavy metal box. With a rumble, the truck lifted the long blue container and