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

end the fight. She stowed her penetrator-loaded pistol and tossed the explosive-loaded pistol into her right hand before conjuring a small cloud of shadow. A quick peek around the opposite corner revealed another fanned set of shiny blades.

She smirked. Mirrors. It was clever of Adrien, but he couldn’t hit what he couldn’t see.

Lyssa tossed her spell toward the mirrors on one side, swallowing them in darkness before rushing to the opposite side and doing the same thing. She crossed again and charged with her remaining strength, her gun in front of her. The mirror blades flipped onto their sides and shot out in a sweeping arc. She leaned back and they flew over her, one almost slicing her nose.

After snapping back up, Lyssa continued her run. Her form began to solidify in patches. Too many wounds and too many clever tricks had drained her. She didn’t care. Adrien wouldn’t escape if it killed her.

Her heart thundered. Her soft footsteps turned to heavy boot strikes as the rest of the wraith form failed. There was a shadow from a ring of whirling blades on a container and the outline of a man’s body. She knew exactly where he was.

Sometimes Lyssa needed tricks. Sometimes she needed clever psychological ploys. Sometimes she just needed to put a bullet into a man’s chest.

Lyssa dropped to the ground right before the corner of the container, sliding feet first as she cleared it. Adrien stood nearby, his orbiting blades at the ready. They fired in her direction, aimed at what would have been chest height before her slide. They flew over her, leaving her next to the man with a gun loaded with powerful sorcery-enhanced rounds pointed at him.

Adrien stared at her, no blades left. He reached toward the shredded side of the closest container.

Lyssa pulled the trigger. The bright flash blinded her as Adrien jerked back. His regalia was now a tattered mess, his chest mangled and bloody.

He was right; she was too used to fighting Shadows. One penetrator would have ripped through anyone without regalia.

Adrien howled in rage and pain and ripped two new blades from the container. Lyssa fired again. The attack blew off his arm and shoulder. The Sorcerer fell to his knees and coughed up blood.

“Lyssa Corti, bearer of the Night Goddess,” Adrien wheezed. “Witness my end.”

She hesitated for a moment, almost shooting before holstering her gun. Even a rogue Sorcerer deserved respect as a former Illuminated, and his invocation of the ancient ritual didn’t mean he was going to win.

She reached into her pocket for a healing herb and offered it to him. “This doesn’t have to be the end.”

“Better to die on my terms than suffer the humiliation that would follow.” He coughed again. “Bear witness, please.”

Lyssa dropped to her knees and downed the herb instead. She tightened her jaw and yanked the blade out of her abdomen, letting out a strangled yelp.

She took a deep breath and spoke the next words in Lemurian. “I, Lyssa Corti, bearer of the Night Goddess, witness the end of Adrien Allard, bearer of the City Guard. By the blood of Lemuria, may his soul find completion.”

Adrien collapsed to his side. “By the blood of Lemuria, may my soul find completion,” he replied in the same language. His breathing grew slower, and he switched back to English. “Norman, Oklahoma. Kalander’s Storage. Unit 48-B. 06-20-20-15.”

“What?” Lyssa clutched her stomach wound.

“You’ve earned it, but beware of who you tell. I question now why certain shards ended up where they did. Burn away the corruption if you dare, Torch. We live in a world of filth, not illumination, but maybe darkness is the best tool against darkness.”

Adrien stopped breathing. His eyes remained open in a death stare.

“What do you think is there?” Jofi asked.

Lyssa scooted over to rest her back against the container. Every part of her alternated between throbbing with fiery pain and numbing coldness. “Something that can wait a few days. For now, I’m going to catch my breath, wait for some of these herbs to give me enough strength to find Aisha, and go from there. We’ve just created a lot of paperwork for Damien.”

Someone’s shadow grew on a container to her side. Lyssa groaned and raised her gun.

“Are you dead?” Aisha called. “I thought we had an agreement about that.”

“Not dead yet, but if you want to finish me off, this would be a great time.”

Aisha walked around the corner, eyeing Adrien’s body. She was bloodied and burned, but she didn’t look like she’d been stabbed. She leaned over and offered her arm.

“Come on, Corti,” she whispered. “You’ve done enough for the day. You might be a thief from a family of thieves, but no one can doubt you’re a demon in battle.”

Chapter Thirty-One

A week later, Lyssa found herself standing in front of the orange door of unit 48-B in Norman, Oklahoma. She’d sloshed through a flooded parking lot after a surprise storm drenched the area. Ten minutes later, there were almost no clouds above her. Sometimes erratic weather was more impressive than sorcery.

The aftermath of the incident had gone about as well as it could, with Lyssa formally contacting the police and the EAA for assistance over Aisha’s objections. She had spent some time resting in a hotel until her regalia and herbs reduced her pain to manageable levels. Even now, she wasn’t back to one hundred percent, but she doubted Adrien had set up a long-play trap in a random Oklahoma storage unit.

Elder Samuel hadn’t said much when taking her report. He had been brief and to the point, and she wasn’t in the mood to be anything but the same.

The Elder had also officially closed out the contract, and the EAA had taken receipt of the surviving shards in Houston and was cataloging them before returning them to the Society. The only thing the Torches had refused to hand over was Adrien’s regalia. They had taken it off the body, and Aisha had promised to deliver it to