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

Some men continued to fire. Others hesitated, unsure now that their enemy was in their midst. One brave soul tried to pistol-whip her. She parried the blow with a baton before kneecapping the man, then smashing him across the head.

“Remember, you’re supposed to apply reasonable force,” Jofi said. “That will improve your standing with the local authorities.”

“If I was applying unreasonable force, they’d all be dead,” Lyssa snapped.

A thug screamed and tried to tackle her. She met his face with a wide swing from both batons, knocking him to the side.

The sorcery trap continued to puzzle her. There was no Sorcerer to explain it. She suspected there had never been, which raised other uncomfortable questions.

Groans, screams, crunches, and cracks overlapped as Lyssa became a flurry of enchanted concussive force. She smacked and pummeled the pack of gangsters, who had been waiting to ambush wounded cops, not a combat-trained Sorceress.

The gangsters had been brave enough to sit in the rooms while sorcery went off, but that didn’t mean they could win with the weapons they had. The growing frustration and terror on their faces proved that. They’d not done more than bruise her despite the advantage of a booby trap, superior numbers, and an ambush. Pathetic.

Lyssa hissed when a bullet struck her back. The round clattered to the ground, leaving a stinging ache. A jumping roll helped her avoid the next shot and close on the shooter. She slammed a baton into a man’s stomach with a fierce jab, and he doubled over in pain. She finished him off with a blow to the head.

As best she could tell, she hadn’t killed anyone yet. Seriously injured, yes, but not killed. Her sides, back, and chest ached. Rips in her regalia marked where she’d been shot. This job was beginning to annoy her.

“You can all just give up, you know,” she shouted before bashing a gun out of a man’s hand and introducing her knee to his nose with a leaping strike. “I’m Hecate! Look at my mask and know the truth. Look at your fallen friends. If you face me, you risk your death. Mercy is only for those who know their limits.”

“You’re more melodramatic than usual today,” Jofi said.

Lyssa tuned out everything but possible targets as she kicked, bashed, and crushed anyone stupid enough to come near her. The numbers thinned. They didn’t surrender, but their attacks slowed.

A man shook out his hand after losing his gun and drew a knife with his other hand. He lunged at her, and she blocked his stab with one baton before nailing him hard across the chest and knocking him to the ground.

Lyssa spun. “Oh, this is good.”

There was no one left awake. She’d pacified the second floor. With the din of immediate battle and her pounding pulse receding, she could make out murmurs and barked orders from below, but nothing that sounded like anyone daring to come up the stairs.

“Something’s wrong,” she whispered after catching her breath.

“Why do you say that?” Jofi asked. “If you’re worried, you can always use me.”

“I think we’ll get to that soon, but these guys should be more scared.”

“They appeared scared to me.”

Lyssa flexed her fingers on her batons. “More scared. Continuing to fight when you’re getting your ass handed to you isn’t the same thing as accepting that an unstoppable Night Goddess is beating you to a pulp even after you keep shooting.”

She rotated her shoulder, wincing. Ice packs and some of Tricia’s herbs would help when she got home. Her regalia would need to do the rest.

“I’m not going all-out on them,” she continued, “but I’m not going easy, either. And why are their buddies letting me beat them up? They had that trap, but no follow-up.”

“Many criminals are heartless,” Jofi said.

“Sacrificial lambs, huh? Maybe.”

Lyssa surveyed the downed men. Most were unconscious or semi-conscious. She had crafted a carpet of beaten thugs, and not one had acted like he thought he’d lose against a Sorceress. It wasn’t as if she expected them to run in terror at the mere sight of her, but going hand-to-hand against someone in a death mask with a literal shadow aura took more than standard thug courage.

Maybe Jofi was right. A diversion? What would be the point? Even if they got away from her, half the Phoenix PD waited for them outside. Those cops didn’t have enchanted batons and sorcery-enhanced defenses to keep them from going to lethal force sooner.

Lyssa looked down the hall at the stairs. No one had come up, which meant they were waiting for her.

They’d thought they’d caught cops with their blast, but her first victim had shouted that she was a Sorceress. The others must have put the pieces together.

“More traps,” Lyssa muttered.

“A cautious approach might be prudent,” Jofi said. “There was no explicit timeline mentioned by the lieutenant for job completion.”

“No way. They tried to blow me up. I’m not creeping around like I’m afraid of these guys, and I was in the middle of something when I got the message.”

“You were in the middle of eating ice cream. I don’t think that ranks highly among important human activities.”

“It was premium ice cream,” Lyssa said. “You don’t appreciate that because you don’t eat.”

“I can’t refute the logic in that sentence.”

She didn’t have time to argue with a spirit about the glories of ice cream, not with a whole other floor filled with murderous cartel thugs.

Chapter Four

Not every door on the second floor was open. Given how much pain she’d delivered without significant resistance, she now doubted a Sorcerer was involved, other than by handing over a dangerous toy. She didn’t doubt it enough to risk getting hit in the back with a spell, though. Her regalia was far more vulnerable to sorcery than conventional weapons.

Lyssa rushed to a closed door and kicked it open. She found nothing but an empty bedroom with a giant TV and a gaming console connected. The starting screen for Premier League Championship 2020 was there,