Semiautomatic Sorceress Boxed Set One: includes: Southwest Nights, Southwest Days, and Southwest Truths

by Kal Aaron

  “What you did shouldn’t be possible for someone like you,” Adrien called, his voice echoing from ahead of Lyssa. “You’re not old enough to hold such power. That shield would defy an Elder.”

  “That’s the thing about having a lot of friends instead of lackeys,” Lyssa replied. “When you put your heads together and pool your efforts, you can do a lot. If you’re that impressed, why don’t you do me a favor and give up?”

  She crept along the side of another container. The sorcery sensation intensified. Something glinted ahead. She jumped back and prepared to fire.

  No attack came. Thin, shiny blades floated in the air and fanned out at the end of a container. Lyssa wasn’t sure what he was up to.

  A whistling noise caught Lyssa’s attention from above, and she looked up just in time to see the two blades. By reflex, she swiped at one with her guns. It sparked as it slid down her pistols, but she deflected it. The other impaled her abdomen. She bit her tongue to keep from crying out.

  Lyssa ran backward as another pair of blades shot up from the opposite side of the container and missed her by inches. Running with a sharp, pointed piece of enchanted metal sticking into her abdomen when she was already wounded and drained wasn’t high on Lyssa’s list of recommended activities for the day. She stayed in motion, every step jostling the blade and making the pain flare worse.

  She continued her defensive dance until she assumed wraith form and ran around the corner. The edged onslaught stopped. Ensconced in wraith form in the long shadow of a container, she was barely visible, but her trail of blood wasn’t helping.

  “When’s the last time you fought another Illuminated?” Adrien called. “I think you’ve gotten arrogant, Hecate. You’re too used to gunning down weak Shadows and relying on defenses that assume the other side doesn’t have true sorcery. Now, because of your miscalculation, you’re going to die.”

  Despite the confidence in Adrien’s words, there was a ragged quality to his voice. The man might have had an impressive shard shield, but he’d pushed himself to the limit with his blade sorcery.

  “When was the last time I fought an Illuminated?” Lyssa laughed. “I don’t know. What time is it?”

  “We can make a deal. I’ll give you the information about your brother. I know you’re hurt. You can just lie and say I escaped. There’s nothing to be gained by fighting me and everything to lose.”

  “In your current state,” Jofi began, “victory is not assured.”

  “Winning never is,” Lyssa murmured. “But there’s no way he’s walking now.”

  She pulled some more painkiller herbs out of her pocket and munched them. Samuel had better let her rest after it was all over.

  There had been no explosions or gunfire for about a minute. The sirens had stayed distant, and flashing red and blue signaled a line of police at the far edges of the port.

  Lyssa tried to decide her next move. There was no way Aisha would lose to a bunch of second-stringers using borrowed power. Waiting for the other Sorceress might be a good move, but she also might not be coming. Aisha might have taken Lyssa’s declaration as a desire for a beginning-to-end duel with the Sorcerer, or the flame Sorceress might be exhausted or unconscious and not able to join her.

  There was no choice. Lyssa didn’t have time to wait for help, Illuminated or Shadow. It was time to 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 n
o 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 Elder Theodora. It was only a matter of time before it disintegrated and returned to the Vault of Dreams anyway.

  Tradition. Lyssa didn’t always respect it, but the death of an Illuminated meant something to her. A regalia was more than a costume or a source of power. It was a fundamental reflection of their soul and deserved to be treated as such.

  Adrien Allard was blamed as the source of all the shards, and the job was over for both the EAA and the Society, though Samuel mentioned he’d come and chat with Lyssa again after everything settled down.

  The rogue Sorcerer’s dying words gnawed at Lyssa as she stood in front of the storage unit’s door. She hadn’t mentioned the storage unit to Aisha, Damien, or Samuel. She didn’t know what they meant yet, and her concern about what had gone down lingered. Adrien’s mention of her brother could have been nothing but a trick, as Jofi suggested, but it was hard to be a Sorceress and not believe in fate a little.

  Did she just want to believe? Probably. There was a good chance she’d open the storage unit and find nothing more than some keepsakes.

  Part of her hoped that wasn’t true, but another part hoped it was. Anything inside that might lead her to her brother would change her entire life. It was easy to say she wanted to find him when she had no real leads. A desire without a plan was nothing more than a dream that would never be fulfilled.

  Lyssa took a couple of deep breaths. A building pressure bothered her as she walked down the hallway toward the indoor storage unit, her boots leaving a trail of wet footprints. Whatever was inside, there was some sorcery involved. That confirmed this lead was something more than a humiliating empty trick, but nothing else.

  Then and there, she wasn’t Hecate in front of the storage unit’s door. She didn’t bother to disguise her white jacket. The woman checking out the lead was Lyssa Corti, the younger sister of Chris Corti.

  She eyed the keypad. Remembering the code, 06-20-20-15, was easy. June 20, 2015. M-Day. She entered it, and the door clicked open.

  “Be aware that the man might have been attempting to manipulate you,” Jofi said.

  “I assumed as much, but that doesn’t make him wrong.” Lyssa opened the door and stepped inside. Without her regalia, she was forced to resort to turning on a light switch. “And people tend to lie less when they’re dying.”

  Annihilation has a beauty all its own.

  She’d been thinking about Jofi’s statement over the last week. As unprecedented as it was, he’d not followed it up with anything similar. Telling Lee and having the Sorcerer overreact about an aesthetic preference statement was a bad idea. She’d worry about it if Jofi said anything else odd.

  Three large briefcases sat on the floor, aligned side by side. Lyssa knelt and opened the first one. Scattered objects lay inside. An emerald with a fire burning inside. A bone flute. A slingshot inscribed with glyphs. Shards.

  Lyssa opened the other briefcases and found more shards, but in the third suitcase, there was something unexpected: a small memory card. She picked it up and placed it in her palm, stepping away from the suitcases.

  No sorcery radiated off it. She chuckled.

  “What’s so amusing?” Jofi asked.

  “The Elders in the Society might not want to modernize, but it looks like the rogues have.” Lyssa pulled out her phone and inserted the memory card. “Probably has a virus, but what the hell. This is my month for unnecessary risks.”

  Nothing nefarious happened. The phone didn’t explode, and no spells went off. Something extremely conventional was stored on the card: photos identified by the date, most taken three or four years ago.

  Lyssa gazed at the first picture. An elegant blonde woman in an elaborate red evening gown was being helped out of a limousine by a handsome older man in a tuxedo.

  The second image depicted a slender woman in a billowing gossamer scarlet gown with a tight red and black corset. She stood in the center of a room, a red Venetian mask covering her eyes and a scarf inscribed with glyphs covering her face while semi-translucent birds made of light flew around her. The dagger-like red heels looked painful, and Lyssa was glad she fought in boots.

  “Do you recognize that woman?” Jofi asked.

  “This is a regalia, the Beautiful Stranger.” Lyssa narrowed her eyes. “I met the owner a long time ago, a Sorceress named Helga Strand. She lives in Oslo, I think. She used to, anyway.”

  “Is she a Torch?” Jofi asked.

  Lyssa shook her head. “Nothing like that. Not a Torch or an Eclipse. A performer, an entertainer—high-class, but that’s it. She’s more the future of coexistence than someone like me.”

  She flipped to the next picture. She didn’t recognize the man but was unsurprised when the next picture contained a regalia for a man of the same build.

  Five minutes passed as she continued through the matched picture and regalia pairs, over fifty Illuminated. She didn’t recognize all the Sorcerers and Sorceresses on sight, but Lyssa could associate a name with a good chunk of the regalia. Only a small number of Torches and Eclipses she knew about were in the photos, and she couldn’t discern a geographical, essence, or regalia pattern.

  “What’s the point of this?” Lyssa frowned. “Preparing something to send to the internet?”

  “To what end?” Jofi asked.

  She stared at her phone. “That’s the real question. Right now, even the rogues understand that shoving everyone’s identities out in public wouldn’t work out well for them either. It’s kind of like being spies. Even when you know a guy’s working for the other side, you don’t go screaming it from the rooftops if you don’t want attention on you.”

  “That seems like an unsustainable strategy.”

  Lyssa snickered. “Yeah, because it is. I’m surprised the Society managed to negotiate our privacy in the Sorcery Control Accords, but I’ll take it while it lasts.”

  “Simple exposure of all Illuminated identities would cause some difficulties, but it wouldn’t be a fatal blow to the Society’s influence or power.”

  “True, but these pictures are on this card for a reason, and I don’t think it’s because some fan collected them.”

  Lyssa shook her head and continued flipping through the pictures before stopping at a familiar dark-haired man. He looked a few years older than the last time she had seen him, but that was to be expected in more than one way. Slowed Sorcerer aging wasn’t the same as not aging.

  She double-checked the date. It was three years ago. The photo showed her brother Chris. The next picture, however, was a different Sorcerer and not Chris in regalia.

  She fell to her knees. “All these years.” She wiped away a tear. “Adrien wasn’t lying. Chris is alive.”

  “We don’t know that,” Jofi replied. “The dates might not represent when they were taken. This may
still be an attempt to manipulate you.”

  “Maybe. But why would they want pictures…” Lyssa switched back to Chris’ picture and pointed to a movie marquee listing showtimes in the corner. “Rainbow Chicken Screams So Loud came out the year listed in the filename. I remember seeing it in the theater with Tricia. You’ve never heard a woman laugh so loud at such a silly movie. I thought she was using sorcery for a while to be so loud.” She shook her head. “If somebody faked this, they went out of their way to make it seem like it was only a few years ago. No way. This picture was taken three years ago, long after my brother’s alleged death and after M-Day.”

  “It might not be your brother,” Jofi said. “It could be someone using a spell to look like him.”

  “Then I want to find them and ask them why the hell they’d do that. He’s important to me, but it’s not like he’s important enough for someone to pull that kind of stunt otherwise.” Lyssa shook her phone. “This is the first real lead I’ve ever gotten. I appreciate what Tricia and Samuel said to me, but this proves they were wrong. Chris is still alive.”

  “Then why hasn’t he contacted you?” Jofi asked.

  Lyssa’s stomach knotted like she’d been punched. She didn’t answer because the question had haunted her for years. It would be easier if Chris had been killed rather than disappearing in the line of duty. He was the only blood family she had left after their parents died.

  “I don’t know,” Lyssa murmured. “But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t find out. I deserve answers, and after all these years, there’s no way I’m walking away from this. Why would I? I’d have to be insane to ignore this lead. You heard what Adrien said. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that I ended up with this job. Maybe my brother was trying to get my attention.”

  “That seems a roundabout way to do it versus contacting you directly,” Jofi replied.

  “What do you want me to do, Jofi?” Lyssa shouted. “Walk away from this? After all this time?”