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

by Kal Aaron

  “Yes, ma’am,” the deputies shouted in unison.

  “Oh, and one more thing.” Lyssa stopped at the fence. “I’m going to need to borrow a crowbar to pry off those boards.” She held up a gun. “My ammo’s expensive. Sorry.”

  All the daylight was gone five minutes into the mine. Lyssa’s regalia kept her vision unencumbered in the slick, uneven rocky terrain, but it suggested that whatever was living in there didn’t depend on normal illumination. That wasn’t a surprise, but the more facts she could nail down, the better prepared she’d be.

  Lyssa continued down a wide, deep slope, following footprints and dried blood droplets. The rotted remnants of wooden cart tracks followed the path. The dryness of the outside air was giving way to cooler temperatures, slick walls, and bugs, so far all normal-sized and far from monstrous.

  She’d tucked one gun away and pulled out her phone to consult a scan of a fifty-year-old map Damien had provided. Her first arrival at a Y-shaped intersection challenged the map’s usefulness. The intersection didn’t appear to have been carved by monsters, and it didn’t appear on the map. With a shrug, she headed into a passage on her left and walked faster.

  Lyssa wrinkled her nose under her mask. “You should be happy you can’t smell, Jofi. I can’t even describe it. It’s a nasty, fetid mess with enough rotten-egg stench to kill small birds.”

  “That suggests a higher probability of a monster than a normal animal or a human with an unusual weapon,” Jofi replied.

  “Maybe.” Lyssa pointed her gun toward something scurrying in the darkness, only to see it was a beetle. “It could be gas buildup and dead animals.” She narrowed her eyes when she spotted a large S-shaped line and a trail of shallow holes in a patch of mud. “But I’m guessing you’re right. Oh, those stupid kids. What a way to go.”

  Faint scratching came from around the corner. Lyssa shoved her phone back into her pocket and pulled out her second gun.

  “Let’s see how ugly this thing is. And let’s test something.”

  Lyssa flattened her back against the wall and took a deep breath before beginning her chant, along with the mental weaving of strands of darkness to become a living shadow. Using her wraith form in a pitch-black tunnel was her best chance for stealth. It was time to see how good these monsters were.

  Chapter Nine

  A long, thin creature about the size of a small dog walked around the corner. Dragging its wide tail, the monster skittered along on eight skinny legs that emerged from the top of its flat body and curved down to sharp points. It was hard to tell the head from the rest of the body other than the slight taper near the front. A layer of translucent slime coated its smooth gray hide.

  Lyssa wrinkled her nose. The appearance of the creature answered the most important question.

  Everyone had different definitions for what constituted a monster. Lyssa’s was simple: Was the lifeform modified by sorcery beyond what could be found in nature?

  She aimed a gun at its head. There were no apparent eyes. Its open mouth showed off two rows of dripping curved fangs. Her regalia would protect her, but that didn’t mean she wanted to let it latch onto her.

  The monster scuttled at a relaxed pace without giving any indication it noticed Lyssa. She thought through the possibilities. Her wraith form didn’t hide her body heat. That meant the monster wasn’t relying on thermal detection. Her spell also wouldn’t hide her from things like echolocation or radar. It was only a visual trick unless she went farther with something like thinning.

  Just because she didn’t spot any eyes, it didn’t mean the creature couldn’t see. It might rely on subtle contrasts or modified arrays of cells difficult to perceive from her perspective. Given the constant olfactory assault, it might even be relying on smell. Or it could be any combination of those things.

  That was the annoying part of dealing with new creations. It turned what should have been routine battles into challenges. She had only basic locomotion intel so far, with no real information on the number and disposition of the creatures. A handful of monsters would be the best-case scenario, but she harbored doubts about that being the reality.

  The monster crept forward and moved past her. It stepped over her boot prints without slowing or giving any indication it could sense her presence. That suggested it couldn’t sense sorcery, but then, it was rare for a monster to possess that ability.

  “It’s like someone crossed a snake and cockroach,” Lyssa whispered. “Snake-roach. I’m suddenly missing fighting cartel guys and smugglers. They don’t smell or look this bad.”

  “You don’t have effective antivenin sorcery,” Jofi said. “Please exercise caution in dealing with possible poisoning incidents.”

  “I’ve got Tricia’s herbs,” she replied. “But point taken.”

  The snake-roach jumped and faced Lyssa. It hesitated for a couple of seconds before charging her location. Good hearing. That was useful to know.

  “Here’s your caution,” she said.

  Lyssa fired into the monster’s mouth. Her muzzle flashes lit the tunnel, and her shadowy form solidified.

  The bullet ripped through the creature and out its back. Green blood splattered all over the area. The creature collapsed, twitching and spewing blood from its wound for several seconds before dying.

  Lyssa counted to ten to avoid any unpleasant surprises. No one wanted to be close to a monster when it exploded into a shower of goo. Nothing happened.

  “Ha!” Lyssa chuckled. “That wasn’t so hard. It might be ugly, but it wasn’t tough. I bet one of Serafina’s little dolls could have taken that thing out without much trouble. That poor bastard might have survived if they’d brought a gun.”

  Scratching noises echoed from around the corner, and a scuttling mass of the snake-roaches erupted from that direction, blocking Lyssa’s way forward. They surged toward her with their mouths open.

  Their appearance didn’t surprise her. She had known that the second she fired her weapon, she invited trouble. She’d also verified they could see her as long as she was a shadow.

  She didn’t sense external sorcery. Any rogue who might be in the mine wasn’t nearby, though she had her doubts about anyone staying in the mine. If a rogue was involved, it was more that they had visited the mine just long enough to drop off their creations.

  Lyssa grinned. “Fine. Let’s play. It’s time for my daily target practice, you freaks.”

  She pointed her guns at different targets and opened fire. Her shots didn’t go down their throats, but they blasted through the creatures with ease, dropping them. Their allies didn’t react to their deaths and continued toward her. Confirmed intel was piling up with the monster corpses.

  “No armor.” Lyssa fired again. “You’re not going to win against me that way.”

  “These creatures are unlikely to be able to understand you,” Jofi said. “Your taunts are a waste of time.”

  “Sometimes a woman wants to hear herself talk trash,” Lyssa shouted over her gunshots. “Is that a crime?”

  “Very well. Carry on.”

  With quick, precise motions, Lyssa lined up new targets in the front of the enemy pack and fired. Her loud shots echoed through the tunnel. She backed up slowly to avoid tripping over rocks. Despite the unimpressive showing of the monsters so far, she wasn’t ready to test their fangs’ abilities to pierce her regalia and armor. Sometimes a creature was designed for maximum offense and minimum defense.

  One of her shots nailed the back of a snake-roach. The monster thrashed its tail, but it continued rushing Lyssa until she ripped it in half with her next shot.

  Not one of the creatures demonstrated fear or concern. That might prove annoying later, but for now, it meant they weren’t being careful. That made it easy for her to pick them off.

  More monsters rushed to reinforce their fallen brethren from farther down the passage, but what had been a scuttling mass of nightmarish doom was now a scattered group of desperate monsters facing a far superior foe. She mig
ht be able to find pity for a human, no matter how corrupt, but not a mishappen soulless mass of flesh. The world would be a better place without these creatures in it.

  Lyssa continued downing monsters with ease. This was better than the range. They were moving mindless targets, and she didn’t even have to pay for the special session. She also was earning a little revenge for a dead man and ending a threat to the regular people living in the area. It was almost enough to make a woman feel warm and fuzzy despite being in a disgusting-smelling hole in the ground, knee-deep in monster gore.

  Two final gunshots boomed before Lyssa lifted her pistols. She surveyed the area, satisfied with the destruction of her enemies. Silence replaced the scratching noises from earlier. Dying monsters twitched in front of her, but they didn’t squeal or chitter in their final moments.

  “You never had a chance,” she said. “But there were a lot more of you than I expected. This job might end up being more annoying than I thought.”

  Lyssa reloaded her pistols before walking over to nudge a body with the tip of her boot. She stared at her leather, looking for any sign of acid burns from the slime, but there was nothing. At least it couldn’t possibly smell worse.

  She tried her boot with the blood. Again, there was no problem. It didn’t hurt to check, but the opposite wasn’t always true, as she’d found out earlier in her career. Being damage-resistant wasn’t the same thing as being immune to injury. Tricia’s herbs would help, but they couldn’t help her if she was dead.

  Lyssa let out a sigh of relief. The monsters lacked acid blood and burning slime, but their stench was so overwhelming as to almost be a weapon itself. She was grateful for what small protection from the odor her mask provided.

  “I need a gas mask,” Lyssa said, wrinkling her nose. “I should have one as standard equipment. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with something this rank. Someone might drop gas on me.”

  “You don’t seem to be suffering any harmful effects,” Jofi said. “More unnecessary equipment leads to inefficiency in travel and conducting your duties.”

  “You’re saying that because you don’t have lungs or a nose.” Lyssa snickered. “It smells really, really bad.”

  “My physical nature is irrelevant to your situation.”

  “My stomach disagrees with you.” Lyssa shoved a snake-roach corpse out of the way with her boot. “I can see how those things could have messed up college kids with Go Pros, but they aren’t much of a threat otherwise.” She gave a nod. “Nice to know. I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell Samuel he’d need major PR to explain away a nest of super-monsters. You know how he can get. It’s a sad day when I’m the one telling someone they need to be more of an optimist.”

  “We have no confirmation we’ve eliminated all threats,” Jofi replied. “Significantly more dangerous creatures might still be present, or there might be more of those creatures. A few aren’t a challenge, but a larger number might pose a risk to nearby towns.”

  “Not going to let me have my moment, huh?” Lyssa chuckled. “But you’re right; I’m sure we’ve got a couple more hiding somewhere. My primary contract is for recon, and that’s not done yet. We know they can kind of see in the dark, but not all the way, and we also know they have good hearing. I hope we don’t have some sort of new sorcery-enhanced invasive underground burrowing species. It’s hard to make self-sustaining monsters, but it’s not like it’s impossible.”

  Lyssa kicked a body onto its back. There was nothing noticeably different on the bottom of the creature’s body. She’d expected evidence of segmentation or a seam but reminded herself that monsters could be created to look like almost anything. Without an active sorcery infusion, physics provided limits, but normal Earth biology principles didn’t always apply, and Sorcerers usually didn’t mind if a monster had a short lifespan.

  “Why do I get the feeling I’m going to be spending the next two weeks checking every nook and cranny of this place?” Lyssa asked, shuddering and considering nose plugs.

  “You could offer support for the National Guard plan,” Jofi suggested.

  Lyssa shook her head. “Samuel would kill me if I said Shadows should clean up a monster nest. Besides, the more tedious and annoying this is, the more favorably the Society will look at it when I finish the job.” She peered at the fallen monsters for any signs of movement. “We’ll finish up here and see what we can find. We can’t ignore the possibility of other monsters. We’ll go from there. I hate it when things are underground.”

  Lyssa spent a couple of minutes inspecting the rest of the bodies and confirming no regeneration. Most monsters wouldn’t be able to pull that off without emitting obvious active sorcerous energy, but making assumptions about mutant snake-roaches while she was alone in a hole in the ground might lead to an unpleasant surprise later that could end with her dead and supplying nutrients to a new generation of snake-roaches. She’d deserve it if she were that sloppy.

  She walked past the bodies and found slime trails interspersed with the shallow holes she now understood were monster prints. There was no hint of blood or human footprints.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure our guy didn’t survive. Damn.” Lyssa clucked her tongue. “File another case under ‘brave but stupid.’ You’d think people would get that there really are monsters hiding in the shadows, and they should be more careful. Sorry, Jake. There’s nothing I can do for you, but I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

  Back in wraith form, Lyssa delved deeper into the mine and found another intersection. She’d not bothered with the map, more interested in following the slime trails back to their source. They went off in different directions, but there were greater numbers of trails converging one way.

  “It looks like we’re getting closer to their nest.”

  “What’s your plan when you arrive?” Jofi asked.

  “I was going with ‘Shoot them all, then shoot them all again if they move.’ These things are nasty but easy to kill. How does that sound?”

  “Simple but effective. I applaud your audacity.”

  “Yeah. This doesn’t call for overly complicated schemes. Yet. Let’s hope it stays that way.”

  Lyssa kept her guns in hand as she walked, the minutes passing in near-silence except for the crunch of her boots. On occasion, she heard distant scratching but didn’t know if that marked monsters or more conventional vermin. There were no new enemies, but one fact grew more obvious with each step deeper into the mine.

  Lyssa holstered one of her pistols and ran her hand along a wall. “It gets a lot smoother and rounder the farther in we go.” She motioned around her current passage. “It looks wider, too. I think we’ve left the main mine tunnels and entered new tunnels. I don’t know if I like that.”

  “Do you have a theory about where they came from?” Jofi asked.

  “Yeah.” Lyssa nodded. “I think our snake-roaches have been expanding the tunnel system, and they might have had help.” She frowned and surveyed the area. “I haven’t seen any metal or wood in a while, but I can’t be sure. Wood braces could have decayed over the years. Seeing all this makes me wonder if the deputy was right about these monsters being an older threat.”

  “You think they did encounter an ancient nest?” Jofi asked.

  “That’s the part I’m tripping on. The victims barely stepped into the place.” Lyssa shook her head. “I’m not saying it’s thousands of years old, but if these creatures can dig tunnels, they might not have originally been in this mine. They could have been somewhere else and spent years digging until they connected to it. That also could mean there’s no rogue to find at the end of it, or the one who did this was involved twenty years ago and forgot about it.” She frowned. “There’s no way that group I fought could have managed to dig out that much material. It’d take centuries.”

  “There are many more enemies,” Jofi said. “That’s your conclusion.”

  “Yeah. A lot more. A hell of a lot more. I’m doing
recon, and they were too, in their way.” Lyssa ejected her magazine and loaded explosive rounds. She tucked the pistol away before retrieving her other magazine, still loaded with normal bullets. “Their digging means we can’t end this by collapsing the tunnels. It’ll just mean these things emerge from the ground somewhere random years from now like a bad Tremors sequel.”

  “You don’t believe light troubles them?” Jofi asked.

  Lyssa continued following the slime trails. “Evidence points that way, but I can’t be sure. I’m not going to bet people’s lives on it. I haven’t sensed any sorcery, so no spells are containing them. They had plenty of hours in the night to come out in, and they didn’t.” She frowned. “It might be they only haven’t come out of the mine because they didn’t sense any prey. If they dig under a city, they could wait for nighttime or make themselves at home in buildings and have thousands of people to munch on.”

  “That scenario relies on many different assumptions that might not all be accurate,” Jofi replied.

  “It’ll help a lot if they couldn’t handle light. At least we can cut down on the possible emergence points.” Lyssa’s stomach churned. “I’ll bring a body back to the surface on our way out. I can confirm if sunlight harms them, and that’ll help us know when we hit them for a chance of safe retreat. For now, time to go back to wraith form and see where the trail leads us.”

  Lyssa didn’t need any sort of special Torch technique or Sorceress spell to know she was closing in on a lot more trouble. The awful gut-churning smell from before grew stronger with each step deeper into the tunnels. She silently cursed whatever idiot Sorcerer had purposely made something that stank so badly.