by Kal Aaron
“You ruined everything,” the robed man snarled. “All my master’s work destroyed for nothing but one pointless death. If you’d only waited until tomorrow, even your twisted darkness sorcery wouldn’t have been able to stop everything when we had all of the ultimate creations. We were supposed to test everything then.”
“You shouldn’t have lured those two guys down here,” Lyssa replied. A shiver wracked her body. “You screwed up. No dead livestreamers, no investigation, no Torches. You shouldn’t have sent the email. Then you could have started World War Kaiju all you wanted and taken down half the county before we got there.”
“Email?” The man stared at her. “What email?”
“The one you sent, the one where you convinced Lucky Nardi to come down here. The one where you taunted Torches.” Lyssa tried to shrug, but her shoulders didn’t respond. “You got not one but three and a bonus healer.”
“No, no, no.” The man shook his head. “We sent no email. I sent no email. Why would we bring you to us before our plan was ready? There were supposed to be five destroyers, not one. Why would we squander all that time and planning? All those resources? All that power? For what purpose?”
“Then who the hell sent the email?” Lyssa asked. “I didn’t imagine it, nor did Lucky Nardi. It was real.”
“I don’t know, but whoever they are, they’re our enemies. I hope my master finds them and makes them pay.”
“Why?” Aisha glared at him. “Why create monstrosities and release them onto the world? What could such a disgusting, twisted aberration accomplish but pointless destruction? Your master is an abomination, and the Society will execute him for what he’s done.”
“For trying to create a better world?” the man replied. “The only way to get stronger is to force things. You’re a Torch. You understand that.” He coughed up blood and smiled. “If you don’t understand now, you’ll understand soon enough. This wasn’t my master’s only plan. You think you’re clever, but someone helped you. It won’t change anything in the end.”
Lyssa frowned. “Antoine, set me down and keep him alive. There’s no way he gets the easy out. We need him.”
“It’s too late,” the robed man said, coughing up more blood. “They’ve protected me from you.”
Antoine set Lyssa on her knees and headed toward the robed man. She couldn’t support herself and fell forward, to be caught by Aisha and steadied.
The healer set his hand on the prisoner’s forehead and began chanting in Latin and moving the tip of his staff.
Hissing, Antoine yanked back his hand and shook it out. The robed man’s eyes clouded over, and his veins turned black. He’d stopped breathing.
Lyssa was trying hard not to pass out. She couldn’t formulate a decent question.
“What happened?” Aisha asked, staring at the robed man.
Antoine clutched his hand. “I haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. Damn, those people are messed up. This was even worse than their monsters.”
Aisha glared at him. “He’s dead? But you were healing him. You don’t strike me as capable of that level of incompetence.”
“Sorry, but they tricked me.” Antoine frowned. “He had a passive spell on him that reversed sorcerous healing. I don’t get why it didn’t go off when I healed him before. I sensed sorcery, but I figured it was just leftover shard stuff.”
“He triggered it somehow,” Ryan said with a frown. “He thought he could get away before, but he finally gave up and took himself out. He was never going to let us capture him.”
“Why would anyone create a spell like that?” Lyssa asked with a shudder.
“In the past, it was done as punishment.” Antoine shook his head. “I would have never thought of someone using it for protection, but I also would have never thought of feeding an army of monsters to make a huge one and set it loose on a town.”
Aisha scoffed. “You don’t have a corrupt mind. There’s no shame in that.”
Lyssa groaned at her churning stomach at the situation. “Damn it. We lost him.”
“No.” Antoine smiled. “We saved a town.”
Aisha smiled and folded her arms. “He’s right. We delivered a resounding defeat to his master.”
“Okay, that’s good, but I think I’m going to take a little nap now.”
Chapter Thirty-One
A week later, Lyssa smiled when she opened the door to the black-suited elderly man on the other side. She didn’t even need the sorcery pressure to know it was Samuel. He’d scheduled an exact time for his arrival. There were no cryptic comments or ridiculous home-delivery-style arrival windows. Much like the team, it was another thing she could get used to.
She headed to the couch to take a seat and let him commence his looming as a small reward for his administrative help on the job. Despite the lingering fatigue afflicting her from using the three showstoppers, she’d gone through the mine suffering far less direct injury than she’d received when taking down the smuggling ring.
Antoine hadn’t been wrong when he called her a loner, but the idea of a team was growing on her. The future might bring more of those, as she suspected, but for now, there weren’t enough Sorcerers to go around, and she couldn’t have a permanent team.
She’d made sure to get contact information for the others in case something else came up in the future. Finding people you could trust in a fight was a big deal.
Samuel closed the door behind him before reverting to his true appearance. “I assume you’ve watched the news in the last week. That will simplify some of what I’m about to explain.”
“Torches torch giant monster? Truth or hoax? was my favorite headline,” Lyssa replied with a smile. “I don’t see the big deal. That makes us sound good. We saved a town. This whole thing ended up with only one dead victim and one dead perp.”
“The government was supposed to do a better job of keeping this under wraps.” Samuel’s eyebrows knitted in irritation. “I would have preferred no references to giant monsters in the Shadow media. They are, by their nature, threatening to the public imagination, so undermine Shadow trust in the Society.”
“It’s kind of hard to explain away a building-sized monster a half-dozen cops had on camera. Not to mention the drone footage.” Lyssa shrugged. “We kept the casualties down to two people, including the main culprit. Considering everything that happened, that’s a downright miracle, and we were one day from five of those things appearing to wreck the county. I’m sure enough missiles from the Air Force would have brought them down, but this way, we were the ones who cleaned up. Illuminated cleaned up a sorcery-created problem.”
Samuel moved to a chair and took a seat, looking at the wall rather than Lyssa. “There are so many aspects of this incident we still don’t know about. We expected a rogue at the end but found someone without our gift. The man had powerful shards, but someone had to give them to him, and he admitted serving at least one other who created the monsters that fed into their true final plan. That is annoying.”
Lyssa folded her arms. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I’m assuming Damien sent you the report about the guy in the robe?”
“The EAA identified the suspect as a missing businessman with no known official ties to the Society,” Samuel replied. “No criminal record, no significant history of any note. A perfectly normal individual who wouldn’t stand out from the crowd.”
She nodded. “And is that true? I know what the Shadow government said, but what about Society records? This guy couldn’t have come out of nowhere.”
“I agree, but he’s nothing, to the best of my knowledge and our records.” Samuel frowned. “I’ve been able to find no indications he was a servant or a member of an Illuminated family, no matter what he said.”
“I don’t know if he was targeting me since he didn’t send the email.”
“Do you have any suspects other than Elder Theodora?” Samuel asked. He didn’t sound accusatory.
“I almost feel like so
meone went out of their way to get our attention, but that’s the thing. He wasn’t the one who did it. He was pissed that we’d shown up.”
“I don’t understand why someone would use such an odd, cruel, and roundabout way to get our attention as opposed to contacting the Society or the EAA directly.” Samuel shook his head. “And I doubt if this was in any way targeted at you.”
“I’m not sure myself, but we still need to figure out who sent those emails,” Lyssa replied.
Samuel nodded. “Agreed. On the off-chance you were targeted, they might have done so because they were related to Allard’s organization. Revenge is the most obvious explanation. It’s far from unheard of for Torches. It’s only strange you’ve gone this long without having to deal with this.”
Lyssa scoffed. “It’s been that kind of time lately. This, on top of my brother’s regalia conveniently reappearing when I find evidence he’s alive.”
“What evidence?” Samuel narrowed his eyes. “You’ve never told me about any real evidence your brother was alive, and what I’ve heard from Last Remnant argues the opposite.”
It was time to gamble. She couldn’t succeed without his help.
“I came across something else,” Lyssa said. “A picture that suggests he was alive a few years ago. I’m not going to show it to you, but I believe in its provenance. Yes, I acknowledge that means I can’t prove he’s been alive since then, but it strongly undermines the Society’s official statements about his death in the line of duty.”
Samuel looked down at her, his expression inscrutable. “You suspect even me?”
Lyssa shook her head. “If I suspected you, I wouldn’t have told you any of that. It’s more that I don’t know who to trust. I think there’s something going on, and call me arrogant, but I think it has a lot more to do with me than I initially believed. I don’t know if this current incident has anything to do with it or not, but it’s not impossible.”
“You suspected Theodora of targeting you, but she had no problem offering Aisha Khatri to assist you on the assignment,” Samuel replied. “That undermines the idea that she’s plotting against you.”
“That’s true. I’ll give you that,” Lyssa agreed, “I can’t be sure anymore that I believe Chris is alive, but if he is dead, that means someone covered up him being alive and killed him later. Then this becomes family vengeance.”
“Perhaps your imagination is running wild. One picture is not enough to justify such an elaborate tale.”
“But a regalia not returning for years?” Lyssa raised an eyebrow.
“That makes a stronger case,” Samuel admitted.
“It goes back to the same thing. I think I deserve a little trip to Ye Old Motherland, don’t you? I tracked those monsters down, kept on the case, and nearly killed myself, taking one down. If I hadn’t obsessed about this, it would have been too late, and we would have had a horde rampaging across southern Arizona and northern Mexico.”
Samuel took a deep breath. “I agree.”
“You agree?” Lyssa stared at him, her mouth open. “I can go to Last Remnant?”
“I don’t make that decision, but I can certainly offer my strong recommendation,” Samuel replied. “Though I do feel compelled to note that given your concerns about trust, going there is extremely dangerous and foolhardy. That’s especially true if this most recent incident is the result of some high-level conspiracy, as you suggest.”
Lyssa grinned. “If I die, Aisha will avenge my death.” She grinned. “Assuming Tristan St. James doesn’t take me out when I’m halfway there.”
“What does he have to do with anything?” Samuel asked, anger filtering into his tone.
“I don’t know,” Lyssa replied, blinking at Samuel’s reaction. “You tell me. I have circumstantial evidence that he might be tangentially involved in something related to Chris, but that’s all it is. It’s not like I know the guy.”
“I would avoid him,” Samuel said. “He’s closer to a rogue than you might suspect.”
“Meaning what? Come on, Samuel. Give me the truth. Right now, I could use more of it.”
“He’s conducted assassinations prior to approval.” Samuel spat the last three words. “He has operated without the sanction of the Tribunal.”
“Then why isn’t he considered an official rogue?” Lyssa frowned. “It seems like a bad idea to use someone who can get away with that kind of thing.”
Samuel hesitated for a moment, uncertainty in his eyes. “Because they were all targets where evidence later arose that would have led to their extreme punishment or execution. That complicates matters. The Tribunal wouldn’t want to appear to support true rogues, even tacitly.”
“Do you know where he is right now?” Lyssa asked.
“No.” Samuel shook his head. “And I think that’s best for both of us.” He stood and smoothed his jacket. “I think we’re done here, Miss Corti. I’ll submit your request and let you know their response. Again, I can’t guarantee anything.”
“All I ask is that you try.”
Lyssa rolled onto her side in bed, sighing. “Do you think Samuel was right?”
“You need to be more specific,” Jofi replied.
“Right about me going to Last Remnant?” Lyssa asked. “We stopped the monster, and it doesn’t seem like it was a trap for me, but I have a hard time ignoring some of the lines in the email and not thinking I was targeted. But that doesn’t change anything about Chris’s regalia.”
“I can’t say what the right course of action is. I’ve never been there, and my experiences with you color my view of the Illuminated Society. But from my perspective, it will at least allow you to continue your investigation concerning your brother.”
“Even Samuel admits there’s something weird going on,” Lyssa said. “He just doesn’t agree about who it is. Could I be wrong? Has everything lately just been a coincidence?”
“Adrien Allard’s pictures are suggestive of something more,” Jofi said. “It’s hard to link them directly to the current incident. In addition, if someone is targeting you and they’re connected to the Society, there is a higher probability that they know your true identity. That is even more true for Elders.”
Lyssa sat up and frowned. “I don’t know what to make of all this. I feel like someone wanted an investigation of that mine before it was too late, but I can’t be sure. I also wonder if the same someone wanted me to be the one to investigate the shard-smuggling, too. I’m still convinced that person knew about the shard-smuggling and pushed me onto that case by sending the emails.”
“What emails are you referring to?” Jofi asked.
“When Damien was following up on the Alvarez raid, he found an email mentioning a message from someone in ‘the bureau.’” Lyssa glanced at her phone. “We never did figure out who that referred to, but someone might be going around using shards to send fake emails. I don’t know, it might be a stretch, but I don’t like all the weird manipulations happening around me.”
“Or you could be falling down a hole of assumptions and paranoia where you see connections that don’t exist,” Jofi replied. “Out of a desperate desire to get closure over your brother.”
“Being paranoid doesn’t matter if I take down a lot of bad guys. It’s a survival trait.” Lyssa sighed. “And I’ve already accepted Chris might be dead at the end of this. I hope he isn’t, but I’ll keep investigating and find out the truth if he is.”
“What’s your immediate plan, then?” Jofi asked. “Samuel will do what you want and push for Last Remnant, but that will take time.”
Lyssa nodded. “I know. My plan is simple. If jobs come up, I’ll do them well. Otherwise, I’ll wait for Samuel to tell me I’m approved to go, eat some strawberry ice cream, and go out on another date with Bill.”
“Instead of Lieutenant Lopez?” Jofi asked.
“I never wanted to date him.” Lyssa groaned. “And I’m beginning to feel like I need to separate the Torch from the woman. Sometimes, it’s nice to
check out and forget who and what I am.”
“I think no intelligent being can truly do that,” Jofi replied.
“Hey.” Lyssa licked her lips. “I didn’t want to bring this up until everything settled down, but what did you mean when you said I wasn’t ready?”
“I don’t understand the question,” Jofi replied.
Lyssa frowned. “You said it when I thought I was dying after firing all three showstoppers. First, it sounded like you thought I was ready and then said I wasn’t.”
“I have no memory of that. Are you sure you weren’t hallucinating due to the side effects of the enchantment?”
Lyssa’s gaze ticked to where her safe was hidden. No, she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t hallucinating, but she also couldn’t ignore that she’d used very powerful spells at Jofi’s request—spells that could risk breaking his seal.
Could he be lying?
That didn’t seem possible. Everything she’d been told by Lee didn’t suggest the breaking of the seal would be that subtle, let alone that Jofi could manipulate people in his original or sealed forms.
The spirit had praised her for trading her life for others. None of that added up to him returning to his true nature.
“Forget it,” Lyssa said. “I made it out of there okay, I’ll be going to Last Remnant soon, and I have a guy I can go out on dates with. That’s not too bad.”
“At least one of those scenarios might end with your life in danger,” Jofi replied.
Lyssa laughed. “Probably not the one you think.”
Author Notes - Kal Arron
March 2, 2021
Arizona is typically referred to as the Grand Canyon State, but we have another nickname, the Copper State. The name speaks to Arizona’s mining past, as do the many, many ghost towns and their accompanying abandoned mines.
Years ago when visiting a local mining-themed restaurant, I found myself pondering all the old mines in the state, including the most likely apocryphal Lost Dutchman’s Mine, and how they’d make great story hooks. When I started writing this series and realized I was going to use Arizona as the main character’s home base, I revisited some of those old ideas. The question turned to what sort of adventure a pistol-wielding, motorcycle-driving sorceress would have in an old mine.