by Kal Aaron
Lyssa quickly fired at the mercenaries, more interested in distracting them than downing men. Their answering bursts ripped through the wall near her, and rounds struck her thigh and side. She hissed in pain. Their rifles were starting to piss her off.
She resummoned her wraith form and darted along the buildings, leaving the mercenaries to rip apart the wall she’d been using for cover. Aisha launched three fireballs before flying backward and dropping onto an old barbershop just before a grenade barrage caved in its roof.
“Flame Deva,” Lyssa called once she was closer. “Have you seen them use any shards?”
Aisha brought up her hands, ready to throw a flame blast, before frowning. “Be careful about surprising me, Hecate. I thought one was coming for me just now, and I was going to greet him in a glorious manner.”
“Sorry.” Lyssa dropped her wraith form. “I keep sensing sorcery from them, but I don’t get what it might be from.”
Aisha scoffed. “These are Shadows. Like you, they might rely on toys, but I’ve not seen any indications that they are Illuminated.”
“I get that, but most of the other attacks involved shards.” Lyssa scowled. “They’re planning something.”
“They are losing strength. We aren’t. Don’t overthink it.”
Lyssa nodded. “We were ambushed not all that long ago by hired guns with shards. We should be careful.”
“We were ambushed, and we then proceeded to devastate those men.” Aisha shrugged. “You’re being overly cautious. We should finish these men off and then question the survivors. If they had an impressive weapon, they would have used it already.”
The gunfire stopped. Lyssa peered around the corner. The mercenaries advanced a couple of buildings with more textbook point-to-point sprints. She couldn’t help but admire the tactics and the caution.
“And if they aren’t using them, it doesn’t matter,” Aisha said. “Trying to defeat them without killing them is proving annoying. The longer this takes, the more chance they have of being lucky or deciding to use whatever hidden shards you’re convinced they possess.”
“Okay, we’ll do this differently,” Lyssa replied, holstering her guns. She pulled out her batons and expanded them with a flick. A moment of concentration and a dark aura swallowed the batons. “Give me cover, and I’ll close in and knock them out.”
“I can’t guarantee I won’t kill any of them,” Aisha replied.
“It’s fine. It’s not like I haven’t killed some of them. Just don’t kill all of them before I get my chance.” Lyssa vanished into the shadows again. “And I trust you to have my back.”
Aisha snickered. “Oh, how things have changed.” She smiled. “Then let me distract them in a manner worthy of my regalia and your respect.”
She chanted a spell. Four flaming wings emerged from her back, and she shot into the sky. With a loud shout in Sanskrit, she thrust out her palm. A cluster of small fireballs appeared in a circle and then shot off in rapid succession. They struck the ground and the buildings near the active mercenaries, bursting into showers of flame and smoke but not doing much damage.
Lyssa spun around the corner and jogged toward the mercenaries. As expected, they ignored the shadow blending with the red-tinged night and opened fire on the four-winged flame angel in the sky. Her wraith form wouldn’t last past one attack, and their confusion might not continue past a handful, but once she was in their line, it was only a matter of time before she took them all down.
Aisha surged forward and peppered the mercenaries with flame blasts and bolts in a strafing run on her way toward their vehicles. They sprayed her again, to no effect.
She cackled like a witch in a cartoon before settling down behind the mercenaries. Ignoring them for a moment, she brought back her arms and fueled a growing ball of flame pointed the opposite way.
The mercenaries ceased fire and spread among the remaining buildings. Fires burned freely on many of the buildings, sending dark smoke into the sky. The smoldering remnants of earlier hits added to thickening miasma.
Aisha released her latest attack. The spell roared away from her and struck the center SUV. A massive explosion consumed it and blew it apart. The two closest vehicles were knocked over by the blast, smashing into others and shattering windows.
“Don’t you see, fools?” Aisha shouted, rising into the air again. “You have no chance of winning. The only reason you’re not dead is that we need some of you alive. Now sur—”
A single shot ripped through her shield and stomach. She reached down with her hand and touched the wound. She brought her blood-covered hand to her face, her mouth open in surprise. Two more shots rang out, both passing through her heat shield like it wasn’t there and then through her chest.
Aisha’s wings disappeared and she plummeted to the ground, maintaining enough concentration to thrust away from it at the last moment. Concentrated jets erupted from her hand and shot her behind the scorched foundation of a destroyed building. She hit the ground and rolled before stopping face-down. Her heat shield vanished.
“No!” Lyssa shouted.
Chapter Ten
Aisha going down was unacceptable. If anyone needed to die tonight, it was Lyssa, not Aisha. The men had come for Lyssa.
She threw her batons to the ground with a growl. Their forms solidified after they left her hands, drawing one shot from a mercenary, but she’d already returned to cover and drawn her guns. She reloaded both with penetrator magazines.
Screw being careful. Lyssa didn’t have time to play around, with Aisha hurt so badly. There was also the risk of the mercenaries’ bullets taking her down. Somehow they had defeated Aisha’s primary defense and her regalia with ease. Even if the Flame Goddess wasn’t as strong on direct defense as the Night Goddess, that was troubling. The evidence pointed to shard bullets.
Convinced of their victory over the wounded flame Sorceress, the men concentrated their fire in Lyssa’s direction. The wild burst- and auto-filled shooting of the earlier fight was gone, replaced by steady, calmer single shots.
The large number of men shooting at Lyssa forced her to concentrate before risking emerging. Being hard to see in wraith form wasn’t enough. A stray bullet to the right part of her anatomy could see her join Aisha on the ground.
She held her breath and took a moment to text a quick code to the Eclipse. A downed Sorceress and possible shard bullets changed the calculus of the battle. This was now an emergency, and she wanted support.
Without waiting for a response, Lyssa emerged from her cover and advanced in a serpentine pattern while in wraith form. Shouts filled the air, and bullets flew in her general direction, but the enemy clearly couldn’t make her out, even with the help of their flares.
A mercenary reloaded and fired his grenade launcher. The round exploded in the center of the street. It wasn’t close enough to do much more than coat Lyssa with dirt and rocks, but the bright flash highlighted her shadowy form like she was an angry ghost stalking toward them.
She fired a penetrator round through the man’s head before putting one through the heart of the mercenary closest to him. Their bodies dropped to the ground as their friends shot back. Now visible, Lyssa ran behind a building and kept sprinting until she came around the other side.
When she turned the corner, she was ready. She’d managed to flank a squad. A double trigger pull of her guns sent her penetrators through the closest mercenaries, and they let out muffled screams—just what she wanted to hear. Most of them were going to die. All she needed was one prisoner. At this point, she didn’t care who it was.
Lyssa leaped onto the wall, letting her feet bond with the shadows there, and ran along the wall toward the men. The awkward profile made it hard for them to hit her but didn’t challenge her. She fired a shot with each step but alternated guns and picked out a new target for each.
Anger clouded her mind. There was no careful consideration of ammo or worry about looking for the commander. Instead, she relied on her years
of muscle memory and careful training on head and heart shots. Man after man fell, their vests and helmets doing nothing to protect them from the enchanted penetrator rounds. Whatever lingering concerns she had about their defenses disappeared.
Each round struck with a bright flash. Combined with her rhythmic firing, it created a strobe-like effect, highlighting the collapsing bodies and the showers of blood. They’d gone from having decent control of the battle to getting slaughtered.
The first hints of panic set in, and men turned to flee. They didn’t escape since Lyssa emptied her magazines to down every mercenary on her side of the road. Between her latest rampage and the earlier casualties, the mercenaries were down to six men clustered on the other side.
The enemy abandoned their careful shooting to practice the fine art of pray and spray, but she ran up the wall and jumped on top of a sloped roof. She sprinted over the peak and jumped in time to avoid a grenade blast. After hitting the ground and rolling to her feet, she ran away from the mercenaries and loaded new penetrator magazines.
Two more grenades finished shredding the building behind Lyssa, but she wasn’t trying to use it for cover. Instead, she ran around the far side and kept moving, determined to head toward Aisha. Even without wraith form, she was in an all-black outfit in the middle of the night and could see perfectly. Flickering flames and flares provided some illumination, but there was no way they could match her regalia’s natural night vision with their goggles.
“Now you’ve done it, Hecate,” shouted a mercenary. She recognized the voice from earlier. Perhaps the commander had survived. Sometimes the universe took, and sometimes it gave. “Those were good men. Damned good men I’ve worked with for years. If you’re angry, blame yourself. Flame Deva didn’t have to be part of this. She wasn’t part of the contract. I would have preferred to have just dealt with and finish you off, but you had to go and make this difficult.”
Lyssa cleared the corner and found Aisha at the end of a trail of blood. The flame Sorceress had dragged herself into a sitting position behind a large rock outcropping. She’d dimmed her regalia aura and held a hand to her stomach wound.
“Damn it.” Lyssa reached into her pocket, pulled out pain and healing herbs, and shoved them into Aisha’s mouth. “Do you need me to move your mouth?”
Aisha grabbed her hand. “I’m not so far gone that I need you to feed me, Corti.”
Her voice was weak. Blood covered her regalia. She swallowed the herbs.
“I’ll finish them off,” Lyssa announced. “You just stay out of sight.”
“Don’t die,” Aisha said. “Not at the hands of these men.”
“Same to you.”
Lyssa thought for a moment before swapping out one of the penetrator magazines for an explosive magazine and running back the way she came. She’d modified the plan to a simple “kill everyone left except the commander.”
Between him and the others she’d downed but hopefully hadn’t killed earlier, they could begin the investigation. Identifying the commander again would require a little risk on her part. It was time to goad him back.
“You’ve pissed me off,” she shouted. “First, you and your buddies keep going after Sorcerers. It’s one thing to fight when someone attacks you, but ambushes and assassinations? What did you think was going to happen? Did you think we wouldn’t come after you eventually?”
“I don’t know about all that, Hecate,” the commander yelled back. “Our assignment was you, but it sounds like our client’s got deep pockets. You Sorcs think you’re gods, that no one will dare touch you, but it’s all about knowing what to expect. Research—that’s what a pro does. It’s like with Flame Deva. We expected her to be here; if not her, then Ultrasound or one of the others. You think we wouldn’t take precautions?”
Lyssa gritted her teeth. The men did seem well-prepared. Did that mean they had shards that could offset a variety of types of sorcery? That was all but impossible.
No. The flares they’d used earlier weren’t shards. Was it only the bullets?
Lyssa resummoned her wraith form. There were no Sorcerers among the men. They had not shown any ability to sense her spells. Heavy weapons and raw numbers had let them stand as equals, but only because the two Torches were trying to minimize deaths. Now that Lyssa had gotten serious, they were down to a handful of men.
“Precautions didn’t save your other men,” she yelled. “And they won’t save you, asshole.”
She counted to five before running across the street, watching the mercenaries. They’d spread out among the buildings. That’d make it harder for her to finish them off but would make her other job much easier.
“I’ll pour a drink for my fallen brothers,” the commander replied. “But their deaths were part of a cost to make the rest of us legends. We’ll be the ones who killed Flame Deva and Hecate.”
“Legends?” Lyssa scoffed. “Did you all smoke meth before you showed up?”
“You’ve been talking about the Society,” the commander said. “They aren’t going to come for us. How many Sorcs will they be willing to lose after we take out you two?”
Lyssa smiled. He’d given away his position; the man was the farthest back. Now it was just a matter of finishing off the others.
None of the men had exposed themselves for easy, direct fire, so she’d need to flush them out. She aimed the gun with the explosive magazine and opened fire at the mercenary in the middle of the group before shifting firing to the edges of the remaining squad.
Explosions rocked the buildings and disrupted the mercenaries’ counterattack. Lyssa charged across the street and brought up her penetrator gun. The first man with the courage to emerge from the smoke choking the buildings earned a brand-new hole in his head.
Lyssa spent the rest of the magazine blowing holes in what was left of the mercenaries’ cover. Bright muzzle flashes announced their positions. All she needed to do was offer two penetrators and an explosive bullet to finish them off as she advanced. It was an expensive counterattack but effective.
Breathing heavily, Lyssa ducked and put her back against a scorched brick wall. A dead mercenary lay at her feet. She tucked her explosive pistol away before reloading with another penetrator magazine. There was only one mercenary left standing, the commander.
Pressure built on her chest from a couple of buildings down. More shard bullets?
“You’re a big bitch, Hecate,” the commander shouted. “Is it any wonder that someone wants you dead?”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she turned back into a shadow and crept along the wall. The commander, as if anticipating her tactic, hurled more flares around him and kept looking both ways. He crouched, holding his rifle in one hand and a knife radiating sorcery in the other. There was the shard she’d been sensing. She was a little disappointed.
Lyssa brought up her gun. Her one free shot didn’t need to kill the man. She lined up her pistol and aimed at the center of his gun, then pulled the trigger.
The mercenary jerked back as the bullet struck the rifle with a bright flash. He hopped to his feet and swung toward her. The front of the rifle fell to the ground. With a scream, he charged Lyssa, the knife held in front of him.
He had two knees, so she gave him two rounds. The commander fell to the ground, screaming in pain.
Lyssa stomped toward him and shot the knife away from him before pointing the gun at his head.
“Damn,” the man wheezed. “You’re better than I thought.”
“I was holding back before because I wanted survivors, but then you pissed me off.” Lyssa crouched and reached out. “Don’t worry. I’m going to give you a magical healing herb, then I’m going to put you to sleep. We’ve got some questions for you and any other survivors. Night-night.”
Chapter Eleven
Lyssa jogged toward Aisha. She’d sent another text code to the Eclipse, but he hadn’t responded, just as he had not responded to the last one. A distant pulse of sorcery sent her already racing heart into
the next gear. She ducked and aimed in the direction of the hill, but no attack came.
She still didn’t know if the mercenaries had brought a Sorcerer with them, but she doubted it. Nothing about their tactics pointed to that idea. They were well-equipped, well-trained men who’d been depending on a couple of bonus toys to see them through the battle.
Lubon remained hidden out there on a hill, waiting for his chance to weaken and kill any Sorcerer who appeared. Maybe he’d seen or sensed something that kept him in place.
She tried texting one more time, but he still didn’t respond. Checking on Aisha would have to come first.
Lyssa frowned as she passed a dead mercenary. There was no sorcery coming off him. It was the same situation with the other bodies she had encountered on her way to Aisha. The only man she could identify as having a shard was the commander.
That bothered her. He couldn’t have seriously been expecting to win by knifing her. Everyone knew she relied on her guns. Had they used up all their shard bullets on Aisha?
“Is it over?” Aisha asked. She was still on the ground and looked like she was in less pain than before. To Lyssa’s relief, the wound had stopped bleeding.
“I took the commander alive,” Lyssa said. “And we’ve got a couple of others still breathing to hand over.” She furrowed her brow. “I texted for backup, but our boy didn’t show. That’s annoying.”
Aisha scoffed. “The Eclipse is waiting for his target. He must have thought dealing with the Shadows beneath him.”
“That’s crap.” Lyssa snorted. “Samuel agreed that if we used the emergency code, the Eclipse would help even without a rogue making an appearance. You could have been killed.”