Southwest Truths (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 3)

by Kal Aaron

  “Be more cautious than Miss Khatri,” Jofi said. “Her arrogance caused her injuries. You can’t deny that.”

  Lyssa rolled her eyes. “It was tungsten bullets, which are unusual, but I get what you’re saying. It’s not like I’ve ever been the type to stand there and let people shoot at me, even if the Night Goddess is tougher than some regalia.”

  “I’d be at a loss if you died.”

  Lyssa laughed. “So would I.”

  “Do what you need to do to survive,” Jofi said. “It’s better to use all your possible choices and risk death than hold back and ensure it.”

  Lyssa eyed the two showstopper magazines in the safe. “I’m not going to go down easy if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m going to finish packing, and we’re going to get the hell out of here with the help of cash and a fake ID. I’m going underground, just like Samuel wanted. I’m also leaving my main phone here. Samuel’s made it clear to the EAA I won’t be available, and I already told Bill I’d be out of town. It’s time to turtle up.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lyssa shoved a spoonful of premium strawberry ice cream into her mouth. It should have been delicious. That was the whole point. She’d spent enough on the pint at a fancy upscale LA grocery store after fleeing to California per Samuel’s request. It almost felt like a sin bringing the fancy ice cream to a motel that rented most of their rooms hourly.

  She couldn’t get into her treat. It might as well have been ash-flavored. The situation was ruining her tastebuds.

  Bringing the Ducati with her had been out of the question, even if it slowed her travel. Tenebrous Air didn’t work on something as big as a car, but adding a few hours behind the wheel of a rental in exchange for not standing out as much was worth the security trade-off, given the uncertainty in the situation.

  She’d chosen LA instead of her instinctive choice of running to San Diego. Anyone who knew her knew she didn’t care for LA. The earlier mercenaries had done a lot of research, and she wanted to steer the next batch in the wrong direction.

  Worried about Tricia and Fred, she went ahead and contacted them, telling them to take a vacation for a few weeks. Tricia didn’t ask for any details and said she’d wanted to take a trip anyway. It didn’t make Lyssa feel any better.

  “This sucks,” Lyssa muttered. “It’s like I’m the one on the run, and I’m the damned Torch. This is ridiculous.”

  She picked up her remote and turned off the TV. There was nothing good on anyway.

  “It’s only been a few days,” Jofi replied. “It doesn’t seem like your activities during those days have been very different from what you do on your normal days off. I don’t see why you’re upset.”

  “Ouch.” Lyssa laughed. “I’m that boring, huh? But I have Bill and the range at home. I’m starting to do more with my life. What can I say? I’m a workaholic.”

  “Why not take the time to reflect on recent events absent an immediate threat?” Jofi asked. “Mrs. Bennett has often suggested you don’t take enough time to focus on positive elements of your life. I do understand that much of that is driven by concern over your brother, but you can’t help him currently and won’t be able to help him at all if you’re killed. There’s little to be gained from this other than to take the opportunity to relax and recover.”

  Lyssa patted her shoulder. “My wounds from the fight are mostly healed up, thanks to the Night Goddess and Tricia’s herbs. I don’t need to relax and recover. I need the stupid assassins to be found and killed, preferably by me.”

  She’d spent almost every moment outside of showers in her regalia, her coat and mask nearby and ready to grab. It wasn’t the most comfortable rest, but it’d assured maximum power if anyone showed up ready to fight her.

  A vague concern about collateral damage continued to bother her, but she was doing her best to keep a low profile. Her current haunt was far from luxurious, but spending time Old West camping with Aisha had left Lyssa wanting a decent bed and an ice machine. Camping deep in the wilderness wasn’t her style, and she suspected it might be easier to find her there. Even rogues stepped more softly in the city.

  Lyssa sighed and laid her head on her pillow, her hands underneath. “It’s just annoying. I don’t like feeling like someone else has this situation under their control. Nobody knows what the hell’s going on. Not even Samuel and the Tribunal. What am I supposed to do? Stay here a week? A month? A year? All the while, whatever’s going on with my brother gets harder and harder to investigate.”

  “I understand your frustration, but as the recent battle demonstrated so effectively, even experienced Torches and Eclipses can be surprised and suffer losses,” Jofi said. “The same lack of useful information you highlight dramatically increases the risk if you’re not more careful in this matter. I must stress that you can’t help your brother if you are dead.”

  Lyssa groaned. “I know. You’ve pointed it out more than once.”

  “Only because you don’t seem to accept it, and you’re reacting emotionally to a situation that requires careful risk analysis.”

  “It’s called being stubborn.” Lyssa sat up. “But I need Last Remnant to at least start to move on. This assassin picked the absolute worst time to mess with me over this stuff. If I get my hands on him, he’s not going to last long. I’m going to make him regret ever even looking in my general direction.”

  She set her ice cream aside before hopping up and walking over to the desk to fill a glass with ice, but her ice bucket was empty. With a frown, she glanced down at Jofi before grabbing her holsters and coat. Being taken out on the way to get ice would be more embarrassing than dying in bed. She could imagine her dead body on the ground, ice bucket in hand.

  Lyssa willed the Night Goddess to turn into a black leather jacket and jeans. Her standard white jacket might be too noticeable or memorable. This was the annoying part of having to hide out. The little details added up when someone knew what to look for.

  The only thing she didn’t have a good solution for was her face. Someone doing facial recognition on her might get hits, but she didn’t think her current roach motel was filled with cameras running sophisticated facial recognition algorithms on their guests.

  There were no suspicious drones zooming by or sketchy people paying attention to her. There were plenty of questionable people at the hotel, but they were there for mundane vices that didn’t involve hunting Sorceresses. The incessant moaning from the room next to her was proof.

  Lyssa grabbed the empty ice bucket and headed out of the room. She searched for anyone looking her way. A housekeeper standing across the hedges dividing the two rows of rooms scowled at Lyssa as she pushed her rattling cart over the concrete walkway.

  There wasn’t any sorcery nearby. Lyssa hadn’t even risked throwing up defensive spells on her room that might lead the assassin to her. Minimal sleep and Jofi would have to be enough to keep her safe.

  Lyssa strolled in front of the rooms and headed for the covered alcove with soda and ice machines near the fenced-off pool. The pool was in need of a serious cleaning, given that algae was beginning to take over. Along the way, a man with an unkempt beard leaned against his doorjamb, smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey, babe,” he called to her.

  “I’m taken,” she replied, not slowing.

  “I bet I’m better.”

  Lyssa stopped to glare at him. “Listen, asshole. I’m not having the best week, and a good friend of mine just got shot several times. So, why don’t you leave me the hell alone before I decide to see if you can smoke that cigarette from another end?”

  He grimaced and looked away. “Geeze. Okay. I’m sorry.”

  Lyssa continued scowling at him as she passed his room on her quest for ice. The housekeeper knocked on a door closer to Lyssa’s room. When no one answered, she pulled out her keycard and let herself in, bringing along a trash bag.

  This wasn’t a big trap waiting to happen. The housekeeper wasn’t a clever Sorcerer waiting to
blast Lyssa with a water essence. She was at a cheap motel with sad people like her trying to hide from the world.

  Lyssa filled her bucket and let out a sigh. “Next time, I should make Samuel put me up in the Traveling Club.”

  “Is that even possible?” Jofi asked. “It’s not a hotel, is it? And would it have been safe? It’s a place where your kind is known to congregate, but it doesn’t have the same level of security as Last Remnant.”

  “It was just a joke,” Lyssa replied. She shook the bucket to level the ice. “I wasn’t expecting to spend the time leading up to my trip in a place like this, is all.”

  “Your job often leads you to unexpected situations.”

  Lyssa snorted. “That’s true.”

  She headed back to her room, shaking her ice and enjoying the rhythm of the cubes clinking together. Her stomach rumbled.

  Lyssa had stuck to delivered pizza since checking in, concerned that using a food delivery app would lead to her assailant tracking her down. Traveling too far from the motel increased the chance of being spotted.

  She couldn’t live like this. It was bad enough she had to keep a secret identity and lie to her boyfriend and neighbors, but it wasn’t easy to separate Hecate from the rest of the world. Keeping Lyssa Corti apart from the real world would destroy her.

  “Something is wrong,” Jofi said.

  Lyssa stiffened. She crouched and set her ice bucket down before reaching into her jacket and resting her hands on her guns. A survey of the nearby area yielded only the smoking sleazeball and the housekeeper pulling a vacuum cleaner off her cart.

  “Are you seeing something I’m not?” she whispered.

  “There is unusually high spirit presence in this area,” Jofi replied.

  “Meaning what?”

  “There are more spirits nearby than would be expected, and more are gathering.”

  Intense pressure attacked Lyssa’s chest, also marking a huge and sudden amount of sorcery. She backed away from the bucket with a frown and edged back toward the alcove. There was a dark corner she could use.

  The smoker collapsed to the ground in a heap, his cigarette falling out of his hand. The housekeeper dropped, knocking her vacuum over with a loud crack as it hit the hard concrete.

  The stars died above. Darkness spread overhead, tracing a dome. The lights outside the room and the light poles in the parking lot continued to work. A wall of pure darkness cut them off from the outside world.

  Her mystery assassin had made things easier for her by knocking everyone out. She pulled out her mask and slipped it on before reverting Night Goddess to its default dark and sinister appearance, including the shadowy aura.

  Lyssa drew her guns. One was loaded with a penetrator magazine and the other with conventional rounds. The bag in the room contained whatever else she might need.

  “Spirits, huh?” She scoffed. “Then we have a pretty good guess of what our assassin’s essence is.”

  “Be cautious,” Jofi said. “There’s little I can do, bound as I am to this weapon, to directly aid you against spirits.”

  “There’s only so much they can do other than stunts without manifesting in the physical world.” Lyssa summoned her wraith form and crept toward her room, keeping her guns up. “Let’s grab some more mags and get to the parking lot. There’s more room to shoot there without accidentally hitting somebody.”

  “You should consider fleeing in your vehicle.”

  “I don’t think that big dome of darkness is just about cutting off light,” Lyssa objected.

  She knelt by the downed smoker. He was still breathing. Whatever spells had been cast, at least she didn’t have a bunch of semi-innocent people’s deaths on her conscience.

  Lyssa continued toward her room. The massive amount of sorcerous pressure generated by the dome made it hard to focus on any other spells. Her new friend could be sneaking up on her from any angle, and she’d have a difficult time knowing.

  It didn’t make sense. Throwing up that huge a spell risked other Sorcerers detecting it. There might not be a lot of Illuminated in the world, but most tended to cluster in bigger cities. Caroline wasn’t the only other Illuminated in Los Angeles.

  “They’re going all in,” Lyssa whispered. “I’m almost honored.”

  “Almost?” Jofi replied.

  “I can’t help but be a little insulted that someone is trying to kill me. It’s a personal thing.”

  “Understandable.”

  Lyssa was almost at her room. She might have made a mistake using her magic and regalia. The enemy might have known her general location and thrown up the other spells to goad her into revealing herself.

  “Oh, well,” she said. “I wanted to get this over with anyway.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Just before Lyssa got to her room, all the nearby lights died. That was downright insulting. After everything that had happened at the ghost town, she’d expected her opponent to know the basic facts about her. Trying to blind her with darkness was the least effective strategy she could think of, beating out using sinister shadow puppets to intimidate her.

  She made it to her room without anything exploding or monsters bearing down on her. That was a good start.

  Her heart rate kicked up. Her door was ajar. She couldn’t remember if she’d left it that way. The enemy might be waiting inside. It might be time to finish things.

  Not having the time or patience to second-guess everything over the last few minutes, Lyssa threw open the door and swept back and forth with her guns, seeking targets. Nothing and no one confronted her. She must have left the door open, after all.

  That was good enough for her. She ran over to her backpack, unzipped it, and stuffed magazines into her pockets, starting with her showstoppers.

  She wanted to be ready for a long, drawn-out battle. Whoever was there should have taken her out before she got back in the room since now she could take on a whole mercenary army or a mine filled with monsters and come out victorious.

  Lyssa hurried back outside, closed the door, and headed to the parking lot. Though she still had her wraith form up, she crouched behind a truck and peered around the area. A small number of people lay unconscious on the sidewalk and in the parking lot. She assumed everybody within the dome of darkness other than her was in a similar state.

  That was useful. No one would run screaming into her line of fire. All she needed to do was be mindful of where she aimed her explosive rounds.

  “More spirits are entering the area,” Jofi said.

  “That explains how this guy is pulling off all these impressive spells, especially if he’s using shards, too.” Lyssa looked around, seeking a hint of a target. She couldn’t do much about non-materialized spirits, but she could put a nice bullet in the head of any spirit Sorcerer who showed up. After that, all she’d need to do was wait for his spirit friends to leave the physical world. An image popped into her head, a spirit Sorcerer she’d never met but who she’d seen on the memory card she’d recovered in Oklahoma. “I’m also really not liking where this is pointing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Lyssa frowned. “But it’s time to hide a little better. Might as well use a soul blanket.”

  She chanted in Phrygian and visualized more sigils. A chill ran through her body, and she shivered.

  “Can you still hear me?” she whispered.

  “Our direct bond can pierce your soul blanket,” Jofi replied.

  Lyssa chuckled. “It’s just been a while, and I needed to make sure. If this is mostly spirit crap, it’ll help until we have to go on offense.” She made a face. “I’m trying to figure out if I should make a run for it.”

  “Do you think you can get through the barrier?” Jofi asked. “You seemed doubtful before.”

  “Not sure.” Lyssa stared at the edge of the parking lot, where a wall of darkness marked the edge of the dome. “I don’t think it’s a giant forcefield, but I don’t like the idea of leavin
g people here when some psycho with spirits is wandering around. It might be worth the risk to draw this guy away from so many people.”

  “You’re correct about its nature,” said a hollow, echoing voice. It was hard to tell if it was male or female.

  Though Lyssa could hear it clearly, the voice wasn’t loud. She couldn’t tell if it was coming from a particular direction. It was similar to how Jofi spoke to her.

  Lyssa gritted her teeth, wondering if she was dealing with another spirit rather than a Sorcerer. It didn’t seem likely. She doubted an untethered spirit would stalk her across the country or be able to hire different groups of mercenaries and assassins to go after targets. Most spirits also lacked Jofi’s intelligence and mental stability, let alone his ability to communicate.

  “Can you hear that, Jofi?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Hey, whoever’s out there, can you hear me?” she asked, this time speaking at a normal volume.

  “Yes, I can hear you,” the voice replied. “It’s taken me some effort to track you down. You did a good job of disappearing. I’m impressed. It’s been a while since I’ve had to put this much effort into tracking down a target.”

  “I live to annoy, vex, and otherwise piss people off.” Lyssa looked toward her room. The dome and other spells continued to mask more sorcery, but she could sense an uptick in spells past her room and toward the pool. Ending the Sorcerer might end the dome.

  The more she thought about it, the less the idea of running made sense. Getting out of the dome might not be hard, but then she’d be on the streets of Los Angeles with an enemy of unknown capabilities and ruthlessness. She wasn’t familiar enough with the area to know where to run to isolate her opponent. She also didn’t have eyes on the target, and he could kill countless people in the crossfire, assuming he didn’t execute everyone at the motel.