Southwest Days (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 2)

by Kal Aaron

  Lyssa shut him up with a quick jab to the throat. He stumbled backward, gasping. She glared at him, hoping he’d buy a clue and decide it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  The idiot growled instead. Lyssa let him charge her and grabbed his arm. Her leather jacket provided decent padding when she dropped to the ground and brought up her leg to his chest for a throw, using his weight and speed against him.

  His eyes widened as his brain caught up with what was happening. He flew away with a strangled yelp before landing hard on his back, knocking the wind out of him. He gasped for air.

  Lyssa hopped back onto her feet, deciding mercy was overrated when fighting a larger enemy. She hurried over to him and slammed her boot into his nose.

  The man managed to catch his breath. Two fierce kicks to his stomach and one to his crotch followed, and he yelped in pain.

  She crouched next to him and patted his arm. “This is one of those times you should reconsider your life choices. All I’ve done is beat you up. Plenty of women around here might have shot you.”

  A final kick to the head knocked him out.

  Lyssa stood, unzipped her jacket, and inspected her clothes, including her shirt. No tears. No stains. A good start. It was hard to tell in the minimal lighting halfway into the parking lot, but it looked like she’d only gotten blood on the tips of her boots. She could live with that.

  Heavy footsteps sounded from behind her. She spun and brought up her hands. Cockiness led to sloppiness, and the latter killed.

  The universe was screwing with her. An even larger man, a tatted-out biker in a leather jacket covered with chains, approached her. She’d seen enough scars in her time to identify the old knife wounds on his face.

  Lyssa glanced around to make sure there weren’t more reinforcements coming. “Come on! He tried to steal my bike. Of course, I laid him out. Tell your friend to not steal people’s bikes if he doesn’t want trouble.”

  The biker looked at the downed thief before looking at Lyssa in disbelief and speaking. His voice held all the charm of sandpaper meeting nails on a chalkboard. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Lyssa replied in an uncertain tone. She inclined her head toward her victim but kept her attention on the new man. “He’s not your friend?”

  “Nah.” The biker shook his head. “I saw you fighting and thought he was mugging you. Stealing your bike? You’re right. He got what was coming to him.”

  Lyssa nodded and let out a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to have to go through an entire biker gang before going home.

  The biker nodded and shot a satisfied expression toward the downed thief. “He dead?” he asked in a casual tone. “I know a guy if you need to dump him somewhere. And no, it’s not Tempe Town Lake.”

  Lyssa chuckled. How many bodies did the man need to dispose of on a regular basis?

  “He’s not dead, just busted up.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “But hey, since you’re asking, could you do me a favor?”

  “A favor?”

  “Yeah. Can you call the cops on this guy and tell them what you saw?” Lyssa motioned to her bag. “I’ve got ice cream and I’ve got to eat it before it melts, and I’d like to do that at home, not in the parking lot. You know how it goes; I don’t want to deal with the cops. Too much paperwork, and it’s been a crap day, but I don’t want this guy wandering around in a bad mood and taking it out on someone who can’t handle him.” She pointed at a security camera over the door. “If they question what happened, you can tell them to pull that footage.”

  She had acted in clear self-defense. Even if the cops came knocking, she had nothing to worry about. Samuel couldn’t complain about her beating down a Shadow, given that she hadn’t used sorcery during the fight.

  The biker nodded at her bike. “Get going. I’ll knock his ass out if he gets back up.”

  Lyssa smiled and grabbed her helmet off the back of her bike. “Thanks.”

  “Nice shirt,” the biker remarked. “I’ll remember to never mess with a chick who likes unicorns.”

  Chapter Five

  Lyssa attacked her pint of ice cream with an oversized spoon. She’d just finished relating to Jofi what had happened at the store and was ready for the hard-earned reward on her dining room table.

  It wasn’t like she was attacked every time she went to the store, so she wouldn’t read too much into the incident. That didn’t mean the timing didn’t annoy her.

  “Might I suggest,” Jofi replied, “that you start bringing me along on your shopping trips? The level of human societal disorder suggests that would be a useful general preparation strategy.”

  “I handled it without guns, and the news hypes everything up to get more clicks and viewers,” Lyssa said, breaking through the surface of the strawberry ice cream. “It was just some idiot who thought he could get away with it. This is the price I pay for having such a nice bike. It’s not the first time someone’s tried to steal it, but at least the last time, the guy wasn’t so blatant.”

  “What if the next thief is carrying a weapon?”

  “Running around armed to the teeth on my basic errands is going to tip my precarious balance away from what can only be charitably called sanity. Besides, no reason to escalate a fight.”

  “You misunderstand my suggestion. My presence would lower the overall risk by raising the potential danger for any engagement. Would-be thieves would need to weigh the risk of losing their lives before choosing to fight, unlike what happened earlier. Ignoring that, you were fortunate he wasn’t armed. Given your vocation, I think it unwise to travel without at least one firearm.”

  “I might be a Paranoid Patty and turned you into one, too, but come on! Most of my shopping trips don’t end in fights or gun battles.” Lyssa rolled her eyes. “And I’ve been training in hand-to-hand fighting techniques since I was five. If I needed to, I could have blinded him with a spell, even without the Night Goddess. You’re worrying too much.”

  “Blind men can still hit if they rely on hearing,” Jofi replied.

  “This might be the state of Tombstone and the OK Corral, but cops still frown on gunfights in parking lots.” Lyssa shook her head. “The last thing I need is to end up on the news and have a lot of reporters sniffing around. It’s not like it’s impossible to trace me back to California and start figuring out that Lyssa Corti left California around the same time Hecate started popping up in Arizona. Right?”

  Lyssa gulped down a bit of delicious ice cream and waited for another response from Jofi. None came.

  Could spirits be embarrassed? All her years with him, and she still didn’t know the answer to such a basic question. From what Lee insisted, most of Jofi’s personality was a fraud anyway, reflections of parts of her psyche rather than true and autonomous traits from the entity. She didn’t know how much she believed that, given how uptight Jofi was, but she couldn’t prove Lee wrong either.

  From what she’d heard, it wasn’t like the great spirit Sorcerers understood much more than she did. Binding a spirit to do a Sorcerer’s bidding didn’t grant insight into its mind or possible soul.

  Lyssa frowned and jammed her spoon into the container, no longer interested in her treat. The stupid thief had ruined her night by forcing this conversation. She’d mentioned her childhood training to Jofi without thinking through the implications of the number she’d tossed out.

  “I never even thought about it,” she said.

  “That seems unlikely,” Jofi replied. “We’ve discussed the merits and disadvantages of bringing me with you on more than one occasion. I thought the incident highlighted the necessity.”

  “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about when I started my martial arts training.” Lyssa looked at her hands, the same hands she’d used to take down someone much bigger than herself minutes before. “Everyone in my family was a Torch before I started training, both my parents and my brother. I don’t even know if I understood what it meant to begin my training at the time. I just knew I wanted to be l
ike my brother and my parents. They were all tough, even without their sorcery and regalia. It gave them this aura that made me respect them more.”

  “Does that bother you?” Jofi asked. “Do you think they robbed you of a proper choice?”

  When Jofi asked a question like that, she wondered if he was baiting her about his situation. On a subconscious level, he might know he wasn’t free. That situation would need to be handled, but not before she closed out the investigation on her brother.

  Lyssa shook her head. “I’m not sure. I cared less about being a Torch at the time than learning to fight like everyone else. I wanted to be a strong Corti. I wanted to continue the family tradition.” She sighed. “I don’t suppose it’s different than coming from a family of athletes or musicians and starting to play or train in a sport at a young age. But it’s weird now to think that everyone took it for granted I’d become a Torch, including me.”

  “That’s not true of everyone,” Jofi replied. “From what I’ve overheard in previous conversations, Tricia Bennett attempted to stop you when she took responsibility for you. She argued on more than one occasion that you becoming a Torch was unnecessary.”

  “That she did.” Lyssa pulled out the spoon and slid the lid back onto the pint. She picked them both up and headed toward the kitchen. “She didn’t push that hard, but that was out of respect for me.” She tossed the spoon into her sink, walked toward her refrigerator, and opened the freezer. “She could have pushed harder and maybe stopped me, but it’s not a problem. Let me make that clear. I like what I do, and I always have. I’m cleaning up the world one scumbag at a time, and things are more dangerous since M-Day. It’s only…”

  “What?” Jofi asked. “I have more difficulty inferring sentence endings than you might expect, even after all our time together.”

  “I never thought it would take this long for me to find a lead on Chris. I’d gotten so used to the years passing that getting pictures and the message so close together rattled me. An embarrassment of riches, I guess you could call it.” Lyssa put her ice cream away. “And Samuel’s cut me off from work, which means I can’t follow up right away. It’s like I have this energy ready to explode out, and I’ll pop soon if I can’t vent it.”

  “Please do not consider it rude of me to point out you were complaining not all that long ago about Elder Samuel giving you work,” Jofi said. “Given the extensive injuries and resources you used in completing the previous contract, it’s not surprising he’s not eager to give you new assignments immediately. In another context, you might be grateful for his consideration, and it appeared to me you were grateful in the immediate aftermath of the Houston incident.”

  “In another context, I might be the Queen of Mars, but in this world, I’m only Lyssa Corti, Torch and professional paranoid bitch.” She slammed the freezer door. “And now I’m healed up and ready and have piles of ammo aching to meet new scumbags.” She slapped her chest. “Serafina even made me a new vest with my last batch of ammo. Samuel knows I’m ready for new contracts.”

  “You suspect his actions are motivated by conspiracy?” Jofi asked. “Or at least more conspiracy than usual?”

  She snickered and headed into the living room. “I don’t know. It’s frustrating. Things have been happening I could have handled. I could have understood the first couple of weeks, but not after that. The timing of the message from Last Remnant only makes it worse.”

  “I thought you felt Samuel would not conspire against you in that kind of way,” Jofi said. “You seemed rather certain on that point before. I will defer to your evaluation of the Elder.”

  Lyssa settled onto her couch. “I still believe that, but it doesn’t mean he’s not benching me out of a misguided attempt to protect me or the Society. If he believes there’s a conspiracy going on, at least more than he’s letting on, he might think I’m making too much noise and could make things worse.” She furrowed her brow. “I mean, come on. Remember last week?”

  “Are you referring to the incident in New Mexico?”

  “Yeah.” Lyssa nodded. “Requesting Theodora send Aisha, of all people, to handle something in my backyard is rubbing salt in the wound. I could have handled that.”

  “From his perspective, your relationship with Miss Khatri has improved significantly. His response in that incident was consistent with your previous complaints and recommendations. He wanted to make sure you were settled in. From my perspective, Elder Samuel is doing his best to meet your previous needs.”

  Lyssa snorted. “So now he chooses to care about me? Perfect. I think I liked the guy who didn’t care better.”

  Lyssa sat cross-legged on her bed and put her hand to her mouth to fight a yawn. She was surrounded by small dry-erase boards filled with names written in black marker.

  Although she teased Samuel and the other older Sorcerers about their resistance to technology, she understood the dangers of depending too much on technological devices and being vulnerable to hackers and government spies. The Illuminated lagged in fusing their arts with Shadow technology, and she didn’t have the inclination, essence, or skills to be the woman promoting that change.

  She ran her finger across the first name on one of the boards and then to the side containing a date followed by carefully written notes. It was the first because it was the most important.

  Chris Corti, Northern Trickster. Last known location: USA.

  Town? State?

  Lyssa had, with the help of her knowledge and casual asking around spread out over numerous contacts, identified every single Sorcerer and Sorceress on the memory card along with their regalia and essences. That had proven easier than she expected.

  It had been a nice bit of sleuthing, but it hadn’t led to any useful conclusions. She couldn’t discern a pattern among the names, essences, regalia, or countries. Someone could have picked Illuminated names at random and come up with a similar list.

  Should she have asked Tricia to look at it? Getting a different perspective might help.

  Lyssa worried it might not be anything deeper than simple coincidence. There weren’t a huge number of Illuminated in the world. It wasn’t impossible that Chris, Theodora, and Tristan St. James had ended up on the list by mere chance. They might have just wandered in front of a camera.

  She sucked in a breath and shook her head. That couldn’t be true. There had to be some meaning.

  Adrien Allard had been smuggling shards, and he didn’t have any deeper connections with Last Remnant than any other random Sorcerer. There was no way he could have pulled off something on that scale by himself.

  Was it that simple? A greedy and ambitious Elder who’d been helping smuggle shards and hadn’t counted on two stubborn Sorceresses putting their differences aside to deliver justice?

  That didn’t explain Chris or the sudden return of his regalia, but Lyssa didn’t have all the evidence yet. A crime couldn’t be investigated until someone knew about it. The smuggling was too high-profile and blatant to ignore, but there could be many more dark plots waiting to be uncovered.

  “Damn it.” Lyssa picked up the whiteboard and stared at it. “I’m getting nowhere fast. I need to up my pressure on Samuel or get more information from somebody on that memory card.”

  “You could ask Elder Theodora directly about her presence,” Jofi suggested.

  Lyssa burst out laughing. “Yeah, that’s not happening yet. I don’t trust her.”

  “You could have Caroline accompany you to verify the truth.”

  “That’s not a half-bad idea, but I’m not ready to pull that trigger until I’m all but sure of the answer. I don’t like politics, but it’s a consideration, and it’ll be difficult to get the princess out of her LA castle to help me without solid proof.”

  “Do you trust any of the others on the memory card?” Jofi asked.

  “I barely know any of the others. None of my friends are on the card, and if I knew where Chris was, I wouldn’t be sitting here in my bed making weird whiteboar
d evidence lists like a crazy detective who ran out of vodka.” Lyssa frowned. “There’s something here. I just don’t know what it is.”

  “Given what you’ve stated in the past and presuming there is a grand conspiracy connecting those pictures to Mr. Allard,” Jofi said, “any approach of an Illuminated on your list risks eliciting a dangerous response, up to and including Tristan St. James or another Eclipse being sent for you.”

  Lyssa groaned and fell back on her pillow. “Nothing like having to take on an Eclipse, but it’s not like I can’t fight. He might be a specialist in assassination, but I like to consider myself a generalist in the art of destructive mayhem. If I see him coming, it’ll be an even fight.”

  She wasn’t as confident as she sounded. Her skills were top-notch, but Tristan had been killing Sorcerers longer than she’d been alive. Having Jofi helped close the gap, but she’d rather not take the chance unless she had no other choice.

  “I would suggest you redouble your efforts to recruit specific trustworthy allies who can aid you in battle,” Jofi said. “Regardless of who you might face in the future, it’ll be difficult to succeed on your own.”

  “I wish Rafael was in the States.” Lyssa draped an arm over her face. “The guy was annoying, but he’s not corrupt, and he can fight. But it’s hard to know where he is half the time.”

  She hadn’t seen her mentor in years and only received the briefest of messages on occasion. The last time she’d heard from him, he was spending time in Australia hunting enchanted koalas that had been upgraded into vicious drop bears.

  There was something pure about a monster hunt. Taking down hideous perversions of nature lacked the moral and political complications of a lot of her jobs.

  “There are other possibilities,” Jofi said. “There is a person who is closer and more easily tracked down. She might prove to be of assistance.”