Southwest Days (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 2), Kal Aaron [book recommendations based on other books .txt] 📗

Ryan rushed in front of the healer to carve a lizard apart. Its body flew a couple of yards before the neatly sliced top and bottom separated. He pivoted toward another enemy and took it apart with similar ease.

“Nothing’s coming from the rear,” he shouted.

“Kill what you want,” Lyssa replied. “There’s plenty to go around.”

The huge volume of monsters rushing the team made it impossible to contain to the hole Lyssa had blasted into the wall, but the modest size of the opening kept the team from having to worry much other than shooting, frying, and slicing the front monsters so eager to die. An occasional beast popped over the group and made a play for Antoine, and he blew it apart.

Aisha sliced off the bottom of her boots with a flame dagger before surrounding herself with a bright flame aura. A lizard charged her, but its mouth burned away before it could bite down. She shoved her palm against its body and a burst of flame hurled it into other monsters, slowing their advance.

“Pathetic creature.” She sneered. “Did you think you had a chance against me?”

Lyssa didn’t mock her about her taunts as she continued firing. She had been guilty of the same thing during her first trip.

She had reloaded her regular rounds several times but had been holding her other pistol and doing nothing with it. She brought it up and disrupted the enemy line, her quick shots exploding in the centers of tight clusters of lizards. That attack, combined with Aisha’s hail of fireballs, helped create a growing mountain of charred lizards.

One lizard made it through the death stream and barreled toward Lyssa to bite down on her arm. She hissed at the sting, but her vest and regalia stopped it from penetrating into her flesh. She fired two rounds into its throat and kicked it back.

“I don’t want to smell even worse when this is over, you freak,” she shouted.

A curtain of flame tore through the front line of the lizards of both columns, setting most of them on fire. Lyssa took the opportunity to jump back and reload both her guns.

The crazed monsters charged through the flames and thrashed in the fluid, but they were scalded and dying. Even the snake-roaches had eventually demonstrated mild self-preservation, but the lizards didn’t seem to be learning anything.

Lyssa didn’t mind. They could finish off the enemy quicker that way. Cautious monsters wasted time.

Suddenly, brightly colored lizards streamed through the opening. Lyssa head-shot the first two she spotted, worried about what the difference in coloration meant, but a third lizard clarified matters by spitting a thick white glob toward her. She ducked and avoided it, but it struck a leftover chunk of the queen and sizzled as it ate away at the decaying material.

“Acid spit!” she shouted. “Careful!”

Aisha ripped into the air with flames shooting from her feet. The pool sizzled and evaporated below her. When she neared the room, she showered flame blasts and exploding balls on the lizards at a more feverish pace than before.

Ryan pointed his sonic blade at a pile of fallen rubble from the original opening. Lyssa couldn’t make out his humming in the chaos of the shrieks, explosions, and gunshots, but chunks of rock shattered into hundreds of pieces. The shrapnel shredded the nearby monsters, adding to the burgeoning piles of the dead. It was pure carnage.

An acid lizard nailed Lyssa’s leg with its spit. Her regalia sizzled and thinned. She gritted her teeth before blowing its head off in revenge.

“You need help?” Antoine asked, twirling his staff. He’d not had to pop a monster in a while.

“I’m not that badly off yet,” Lyssa said. “Just watch yourself.”

She laughed when a pack of small snake-roaches rushed through the opening. Aisha’s aerial bombardment scattered them, leaving them nothing more than charred messes before they made it very far.

“Good to see some classics,” Lyssa said, firing at an acid-spitter.

The heaving, thrashing mass of monsters coming through the hole was scraping off material on both sides and widening it. They were still forced into easy columns, but the increased space was allowing more through with each wave.

Lyssa double-loaded her empty pistols with regular rounds. Aisha was handling crowd control fine. It was time to focus on finishing off the ones who got past the initial bombardment. She swept through the monsters, putting round after round in their heads or down their throats.

“You guys never learn to be afraid. Not a great survival trait.”

The dead bodies had started as a barrier for the enemy, but the now-huge pile formed a natural soft ramp onto and over the body of the queen, making it easier for the survivors to scramble toward their targets. Though the increasing waves included more snake-roaches and fewer lizards, the acid spitters grew more common, forcing everyone to keep moving.

The cacophony of battle receded in Lyssa’s mind as she focused on the nearby threats. She trusted Aisha, Ryan, and Antoine to play their parts and concentrated on downing targets and ducking and dodging the monsters that made it close to her or the occasional splat of acid coming her way.

Snake-roaches fell. Acid-spitters’ heads exploded. It was a meditation session centered on death.

Two magazines later, Lyssa took short, quick breaths, trying to ignore the burning pain and holes in different parts of her regalia. Aisha dropped to the ground shortly after, her breathing just as ragged. Huge numbers of dead monsters proved the cost for the enemy, but the team had been pushed back to the other side of the pool.

The monsters were able to spread out now, and the change provided the Society team a greater advantage since the lizards and snake-roaches couldn’t swim faster than they could run. Ryan waded toward the front, eager to cut through the survivors, while Aisha alternated concentrated fire blasts and explosive orbs near the ever-widening hole.

A lizard made it past Ryan and bit