Southwest Nights (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 1), Kal Aaron [best books for 20 year olds txt] 📗

shield. You don’t understand how long I’ve prepared for something like this. Do you think I didn’t anticipate Torches or Eclipses showing up? Your arrogance will be your downfall. We can continue to attack you, but you can’t get to us. You can’t win.”

“I think you still don’t understand what pure darkness is,” Lyssa replied.

“And what’s that? Entertain me before you die.”

Lyssa didn’t respond. She chanted under her breath, her mind filled with a complex series of glyphs and arcane symbols alternated with images of celestial destruction, including a stream of material being ripped off a massive star and heading into a black hole. She shifted her visualizations, mentally drawing the glyphs in strokes in time with her chants. The glyphs were formed in her mind over a field of stars, each star disappearing when she produced an arcane symbol. A swirling void surrounded the front of her left pistol containing the showstopper rounds.

“What are you playing at over there?” Adrien asked, sounding nervous. “I can sense it. Your darkness won’t win against my blades. And you never answered my question, Hecate. What’s so special about pure darkness?”

“Pure darkness is one important terrifying thing,” Lyssa replied. “It’s why everyone has a primal fear of it. Pure darkness hides everything from sight, so people inject their fears into what they can’t see. In that sense, it’s everything, but that’s not what it is. What it is, is nothing.”

She spun around the corner, pointed the gun at Adrien, and pulled the trigger.

Chapter Thirty

Biting cold enveloped Lyssa’s body. Deep, impenetrable darkness swallowed the emerging bullet. The blackness flew toward the invisible barrier, dimming the path it flew along but not expanding, as if sucking in the nearby light and leaving a column of shadow.

The bullet struck the barrier. Jagged dark lines shot out from the point of impact, enveloping the barrier in an instant and revealing its shape as a squat dome. Panic covered the faces of the men inside.

The inky dome of nothingness lasted less than a second before dots of light appeared, a few at first, then many, as if it were flaking away into nothingness. Lyssa brought up her other gun, still filled with penetrator rounds, and waited until the dome disappeared.

The man holding the skull shard jerked back as it cracked and crumbled to dust. He yanked out a pistol.

Lyssa smiled, not disappointed with her failure to kill Adrien. She needed to take the bastard alive. Shredding Adrien’s invisible castle had been worth it just for his shocked expression.

“Annihilation,” Jofi said, “has a beauty all its own.”

Lyssa hadn’t heard Jofi say anything like that before, but she didn’t have time to worry. She’d know when and if the seals broke. It wouldn’t be subtle.

Adrien sprinted from the open container to the container maze, his blades still whirling around him. Aisha unleashed small, fast fire blasts at his men. Her spells exploded on the unfortunate lackeys, burning through their uniforms and sending them to the ground, screaming. The survivors broke away from the container and ran in different directions.

A curtain of flame from Aisha ripped over the ground and cut them off from the container maze. They ran backward as a group, laying down cover fire as they sprinted for smoking ruins of the semi’s cab, the only available cover.

The dart man pulled a dart off his bandolier and brought his arm back to throw it. Aisha whipped a fireball at his arm. He released the dart, only for it to meet the Sorceress’ attack. The dart exploded in a web of sticky filaments, imprisoning him. He yelled in surprise and toppled forward. Aisha laughed.

She wouldn’t be able to keep up that pace after the larger, earlier attacks. Lyssa needed to do her job, too.

Taking her opening, Lyssa jumped for her first conjured step. She’d meant to use the steps to get above potential holes in the shield, but now they would help her track down the fleeing Sorcerer.

She ignored the throbbing from her previous wounds and the cold and heaviness soaking her body, concentrating on charging up the steps and getting an angle on the fleeing Sorcerer. A bullet flew past her, but the man who’d shot at her went down a half-second later, the victim of a fireball.

Aisha forced the men back, alternating hands as she tossed attacks. Covered by her shield, her bare feet left blackened steps on the road.

The enemy bullets disappeared against the power of her shield, but stray shots to the side exploded on the pavement, staggering her. Aisha had already downed half the men, leaving Lyssa not very worried about her, but she went ahead and added two shots of her own at the shooters from above. Her penetrator rounds blew through the bodies of her targets.

She was out of pity. These men had understood what wielding shards against Torches meant. They’d had their chance to surrender, and they’d insisted on fighting. Like Alvarez and his thugs, they’d learn that shards weren’t enough to compete with true sorcery.

Lyssa bounded higher using the disintegrating Dark Steps. She took a side path that helped her spot the fleeing Adrien. She ran forward and leaped off the farther step onto the top of a container, pumping her cold and heavy arms and legs to catch up with him. He ducked behind a container.

Wrenching metal sounded from ahead. Lyssa kept running. Metal ripped from the top of nearby containers, lengthening into sword- and knife-sized blades. They shot out in an arc pointed in her direction.

She jumped down between containers to avoid the attack. One of the blades sliced into her shoulder, tearing the regalia and the mesh. Blood seeped from the cut.

Lyssa landed with a grunt, stumbling. In her current state, firing another showstopper would drain her too much, and she needed to take Adrien alive anyway. It’d been a risk shooting it directly at him, even behind his shield.

Her shoulder stung, and she glanced at the wound. Thin but shallow. Slicing through her stacked defenses