Southwest Truths (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 3) by Kal Aaron (the red fox clan .txt) 📗

to become the villain in the next Pixar film, Chairs?” Lyssa asked.

The chair dogs rushed her as a group. She fired at the ground in the center of the formation. Her explosive round disintegrated the closest enemy, leaving nothing but flaming pieces and ripping two others apart. They twitched on the ground before they stopped moving. She didn’t know if destroying a chair possessed by a spirit counted as killing something. As far as she knew, it released the spirit but didn’t otherwise harm or damage it in any real way.

Lyssas fired three more shots in rapid succession, sweeping her gun in an arc. Her blasts ensured the motel would need new deck chairs and grounds maintenance. The attacks left charred craters in the concrete and the dirt. Burning hedges surrounded the hole carved through the center by explosions. It was efficient destruction, her specialty.

“Don’t bring chairs to a gunfight, St. James,” Lyssa shouted. “Did you think those things would take me down? I’m insulted.”

The hydro men moved faster, their speed now close to a human jog, but she’d put enough distance between herself and the fluid enemies that it was trivial to produce another set of craters and defeated enemies. The blasts splashed water everywhere. Steam filled the air, leaving it humid. She wanted to throw out another taunt.

Lyssa frowned. Something was wrong; it was too easy. Tristan St. James wouldn’t have the reputation he did if his attacks were trivial to defeat. What was he playing at?

“Why don’t you stop with the attack of the evil pool crap and come out and face me directly?” Lyssa shouted. “Don’t you think this is getting boring?”

“Is that even necessary?” Tristan replied. “I think I can whittle you down, Hecate. How many bullets can you possibly be carrying? Can you defeat my spirits with your batons and spells but not enchanted bullets?”

Lyssa laughed. “I carry enough ammo to clear out a mine filled with monsters, including huge ones. I wouldn’t bet on outlasting me. Let’s not pretend that pushing spirits to manifest in our world doesn’t take energy, too.” She snorted. “How did you kill Lubon? You use a spirit for that, or did you just chop his head off with your knife? Sometimes it’s the personal touch that matters.”

“Not everyone will answer your questions just because you ask.”

She was close enough to the parking lot to make a sprint for her rental car but discarded the idea. Now that she knew who she was dealing with, her best chance of ending everything was to take him on there. Running risked all the unconscious people, given what he’d said.

“Any idea how to wake these people up, Jofi?” Lyssa asked Jofi.

“No,” he replied. “Your generation of loud explosions and their continued sleep suggests you’ll need to disable your opponent or locate and disable the shard responsible.”

“That’s about where I’m at, too. Damn.”

Sorcery pulsed beside her. Lyssa frowned. It was coming from her room.

She stepped back and charged the window, smashing through. Glass flew everywhere and she hit the floor and rolled to her feet, ready to put an explosive round into Tristan St. James at point-blank range, even at risk to herself if it’d end this fight.

There was no one in her room. The sorcery pressure grew.

“What’s going—"

A shockwave smashed into her and flung her against the wall, knocking the air out of her. A howl sounded, and air rushed past her. Twigs, rocks, and tiny pieces of concrete flowed into the center of the room in a swirling mass. The walls of her room cracked, and the mirror shattered. Lyssa fell to one knee, gasping for breath. Her heart thundered. There was no air in the room to fill her empty lungs.

She rushed to the door, threw it open, and ran outside. Two yards away, she inhaled newfound precious oxygen.

Lyssa rushed toward the parking lot. Tristan wasn’t a god, but he was a skilled Sorcerer. She needed to give him less to work with by being smarter.

Something crawled out of her broken window. Lyssa blinked, not sure what she was seeing. Coldness seeped into her body as uneven, juddering shapes slithered out of her room, rough tentacles, legs, arms, and hands appearing and disappearing. The area around them darkened as they moved, and loose debris and pebbles flowed into the shapes, disappearing like they were sucking up everything around them, including light. The forms continued to writhe and distort, constantly changing. As they moved forward, they scoured the concrete pathway.

Lyssa’s heart thundered. She’d seen those before, or something very much like them, but not for about six years. They were materialized emptiness spirits.

“Those spirits are extremely dangerous,” Jofi said. “You should flee.”

There was something in his tone, a genuine emotion: panic mixed with anger. Lyssa took a deep breath. They weren’t grand emptiness spirits. She could still win, but every second she spent fighting them risked Jofi’s seal.

Lyssa finished her run to the parking lot. Two emptiness spirits emerged from her room, but she was having a hard time judging their size because of their continual shifting. She lined up a shot, aimed at the ground in front of one, and fired.

The explosion blasted up concrete and dirt, which swirled into the emptiness spirit and disappeared. The spirit slid forward, not reacting to the shot.

“You will be unable to defeat them using your weapons,” Jofi said, his tone growing strident. “You should retreat.”

Lyssa emptied her magazine, creating a nice, long ditch in the walkway but not slowing the advancing spirits. They crawled along, reaching a car. The spirits advanced without pouring over it, and everything except a thin slice in the middle disappeared into the pure darkness at their center.

Holstering her gun, Lyssa continued backing away. The emptiness spirits weren’t moving fast, but there was no way she could run while something like them was wandering around.

“You’re playing with some dangerous friends, Tristan,” Lyssa shouted. “Very dangerous. But I’m sure you know that.”

“I’m doing what’s necessary,” he replied. “You could make