“Okay, we’ll do this differently,” Lyssa replied, holstering her guns. She pulled out her batons and expanded them with a flick. A moment of concentration and a dark aura swallowed the batons. “Give me cover, and I’ll close in and knock them out.”
“I can’t guarantee I won’t kill any of them,” Aisha replied.
“It’s fine. It’s not like I haven’t killed some of them. Just don’t kill all of them before I get my chance.” Lyssa vanished into the shadows again. “And I trust you to have my back.”
Aisha snickered. “Oh, how things have changed.” She smiled. “Then let me distract them in a manner worthy of my regalia and your respect.”
She chanted a spell. Four flaming wings emerged from her back, and she shot into the sky. With a loud shout in Sanskrit, she thrust out her palm. A cluster of small fireballs appeared in a circle and then shot off in rapid succession. They struck the ground and the buildings near the active mercenaries, bursting into showers of flame and smoke but not doing much damage.
Lyssa spun around the corner and jogged toward the mercenaries. As expected, they ignored the shadow blending with the red-tinged night and opened fire on the four-winged flame angel in the sky. Her wraith form wouldn’t last past one attack, and their confusion might not continue past a handful, but once she was in their line, it was only a matter of time before she took them all down.
Aisha surged forward and peppered the mercenaries with flame blasts and bolts in a strafing run on her way toward their vehicles. They sprayed her again, to no effect.
She cackled like a witch in a cartoon before settling down behind the mercenaries. Ignoring them for a moment, she brought back her arms and fueled a growing ball of flame pointed the opposite way.
The mercenaries ceased fire and spread among the remaining buildings. Fires burned freely on many of the buildings, sending dark smoke into the sky. The smoldering remnants of earlier hits added to thickening miasma.
Aisha released her latest attack. The spell roared away from her and struck the center SUV. A massive explosion consumed it and blew it apart. The two closest vehicles were knocked over by the blast, smashing into others and shattering windows.
“Don’t you see, fools?” Aisha shouted, rising into the air again. “You have no chance of winning. The only reason you’re not dead is that we need some of you alive. Now sur—”
A single shot ripped through her shield and stomach. She reached down with her hand and touched the wound. She brought her blood-covered hand to her face, her mouth open in surprise. Two more shots rang out, both passing through her heat shield like it wasn’t there and then through her chest.
Aisha’s wings disappeared and she plummeted to the ground, maintaining enough concentration to thrust away from it at the last moment. Concentrated jets erupted from her hand and shot her behind the scorched foundation of a destroyed building. She hit the ground and rolled before stopping face-down. Her heat shield vanished.
“No!” Lyssa shouted.
Chapter Ten
Aisha going down was unacceptable. If anyone needed to die tonight, it was Lyssa, not Aisha. The men had come for Lyssa.
She threw her batons to the ground with a growl. Their forms solidified after they left her hands, drawing one shot from a mercenary, but she’d already returned to cover and drawn her guns. She reloaded both with penetrator magazines.
Screw being careful. Lyssa didn’t have time to play around, with Aisha hurt so badly. There was also the risk of the mercenaries’ bullets taking her down. Somehow they had defeated Aisha’s primary defense and her regalia with ease. Even if the Flame Goddess wasn’t as strong on direct defense as the Night Goddess, that was troubling. The evidence pointed to shard bullets.
Convinced of their victory over the wounded flame Sorceress, the men concentrated their fire in Lyssa’s direction. The wild burst- and auto-filled shooting of the earlier fight was gone, replaced by steady, calmer single shots.
The large number of men shooting at Lyssa forced her to concentrate before risking emerging. Being hard to see in wraith form wasn’t enough. A stray bullet to the right part of her anatomy could see her join Aisha on the ground.
She held her breath and took a moment to text a quick code to the Eclipse. A downed Sorceress and possible shard bullets changed the calculus of the battle. This was now an emergency, and she wanted support.
Without waiting for a response, Lyssa emerged from her cover and advanced in a serpentine pattern while in wraith form. Shouts filled the air, and bullets flew in her general direction, but the enemy clearly couldn’t make her out, even with the help of their flares.
A mercenary reloaded and fired his grenade launcher. The round exploded in the center of the street. It wasn’t close enough to do much more than coat Lyssa with dirt and rocks, but the bright flash highlighted her shadowy form like she was an angry ghost stalking toward them.
She fired a penetrator round through the man’s head before putting one through the heart of the mercenary closest to him. Their bodies dropped to the ground as their friends shot back. Now visible, Lyssa ran behind a building and kept sprinting until she came around the other side.
When she turned the corner, she was ready. She’d managed to flank a squad. A double trigger pull of her guns sent her penetrators through the closest mercenaries, and they let out muffled screams—just what she wanted to hear. Most of them were going to die. All she needed was one prisoner. At this point, she didn’t care who it was.
Lyssa leaped onto the wall, letting her feet bond with the shadows there, and ran along the wall toward the men. The awkward profile made it hard for them
