How To Be A Badass Witch: Book Two Read online

  Finally, Kera grabbed a small pack into which she dropped a can of hairspray and a water bottle filled with Red Bull.

  Then it was time.

  The young woman opened the main door of the warehouse and wheeled Zee out into the mixture of natural darkness and artificial light, then closed the door behind her and inhaled deeply. She walked the bike a short way down the street and turned a corner before mounting it and cranking the engine.

  You can do this, Kera, she encouraged herself. It needs to be done. LA in general and downtown in particular aren’t big enough for me and...well, everyone else. Especially when the everyone-elses have been marshaling their forces to crush me. That ambush in the alley was only the beginning.

  She gave her neck a slight twist to loosen it and steered the cycle toward the neighborhood where she’d been ambushed before.

  “I got this,” she whispered. “Bring it on.”

  Upon reaching a space where the buildings were low enough and sparse enough to disclose most of the sky, Kera saw a luminous yellow sphere hanging low in the blue-black void.

  Full moon on a Friday night, she noted. Perfect for fighting and general mayhem. She was choosing to take this as a good omen.

  Her destinations varied, but she knew approximately where to start—neighborhoods with a hostile vibe or a bad reputation and areas of known gang activity. She didn’t seek out the gangs, though, not yet. The first step was to kick things up a notch with a little vandalism.

  In the labyrinth of residential areas between the Fashion District and Historic South Central, Kera stopped at a corner store where a spiky black insignia had been spray-painted across half the wall.

  “Needs improvement,” she quipped. She parked her bike, hopped off, and strode over to re-tag the place with her hairspray can.

  Taking another deep breath, she repeated the magical formula she’d practiced earlier and then drew the LA Witches logo over the existing one in bright, flaming letters that would be visible from a quarter-mile away.

  Chuckling to herself, she trotted back to Zee and rode to the next neighborhood.

  Kera repeated the process three more times before she was interrupted.

  She was in the midst of drawing the H when she noticed two moving silhouettes out of the corner of her left eye. Keeping her helmet on, she turned her head to the right in a slow and casual way and saw a pair of obvious bangers stomping out from behind a fence, fixated on her.

  “Hey!” one of them shouted. “What the fuck?” They charged.

  Kera pulled her spray can away from the wall, and the Firefly spell replayed in her head as she cast it. She depressed the button and lit the stream.

  The young men cried out as a five-foot tongue of flame leaped toward them. She’d deliberately lit it before they were in range since she didn’t want to burn anyone alive. Still, it was enough to make them skid to a halt and raise their arms reflexively in front of their faces. She extinguished the fire and tossed the can in a high arc toward them in the same motion.

  The panic on their faces was obvious, but before they could either flee or counterattack, Kera charged them, summoning all her skill and knowledge of martial arts. She kicked the first guy square in the groin, then pivoted and punched the second in the face.

  Both reeled, and she half-tripped, half-threw the first into the wall; he crashed and went down. The second man took a badly telegraphed swing at her, but she dodged it and dropped him with a knee to the stomach, followed by another fist to the side.

  As both gangsters dropped, Kera caught the plummeting spray can in mid-air. “Thanks,” she told them, then hurried back to Zee and resumed her mission.

  Her next stop was a similarly tagged half-wall of concrete next to a small urban park surrounded by low houses and apartment buildings. When she dismounted and took her spray can over to the logo, a pair of whistles greeted her.

  Kera looked over. Two teenage boys, fifteen or so, were staring at her.

  “Oh, sure.” She huffed. “Even with all this crap on, they recognize a female when they see one.”

  They didn’t approach her but seemed to be goading one another to walk up and start a conversation. While they argued, Kera painted over the local gang insignia with hairspray, then returned to her bike and swung her leg over the seat.

  Then she flung out her hand and ignited the logo. The letters burst into magical flames, with LA Witches blazingly obvious to the whole street. The two boys, mouths agape, stared at the fire, then at Kera, then back at the fire. When they looked toward the motorcyclist again, no one was there, though the engine buzzed somewhere nearby.

  By this point, Kera had delivered her challenge to most of southern downtown and the areas adjacent to it, and since word had gotten around that the LA Witches’ most prominent member was a biker, someone would notice her despite the obfuscation spell on Zee and respond to that challenge.

  It didn’t take long.

  Two cars passed her on a little-traveled street, then hit their brakes and skidded into tailspins as soon as they caught sight of her. “Hey!” someone yelled out the window. Other men shouted and cursed and issued threats, and she was almost positive she heard someone racking the slide of a pistol.

  “Whoa, yeah,” Kera inhaled. “It’s on!”

  She veered to the right down the nearest cross-street as someone fired a gun. The bullet ricocheted off the asphalt and struck a nearby tree.

  Not good, the girl concluded. Those assholes don’t mess around, I see. If they wanted to fight the old-fashioned way, I could take them on, but at this rate, there’s a good chance of getting capped in the spine or them hitting innocent bystanders

  Time for her first change of pace for the night. She needed to draw them away from people sooner than she’d anticipated. She thought briefly about skipping the first stage of the fight and just luring them to the warehouse, but she didn’t want to chance a drive that long until she could make sure their guns were gone or emptied.

  Chanting the luck spell in her head and rapidly performing the required gestures with one hand, Kera swerved left and right down the road as the two cars pursued her. They weren’t stupid enough to spray the whole neighborhood with gunfire, but occasional shots rang out.

  As she came to another cross-street, two more cars appeared and joined in. One tried to cut her off, but, gritting her teeth, she pulled Zee aside, tilted the bike at a crazy angle, and barely squeezed between the vehicle’s front bumper and a storefront beyond the sidewalk. Then all four cars were behind her, and the chase was on again. Kera laughed as the burst of adrenaline from her maneuver hit.

  Ambushing them was the plan anyway, right?

  Another gunshot rang out behind her, and she gritted her teeth. She had to end this as soon as possible. The cops would get involved, or there would be collateral damage, or both.

  She spied a larger building up ahead and around a corner and gunned it before turning slightly. The bike’s tires ran from road to sidewalk and back and rocketed straight toward the structure as the cars full of angry men continued their pursuit.

  It was a multi-story sewing and manufacturing center. There was a small, empty security hut out front, and she drove Zee straight into it and locked him up there, confident that the cloaking spell would divert the gangsters’ attention away from it.

  Then she jumped out front as the four cars pulled up in the street, forming a semicircle to cut off her escape. The only way open to her was into the building.

  Kera sucked in air and whispered a minor amplification spell before yelling, “Yeah, I’m here, motherfuckers, and if anyone messes with me, I’ll turn their asses into chorizo. You got that?”

  Someone aimed a Glock, and Kera turned and flipped over the short wall that surrounded the structure. Concrete cracked behind her as the man with the gun fired at the portion of the wall she’d climbed a split-second earlier.

  Inside the compound, Kera ran straight for the front doors, kicked them open, and ducked inside. She sl
ammed them again and noted a heavy crate nearby, calling upon the extra natural strength granted by adrenaline to push it against the portal from within. It would slow them down enough for her to set up her trap.

  Not that it was a terribly sophisticated snare, but that only meant it would be fast and easy to prepare. Trap them and disable their guns, then start the chase again to get them on her turf.

  A moment later, after heated voices argued outside, a car engine revved, and the largest of the four cars drove straight toward the factory. Wood and metal shrieked and crunched as the front end plowed through the door, scattering shards of the wood and debris along with the pieces of broken headlights.

  The lamps within still shone, though, and in the beams of light they projected into the dark space, the silhouette of a single figure stood with hands on hips.

  People emptied out of cars; a fifth had come in from the rear at some point. Mostly young men, though Kera spotted a handful of women too.

  They all looked pissed, she noted, and she only barely managed to refrain from pointing out that no one had made them drive into a factory.

  A big, muscular guy with a shaved head and a white wife-beater shirt came out in front. “Where’s the rest of your gang?” he demanded. The entire front line of bangers glanced around as if waiting for the catch or expecting to be ambushed.

  Kera cleared her throat and pitched her voice low and husky. “Don’t worry about that. How about instead, you try to beat me first?” Unseen under the helmet, her eyes were darting to each of the people.

  Heat metal, maybe? Or a bad luck spell?

  The bald guy snorted and took a step toward her. “No problem.” He shrugged and flicked something out of his pocket. In the glint of the headlights, Kera spied a four-inch blade.

  Kera began to circle. She knew enough about the internal workings of guns to realize that there was a good way to disable them without people figuring it out and picking them up again, namely, heating one or two of the necessary parts enough to warp them out of shape.

  She began to chant under her breath as she reversed her circling. She wasn’t stupid enough to circle so far that she’d have her back to the gang members.

  “What’s wrong?” the man taunted. “You scared, witch?”

  One of the men gave a bellow of pain and threw his gun out of his pocket. It thudded to the ground, and there was the tell-tale clicking sound inside it. Everyone jumped out of the way, but nothing fired.

  Hmm. She’d gone a little overboard if he felt the heat, but it had worked.

  “What the fuck?” the leader demanded.

  “It’s…hot!”

  New yells sounded. People were yanking their guns out of their pockets, some girls yelping and grabbing them from holsters under their skirts.

  That’ll teach you to play supermodel, Kera thought with a grin.

  The leader whipped back to her. “You doing this, witch?” He began to advance again, not bothering with circling, and others were advancing, too. There were more metallic clicking sounds and more flashes of light off lengths of steel.

  Kera frowned. “So much for mano a mano...”

  There was no time to do this the careful way. She simply vaulted straight into the air, grabbed a bar, and redirected toward the door, then casting Feather Fall in a hurry so she landed behind the group of gang members on top of a car.

  Before any of them could react, she was gone, a black streak in the growing darkness. She detoured toward the security hut where Zee was stashed. He was still under the protection of an obfuscation spell, so by keeping low to the ground and trusting her black outfit to make her less visible, Kera was able to pull the bike out and wheel him around back.

  In the distance, she could hear sirens. Someone must have noticed the exceedingly subtle maneuver of driving five cars through a locked warehouse gate.

  Behind her, there was the slam of car doors and some yelling, but no gunshots.

  “All right,” she murmured. “Let’s burn rubber.”

  She drove off, weaving through the piles of detritus that lay scattered around the property.

  Time for Phase 2.

  “STOP!” Mia’s shout practically echoed in the SUV.

  Doug slammed on the brakes, and the car’s tires squealed as they skidded to a halt on a mixed-use street south of downtown. True to their source’s words, all hell was breaking loose in a disused textile plant around the corner.

  “Okay,” Doug gasped. “I stopped. I was going to stop in a few hundred more feet anyway, okay? Is there a particular reason you—” He broke off as they assessed the situation.

  The incident looked more severe than they would have anticipated. The front doors were splintered, having been plowed into by a car, and more cars had driven in behind it.

  That sort of shit didn’t just happen.

  Doug ran a hand through his hair and exhaled loudly. “Goddamn. Into the trenches again, I guess. As if that hostage situation the other night wasn’t intense enough. There aren’t people in here, right? So what the hell is going on?”

  “If we figure it out, we can brief the police when they get here,” Mia pointed out. The sirens were coming, but there was no telling how long they would take. “I’ll take the camera this time, but if it gets too heavy, I’m handing it to you. Fairness only goes as far as upper body strength, and you have an unfair advantage in that department.

  Doug waved a hand. “Fine, whatever. Let’s move in.”

  He drove closer and parked the SUV in a street-side space that was out in the open so they’d be able to see if anyone tried to mess with it. None of the locals seemed to be out and about, though, not counting the ones inside the factory. Anyone who had been around probably had the good sense to hide when the car chase came through.

  With their visual and audio equipment in hand, the reporters approached the building. Just as they started recording, a figure soared out of the ruined front of the building and landed lightly on top of one of the cars.

  “Holy shit!” Doug’s voice was tight. “You getting this?”

  “Yeah,” said Mia. “Is that who…who I think it is?” She didn’t even care about the burn in her arms. Footage like this was priceless.

  There were still screams inside the building, though it was hard to hear what was going on.

  As Mia filmed, cursing when she lost sight of the figure in black, Doug pulled out his phone to call 911.

  “My mama would kill me if she found out I was around something like this and didn’t call the emergency line,” he mumbled. “Everyone’s got a mother who worries, right?”

  “Man,” Mia quipped loud enough for Doug to hear, “you learn something new about your partner every day.” She was still scanning the darkness. Another flicker of movement—the security hut?

  Yes.

  Mia thought she saw a dark shape flitting around in the corner of her eye. When she turned her head toward it, it was gone, but then a motorcycle engine started up.

  Her eyes bulged. “Come on!”

  She and Doug raced back to the SUV. He grabbed the camera from her and both of them skidded into their seats, then he started the engine with a roar. They jumped into pursuit as the bike zipped through the rubble of the factory’s back area and then down the street. Riding it was a svelte figure in leathers and a shining black helmet.

  Other cars started inside the factory, and two of them reversed out of the wreckage at high speed and took off after the motorcyclist.

  Doug gunned it. “Hey,” he pointed out with a nervous grin, “at least with multiple people after Motorcycle Man, we’ve got that much less work to do. Divide the job three ways!”

  “Yeah, whatever,” grumbled Mia. “Just keep on their tail. We’re not losing the bastard this time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jay fired a short burst from his AR-15 into a window on the second floor of the Wells Fargo Tower. The glass shattered and wind rushed in as the plaza beyond was revealed. The first two obligator
y cop cars were pulling up, red and blue lights flashing.

  “Fuckin’ pigs,” he cursed and emptied the rest of his magazine at the pair of vehicles. Glass shattered under the barrage of rifle fire, and one of the colored lights went out. The second of the two cars began to hastily reverse, knocking over a couple of potted palm plants and then getting briefly stuck in a hedge. The first car remained where it was, silent and unmoving.

  As Jay reloaded, he shouted over his shoulder, “We got company! Hurry the fuck up.”

  Nolan approached and cocked his Uzi. “Any more yet?”

  “Naw,” said Jay, “but they gonna be here any minute. They’ll have SWAT on our asses.”

  The other man grinned. “Where’s Gage? Maybe we’ll get to see some SWAT pigs dancing with their balls on fire.” He aimed his submachine gun through the blasted window and sent a barrage of .45 ACP at the second police car, which was beating a hasty retreat. He didn’t hit much, but it sent a clear message.

  Down on the first floor, Gage heard everything.

  “God-fucking shit-dammit,” he snarled. The SWAT teams had shown up faster than he was hoping, and he didn’t have the time to light anyone’s balls on fire. “Tariq, you grab that Nolan guy and guard the front entrance. Start shooting the instant more fuzz show up. Use magic if you have to. The idea’s to keep them pinned down while we finish up. Mick, Antonio, come with me.”

  They did a quick personnel shuffle as Gage stormed through the lobby toward the vault. He’d likely have to do most of the sensitive work himself, with Jay handling the mundane task of ventilating cops and the two guys with him doing the manual labor.

  When Mick and Antonio caught up, Gage had already begun casting a spell on the massive lock that separated the main vault from people like him. He focused, concentrated, and recited the words, sweeping his hands in front of him and ignoring the sounds of sirens, screeching tires, megaphones, and more automatic gunfire.

  The lock cracked, spewing sparks and whistling like a log on a campfire, then the pieces fell. Laughing in triumph, Mick and Antonio threw open the door and barged in. Their rifles were slung over their backs, and they had crowbars in their hands.