Courts and Cabals 3

by G. S. D'Moore

  He was an imposing figure, and many would say, second in power only to the queen herself; but his most unique feature, he was uncharacteristically kind for a Fae. He was absolutely deadly on a battlefield, but Oberon was equally known for his ability to forgive and forget; sometimes to his own detriment. He gave Aveena a broad smile as their eyes met for a brief moment.

  “His vote will cancel out Nimue’s,” she reasoned, but that just brought her back to square one.

  However the rest of The Nine voted, she knew everything boiled down to the being at the center of the dais; on a throne that sat a little higher than the rest. Queen Maeve was not what most would expect. An entity as old as time itself, a living God, Ruler of the Sidhe, The Mother, Mistress of Seasons, Queen of Summer; the list of titles went on and on, and invoked the epitome of regality. When Aveena finally laid eyes on the ruler of all Fae, she was speechless; and not in the way you’d think.

  “One of these things is not like the others.”

  The queen looked sixteen, at most, and was dressed like she was going through a grunge rock phase. She wore torn black jeans, Dr. Martens boots, and had one leg swung over the edge of her throne. If she’d been wearing a skirt, anyone standing in front of her would have had a shot straight down main street; so, thank the gods for skinny jeans. Her frame was thin, maybe five and a half feet tall, and her baggy t-shirt kept falling off one shoulder as she took a file to nails that would give a nun a stroke. Her hair was shoulder length, parted perfectly down the middle, with one half dyed bubble gum pink, and the other traffic-cone orange. She didn’t wear a crown or tiara, and she didn’t need one. The effortless power that radiated off her drove Aveena to her knees; although, she tried to make it look like a show of respect. Not weakness.

  From the look on The Nine’s faces, she didn’t succeed.

  “My Queen,” Ymira stood, “I bring before you a prisoner.”

  Maeve didn’t look up at first, she was going to town on her pinky finger with a zealousness that would make a Templar look timid. She brought it up to her eye, studied it, and blew on it. Remains rained down on the Green Maiden, but if she found it insulting, she kept her trap shut. The Fae’s tongue slithered out and gathered up the detritus to pull back into her gullet. When Maeve finally looked up, her eyebrows climbed into her hairline.

  “My day just got a lot more interesting,” she spun to plant her boots on the ground and leaned forward to look at Aveena.

  Maeve’s eyes were completely white, with a slight glow, and they bore into Aveena’s soul with ease. She didn’t even try to stop the queen. If she had, her very essence would be torn to shreds.

  A heartbeat, and Maeve knew everything she needed to know about the situation. She watched the events play out from Aveena’s memories. She saw how Aveena recruited Chloe to assassinate Cam for the slight against her. Then, there was Chloe’s untimely death, and the enlistment of Ser Fredrick to right that wrong. The queen got a play-by-play of Ser Fredrick’s defeat, and Aveena’s plans to capture Cam in Las Vegas and New York. The queen even felt Aveena’s savage joy when she brought down the bane of her existence with a single punch.

  Then, she saw it all go to shit. Maeve saw what happened in the throne room. She saw the Trickster take apart Ymira’s guards, and both men escape the Lady of Winter’s clutches. Weeks of memories, emotions, frustrations, and joys were taken by the Fae queen with a single drop of her power.

  Maeve smiled like she’d just eaten a spoonful of mint chocolate chip ice cream, and laughed. The high-pitched ring of her voice rebounded off the walls and made everyone jump. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed. She slapped her knee as tears leaked from her eyes, and she brushed her multi-colored hair out of her face.

  “Oh my,” for a moment, her accent sounded like a woman from the Antebellum South as she fanned herself. She smiled, and the peels of delight gradually faded from the hall. “I really needed that.”

  “My Queen,” Ymira pressed forward. The Lady of Winter was a stubborn, and blunt instrument.

  In other words, she was a fucking tool.

  “She brought an Aesir into my House. She violated your edicts. I did not bring her before you as a joke. I brought her to be punished. She was my heir, my daughter. I bore her in my womb, but she has erred, and I demand justice for my House.” There was emotion, a tinge of hurt, in Ymira’s voice; which helped sell it.

  “Crafty bitch,” Aveena had to admit.

  The Lady of Winter didn’t get emotional, but she’d pulled out all the stops to get rid of Aveena. Ymira saw her daughter as an embarrassment, a weakness that needed to be dealt with. The Lady of Winter was a hammer. Aveena, the nail. To her mother, there was only one course of action. It sure as shit wasn’t to kiss and make up.

  Maeve tapped her chin for a second, which stretched into two, and then three. From the looks on The Nine’s faces, this wasn’t standard protocol. That made sense. You couldn’t run an entire realm for eons and eons if you couldn’t make the tough calls. It took more than power to rule. It took decisiveness; especially in cases you were personally attached to. If you wanted to get technical about it, the Queen was Aveena’s great grandmother. All of The Nine were closely related to the literal god, which was why they had so much power: they got it straight from the source.

  In contrast to the others, Puck and Ymira were one step farther removed from Maeve, and thus, individually weaker without the additional powers the mantle of their titles conferred upon them.

  Any human who looked at it would find it a little incestuous. Ymira was Maeve’s granddaughter, but the Lady of Winter had slept with another one of the queen’s grandchildren, a son of Oberon and Titania, to create Aveena. What humans would never understand was they were all different subspecies within the greater Fae; so, it was less icky. Human society just didn’t have an equivalent, and since most Fae farted for longer than most human lives, they really didn’t give a shit what the hairless apes thought.

  Still, this was a family matter that directly affected one of the nine realms of the Fae. In the past, Maeve’s rulings were quick, concise, and brutal. She was not known for her kindness, and she didn’t give second chances.

  Theoretically, Fae lived forever. By that logic, all the members of The Nine should be her direct children. If two were her grandchildren, that meant something had happened to the original Lady of Winter and Satyr Prince.

  In the beginning, all of The Nine were supposed to be evenly matched against their siblings. It created balance among the realms. Over time, things changed. Members of The Nine gathered their own power, joined forces, engaged in feuds, double-crossed one another; whatever tickled their fancy. Now, power ebbed and flowed in an ever-changing chaotic mess. Still, the members were serious threats to one another; and it was never a good idea to challenge a serious threat over something as stupid as land, resources, or a pinch more magic. That only left one real check and balance against the power of the lords and ladies of the Fae high court.

  Even Aveena could do that math. She gulped as dread filled her gut. If Maeve was willing to kill her own children who broke her rules, what was to stop her from dealing with one pesky, little great grandchild?

  Three seconds stretched into five as Maeve tapped her finger against her chin. “Lady Winter, what do you think?”

  “Kill her,” Nimue interrupted, her eyes practically shining with glee. “You shut the way for a reason. If this one reopened it, then we are all at risk.”

  “I agree,” it clearly pained Ymira to side with her enemy.

  “Nonsense,” Oberon’s deep, booming voice overpowered the ladies. “How was she to know what she was doing? Lady Winter failed to teach her children the dangers surrounding us. Do we fault the child who eats the sweet, or the parent who left it out on the table in the first place?”

  “You look like you’ve eaten a few sweets lately, Master Hunt?” Mab’s sultry voice dripped with enough sexuality that she might even be able to give the succubus bitches a run for
their money.

  “What is this nonsense about sweets?” Titania looked from Oberon to Mab, suspicion in her eyes.

  “Shit it’s one of those days.” Sometimes, the Autumn Lady could be a tad bit paranoid about her man.

  Aveena couldn’t blame her with women like Mab stalking the halls of Maeve’s palace. Fae weren’t renowned for their monogamy; but if Titania was having a bad day, then she would take that out on Aveena. Things weren’t looking good.

  “Enough,” Maeve’s voice silenced The Nine. “Vote already. All in favor of killing Aveena, formerly of House Foxbelle?”

  Ymira, Mab, Nimue, and the Erlking’s hands went up. Titania looked like she was about to vote in favor, but a whisper from Oberon stopped her.

  “All against?” A smile formed on the edge of Maeve’s thin lips.

  Oberon, and this time Titania’s, hands both went up. They were joined by the Satyr Prince and Green Maiden. Aveena didn’t know what made them vote in favor of keeping her head on her shoulders, but she owed them a huge debt.

  “Four to four,” Aveena gulped, and turned her attention to her queen.

  “Up to me again, I see,” Maeve huffed, but everyone could see she was loving it. She put out her thumb, like the human emperors back in ancient Rome. She tilted it back and forth, making little noises as she did for her own amusement. Then, she dipped it all the way down . . . before reversing and giving Aveena a thumbs up.

  “Congratulations, you get to live another day, Aveena No Name; but Lady Winter’s words are final. You are banished from her lands, removed from her bloodline, and all rights and privileges of your noble birth are voided. I’d find somewhere safe to be, and I’d find it quick.”

  Maeve’s eyes glimmered, but Aveena couldn’t tell if it was compassion or malice. Either way, she didn’t care. She turned on her heel and ran. Her rags split on her first stride, baring her ass to the most powerful Fae in existence; again, she didn’t care. She needed to be somewhere else yesterday. Her life literally depended on it.

  ***

  Maeve watched as the young frost giant fled, and the rest of The Nine dispersed for lunch. Close votes always made tempers rise, and hungers peak. The palace had a fine collection of delicacies; anything and everything was available. A tickle in the back of her mind told her half of the court stuck around; likely to understand why the hell she’d offered clemency to the girl.

  “My Queen . . .” Ymira started, but Maeve held up a hand.

  Her granddaughter wasn’t the sharpest blade in the armory. Give her an army and tell her to kill the enemy and she was a genius, but she didn’t have the tact for political maneuvering. Maeve liked it that way. The former Lady Winter had been a traitorous cunt, and, ironically, been killed because of her own dealings with the Aesir.

  “Seems to run in their blood.” Maeve birthed the frost giants to be the perfect soldiers, but apparently, she’d missed the mark.

  People liked to bitch up a storm, but the truth was, creation was hard work; and even gods didn’t always get it right. She gave a mental shrug and looked over her shoulder at Ymira and Nimue. She liked to foster competition between the two, but their little scuffles were growing too costly for both their realms. “A little teamwork is just what the goddess ordered.”

  Erlking just looked confused about why Maeve let an upstart get away with violating an edict. Behind the rest, Mab just looked hungry. Of all her children, Maeve was most interested in whatever Mab was plotting in that dark mind of hers.

  “I made her too well,” she shirked off the sensation that Mab was going to stick a knife in her back, and smiled at her children.

  “Do you honestly think I’d let Aveena get away with what she did?” a wicked grin split her face, which was quickly mirrored by her children. “It makes me sad that you think I’ve gone soft,” she put a little steel in her tone, and the lords and ladies took a step back.

  “I just think it’s been too long since we had a little fun,” Maeve shrugged nonchalantly. “Give the little bitch a day . . . and then call the Wild Hunt.”

  Of all the smiles around her, the Erlking’s was the biggest.

  ***

  “A ham sandwich . . . again. For the love of god, could she make me something else,” the man, seated behind two inches of plexiglass reinforced by the strongest wards known to man, got out his brown bag lunch and upended it on the desk in front of him.

  Technically, he wasn’t supposed to eat on shift. He should call someone to relieve him, but that would take ten minutes, and all travel through the inter-realm portal with the Fae had ended months ago. Whatever was going on, the Fae didn’t feel like talking, so the man spent eight hours a day staring at a swirling multi-colored vortex. Pretty soon, he’d have to go on disability from the debilitating migraines it gave him.

  The man had been working in Ireland for the last two years on the massive UN complex that supported the portal. He knew all of the security measures by heart. Nearby, two full echelon teams were stationed as a quick reaction force. With them, a full brigade; three thousand human combat troops, could be mobilized inside thirty minutes. If that failed, every mage in Dublin would be there in an hour, and every mage in the UK within the day. That was just the start.

  Most people forgot about the large, thermobaric warheads scattered around the complex, and surrounded by enough cold iron to make them the world’s largest claymore mines. If he believed the scuttlebutt, there were even rumors a nuke was buried in the basement if they lost containment. No one knew what a nuke would do against Fae, and everyone hoped they didn’t have to find out.

  What all of that meant was Mr. Ham Sandwich felt completely safe digging into his meaty meal with a potential invasion route less than fifty feet from his balls. Or . . . he felt safe until something flew out of the portal and slid across the white linoleum until it smashed into the drywall.

  “What the fuck?” the man yelled.

  To his credit, his training took over. He flipped off the clear lid and hit the red alarm button that would put the building on lockdown and mobilize the echelon teams. The involuntary contraction of his muscles also caused him to grip his sandwich hard enough to spurt Dijon mustard all down his front.

  “Son of a bitch,” he growled as he dropped his sandwich and grabbed a shotgun secured under his desk. He slammed a cold-iron round into the chamber, and used his workstation as cover from the unknown threat.

  That’s how the echelon team found him: spicy, yellow mustard splattered across his uniform as he covered a very pale, very naked young woman. At least his scarlet blush went well with mustard yellow.

  The team secured the gate as the commander relieved the guard. “Ma’am,” he helped prop her up against the cracked drywall, and offered her a bottle of water. “Who are you, and why are you here?”

  “My name is Aveena Fo . . .,” Aveena stopped herself, “just Aveena, and I’m requesting asylum.”

  “Asylum?” behind his armored helmet, the commander’s eyes widened. “You know you can’t just come here and ask for asylum. You need to have a qualifying circumstance.”

  Aveena laughed, which turned into a wince. Her leg was broken, and blood matted her hair. A headwound that bled freely a moment ago was just beginning to heal, and if she didn’t have a concussion, then she’d freely walk right back through the portal and into the hell she’d left behind. She looked up at the commander, silver blood dripping off her chin.

  “Ma’am?” the commander’s voice was tinged with concern.

  “Oh, I have a good reason,” Aveena’s cold eyes pierced the man’s visor with their intensity. “My mother and all her friends are trying to kill me.”

  Chapter 5

  The searing glare of light through my eyelids woke me up. I groaned, tried to roll over, but my neck seized up tighter than a nun’s legs in the face of temptation. I picked the lesser of two evils, continued to roll, but even after all the effort, half my face remained subjected to the sun’s strobing effect on my addle
d brain.

  “Whoever said going to sleep with a concussion could kill you can suck it,” I tried to move, but every part of me hurt. I thought my Fae powers would have done something to heal me during the night, but it seemed like even they had their limits.

  Cautiously, I cracked an eye open . . . “Oh, shit on a stick,” my groan turned into a cry that I strangled with manliness as I looked at my surroundings.

  First, the glare didn’t belong to the sun; it belonged to a pair of neon titties bouncing up and down to lure people in like moths to the flame. Second, it was still night; and third, a quick look at the clock told me I’d only been out for about ten minutes.

  “This sucks,” I mumbled as I looked around.

  “Shit, no . . . no . . . no . . .” Butters sat in the driver’s seat, smacking the steering wheel like it owed her money. “Don’t die on me now!”

  I looked out the front windshield and saw what she meant. The Camry’s valiant effort in our escape from Duke Tentacle came at a cost. Smoke streamed out of the grill, and puffed through the bullet holes in the hood. Even in Tijuana, that wasn’t something you saw every day. Even though I wasn’t a car guy, I knew the wheezing, grinding, and rattling under my feet couldn’t be good.

  Sure enough, Butters had barely pulled to the side of the road when the Toyota gave a mighty cough of exhaust and fell silent. We sat in silence for a minute, but Butters never let go of the steering wheel. She just stared straight ahead, like she couldn’t believe what happened.

  She wasn’t the only one taking a second to get their shit together. I’d played battering ram one too many times tonight, and my concussed brain wasn’t being very cooperative. By the time I focused enough on my surroundings, I knew we were in trouble.