Courts and Cabals 3

by G. S. D'Moore

  There wasn’t going to be any jogging today. Light cardio was for pussies. Dead pussies.

  She set off at a dead sprint. A whirlwind of dull colors and different aspects of the mortal realm spun around her as she pumped her legs like her life depended on it; because it sure as shit did. Despite moving faster than anything mankind could produce; the howling grew closer.

  She’d never really been scared in the UN’s custody. It was tough to escape, a challenge to get through the impromptu warding, but she always knew she could leave if she needed to. Hell, she might have been able to fight her way out of the room. Fae intelligence said there were echelon teams stationed at the complex, so it would have been interesting to see their response time.

  She wasn’t worried about the UN, but this was next-level shit. She couldn’t think of a time when someone had successfully evaded the Wild Hunt. The hunt either brought you down, and returned your bloody head to the huntsman leading the charge; or maybe, if you were lucky, they’d offer you a chance to join. Then, for all eternity, your soul would be tied to the hunt. Whenever it called, you would answer and obey the commands of the huntsman.

  “Yeah. Fuck that,” she spat. She wasn’t going to live her life under some asshole’s thumb. She’d done that for the last eighteen years, and she was done with it.

  Now, she just needed to live long enough to take advantage of her independence. She felt the strain in her muscles as she ran through the Atlantic Ocean; not over it, or on top of it . . . through it. It was hard to explain the sensation of the land between beneath the waves, but the only thing that mattered were the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. There was a snarl far too close for comfort. She didn’t dare look back, she just kept running.

  She was probably a dozen steps from dry land when she heard the rhythmic thump thump thump of giant paws behind her. She could practically feel her pursuer’s hot breath on her neck, and smell the stank-ass decay of the creature. It made her gag, as she juked left.

  If she hadn’t listened to her instincts, she’d be dead. A great, black beast surged past her as it tried to plant its paws in her back and make her faceplant so it could rip into her exposed neck. She only got a glimpse of the shadow as she kept running. The seconds it took the beast to reorient were critical, and she’d put a subjective twenty miles between them. Of course, that didn’t mean shit for the creature’s partner.

  Claws ripped at the back of her leg, trying to hamstring her. It was a hunting technique older than mankind, and it almost succeeded. A stutter-step at just the right moment saved her from certain death, but she stumbled and fell; making sure to twist.

  Her weak human glamour disintegrated as her twelve-foot, frost giant form, exploded into reality. As she twisted and fell, she harnessed the torque from her core and lashed out with her leg. Her foot made contact with something gray and greasy. There was a yelp, as a second beast the size of a Chevy Tahoe was knocked aside.

  “Malk,” she hissed as she got a good look at her people’s greatest adversary.

  Frost giants had hunted the other alpine predators of Winter to near extinction, but that didn’t mean ones and twos hadn’t found their way into the service of other lords and ladies. They were vicious, bloodthirsty creatures. Extremely dangerous, strong, and fast; which made them excellent scouts for a hunting party.

  The malk shook its head to clear the pain she’d inflicted as if rose back to its legs. It had limbs closer to a giant cat’s, like lions or tigers, than wolves. Their claws were also eight inches long. She’d taken cocks smaller than them, which explained why it was taking longer for her wounds to close.

  She didn’t wait around for the malk to shake it off. She got the hell out of dodge.

  The beacon glowed like a lighthouse in her mind. It was close, so close, and would offer her more than enough protection from the hunt, but she couldn’t lead the malks right to her doorstep. If she did, she’d never be able to leave. She needed to throw them off her scent. A malk’s senses were not something anyone could easily fool. It would take some serious power to get the beasts off her tail long enough to get to safety.

  Luckily, she was a noble fucking Fae. Her mastery of glamour was excellent, and she started working it like a pro. First, she adopted her bombshell blonde, human glamour, and threw a veil around herself. It made her invisible, eliminated her scent, and silenced her running footsteps. It was as close to pure invisibility as a Fae could get, and she stumbled as it taxed her power. She couldn’t half-ass this if she wanted to live.

  Next came the hard part, and she almost groaned at the prospect before sucking it up. As the veil settled around her, she created a duplicate of her true form. It was perfect down to her pinky toe. Then, she filled it with power. It shone like a bonfire in the land between, and then it hauled ass in the opposite direction; leaving a wave of scent and power in its wake.

  She abruptly stopped; and did her best impression of being one with the universe. The thump thump thump of the malks arrived a moment later. Both beasts looked around in a moment of confusion, and lifted their heads to sniff the air. She didn’t dare breathe. If this failed, they’d jump her, take her down, and she’d be too fucked up to escape when the huntsman arrived. She hoped that wasn’t anytime soon. Her little decoy might be enough to fool the malks, but not whoever was leading them.

  “Come on,” she willed the beasts to chase her double. She’d actually gotten the idea from the Aesir Trickster, but she wouldn’t admit it to anyone. A Fae should never emulate one of the Aesir. That was just . . . wrong.

  Two agonizing seconds passed before the two malks’ heads snapped in the direction of the double, and they tore after it. Aveena gave it another few seconds before she exhaled, and a few more before she started to run for her hidey hole; because that’s exactly what it was.

  It was a low-rent, shitty apartment on the outskirts of Vincent’s Hollow. The rent came out of an account linked to one of her former vassal’s cousins. The guy didn’t even know it was in his name, and he wasn’t the type to run a credit report. It had been warded by a human mage, so nothing about the place screamed Fae. She’d never been to it. Never even been near it except attending the school. It was the perfect safe house with no connection to her.

  With a whisper of her will, she slipped through the wards, and dropped back into the mortal realm.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she snarled.

  The place was supposed to be empty, but junkies had obviously squatted here recently; and judging by the scent, were cooking something that wasn’t grandma’s homemade cookies. She kicked aside trash, needles, and tried to ignore the scent of shit wafting from the bathroom.

  “In the name of all the gods, put down the seat and flush the damned toilet,” she growled at no one in particular.

  Good thing the place was empty, or she would have bashed some skulls. Her momentary anger at her not-so-secret safe house faded as fatigue threatened to overwhelm her. She’d used a hell of a lot of magic, fought off two magical bloodhounds, escaped from UN custody, and lived to fight another day. She opened the door to the apartment’s single bedroom, didn’t bother to look at her reflection in the broken mirror, and swept debris off the bed before faceplanting into the covers.

  “Ugh, gross,” she cried out when her cheek hit something crusty. She knew dried semen when she saw it. It was a good thing she was Fae, or she’d definitely catch something from this place.

  “I know, right,” a familiar voice echoed from behind her.

  She didn’t have time to turn before something ridiculously heavy and coursing with magic smashed into the back of her skull.

  For the second time in as many seconds, she hit the bed, and flopped off like a fish out of water. Pain and some magic spell paralyzed her. She pushed her own power against it, and it started to unravel; but not quick enough.

  “Fuckety shit shit,” she stared up with wide eyes as Monica Van Helsing stepped around the bed and raised her rune-etched
staff over her head.

  Her eyes gleamed with zealous hate, but her lips twisted in a sinister smile. “You gave me your oath, Fae,” she snarled before she brought the magical artifact smashing down onto Aveena’s head.

  To her credit, it took the wicked witch three good swings to knock the noble Fae the fuck out.

  Chapter 11

  I’ve got a question, and I swear to the gods it’s an honest one. Some people are more equipped to answer it than others, and I bet I’ll get a ton of different opinions; but variety is the spice of life. Right? So, here it goes.

  At what point does staring at a woman’s ass go from a sign of admiration to pervy?

  I only ask because as I walked down the back stairwell, after the gunfight on the roof, all I could do was look at a perfect pair of imp asses. I almost tripped over my own feet and took a header into the concrete a second after I locked in on those delicious badonkadonks. I don’t know if Ariana and Ivanna knew what I was doing, but considering what they were, it was hard for them not too. They had to sense my eyes trying to drill holes through the latex, and I was throwing off an I-wanna-fuck-you vibe like a nuclear powerplant in full meltdown. They had their heads together and were whispering about something, but I swore they put a little extra sway in their hips as we made it to the door back to the gym.

  A little voice in the back of my head was getting softer and softer. It ranted about something being wrong. That this wasn’t me, and I needed to get my shit together. The voice had been pretty loud since I’d woken up from getting hit by that car, but at the moment, after the adrenaline rush of battle, I didn’t give a shit. Hell, I was sporting a war boner that was about to split my shorts in half. That’s not an exaggeration. They were made from a pretty poor material, and I’d put some gashes and holes in them while diving around the roof. One good pulse of blood, and I was going to burst out of them like an alien out of Sigourney.

  Of course, that just got me thinking about her braless in Aliens. It didn’t help the situation.

  Part of it wasn’t my fault. Honestly, all teenage boys are borderline pervs. It’s encoded into our DNA. The minute we hit puberty, it’s all about spreading the seed, continuing the human race, and all the biological imperatives that go with that. That’s why boys think about sex a billion times a day, and despite all the shit I’d been through, I was still a teenager; barely, but it still counted.

  Girls were a whole different deal. Nothing could be truer than the men are from Mars and women are from Venus saying. They approached just about everything differently, but for the purposes of my question, they were on completely different ends of the spectrum when it came to sex.

  “Maybe not Dani,” I considered, but she was the exception, not the rule.

  Women come at reproduction from an entirely different viewpoint. Where guys would stick it in anything with a hole, girls were picky. They had good reason to be. For guys it was a one-act deal; wham, bam, thank you ma’am. We had a good cum, and that was all she wrote. Girls had to deal with that shit for at least another nine months. A second of bliss for us was months of a literal pain in the ass for them; and that didn’t even count childbirth and raising the kid. Maternal instincts were no joke, and I’d seen the birthing video in health class. They had to be fucking superheroes to do that shit; because, sometimes there was literal shit involved.

  I’m getting off topic; so, getting back to my question. When did it become creepy to hope one of the imps slipped out of her panties and begged me to fuck her right then and there? If I asked a guy, I’d probably get as many varied answers as if I asked how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop. There’s a joke about eating someone out in there, but that’s just too easy. I’m better than that.

  If I asked a girl, they’d probably give me a better answer; if they didn’t slap me instead. Wherever they drew the line, I’m sure I’d taken a running leap over it a long time ago.

  Despite all that, when it all boiled down to it, I think the only person whose opinion mattered was the person on the other end of the ogling. In this case, it was a pair of sex-fueled imps; and I was confident they wouldn’t care if I stared at their asses until the sun winked out, darkness covered the land, and some ancient prophecy came true and announced the end of all mankind.

  That was fine by me.

  We emerged back into the gym and saw Thomas gesturing peacefully at a gaggle of his clients. When I first arrived, he’d pulled a little mojo to get them all corralled into the back room; but there was only so much you could do when a raging gun battle was taking place right over their heads.

  “We’re all going to be just fine . . . We’ve tried to contact the authorities . . . We’re perfectly safe within . . .” I felt a headrush as I walked past him. He was putting off some serious vibes to try and keep everyone calm.

  The two imps veered away to help him, much to my libido’s displeasure. I practically craned my neck around one hundred and eighty degrees to get a final look at their asses as I walked past. I didn’t even try to hide what I was doing. That, of all things, was what snapped me out of it. Not even Thomas’s glare phased me.

  “Gods, what’s wrong with me?”

  It was the cardinal rule of ass gazing to look where the woman was going to be so the ass appeared in your line of sight to be worshiped. Twisting your neck every which way was a good way to get spotted; and like I’d said, it depended on the woman if they’d take it as admiration or creepiness.

  I started to snap my head forward, but Ariana looked up and met my eye. “Busted,” I thought, as I felt the blush surge into my cheeks.

  Then, she winked.

  “Oh no,” there were a little extra oomph in that wink, and it happened. My dick pulsed like someone had just shot me up like Jason Statham in Crank. There was a soft ripping sound, and the top quarter of my dick poked out of the ruined pants.

  If I was blushing before, my face was literally on fire now. Ariana took a step toward me, like a predator who’d marked its pray, but I was already beating a hasty retreat. A stern look from Thomas got her back on task settling down the clients. Together, all their mojo got things under control, but I needed to be as far away from them as possible in my current state.

  I quickly retreated to the reception area where things were a little safer; and I mean a little. I’d traded two imps for three college coeds. I was still a diabetic in a candy factory, this was just the reduced-sugar section.

  “Cam, what the hell did you do?” Skella came at me in full-on bitch mode.

  Night just sat in a chair with her arms folded across her chest; looking at the steel shutters in front of the windows. Butters opened her mouth to say something, but stuttered.

  “Ummm . . . Cam,” her eyes were wide, and blood flooded her cheeks. “You’re . . . um . . . kind of exposed.”

  The confirmation that all three women were now staring at my junk only made me get harder. My dick actually started to rip at the rest of my pants as it struggled to get free. “This is a nightmare,” I groaned as Night gave a purr and Stella rolled her eyes.

  “You’re such a fuckin prude, Butters,” Skella reached around the front desk, grabbed a pair of shorts with the gym’s logo, and tossed them in my face. “A dick is a dick. Go suck it if you want, but not until I get answers.”

  The little blonde stood in front of me, arms crossed, while I pulled the pants out of my face and tried to control my erection. I did the only thing I could do. I gave her answers. I didn’t sugar coat it. They deserved more than that; or at least Butters and Night did. I really didn’t like Skella. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still put my P in that V, but there would be no cuddling after.

  I told them about the magic circle the cabal had drawn around us. The sniper out there who was waiting to gun us down if we tried to make a run for it. Not to mention the fifty bad guys with guns, and I couldn’t leave out the druggie shifter who’d managed to kill an imp in the past.

  By the time I was done, Skella l
ooked like she needed a good tanning bed, and she’d backed up out of my grill. The previously unknown part of me that was making itself more and more known didn’t like that. It wanted to get up close and personal. She would be easy to subdue. She was small, weak, and I hadn’t seen her wield any of her magic. I could take her if I wanted.

  “No means no,” I shook my head. I needed to get control of these runaway fantasies, or they were going to bite me in the ass at the worst possible time.

  A racket behind me pulled my attention away from the coeds. Ariana and Ivanna were approaching with an armful of assault rifles, and a half-dozen, dazed-looking clients. The clients were decked out in the same vest I was wearing, and many were holding rifles.

  “What?” Ariana asked with a raised eyebrow. “They have just as much right to defend themselves as you do,” her eyes immediately snapped down to my exposed self, and she licked her lips. “Maybe another time, big guy, but we’re going to have trouble soon. Bathroom is down the hall. Get fixed up and meet me back here.”

  I don’t know if someone high on succubus should be armed, but I wasn’t going to argue. We needed all the help we could get. I extracted myself from the tricky situation and practically ran to the privacy of the bathroom.

  “Does the cabal use the same interior decorator?” I wondered as I walked into the room and realized it was almost a perfect replica of the place in Reno: marble, rich carpet, expensive fixtures. It had the works. It felt like a cardinal sin to strip out of the ruined, tourist shorts and pull on the higher-quality Under Armor pants.

  I gave myself a look in the mirror and took several deep breaths. I put the imps, the coeds, and everyone trying to kill me out of my mind. I found the peace in the center of my being before I opened my eyes. The guy who looked back at me looked like hammered shit. He looked like he needed a few good nights sleep, an IV, and a full Thanksgiving buffet. My eyes were sunken, cheeks a little more pronounced, and you could hardly tell the difference between the black tactical vest and the black bruise on my chest where the sniper had shot me. I’d lost too much weight in Aveena’s tender love and care, and the last few days hadn’t been much kinder.