Courts and Cabals 3

by G. S. D'Moore

  I lost track of where we were in the building, and just hung on for dear life. Nagas were strong, and she proved that by bashing the shit out of me. She threw us back into the mirrored walls of the weight area. None of the glass actually punctured me, but she knocked the wind out of me, and the glass remnants were itchy as hell. I had a vague memory of hitting more equipment, the reception desk, and then the metal shutters before she finally shook me off; but I wasn’t just holding on and enjoying the ride. I was doing my own damage.

  Her hissing scream filled the building as I squeezed her scaly ass and made her my bitch. I don’t know if snakes have bones or cartilage, but whatever it was, I cracked it. I put my troll strength up against her naga durability, and I might have just come out ahead. It didn’t seem that way when I went flying through the air and skipped across the anti-slip mats that were soaked in other people’s bloods. If I didn’t get an STD from today, it would be a miracle.

  “Ha!” I barked as I saw snake girl slither jerkily back through the breach. “You better run, bitch,” I laughed some more and winced. My ribs hurt as I took in the tactical situation.

  I don’t know the technical term, but it was a bloody mess. All the clients were down with a variety of injuries, the most common being death. Ariana was being propped up against a wall by Skella, who was limping pretty bad. Night was down in a pool of blood. Sometime during my private rodeo, some asshole had shot her in the arm.

  “Fuckers! I’ll rip their dicks off,” I fought back the Aesir that tried to break through.

  Butters looked okay. She was tending to Night with her new cauterization technique while Ivanna helped. The imp looked like she’d taken a few punches, but didn’t have any other holes in her. Lastly, I found Thomas, and that brought a smile to my face.

  He had Fontaine in a full nelson, and was whispering sweet nothings in her ear. The werewolf was fully shifted, but with his hands on her, the woman was furry putty. She gave a moan as he wrapped his hand around her throat and started to squeeze.

  “Finish her!” the voice from Mortal Combat roared in my head.

  Thomas looked like he was about to give her neck a good twist when he suddenly jerked forward. Blood splashed outward, and a second later, BOOM! The incubus fell limply to the floor, and Fontaine blinked like she was coming out of the world’s best wet dream into a nightmare. Understandably, she ran; leaving Thomas’s bleeding body on the ground.

  “Dad!” Lucia screamed from the hallway.

  “Fuck!” I yelled, sliding forward and scooping him up in a move that would make James Bond jealous.

  As I cleared the breach’s line of sight, I felt the supersonic passage of the round meant to put the incubus down for good. “Motherfucking sniper,” I was going to rip off that guy’s dick, shove it down his throat, and jerk off his neck until his head came off.

  I cradled Thomas’s head in my lap, and felt the blood ruining yet another set of my clothes. I carefully felt the back of the man’s skull and winced. The back half of his noggin was caved in. I tried not to puke as I checked his pulse.

  “Tough old bastard,” he had one, but it was weak. That’s when his daughters arrived.

  “Get him into one of those fuck rooms,” I ordered, and surprisingly, they obeyed. Apparently, with daddy down, I was in charge. The problem was, I didn’t have any idea what to do next.

  The Tikals had taken enough casualties they weren’t coming through the door at the minute, but I doubted we could stop them if they resumed the attack. There were probably fifty dead bodies scattered around the joint, and more would be joining them soon. My ribs still hurt as I took it all in.

  “Cam?” Butters looked up at me from where she knelt next to Night.

  There was a silent plea on her lips as she looked for guidance. I wished I could give it to her. So, of course, that’s when I started to hear RPGs go off at the back of the building.

  “Kill anyone who comes through that door,” I ordered Butters, one of the last combat-capable people present as I rushed down the hallway toward the back.

  The first fuck room door was open, and the three imps were fussing over their dad. They wouldn’t be any help until they got him settled. I passed the second fuck room and saw Mr. Mendez, or what was left of him. Someone might be pounding the back wards with RPGs, but I had to take a detour to puke my guts out.

  Mr. Mendez just looked . . . wrong. His eyes were glazed over in death, but his face was frozen in pants-shitting terror. I didn’t blame him. His body had been viciously broken. I counted twelve big bones poking out through his skin before I had to hit the porcelain throne. His skin was so desiccated that a butter knife could have sliced him in half. The life wasn’t fucked out of him. It was viciously ripped free by a supernatural predator.

  I didn’t have time to wash out my mouth before the RPGs breached the wards and something started hammering the back door. I found myself alone in the hallway, covered in blood, and still hurting all over.

  “What the fuck else is new?” I readied my mind to unleash the Aesir.

  I didn’t care if I fucked everything with a hole when this was over, I wasn’t going to let anything happen to my friends. My family. With my last resort primed, I manifested a glamour sword and shield.

  “Come at me bro!” I yelled at the door, as something sharp sliced diagonally through the reinforced steel door like a hot knife through warm butter.

  My jaw dropped at the awesome display of power, and it hit my knees when I saw what shouldered through the door and into the hallway.

  “We’re totally fucked now.”

  “Hey there, stud. You miss me?” Dani strutted toward me with the biggest fucking double-bladed battle axe I’d ever seen resting against her shoulder.

  Behind her came Fern with a beaming smile that made me forget all my troubles. Not to mention some leather armor that made her tits look awesome, and a wicked, curved pair of knives in her hands. Behind them came imps; two, four, six, I stopped counting. It was so beautiful. I felt a tear slip down my cheek.

  “Don’t get all soft on me now, big guy. The part . . .” Dani cut off as I grabbed her in a bear hug and squeezed until her bones complained.

  “Is that a sword in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me,” I laughed after a second.

  “If it was a sword, that would mean you’d fucked a dick girl, Cam,” she fired back as I dropped her back to her feet.

  She stumbled a bit, and shook it off, but I saw the blush on her cheeks. Then, she pulled out the sword in question and handed it to me.

  “I missed you,” the words nearly got caught in my throat. I wasn’t talking about the sword.

  “Yeah,” she replied, not meeting my eyes. We had a lot of catching up to do.

  Of course, the universe couldn’t let me have a moment.

  “Cam!” Butter’s voice was full of panic, and I smelled fire.

  “Fight now, fuck later,” Dani pushed past me and took control. “Let’s teach these little bitches not to mess with the Venetian Cabal!” she pointed to the imp soldiers and sent them out to kill our enemies.

  I didn’t need the Aesir in me to achieve the war boner poking through a hole in my shredded, blood-soaked shorts. I don’t know if Dani noticed, and I didn’t care. With her here to help, I felt like everything was going to be alright.

  Chapter 14

  Aveena reached up to grab the metal railing, and winced. It was cold. That wasn’t something she usually needed to consider. She grimaced as she hoisted herself up, and winced again.

  “I’m getting sick and tired of this shit,” she growled as she leveraged herself into the seat and shut the door behind her.

  She’d never realized how good she had it. She used to be a near god, unaffected by ice and fire, and would have healed from a near-death experience by now. Now, she was still limping along, a little woozy, with the occasional bout of nausea. Having to stick her head out a window and puke her guts out every few hours was starting to take its toll. It
was hard to keep any food down, and that wasn’t helping her growing fatigue. All in all, she felt like hammered shit.

  “Is this what it means to be human?”

  It wasn’t some existential question she posed to herself about her place in the universe. She really wanted to know if humans had it this shitty. If that was true, they’d gotten the ass-end of the cosmic deal. She almost felt sorry for them . . . almost. She didn’t have the energy to really care about anything other than her own survival right now.

  She’d always heard that her people screwed with humanity on the regular. It was fun. Mortal lives were like a candle. They burned dim and quick, forgot everything after a few generations, so the Fae could keep pulling the same shit on them over and over. She’d never personally partaken in the revelry; but she would have liked the option. Now, she felt like she was the one getting screwed over.

  “How you doing, girl?” asked the heavy-set man at the wheel.

  He looked like a walrus buttfucked Santa Claus. A tangled, white beard hung down to his belly button. On a regular man, that would be impressive; but this guy was fat. His seat was pushed back as far as possible from the wheel, and even then, there was a little blubber pressed up against the steering device. If she thought about it too long, that was probably a hazard, but she’d picked this guy for a reason.

  “If you make one move to force me to suck your dick, I will bite it off and spit it out on Route sixty-six. Comprende?” her voice sounded tired; not at all as threatening as she intended.

  Fatty blinked in surprise, but she wasn’t buying it. Truckers didn’t just pick-up random girls at rest stops for their conversation skills. They wanted a pretty little thing to play their meat flute. It was one of the unwritten rules of the road. If you wanted a ride, you had to pay the piper.

  Aveena hadn’t known that when she started hitchhiking not that far outside Vincent’s Hollow. Using mortal means of transportation was her only option. The Wild Hunt was waiting Between, and Van Helsing . . . well . . . she didn’t know what the power-stealing bitch was capable of; so, better safe than sorry. It added precious time to her journey. But slow and alive was better than fast and dead.

  The first ride had taken her to Cleveland; the armpit of America, and lulled her into complacency. She’d passed out for most of the trip, and nothing bad had happened. Ride number two changed that. A younger man, slightly less fat, but still sporting a beer gut, had picked her up on I90. He’d started off with the same line as wannabe Santa.

  “How you doing, girl?”

  She’d given him a tired smile, and resumed trying to get some sleep. Hindsight being twenty-twenty that was a stupid idea. If she had to give the trucker some props, it was that he knew what he was doing. He had his move down. With skill she hadn’t been expecting, he’d flicked on the cruise control, pushed his seat back, and unzipped his pants with one hand; while gently cupping the back of her head with the other. It was a tender, affectionate motion, and that caught her by surprise more than anything. She didn’t even resist as he pulled her head down toward his chubby cock.

  She remembered looking down, and the critical second it took her to realize what was happening. His cock was seared into her memory. It was a small, but girthy dick, and smelled like sourcrout. If you want a rule to live by, a good one is to not suck a dick that smells like it just got served out of Hitler’s grandmother’s kitchen.

  She’d come dangerously close to having that smelly dick shoved in her mouth, but she turned her head at the last second. She could still feel the line of pre-cum on her cheek from where the excited fucker had tried to reorient her head toward his dick; but she wasn’t some truck stop whore.

  She was Aveena fucking Foxbelle; a noble Fae. Well . . . minus the Foxbelle, and possibly the noble part, but she was still Aveena the fucking Fae. She wasn’t going to let some fuckface face fuck her. The man’s curses turned to gibberish as she easily lifted her head up, while he pushed down with all his strength. It was sweet music to her ears. It was nearly as pleasant as the crunch the cartilage of his nose made as she slammed the back of her head up into his face.

  She felt a splash of warm blood in her hair as she pinned the trucker to his seat with her forearm, and reached over to open the door. Just as smoothly as he tried to throat fuck her, she undid his seatbelt and shoved him out the door. They were only doing fifty-five down the interstate, so he might have lived. Maybe. She didn’t spend a lot of time thinking how much force it took to break a mortal. The simple answer was: not a lot. At the moment, she really didn’t give a shit.

  “Tuck and roll, bitch,” she laughed to herself as she tried to get control of the big rig.

  It took some time, but she figured it out. She wasn’t going to be able to take any city streets, but that wasn’t the plan. She rode the highway until the semi ran out of gas, hopped out, abandoned the vehicle, and flagged down another driver who might be intrigued by a pretty girl on the side of the road. Now, to set the tone, she gave all the truckers the same speech she’d just given morbidly-obese Kris Kringle.

  One skinny bastard had the audacity to tell her to take a hike, so she chucked him too and stole his ride. Grand theft auto was one of the few bright points in her life right now. She smiled at the memory.

  Instead of trying to bumble through some half-ass excuse of why he wasn’t going to shove his dick down her throat, diabetic St. Nick just shook his head and gave her a sad look.

  “You’ve been through the wringer, haven’t you,” he threw the truck in gear and started to accelerate back into traffic.

  “Mister, you have no idea,” she kept to the far side of the cabin, with her hand on the door handle in case he was a supernatural she couldn’t sense.

  Normally, that wasn’t an issue; but everything about her powers was wonky right now. It would suck ass to outfox the Wild Hunt, and befuddle the Wicked Witch, only to have some trucker werewolf rip out her throat. That’s just embarrassing.

  They were silent for the next ten miles before he opened his mouth again. “Where you headin’?”

  “West,” she answered monotonously. She didn’t want to give out her exact destination in case the police found the hitchhiking Fae that was boosting eighteen wheelers from hapless rapists.

  “Okay,” he replied, and kept on driving.

  Twenty miles later, he interrupted her as she started to doze. “Just one more question, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Shoot,” she yawned.

  “Have you thought about taking Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” she gaped. “I had to catch a ride from a bible thumper. Why can’t he just want me for my dick-sucking abilities?”

  She didn’t respond. She just turned her back on him, pretended to sleep, and focused on healing. She needed to have her shit together by the time she got where she was going. Anything less, and getting double teamed by the Wild Hunt and Van Helsing was going to be the least of her worries.

  ***

  I rushed after Dani and the imps; my eyes fixated on her monstrous axe as much as her ass. I gave myself a mental slap and shut the Aesir back in its cage. I needed my head screwed on straight right now.

  We rushed into the meat grinder that was the main portion of the gym, and I expected to see Butters throwing fireballs at a horde of goons like an OG Ignus mage. Instead, she was hunkered down behind the impromptu barrier that hadn’t done much but buy the gym’s clients a few extra minutes of life. Don’t get me wrong, there was still fire; it just wasn’t inside the gym.

  The parking lot was taking a bath in orange flame. All the client’s cars had gone up like tinder, and were eagerly awaiting someone to come roast marshmallows on them.

  “Not like they’re going to need them anymore,” I kicked a severed arm out of my path and crouched down next to Butters.

  A little-known fact that the Hollywood special effects community probably doesn’t want you to know. A car on fire doesn’t explode i
mmediately, if at all. The flames need to get inside the gas tank to make things go boom, and it takes some effort to do that. The expensive, foreign luxury models in the lot might burn into charred skeletons before ever going up in that glorious fireball action heroes were always walking away from in slow-mo.

  “They just went up a second ago,” Butters said, as she stared wide-eyed at Dani and the imps spreading out around the room.

  “Dani, Butters; Butters, Dani,” I made the introductions.

  “Can she fight?” the dwarf asked as she moved to get a better look at the breach.

  “She’s still alive, isn’t she,” I gave Butters a smile, and got a shaky one in return. The coed was tough, but she’d just seen a lot of people ripped to pieces.

  “And Thomas shot in the head. Don’t forget that exclamation point on this already shitty day,” I added.

  “Who else is combat capable?” Dani asked, slinking back and never giving the sniper a fresh target.

  “You’re looking at it,” I splayed my hands and shrugged.

  “Plus, me,” Ariana slid into position next to Butters. “Ivanna and Lucia will act as our reserve, but someone has to protect dad.”

  “Thomas is down. Shit,” Dani muttered. “I was kind of counting on a heavy hitter. This just keeps getting better and better.”

  “Welcome to the party,” I added.

  “You always throw the best keggers, Cam,” she shot me a grin and made some hand motions to the imps. I didn’t know what they meant but the super soldiers did.

  “Master,” I felt a voice whisper in my ear, and I nearly jumped through the ceiling.

  “Fuck, Fern, don’t sneak up on me like that,” the little Pixie was practically invisible where she stood on my other side. I guessed that was on purpose.

  “I scouted the ground with the metal funeral pyres,” she continued. “There are three beings waiting out there. I believe they want to talk.”