Courts and Cabals 2 by G.S. D'Moore (best novel books to read .txt) 📕

I had no idea what the qualifications were to get into the big clubhouse in the sky, but I wasn’t a role model for future generations. I wasn’t even sure I believed in that God. I was about to lose my head to what amounted to a little-G god, and it was impossible to know if that had any bearing on my final destination. When a lot of power got thrown around, the laws of the universe tended to go a little wonky.

Hell was more straightforward; eternal torment, lakes of fire, or descending circles of depravity until you reached the imprisoned fallen angel. If Dante’s Divine Comedy was to be believed. Things didn’t tend to vary much beyond life was going to suck ass. My little side hustles, fucking outside the sacrament of marriage, and generally taking everyone’s name in vain definitely checked the wrong boxes; so, it was always a possibility.

Life after death could also be an eternal purgatory; wandering the wastelands of another realm of reality. Maybe there would be trials I had to endure to enter Elysium. Maybe a big dude with a cat’s head would judge me at the gates of the underworld. Hell, maybe I’d take a cruise down the river Styx that would last an eternity.

“Talk about an eternity, this is taking forever. The anticipation is killing me,” I scoffed, as I snapped my eyes closed at the last nanosecond. Call me a coward, but I couldn’t watch the axe actually take my head off.

The Lady of Winter was going to come down on me with more speed and power than any execution in history; or maybe that was just my ego talking. She really wanted me dead. With morbid fascination, I wondered, if she cut me down so fast, would I even know I was dead for a few seconds? Would my brain think everything was still hunky dory that I’d actually be able to look up at my headless body before everything shutdown and I passed on?

Those were the type of questions I asked myself at the end. In fact, I might already be dead, and this might just be the beginning of my eternal torment: endless questions without answers. I shivered. Like any child of the digital age, I hated not having answers at my fingertips; so, I built up the courage to sneak a peek.

“Oh shit,” I pissed myself when I saw the blade a centimeter away from my nose.

I didn’t have any control as a foul-smelling pool spread out around me, and I was so lost in momentary embarrassment, that I missed the blade not coming any closer to finish the job.

“What the hell?” I carefully moved my head to the side, so I didn’t have the Axe of Damocles literally hanging over me.

I let out a breath I thought was going to be my last and looked past the blade at Aveena’s mom. Her muscular frame was literally shaking from exertion, which made her loose titty bounce appealingly. Her face was screwed up in concentration, anger, and a healthy dose of fear. That’s when I felt the thrum in the air. I’d felt it before; like the universe had hit a tuning fork. The last time this happened, it was followed by pain and a gaping hole in the UN HQ.

As if the universe was waiting for me to acknowledge that fact, pain hit me hard enough that the lightning strike felt like a love tap in comparison. Then I felt nothing . . . absolutely nothing, and I was sure I was dead. The problem was, I was still perceiving everything. That was a bit of a head scratcher.

The closest thing I could think of was astral projection; that I was having an out-of-body experience. There was so much pain, that my body said fuck it and shut down.

“So, why am I still conscious?” my mind played devil’s advocate.

“Who the fuck cares. You’re alive. That’s all that matters!” I shouted back. Since it was never a healthy thing to be arguing with yourself, I shut up and took a look at my surroundings.

The courtiers had skittered back like cockroaches caught in sunlight. Aveena was still off to the side where momma’s bitch slap had tossed her, and the guards rushed toward the Lady of Winter. The Lady had let go of her axe, and taken several steps back. The axe stayed where it was, but no one was looking at me. Their eyes were locked on the kaleidoscope of color rapidly growing from a pinpoint to a man-sized hole in reality.

I’d missed it last time because Aveena had just knocked my ass out, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to notice a rift between realms. The rift stopped somewhere between man-sized and giant-sized, and the Fae court took a collective intake a breath. For a moment, nothing happened, and a few people let that breath out. Then . . . an armored foot appeared. It was followed by a leg, torso, and head of a humanoid creature; if that creature was nine feet tall, and looked like a twenty-eighth-century knight of the future octagon table – because round tables just didn’t cut it anymore.

I’d seen the crusader-knight look before. Aveena had decked herself out in the glamour armor when she’d squared off against Lilith another lifetime ago. This wasn’t that. This armor was sleek, lightweight, and what I imagined future Navy SEALs would be sporting when they became Space Force SEALs; although, this armor was a brilliant-gold color with runic script etched into every inch of it. I had no idea what the writing said, but power had a language all its own; and this stuff was thermonuclear-level magic.

 The armor allowed the creature to move effortlessly, but unlike human armor, the only