Courts and Cabals by G.S. D'Moore (best e reader for academics txt) 📕

“I’m Cam,” I replied, still trying to be friendly and not suspicious. “Lilith told me to come over and . . .”

“I don’t need to know what she was going to do to you,” the other girl rolled her eyes like she’d been through this before. Her eyes swept the room like she was looking for evidence.

“I’ve heard about you, Cam,” she walked to the messy side of the room and scanned her things. “People say you’re bad news.”

“Do you always believe what other people say?” I tried to stay casual.

“No, but other people aren’t sitting alone in my room,” she turned to study me with her hands on her hips.

I could tell without asking that she was a dwarf. Not a dwarf like a little person, but a dwarf like lived under a mountain and made the best weapons in the world. Before the Revelation, there had been a lot of fiction written about her people. Some was right, some wasn’t. First off, dwarves weren’t that short. She was probably five feet, which was the same as plenty of human women. The second inaccuracy was that it was hard to tell dwarf men from dwarf women. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The rule of thumb for dwarf women was that they were ten percent hair – she had reddish-brown hair in a pair of braids down to her waist – fifty percent boob, and fifty percent ass to make them one hundred and ten percent woman. Female dwarfs had some damn fine curves.

The myths that were true were that they preferred to live below ground. There were many dwarf cities that had been recognized by the US, mostly in the Rocky Mountain range. They also made the best weapons in the world because they could work unparalleled magic with earth and metals. They were meticulous, paid attention to detail, and were superb planners and organizers; which made them damn good engineers for just about anything. As with most races, those were stereotypes; and while I couldn’t comment on this particular dwarf’s craftsmanship, she certainly wasn’t organized.

“My eyes are right here,” she snapped, as my eyes drifted to her chest. “Fucking boys,” she scoffed. “I bet you’ve been sniffing around in my panty drawer,” she accused.

“What?” my jaw dropped in surprise.

“Lilith told you to wait in here and you thought you’d do a little panty raid. You want to steal something lacey to take back with you to wank off into after Lilith finished playing with your fiddle, don’t you? Fucking pig.”

I could see she was getting herself riled up, and I needed a way out. She might be a foot shorter than me, but dwarfs were tough. It took a lot of strength to make weapons that could hurt other supernaturals, and dwarfs had it. Ironically, women tended to be stronger than men, so I definitely didn’t want to fuck with her.

“I can see Lilith bringing me here has upset you,” I backed away with my hands in a non-threatening gesture. “How about I just leave and you can take it up with her?”

“You are a panty thief!” she exclaimed, and leapt toward me. “No one gives up on fucking Lilith once they’re this close to banging her,” she reached out to grab hold of my shirt, but I was already moving.

I fled the room, and her yells chased me down the stairs. Dwarfs might be strong, but they weren’t as fast on their feet as humans. Sudden bursts of agility . . . sure, but I could beat one in a foot race. I didn’t stop running until I hit the front door, and emerged directly into a downpour.

“Oh, come on,” I cursed the heavens as I threw my arms up to cover my head. It didn’t do shit, and I had a quarter mile walk to get back to my dorm.

I accepted I was going to get soaked to the bone and set off. In my mind, I was already concocting a tale to spin Lilith woke up, or when what’s-her-face lost her shit when she found her roommate stuffed under the bed. I didn’t have a lot that would work to my advantage. Everyone under the bleachers had seen me get invited up. Since we were meeting at her dorm, I had to sign in when I arrived. The dwarf put me at the scene of the crime, and Lilith would drive the final nail in my coffin.

“I’m fucked,” I hung my head, and water dripped from my hair onto the concrete below.

The best I’d come up with was that my jizz was poisonous to succubae. While there were certainly weirder things in the world, something told me that wasn’t going to cut it for St. Vincent’s. I was so concerned with what big Bubba was going to do to my ass in prison, I didn’t register the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. By the time I did, the light had already flashed, and my brain was playing catch up.

The bolt of lightning streaked out of the sky and hit me like a runaway truck; if a runaway truck had a billion volts of electricity to pump into my frail human body. One second everything was bright white, and the next, it was black. I didn’t even have a chance to react.

As far as solutions to my predicament, it could have been worse.

***

The hum of electronics and clack of keyboards was the dominant sound in the room. The glare from screens was going to leave people blind in their seventies, but the ergonomic chairs would save their lower backs. Row upon row of analysts worked through their shifts, and with each data point, the big board at the front of the room updated. It was a massive image of the