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

to darken at the edges. “You’re cute, but you don’t fuck with the Fae. You won’t like the fucking you get in return.”

I was pretty sure my last thoughts would be a string of obscenities that cursed Aveena Foxbelle to die a gruesome death. My vision was down to nothing more than a pinprick of light in the darkness, but that pinprick was enough to see the door explode inward. Bits of wooden doorframe were turned into shrapnel, and it peppered me and my murderer. It wasn’t enough to hurt her, but it was enough to break her concentration.

The ball of water in my throat dissolved. I involuntarily inhaled, and water went down the wrong pipe. I hacked and coughed, trying desperately to get some life-saving oxygen into my lungs. My brain, finally sensing that I needed blood in other places, turned my hard-on into a soft-off. I saw Chloe glaring at me, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the sudden lack of sexual gratification, or whoever had come to my aid.

“Nymph,” an all-too familiar voice hissed.

“Whore,” Chloe spat back, but there was a clear look of fear on her face.

I was too preoccupied with trying to breathe, but I caught the expression of rage on Lilith’s face, and gave her the best help-me look I could muster. The message got through. An invisible wave of force plowed through the room, and ripped Chloe off me. Thank gods I’d lost my boner, or I’m pretty sure I would have broken my dick. Instead, it just hurt like a motherfucker.

Despite being in her birthday suit, Chloe rolled with the punches, and came up in a fighting stance. Twin daggers appeared out of nowhere, and she flung one at Lilith. The succubus’s flaming sword sprang forth from her mouth and swatted the dagger away. The glamour shattered against the green fire, but the sudden burst of flame broke the succubus’s line of sight with the enemy for a critical second.

With the second dagger, and a precious second of time, Chloe leapt at me, ready to end the feud I’d inadvertently started.

“No!” Lilith yelled, her voice tinged with fear, as she conjured a spike of force. My eyes locked with her twin infernos just as Chloe’s dagger stabbed into my chest.

I’d been through a lot in my life. I never knew my deadbeat dad. My mom died when I was young. I lived in the foster care system for a bit, and that was always rough. I was definitely the local mischief maker. I made connections and business deals in the gray area between legal and criminal. I was best friends with the local, shifter drug dealer, and I considered myself tough when compared with other humans.

None of that meant jackshit when I got stabbed. It was the single, most excruciating moment of my life when that blade cut through skin and muscle. If there was any bright side to be found, it was that Lilith’s telekinetic strike knocked the blade off target. Instead of stabbing me in the heart, Chloe got me in the pectoral near my shoulder. It still left me screaming like a stuck pig, which was basically what I was.

Chloe didn’t get off much better. This blast was much more powerful and concentrated than the first. It threw her right through the tiles, bathroom drywall, the brick wall behind it, and into the adjoining drug store; which was thankfully closed for the evening. From the sound of screeching metal, I guess she took out a couple of aisles before she came to a stop.

Lilith leapt toward the hole in the wall, but hesitated. She looked at me, and then at the darkened space beyond. “Fuck it,” she growled, and rushed to my side. The dagger was still sticking out of my chest, and an unhealthy amount of blood was leaking down my front.

“You’re going to be ok,” she immediately reassured me as she looked around the room. There was no first aid kit, but there was an old machine that sold condoms and tampons. She ripped the metal box off the wall, ripped open the front like it was tissue paper, and pulled out a handful of tampons.

I wasn’t about to argue, because I was going into shock. I knew that because I wasn’t feeling the pain as much as I should, and everything was getting fuzzy. I tried to remember anatomy class, and if there was anything important Chloe had hit.

“Hang in there,” Lilith was calm and collected as she opened the tampons and took a deep breath. “This is going to hurt.”

I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to pull out knives from wounds like this; something about doing more damage coming out than going in. I was going to tell her, but she’d already gripped the blade and yanked.

That hurt. “Fuck!”  I roared as pain flooded through me, but Lilith held me down with one hand and applied pressure with the makeshift bandage. All while I sat naked on a toilet sporting a half chub, because even while bleeding to death, Lilith’s power still had that effect on me.

After a few moments, the fuzziness returned, and shock started to set back in. I also started hallucinating. “Lilith, look at the big albino dude.”

In the doorway, was not a big, albino dude, but judging by Lilith’s wide eyes, it wasn’t what my shock-induced brain was telling me either. The creature in the doorway was white with black stripes running down its back and sides. It was easily eight feet tall, judging by how it had to bend down to fit through the door. It was easily the most jacked creature I’d ever seen, and it had to turn sideways to fit through the door. Its top canines jutted out of its mouth and past its chin. Its eyes were as dark as the night sky as