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

with one of the many assault elements against the brick wall of the target building at the center of Lincoln’s warehouse district. He’d double checked all his weapons before getting here, and made sure each of the wards and runes etched into his clothing were powered up and ready for action.

The det-chord was set twenty feet away, where its crack-boom turned the brick, wood, and drywall behind it into a gaping hole. Blind and deaf, Vernon was pushed forward with the rest of the SWAT team as they moved into the breach. By the time he’d taken two steps, his senses were starting to clear. By the time he hit the hole, he was as good as new.

The six-person element spread out around the room, each taking a sector of fire, and making sure not to shoot any of their own people. Even with the debris of the explosion still clouding the air, he could tell the room was empty.

“Team Two has made entry. First room clear,” he sent the status report as the team stacked up again at the door leading to their next objective.

In the distance, he heard gunshots. Screams echoed through the building and over the radio. “Let’s go,” he prompted, and a SWAT officer used a shotgun to shoot the hinges off the locked, metal door. Vernon kicked he heavy barrier twenty feet into the next room and led the charge.

In the operations order, it was detailed that the warehouse the wendigos were using as a nest was a storage space for a nearby slaughterhouse. The meat would come here to wait for refrigerated trucks to ship it across the country. It was ironic that the supernatural criminals took up residence around a bunch of meat they couldn’t eat.

As the team moved into a large open section of the building, they were hit with a blast of frigid air. Their exterior entry point had been the foreman’s office, and they’d just emerged onto the refrigerated floor where hunks of hundred-pound meat hung on hooks.

“This is creepy,” Vernon gulped, and the team spread out into a firing line. They were spaced about ten feet from each other. That looked good on paper, but with racks of meat separating them, the reality was much different.

“Switch to thermal,” one of the other officers in the element ordered.

Even though Vernon was technically in command, he was still an outsider and needed to tread carefully. “Negative,” he cut the other man off. “Targets are cold blooded. Stick with your eyes or you won’t even see them coming.

There was some grumbling, but no pushback. The locals could tell a good idea when they heard it. Vernon was the supernatural expert for a reason.

Along with being cold blooded, wendigos were a form of bastardized shifter. No self-respecting shifter – like Vernon or Sheriff Wood – would ever put themselves in the same class as a wendigo. It didn’t matter if they fit into the same scientific family. While Vernon was pure wolf, and proud of it, the wendigo’s looked like a moose fucked a deer and then didn’t eat for six months. Their fur ranged from a brown to black color and covered a gaunt body with a moose’s snout and deer antlers. Two, too-long arms ended in four claws that nearly scraped against the ground, but would rip a human’s guts out with a single swipe. The antlers themselves were deadly, and the species was strong enough to walk around with an impaled police officer’s body on its head with little trouble. They were nowhere near as tough as a pure shifter, and didn’t have rapid healing abilities, but it would still take a dozen rounds to the chest to take one down. Better to blow their brains out. Judging by the gunfire echoing through the building, the locals were finding this out the hard way.

“Move,” Vernon waved his hand forward as he kept his rifle scanning his sector of fire.

In a rough line, the six officers stalked forward; their weapons twitching at the slightest sound. They were more than halfway across the room when the wendigo’s hit them on the flanks. Like wolves, wendigos were pack hunters, and acted as such. The fresh-faced kid on the end got off a burst of 5.56mm rounds before the wendigo hit him low; taking off his leg just below the knee. He went down screaming as blood spurted across the floor.

The officer next in line shifted fire and blasted the wendigo in the side on full auto. Fear made some of his shots go wide, but several slammed through the animal’s hide; making it screech in pain. The man’s training was evident as his rifle ran dry. In a smooth motion, he tossed it around to his back and drew his sidearm. The wendigo was still trying to recover, and he put three rounds into the side of its head. The creature’s brains splattered onto the ground as it toppled over.

“Make sure to cut off its head if you can!” Vernon yelled over the gunfire as he tried to pin down the other wendigo. It was the best way to be certain they were really dead.

Things were not going as well on the other flank. The officer hadn’t even been able to get off a shot before he was hit. The wendigo swiped its claws right across the officer’s belly, easily piercing Kevlar and flesh, to spill his intestine onto the floor. The guy didn’t even see the decapitation blow coming. He was too busy seeing what should be inside of him, outside of him. His buddies came to the rescue, but only tagged the wendigo as it used the hunks of meat as cover and retreated back into the depths of the building.

The radio traffic was crazy, but Vernon cut in with his own situation report. “Contact, team two has two down, one KIA, consolidating,” he