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

a rifle. The one cop who’d still been fighting before they arrived looked like he’d barely dodged a claw. It still nicked his face, and an ugly red line seeped blood down his chin to drip onto his chest. If they survived the fight, the medics might be able to save his eye.

Vernon wanted to help, but the other two wendigos were coming for him. In his werewolf form, his fingers were two big for the Colts, but he was prepared for that. On the back of his magically-expanded body armor he wore a big-ass knife. To a human it would be considered a sword, but not to the eight-foot monstrosity he’d become.

He pulled it clean from its sheath, and it sang through the air as the wendigos split up and tried to come at him from both directions at once. The blade was steel with flecks of cold-iron and silverbane worked into it by a dwarf bladesmith. It wasn’t enough to kill shifters or Fae outright, but it would give them a bad day. A thick knuckle guard extended from the handle, which doubled as a set of brass knuckles made of the same components as the blade. It was designed to fight supernaturals in hand-to-hand combat.

The first wendigo learned that the hard way. It thought it was faster than it actually was, and he caught it across the chest with the blade. His strike threw off its trajectory and it smacked into one of the few remaining, intact tables.

The only thing the attack was good for was a distraction. The second wendigo hit him full in the side, taking advantage of its buddy’s misfortune. Vernon was ready for it. One of the protective wards on his armor flared and heated his fur beneath the protective fabric. It burned out in a puff of smoke, but it did its job. The wendigo had tried to impale him with its antlers, and swipe at his hamstring with its claws. Both attacks failed. In response, he spun, and used the centrifugal force generated by his core to deliver the mother-of-all backhands.

The crack of the wendigo’s bones breaking was audible over the gunfire, and it went down without another sound. Vernon stomped over to the first, wounded wendigo as it struggled to back away. His massive paw pinned the creature to the ground as he drove the blade through the back of its neck. The knife wasn’t designed for sawing, but he made it work.

The wendigo’s head came off with a wet pop. He repeated the action with the second wendigo before he turned to face the last threat in the room. He’d taken down the two wendigos so fast that the third creature was still working its way toward the officers. The officer’s fire was turning panicked as they failed to hit it, and they’d basically fallen back on the spray-and-pray method. Judging by the number of shells on the ground, they had to be low on ammo.

At that point, both officers had the misfortune of their weapons running dry at the same time. The wendigo’s enhanced hearing heard the click, and it seized the moment. It used a table as a spring board and launched itself at the remaining officers . . . only to get drilled in the shoulder by its comrade’s bloody head.

Vernon was aiming for the creature’s head, but was satisfied as the fastball knocked the wendigo off course. It still hit the table the officers were using as cover; smashing it backward and knocking the surviving men on their asses.

It was quick to recover and face Vernon, but forgot about the humans. Most supernaturals did in a fight, and it paid for the mistake with its life. The brave officer from team two had reloaded, and despite cradling an arm with a compound fracture, drilled the last wendigo in the skull at point blank range. He held down the trigger until the thirty-round magazine ran dry. The wendigo’s head looked like someone stuck a grenade up its nose. Vernon was sure it was dead when the smell of fresh shit permeated the room.

With all the wendigo’s down, two by his own hand, he threw back his head and howled in victory. The remaining officers jumped at the sound, maybe even pissed themselves, but didn’t shoot him.

“Glad he’s on our side,” the officer with the ruined eye replied.

The officer sent out the status reports, and it looked like the rest of the teams were reporting back that the building was clear. There were only about a dozen wendigos in the warehouse, and it just happened that half were concentrated where teams one and two breached. The rest of the assault force had taken casualties, but they hadn’t faced a mass attack like Vernon had. That was for the best.

As cleanup started, Vernon shifted back. His clothes shrank with him, and except for the one burned patch where the ward went up in smoke, the only sign that he’d even been in a fight was the massive amount of blood splatter covering his entire body. Medics worked their way among the wounded, while forensics teams entered the warehouse, and deputies secured the perimeter. The commotion had drawn a crowd, and the media was here in force.

Vernon kept well away from the reporters. It wasn’t a secret that he was with the UN Response Division, but that didn’t mean he needed to be on camera after the bloodbath. He kept to the inside of the warehouse. He walked among the carnage trying to look busy. In the depths of his webbed, combat harness, he felt his phone vibrate.

He pulled it out and recognized the number. Still high on the thrill of the hunt, his mind flashed back to memories of the caller clawing at his chest while she used his dick as her own personal play-thing. “I’m surprised to hear from you, Becky,” there