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

was down, and a big fucking hole sat where the door had been. The Caeli mage looked like he’d taken a hit, and the smoke obscuring the machine gunners’ sights was lifting.

“Move! Get to the door!” Vernon yelled, and sprinted from behind cover.

Machine gun rounds chewed up the street around him as he dashed forward at close to fifty miles per hour. He didn’t try and slow down to return fire. That would only get his ass shot. He was sprinting as fast as he could, and he wasn’t slowing down. He felt something heavy hit his shoulder, and the flash-burn of his ward protecting him seared up his neck. He stumbled slightly, but was able to stop himself from face planting and getting shot to shit. He corrected course and kept on running.

He was twenty feet from the hole when something hard punched into his leg. The ward there was already gone, and the fucker hurt. Momentum kept him going as he stumbled through the opening. He didn’t stop there. His leg wasn’t responding well to his brain’s commands, and it buckled when he tried to pump the brakes.

“Shit balls,” he had time to thing before he tucked his shoulder and smashed through the far wall. On the other side of that wall was a hallway, and the opposite wall only half stopped him.

Head and chest on one side, and his ass on the other, with his waist caught in the drywall, he’d successfully made entry. “Report,” he winced.

Before he could get a reply, an incredible burning sensation ignited in his leg. He howled in pain as the ancient bane of his species hammered him. Without thinking, he grabbed a tourniquet from his belt. He channeled magic into it, and runes lit up in response. He growled as he tried to move his useless leg to get the tourniquet under his foot and move it up above his wound. The round had penetrated just below the knee, so he worked the life-saving, enchanted tourniquet to the middle of his quad. He stopped to rip a two-by-four out of the wall and place it in his mouth.

“This is gonna suck,” he pulled.

He roared in pain, and bit straight through the wood as the magically-imbued medical device clamped down on his thigh enough to stop the blood flow. On top of that, it was hot; as the spell repulsed the silverbane to keep it isolated in his leg.

It hurt like the mother of all motherfuckers, but it had to be done. The leg would go gangrene and die in short order with no blood flow to the extremity, but it kept the silverbane localized. If he let it spread, and get to his heart, he was dead with a capitol D. He still felt like he had the world’s worst case of hemorrhoids in his leg, but the painful burning didn’t move past the tourniquet. His first aid complete, he finally checked his surroundings.

He’d lost one of his Colts when running through the walls, but he gripped the other one tightly and scanned the area. It was full of dust and asbestos from his wrecking-ball entry, but was clear other than that. He struggled to his feet to find a more defensible position than hanging in a wall.

“Report,” he ordered again.

“Bravo’s down,” someone relayed. “Medics are trying to get to them, but the vamps are keeping everyone pinned with those guns.

“I’ll handle it,” Vernon grunted. The mission was still to get these drug-dealing vamps off the street, but he couldn’t do that if the team died.

All the assault elements had memorized the blueprint of the building when they ran rehearsals. Their carefully choreographed plan hadn’t survived contact with the enemy, but the building was still the building. Vernon limped down the hall, hugging the wall, toward the stairs. The door was locked, but a quick punch from his giant, furry paw knocked it down.

Immediately, gunfire slammed into him. He should have been more careful. His senses should have picked out the rapid breathing on the other side of the door. He should have done a lot of things, but he was hurting, and that cost him his edge.

The kid on the other side of the door, and he was definitely a kid, was holding down the trigger of an M16. It was an older military weapon, phased out in favor of the M4, but it still worked the same. The young vamp obviously thought it was some sort of machine gun and would keep firing. The single trigger pull fired off three rounds. Two hit Vernon in the chest, while the recoil forced the rifle upward. Round three was almost fatal. It whizzed past his ear close enough that the zip overloaded his eardrum for a heartbeat.

Vernon felt a burst of warmth as the ward died, and the punch of kinetic force as he took the second round in the vest. Thankfully, the Kevlar there was designed to take hits. He could smell the silverbane of the bullet, but it pancaked against the armored plate.

The young vamp had enough time to look at his gun in surprise. He looked equally surprised Vernon was still standing, but didn’t get another chance to do anything about it before the UN agent put a round between his eyes. His chamber was dialed into the liquid UV rounds. While a round anywhere else probably wouldn’t kill the vamp if he got medical attention, a round to the noggin sure as shit did. The steel-jacketed round punched a hole in the kid’s brain, and the liquid ate at it like hydrochloric acid until it overwhelmed the vamp’s healing ability.

The look of surprise was forever frozen on the face of a creature that expected to live for a thousand years. The poor bastard hadn’t even hit twenty as he toppled forward and spilled blood and chunks of