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

The phantom blade pushed out against mine, to throw me back, and open up room for another horizontal slash. I spun in response.

Dani’s shove, intended to throw me back, actually threw her off balance. My pivot brought my sword across her midsection and something warm splattered across my shirt.

That broke my concentration. The weird phantom sword vanished as Dani toppled forward. My cut wasn’t deep, but it wasn’t shallow either. Like other supernaturals, a dwarf healed fast, but by the surprise written all over her face, Dani never expected to need her ability against me.

“Shit . . . Shit . . .” I ripped off my shirt and eased her down across my lap so I could apply pressure. The life-giving liquid was running down her sides and coating the mats.

“Shit is right,” Dani gritted her teeth against the pain. “Where the shit did that come from, Cam?”

“I don’t know,” I wondered.

“I guess I got lucky,” I answered. “This is why I wanted to use practice swords,” I glared at her.

“HA!” her thunderous laugh made me jump. She pushed my blood-soaked shirt away from her torso, and I saw the bleeding had stopped. An ugly cut was still there, but the blood had congealed. As I watched, the skin slowly started to knit itself together.

“I’m fine,” she waved me off, and got to her feet; copping a feel of my dick in the process. She wasn’t getting much. Nearly spilling her intestines all over the floor was a guaranteed soft-off. “You need to talk,” she poked me in the chest, nearly driving me to the ground.

“I was only going half speed, but that’s about twice as fast as a human. There was no way you should have been able to anticipate the push, much less turn it to your advantage and gut me,” she was serious. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, and then tried to explain the phantom thing I imagined.

She cocked her head in confusion. “Let’s test it,” she concluded, not sure if I was blowing smoke up her ass.

She went to grab the wooden practice blades. “Not a fucking word,” she snapped when she saw the smile on my face. “If some weird shit is going on, I’d rather you didn’t accidently cut off my tits . . . or your own cock.”

Her seriousness rammed the issue home, and I got down to business. The wooden blade was entirely different than my short-sword – Dani hadn’t been lying– so it took me a few painful hits to get used to it. Eventually, I found my groove, and loud whacks replaced clangs.

It took a minute, but I felt the spark again, and the blur followed. I couldn’t tell her it was happening, but she must have sensed it. It was hard to miss when I started to move away from where she was going to strike before she’d even started her attack. I grinned without losing my concentration, and she replied by turning up the heat.

I didn’t know if she was going all out, but the time I had to react to her strikes grew shorter and shorter. Pretty soon, it was like we were fighting normally again, but there was one key difference.

“She’s sweating,” I saw the liquid glistening on her brow, and beads running down her face. The surprise dropped me out of the zone, and I suffered the consequences.

I didn’t move nearly in time to dodge her slash, and it smacked into my arm with a loud thunk. That was followed by a loud crack and waves of pain. I dropped the sword, but didn’t even get to yell out before the pain signaled my brain to shut down and I blacked out.

I don’t know how long I was out, but long enough to get an audience. I awoke to the sting of the smelling salts Dani opened under my nostrils. We were old friends at this point. There was still pain, a lot of it, but she’d put my arm in a sling while I was out. At least I was unconscious for that part.

I saw Xamira and Xander standing off to the side speaking quietly with Lilith while Dani hovered over me.

“Wakey wakey,” she snapped a finger in my face to draw my attention. “How many fingers?”

I could clearly tell the number, so she didn’t think I had a concussion from smacking my head against the pads. My arm on the other hand . . .

“Explain this to me again,” Lilith approached looking perturbed. She wasn’t radiating rage, but she was not happy.

“I don’t know,” Dani scratched her head, and got a full glare from the succubus. “I mean, I know how I broke his arm, but I don’t know how it got to that point. Cam said he was seeing stuff, a phantom figure. I didn’t know if he’d been hit in the head too many times or what, so I tested it out,” she blew out a long breath. “I’ve never seen him fight like that,” her admission surprised me. “I was going one hundred percent against him; giving him everything I had. He was like some fucking tornado moving around it all. I couldn’t score a hit. He knew where I was going before I did. Then, suddenly, he didn’t. I’m glad we switched to practice swords.”

I hadn’t realized that yet. If she’d struck me with her real blade, at her full power, she definitely would have cut me in half.

“This is all great,” I winced, as even the slightest movement sent pain shooting through me. “But how about you work some of your sex magic and get me back up to one hundred percent. I can’t take weeks off to heal. We’ve got a deadline.”

All the supernaturals looked at me like I’d just grown a second head. “What?” I asked defensively.

“Cam,