Courts and Cabals 2 G.S. D'Moore (the little red hen read aloud .txt) 📖

froze like a deer in headlights. Armed with my new knowledge, my body rebelled against the thought of being alone with her. Lilith frowned at my hesitation, but Via smiled that toothy smile that nearly had me peeing myself again.

“I promise no harm will come to you,” Via sounded bored as she turned on her heel and vanished through the door. I didn’t follow.

“Dragons don’t lie,” Lilith explained as she gave my shoulder a comforting squeeze.

“Don’t or can’t?” I asked. There was a big difference.

“Don’t,” she repeated. “when you live so long, your word has to mean something. If she says she won’t harm you, she won’t.” With that settled, Lilith slapped my ass to get me moving.

I entered the kitchen cautiously and found the dragon waiting at the island table. The kitchen was a mix of black and white marble, subway tile, and expensive stainless-steel appliances. Via might be old, but she clearly liked the finer things.

“Sit, young warrior,” she waved to the chair next to her. I took a seat, but instinctually leaned away. That amused her. “Don’t fret, I don’t usually bite,” I notice the qualification she added to technically be telling the truth. “All I want is a good sniff,” she leaned in and did just that.

The hair all over my body stood up as a wave of magic passed through me. Surprisingly, my dick wasn’t standing at attention like every nerve in my body. Her magic was different than Lilith’s, and I smelled charcoal for some reason. I sneezed as the scent became overwhelming.

“Aren’t you a conundrum,” she leaned back. “I can see why Lilith’s mother is obsessed. It has been a long time since I’ve met one of your kind.”

“What?” all nervousness fell away at the comment. “You know what’s wrong with me?”

That made her laugh her rumbling, terrifying laugh. “Wrong? There is nothing wrong with you. There is something very, very right about you, young warrior. In time, you will learn that, but beware,” her tone dropped. “My old friend always has plans of her own. She is a spider and her webs will snare you if you are not careful.”

“What the hell does that mean?” exasperation saturated my reply, but Via had already snapped her fingers and the other three women joined us.

“Are you ready to begin your journey?” the dragon asked.

“Yes.”

“Ready.”

“I want to get the fuck out of here,” the three women replied in their own way.

Via ignored Dani and made a circular motion with her hands. More embers flashed into existence. They formed a circle and started to swirl. They increased in strength and speed until a roaring fire blazed in a circle with a black nothingness at the center. I had an idea what the hell was going on, but none of the legends ever talked about dragons being able to do this.

“I can’t get you all the way home. They will be able to identify the powerful surge of my magic at both points,” Via shrugged, like being an enormously powerful being was an inconvenience. “I’ve masked the exit point with another, scheduled ritual. You should be safe for a while, and you’re fairly close to your final destination.”

“Thank you, ancient one,” Lilith bowed before being the first to step into the six-foot blackness at the center of the fire. Her naked, bloodstained ass simply vanished.

Dani was next, and Via made a snapping noise with her teeth as the dwarf sprinted past. The dragon laughed at the wave of fear that followed Dani into the blackness. Xamira walked through next, leaving just me and the dragon.

“Why do you torment Dani like that?” I felt something stiffen my spine enough to challenge her. Dani was my friend, and I didn’t like people fucking with her.

Via just lifted an eyebrow and shrugged. “We dragons love our mountains, and a good mountain is hard to find. A lot of the time they were already occupied.”

I’d read Tolkien’s The Hobbit and knew all about Smaug.

“We always won,” she said proudly, “so it’s instinctual for the dwarfs to fear us. Its ingrained in their DNA just as much as their affinity for metals.” She was not apologetic for the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dwarfs her species had killed over the millennia.

I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to meet another dragon. “Thank you for your hospitality,” I gave her a bow, and stepped through the portal. Just because I didn’t want to ever meet another one didn’t mean I was going to be rude to the only one I knew.

“Good luck,” I caught the whisper of her final words as my world turned on its head and magic pummeled me like a pinball before dumping me somewhere else.

***

Commander Feng felt the flare of magic seconds before the modified Blackhawk crossed the wards. “Turn around!” he screamed; in a tone his team had rarely heard from him. They’d felt the wards too, but thought nothing of them. He knew better. There was a scent to them he was familiar with.

The pilot banked the helicopter hard to the right and quickly circled out of the area. On Feng’s orders, he put the bird down a good quarter mile from the edge of the wards. “Everyone, stay here.”

They objected to him going alone, but since he knew the targets were gone, there was no use endangering the rest of the team. It took him a few seconds to cover the distance, but she was already waiting for him by the van. He approached cautiously, respectfully, and with his head bowed in subservience.

“Great Vesuvia,” he didn’t list all the titles she’d accumulated over the last two millennia. It would go on for a while. The dragon before him had been very active during the first thousand years of her life. Most of her prefaces went: “Destroyer