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

listened to Lark. “Make your glamour strong,” he’d instructed. “What fun is it if you can’t take a punch?”

Since Lark was basically Lucifer incarnate, it was probably a good thing any fixed glamour he wore didn’t collapse if he got punched in the face. From the limited time I’d spent with the old satyr, I wasn’t surprised he’d said some things that made powerful people want to sock him in the kisser.

For me, it wasn’t a fist as much as a hypodermic needle. Baddy number three tried to jab it into my gut, but it hit my glamour and slid along my false skin. The guy looked at me with complete shock written across his face. My reaction was delayed, but I finally responded. I drove a palm strike into the man’s chest meant to drive him back, but I still didn’t have a good handle on my new strength. Power raged inside of me now that I knew I was in danger.

I winced as I heard the crack of the guy’s sternum breaking. To add insult to injury, my palm strike picked him up off his feet and launched him halfway down the alley. Thankfully, this section devoted to foot fetishes was fairly empty. Still, people screamed and ran away from me.

“Let’s move!” Dani wasn’t trying to play it cool anymore. Baddies one and two weren’t far behind, so we ran.

I leapt over the guy I’d dismantled, and managed to kick the needle under a table. I didn’t want anyone to accidentally step on it and get a dose of whatever nasty cocktail was meant for me. Baddies one and two sprinted behind us, but it became obvious they were only human, and we quickly outdistanced them.

“Coming through . . . make a hole!” I did my best drill instructor impression as I shouldered aside people as we ran for the nearest exit.

I had no idea where our two imp guards were, but it couldn’t possibly be good.

“Emergency exit!” Dani shouted, and pointed toward the welcoming neon, red blaze hanging from the ceiling.

People were jumping out of our way now, and I saw convention security moving in on us. We were maybe twenty feet from the exit when the doors burst open. The screech of metal made me dig my heels into the carpet, slip, and fall on my ass. Dani kept her footing, but not for long. Two bodies dressed in black hit her like fastballs. She collapsed in a heap under their weight, and I instantly recognized our imp guards. Both looked unconscious.

Standing in the wrecked double door, nearly as wide as the frame itself, was a big fucker in jeans and a flannel shirt. Muscles bulged against the quintuple XL, and his neanderthal face was screwed up in anger. He had a split lip, and a bruise forming around one of his eyes; so at least the imps didn’t go down without a fight.

Something about the hulking man sparked a flare of camaraderie in the burning fire of my chest. “Shit,” I put two and two together, and that equaled troll.

“Hiya,” I waved at the big guy, who towered over my own six and a half foot glamour. “I don’t suppose we can talk about this.”

The whole situation was turning into a battle royale. Dani got to her feet behind me, and the two imps were stirring. Bad guys one and two had stopped about a dozen feet behind us, and looked like they were putting their needles back in their pockets. If they knew the needles were just going to bounce off me, then there was no point to limiting themselves in a fight. People gathered behind them to watch the show.

To make things even worse, convention security arrived from alleys on either side of the main boulevard. Judging by the size of a few of them, there were some shifters present; and I wouldn’t put it past a resort and casino that raked in money hand over foot to have a few mages on staff as well.

Then there was Layla, who looked pissed. Her carefully done bun had slipped open and her hair spilled down her back. With the cleavage and black miniskirt, she looked sexy with a triple X. Being pissed just added to the hotness for me, until she hissed and showed some fang.

The troll in front of me didn’t move, and no one said anything; afraid it would just set everyone off. Of course, that’s when bad guy number four showed up with a stun gun and took a shot.

Then it turned into a total clusterfuck.

I don’t know who the bad guy was trying to take down, but he hit one of the human security guards behind me. The poor bastard’s body locked up and he toppled like a felled tree. Of course, that made the shifter next to him pounce twenty feet into the air, like a jungle cat, and land on the bad guy with fist flying. The guy’s screams were cut short when the shifter gave him a one-two to the skull.

Baddies one and two whipped out weapons that looked like they were made of plastic and designed to get around standard security measures. They opened fire at anything that moved toward them. Sharp cracks echoed through the big hall, but it didn’t look like they were using lethal rounds. I could tell because blood didn’t fly everywhere, and I got an up close and personal view when a round hit me. My glamour held, but my arm went numb. All around me security guards were falling. They didn’t have weapons, but the remaining shifters were closing on the two baddies; walking through a hail of electrically-charged rounds to do it.

A couple guards tried to cut off the troll, and they paid for it. He didn’t kill them, but he definitely crushed bones and tossed them halfway across