Courts and Cabals Omnibus: Books 1-3, page 6
Vernon had been in here enough times to know his boss had been in the shit more than once. For every picture of her with a President or Prime Minister, there was one of her in a war zone. There were also a few of her after bagging rogue supernaturals. Those prints were not safe for work.
The one thing he never saw in the office was pictures of a family. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if the Director had a family. Word on the grapevine was that she’d been born government-issued.
“Sit,” the Director commanded as she took her own seat behind a large desk.
Vernon sat and made sure to look Evelyn Winters in the eye. She was human, an extraordinary human who’d been through a hell of a lot more than he had, but despite her icy blue gaze, he knew for sure she couldn’t stare into the depths of his soul.
“Still,” he fought down a shiver as she studied him.
Director of the United Nations Worldwide Registration Response Division, Evelyn had been in Army Intelligence before she finished her commission at the end of Vietnam. She took a lateral transfer into what would one day become the NSA. People had taken note of her skills in the late 1970s. By the Eighties, she’d been promoted to a senior intelligence official in the Reagan Administration. Then the Revelation hit, and the world got turned on its head. She’d been instrumental in America’s response to its newfound citizens and problem children. She’d been assigned to the CIA and was in line for the Director position, but her talents were needed elsewhere. The campaign to get the WRA passed and ratified throughout most of the world was difficult, and America needed someone it trusted to steer the ship. Someone else could lead the CIA, but her experience with the supernaturals in the early days after the Revelation made her perfect for the newly minted UN position. A relentless campaign had secured her the desk she was currently sitting behind, and she’d held it ever since.
All that wisdom and experience sure as shit seemed like it could pierce Vernon’s soul. “What can I do for you, ma’am?” he broke the silence with his relaxed southern drawl that told everyone within earshot he was a Texas boy.
“You can act like you give a shit,” she snapped back, as she pulled a loose strand of her silver hair behind her ear.
Evelyn wasn’t much to look at. She was in great shape for someone pushing seventy-five, but at 5’3”, she wasn’t physically intimidating. Anyone who knew anything about her past knew she’d used that to her advantage. She knew where plenty of bodies were buried and had put several there herself. She was also a bit of a tight ass and rigid. She was an old dog, and she wasn’t about to learn any new tricks. Her tricks had worked just fine over the last five decades.
In many ways, Vernon was her opposite. He was a big boy, over six and a half feet tall, well-muscled, but not overly so. He wore his hair a little long and shaggy under his cowboy hat, and he preferred tactical-wear to a suit and tie. You wouldn’t catch him dead in a pair of loafers. It was always combat boots, and he was always armed; even in the depths of the UN HQ. His carefree attitude was often confused as him not giving a shit, and sometimes that was true. It was also true that the Response Division needed him a hell of a lot more than he needed it.
“You are a Supervisory Special Agent of my division, Vernon, if you’re going to take a nap, at least do it in your office,” she continued, venting her frustration.
“I have an office?” he was genuinely surprised.
“Fuck,” Evelyn sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off a migraine. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Easy, send me back on the road,” he replied, and started to lean back to throw his feet up again, but stopped himself.
Vernon Dud was made for many things. As a shifter, he was made for strength and speed. As a mage, he was an incredibly rare hybrid that could bring an extra level of power to deal with every threat. Lastly, as a Texan, he brought two heavy-caliber, rune-encrusted Colt Frontier six-shooters to the show, and the ability to shoot the wings off a fly at fifty meters. He was meant to drive fast cars and fuck loose women while listening to the devil’s music. He was not meant to sit in an office and play politics.
He also shouldn’t be a supervisory special agent. SSAs usually took ten to fifteen years of dedication to achieve. He was only twenty-four, and he’d only been promoted because they knew they needed to pay him more to keep him. Most of the division was human. The division didn’t track down humans who refused to register. The mission was to keep track of the extraordinary, and those same extraordinary people weren’t inclined to work for the people they saw as infringing on their freedoms.
Vernon could accomplish missions alone that took teams of specially trained humans. He knew that. Evelyn knew that, and his ego was sized accordingly. So, sometimes, it was her job to bring it back down a notch.
“Be careful what you wish for,” her exasperated sigh shifted, and Vernon tensed. “I’ve got something on the threat board for you to check out.”
The threat board housed everything from shifter serial killers to mages conjuring eldritch terrors. Vernon tried to remember anything that was blinking red on the board as he’d left the room. Things were mostly green with a few yellow spots.
Evelyn pulled a tablet from her desk drawer and tossed it to Vernon. Technically, he should have been carrying his UN-issued tablet with him at all times, but it was probably still sitting in the office he didn’t remember he had.
“This was just elevated to yellow. Low priority, but still, it gets you back on the road,” she waited while he read the synopsis.
As he read, his face soured. “You want me to check in on a high school?”
“Yes,” she replied seriously. “There was a localized, unregistered, unnatural weather event. Those require a permit, and there was none on file with the local PD or us.”
“A permit violation . . . at a high school,” he deadpanned, hoping this was a joke. “Can’t the local PD handle this?”
“No,” she replied, just as serious. “The school is full of the rich and famous, human and supernatural alike. The local PD doesn’t have the balls to go up there. They need someone with enough weight to throw around before they’ll even step on campus.”
“So, I’m a glorified babysitter,” he closed his eyes tight and hoped this was all just a bad dream.
“At least you aren’t here making my life more difficult,” she leveled with him. “I’ve got you a bus ticket that leaves from Grand Central in an hour. Get your go bag and get out of here,” she gave a wave of dismissal and turned her attention to other pressing issues.
Vernon wanted to argue with her, but she’d already moved on. “Fine,” he growled, and for the hundredth time wished he’d been born a hundred and fifty years ago.
He would kill to be a desperado, sheriff, or a US Marshall in the wild west. A life of gambling, whoring, and fighting sounded just fine to him. He unconsciously gave his revolvers a stroke and headed back to the room to grab his kit. That secured, he headed for the lobby to catch a cab.
He passed lines of protesters, human and supernatural, chanting and marching in a designated area. Some had signs concerning income inequality, others human rights, but by far the majority were to disband his division and repeal the WRA. Since he didn’t wear a patch designating his division, and his badge was tucked away in his bag, he didn’t draw the ire of the crowd.
“Thank the gods,” he thought as a yellow cab pulled out of line to pick him up. “He just couldn’t deal with any more stupidity today.”
Chapter 6
“What in the ever-loving fuck was that?” Lilith regained consciousness in near-complete darkness.
The first sign that something was wrong was that she didn’t snap to being fully awake. She was drowsy, groggy even, and that had never happened. Of course, she was only eighteen, but from everything her mother told her, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Succubae didn’t need sleep like humans. A few hours every couple of days was enough, and if she stayed fed, she could go for weeks before the deteriorating effects of sleeplessness took hold.
“What was I . . .” the fog in her mind persisted, and she gave her head a few good shakes. One smacked it against the hardwood floor. “Where am I?” she finally started to take in her surroundings.
The floors were chilly, and although her species was only adversely affected by extreme temperatures, she still felt it. She straightened up and promptly smacked her head into a metal lattice.
“Shit,” she cursed, as she started to put two and two together. She was under her bed.
“What the fuck is going on?” She pulled on her comforter to expose the rest of the room as her memory started to flood back.
The moon was only a sliver, so the amount of light in the room was negligible. Of course, her gifts allowed her to see perfectly with even that little light, and with the comforter out of the way, the room came into view. Despite the racket, Dani, her dwarf roommate, slumbered in her bed. The shorter woman had a particularly heavy breathing pattern when she was in deep sleep, and nothing short of a bomb would wake her up.
Lilith straightened up, cracked her back, and took stock of the situation. She was still in her uniform skirt, but her bra was on the floor. Since she normally folded and put away her clothes, that was a red flag. Dani’s side of the room was still a mess, so it was impossible to tell if there were signs of a struggle. Since the dwarf was sleeping without a care in the world, no one had heard a fight and come rushing to help.
Lilith studied her sleeping friend. Dani had a tendency to sleep in the nude. Lilith didn’t know why. She wore appropriate sleeping clothes. She wasn’t a barbarian. Studying the dwarf’s massive breasts as she slept, Lilith could say for certain she wasn’t hungry.
“There goes that theory.” She thought her grogginess and memory loss could have been due to severe hunger. She turned her attention away from her friend and focused on her memory.
She pushed power from the core of her being. Power that she got from the sexual energy of others. She was young, so she didn’t have much, but as she grew and got more experienced, her magical battery would grow. Once she reached full maturity in three years, she’d be an order of magnitude stronger than she currently was. She couldn’t wait for that day, and the increased appetites it would bring.
At the moment, she concentrated on remembering. The first thing that came to mind was a cock. Eight inches, solid thickness, without any weird bends that made it look like a banana. It was a good, hefty, straight cock. There was something about a quiz. Normally, she didn’t need any help. Not having to sleep much left her plenty of time to finish her homework, but this time she needed help. Everyone knew if you needed help you went to Cameron Dupree.
“Cam!” it came flooding back to her. She remembered him going off fairly quickly, but that was usually the case with humans. He tasted good going down, a fine meal, but then . . . something. She couldn’t put her finger on it. “Did someone ambush me while I was sucking dick?” It sounded silly, but a succubus was most vulnerable when she was . . . occupied. “Maybe, but that feeling?”
It felt like someone lit a fire inside her. Like a nuke had gone off. No . . . like someone had jump-started a star. She’d never felt anything like it, and just thinking about it had her panties soaked. She bit her lip and gave Dani a sideways glance. The dwarf gave a very unladylike snort, and she rolled over to reveal a bare, but shapely, ass. Despite the sudden desire, something told Lilith that Dani wouldn’t be happy to be woken up with a request to go to town on her Egg McMuffin.
Fortunately, there was always someone she could call if she had questions. Someone who’d been there for Lilith every step of the way. Someone who’d taught her every trick in her book. Someone who’d only give her a little grief for waking her up in the middle of the night: her mother. The thought might terrify some humans. After all, what person wanted to think about a mother teaching her daughter the art of smoking the pink cigar? Succubae didn’t look at things that way. This was a mother teaching her daughter how to eat. Humans taught their kids to drink from sippy cups and use their fork and spoon. It was the same. The only difference was the viewpoint.
Lilith grabbed her phone from her desk and quietly exited the room. Each floor had a common area with a small kitchen, chairs, and a TV. She sat down at the table and dialed the number from memory. She didn’t even care about the time difference.
“Hello,” a sultry voice answered that could have raked in seven figures working a phone sex line.
“Mom,” Lilith’s voice must have betrayed something.
“What’s wrong?” Human or supernatural, a mother was a mother.
“I have a question for you . . .”
***
“What the shit?”
One second, there was darkness, and the next, reality sprang back into focus. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the term ‘let there be light’.
I bolted upright and was forcefully met with a pair of hands and a kind face. “Easy, darlin’,” the nurse replied with practiced bedside manner. “Lay back down. You’ve been through a lot.”
I allowed her to push me back down as my memory returned in a rush. “Got my dick sucked . . . check. A succubus with epilepsy . . . maybe. Walking back to the dorm and getting hit by lightning . . .?” I didn’t know about the last one. All I remembered was a brilliant white light, searing pain, and then nothing. I looked to the nurse for reassurance.
“You had a close call, darlin’,” the woman said as she straightened her old-school white blouse, skirt, and stockings with a big red cross on her hat. “The odds of getting struck by lightning are about one in seven hundred thousand. You had a near miss, but it still counts.”
“A near miss. That makes more sense.” If I had been struck, I’d be nothing more than a crispy critter.
Out of reflex, my hand dove beneath the sheets to check my twig and berries. With a sigh of relief, I confirmed everything was where it should be. The nurse gave me a disapproving look, but ignored it otherwise. Despite the unique student body of St. Vincent’s, it still wasn’t normal for people to have near-death experiences.
“I’m going to monitor you for the next few hours, and if your vitals are stable, I’m going to release you,” the nurse continued, as she went to record the data on a monitor next to my bed.
“What day is it?” I asked. I didn’t have my phone, and if I had to guess, even a near miss would have fried it.
“It’s one o’clock on Friday. You’ve been out for about eighteen hours,” she confirmed, and then headed out the glass-paneled door to the main section of the building. In the recovery ward, mine was the only bed in about a dozen that was occupied.
“Eighteen hours . . .” I gave a mental sigh. Despite the whole experience, I felt great. I didn’t get more than six hours of sleep on average, and eighteen really filled up my tank. “Wait . . . shit!” I remembered what I was supposed to do.
I’d been so focused on meeting up with Lilith that I forgot about other pressing issues. First and foremost, there was a certain item I was supposed to obtain for a certain Fae. There was no way Aveena’s order was going to get filled in her twenty-four-hour timeframe, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to care about my incapacitation. That was the Unseelie way.
I was still thinking of how to dig myself out of this hole when the door burst open and my friends rushed in. Jerome was first through the door and grinning like a fool. Brad looked more concerned. Unlike my other friends, he had the frailties of a human and knew just how close I’d come to being roasted alive. Makaylah just looked uncomfortable since there was a lot of blood around, and it probably smelled delicious to her.
“You have to be the luckiest and unluckiest man alive,” Jerome clapped me on the shoulder, driving me deep into the padded mattress. “You get the sexiest girl in school to play your fiddle, and then you get struck by lightning on the walk home. That’s some epic shit,” he laughed.
“Sure, because good luck is getting a woman to suck your dick; sexist pig . . .” Makaylah’s voice drifted off as her eyes darted from side to side. “I need to get out of here,” she looked paler than usual as she turned on her heel and made a beeline for the door.
Brad watched her go before approaching. “How are you feeling?” he asked a very human question that the two supernaturals hadn’t even considered.
“Great, actually. I should be out of here in an hour or two. Late enough to miss class, but early enough to call in a favor,” my eyes met his, and I batted my lashes.
“No, no . . . no . . . no,” the Caeli mage backed away from me. “I told you already. I’m not going back to that weirdo.”
Brad knew my request before I could ask it. The sheet of paper Aveena’s changeling handed me requested a baby’s rib. It was a magical version of a controlled substance; obviously, because of the source it came from. Mostly, they were taken from babies that succumbed to SIDS, but that number was shrinking by the year. I didn’t know the properties of the item once infused with magic, and I didn’t want to know. All I knew was that there was only one black market operation in the small town that surrounded St. Vincent’s.
The guy who ran it looked like a child molester. He wasn’t actually one, but he drove around in an ’80s Astro van filled with illegal magic trinkets. He kind of hit the stereotype on the head. Being on the move kept him off the local PD’s radar, and a few enchantments made sure the human cops didn’t find anything if they ever searched his mobile shop.
I had Brad run an errand once before, and the guy creeped him out. He wasn’t willing to do it again. “Please,” I gave him my best puppy-dog look. “You were there. You know who this is for. If I don’t come through, she’s not the type to shrug and walk away. She’s the ‘I’ll take my pound of flesh in payment for your failure’ type.”
Brad held my eyes for a moment before dropping them. “Fuck. Fine, I’ll do it, but you owe me big, Cam.”
