Courts and Cabals Read online

  Courts and Cabals

  By G.S. D’Moore

  Copyright © 2020 by G.S. D’Moore

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For permission, contact [email protected].

  Cover art by Mykel Ferguson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9981286-6-5

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 1

  I’m standing at a precipice, a cliff, and looking down at a churning ocean. My toes curl around the rough edges of the earth with nothing between them and the roiling sea but a hundred feet of air. All the way to the horizon, white-capped waves march toward me like a formation of soldiers off to war. I look out at it all and raise my arms from my side.

  A strand of greying hair whips across my vision, but that’s the only evidence to suggest I’m old. My arms catch the currents, like a bird riding the thermals, and they are thick and powerful. My pale skin is pulled taught by hard muscles, and veins visibly pulse to the beat of my heart. My chest is protected by a thick coat of greying hair over a broad chest that expands as I take in the salt-tinged smell of the sea. Everywhere I look, my body is marked by scars of all shapes and sizes, but they don’t bother me. I look on them with fondness and pride.

  My eyes drift from my scars back to the sea as a slight weight lands on my right shoulder. I ignore it, and instead roar in frustration. Why? I don’t know, but a shockwave spreads outward, crushing the wave of white-capped soldiers edging meticulously forward under the pull of the moon. They’re driven back over the horizon. I dare myself to make a decision. One step . . .

  . . . something hard smacked me in the back of the head. “What’s more important, Mr. Dupree; my lecture or the back of Ms. McDougal’s head?”

  The class laughed as I rubbed the impact point. Sally McDougal turned around and glared at me like I was a piece of bird shit she’d accidentally stepped in. I wasn’t actually staring at the back of her head like some creep. The back of the head doesn’t do it for me; especially Sally McDougal’s. She has dyed platinum blonde hair, and her plain brown roots were already starting to show. If I was going to stare at something, I’d stare at her ass, but that’s hard to do when we’re all sitting in Mr. Miller’s senior history class.

  Speaking of Miller. “Fucking asshole,” I kept the thought to myself to avoid detention.

  “Your lecture,” I answered his rhetorical question anyway, and gave him my best fuck-you smile. I managed to wink at Sally too, and she turned around with a huff.

  I’d be the talk of the women’s locker room during gym period. Sally – always a gossip queen – would tell everyone who’d listen how I was staring at her in history, and how I lusted after her. Hell, by the time the rumor mill churned it out, and slid it through the grape vine, the story would be that I was jerking off to her in the bushes.

  “Fucking high school,” I was so sick of this place, but I had one more year left at St. Vincent’s Academy for the Rich, Powerful, and Famous.

  That wasn’t the actual name of St. Vincent’s Preparatory Academy, but it was still a spot-on description in my opinion. Tucked away on a few dozen acres of forest in Upstate New York; St. Vincent’s was the perfect place for the powerful to send their Ritalin-addled, sexually-frustrated, trust-fund teenagers. Away from the plebeians of the world, St. Vincent educated roughly six hundred future leaders of tomorrow. Or at least that’s what their propaganda said. They sure as shit charged enough for the privilege of educating.

  “I’m glad you agree, Mr. Dupree,” Miller had a glint in his eyes that made me worried.

  I don’t know why the fat, old bald guy hated me. Normally, a teacher hated their useless, slacker students who sat in the back and played on their phones throughout class. I didn’t do that; at least not in this class. History and language classes were about the only thing I was good at. Ask me about the American Revolution and I could give you time, date, and who was present at historical events throughout the important period in American history. Give me a foreign language to learn, and I could master it faster than anyone. Ask me about the periodic table, to solve for X, or to grammatically critique some shit by Walt Whitman, and you might as well be asking me to jump to the moon.

  In fact, I was Miller’s best student, but he was still a grade-A douchebag to me. “Is he challenging me to be better,” I asked myself years ago when I had my first class with the closet sociopath.

  The answer was a resounding fuck no. He was a sad old bastard who’d reached the apex of his education career a decade ago. He was bitter about it, and was willing to take that out on his pupils. Even worse, he had tenure, and could probably get away with murdering one of us under the right circumstances.

  Today, he wasn’t trying to murder me, but he did chuck a hunk of chalk at my head when I started to zone out again. “Give me a review, Mr. Dupree, of everything we’ll need to know for the midterm,” he instructed with a cruel glare.

  It was a daunting task, but I’d do it just to see the smug look on his face evaporate when I showed him up. “We started the term by going over the conditions that led to the Great Depression, and the political and social backdrop of the 20’s and 30’s,” I started off. “We spent a little time on prohibition, because it was stupid, and not enough time on the birth of organized crime. Who doesn’t like to talk about Al Capone? Right guys?” I looked around the room and got a few laughs and nods of encouragement. Before Miller could rip me a new one, I continued. “We discussed the New Deal and FDR coming to power, then transitioned into the start of World War 2.” As a history teacher, Miller was naturally a history buff, but in particular, he was a military history buff. It was one of those interests we sadly had in common. We’d spent nearly a month on those six years.

  “We reviewed the German Stalemate, Hitler’s obsession with the occult, and his eventual assassination in 1953.” Learning about how Germany singlehandedly fought the allied nations to a standstill at its borders was fascinating.

  Even with Eisenhower’s D-Day invasion, and the retaking of France, the allies had never been able to advance far into Germany without getting rebuffed. Tales of Ubermacht were prevalent in those days, but Allied commanders attributed it to crack SS and paratrooper regiments held in reserve until the last second. They’d only learn the truth half a century later.

  The German Stalemate was the time between the armistice in 1945 and Hitler’s death in 1953. In that time, the Third Reich basically became a pariah state at the center of Europe. Allied armies remained on the continent; surrounding, and blockading Germany from receiving anything from armaments to the latest body soap. It was eight years of tension; not only between Germany and the world, but also the USSR and USA. The two superpowers – with va
stly different political ideologies – were itching to extend their spheres of influence, but didn’t feel safe with Germany still in control of a powerful military force. While history scholars argued about the overall effect of the German Stalemate on the late 40’s and early 50’s, they all agreed it put off the coming Cold War for nearly a decade.

  “After the Stalemate, we discussed the reintroduction of democracy into Germany, and the intricacies of Communism and Capitalism. We discussed the reconstruction of Europe, the skirmishing in Korea, the revolution in Greece, the leadup and eventual American involvement in Vietnam, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; as well as the breakup of the colonial empires over that thirty-year time period,” I checked the topics off with my fingers.

  “Then we hit 1985 and the Revelation.” The entire class sat up a little straighter. Despite the historical significance of WW2, the death of fascism, the Cold War, Communism vs. Capitalism, and all the other crap that happened in the middle portion of the twentieth century; without a doubt, the most important issue of the last half-century was the Revelation.

  December 2, 1985, a Monday, and a day that would change the world. All across the world there was a giant coming out of the closet. It had nothing to do with being gay, but everything to do with being different.

  “Overnight we saw the world change,” I could feel the class hanging on my every word. “By December third, we knew all the myths and legends were true; at least to a degree,” I added the disclaimer to the statement because there was still a lot of ongoing discussion on that point thirty-five years later.

  Magic existed; witches, wizards, warlocks, sorcerers, and medicine men were real; while a bunch of other Harry Potter-like motherfuckers had been manipulating the primal chaotic forces of nature for millennia. Creatures born of magic and humanity, revered as ancient gods, and etched in fantasy, stepped into the light to finally shared their stories. I wanted to say “creatures that go bump in the night”, but there were a fair number of those “creatures” sitting all around me, and I was already ankle deep in shit with Sally. There was no reason to have the whole class think I was a racist.

  “After going over the Revelation in-depth, we spent the last few weeks reviewing the worldwide ramifications, changes in society, cultures, and laws; specifically, the Worldwide Registration Act (WRA).” I shook my head along with most of the class. If you agreed with the WRA you would for sure be labeled a racist. Although, the idea of race had drastically changed recently.

  Most people considered the WRA a giant infringement on people’s individual rights. It was simple enough legislation. Across the world, no matter the nation, everyone was registered into pre-approved categories at birth. For instance, if you were a dragon hatchling, the box for dragon, and the indicated subspecies, was initialed on the birth certificate of your home nation. The hatchling and its parents went home with the certificate, but the information was digitally stored in a United Nation’s database. Since the program spanned the planet, the UN was given ownership, the responsibility, and the power that came with it.

  The WRA also established an international standard for what was, and wasn’t, acceptable for the newly discovered supernatural species. Rules and regulations were laid out for everything from appropriate magic use to acceptable breeding space for large, endangered creatures on public land. To enforce those laws, and ensure everyone registered appropriately, an enforcement division was created. That division was not liked by many, and calls to defund it were constant.

  People tried to hide or circumvent the WRA’s requirements. It didn’t matter if you were human or supernatural, there was always someone willing to break the law. Creatures of all shapes and sizes did home births without any medical supervision, didn’t fill out paperwork at hospitals, or found clinics sympathetic to their cause.

  The enforcement bureau had an office in every country to look into instances of noncompliance. They frequently partnered with police forces of the federal, state, province, or whatever a nation called their subdistricts. These UN agents worked with their host countries to keep the peace and enforce the more stringent portions of the WRA. They had arrest, deportation, and extradition powers. Some people called the whole thing oppressive, totalitarian, and fascist. Other’s just called it business as usual.

  Despite how much people hated it, that was my life plan; even though I was never going to tell anyone. I was going to join the WRA enforcement division. I wasn’t doing it out of any sense of loyalty, or even because I believed in the cause. Far from it. I was doing it because it paid well, and it put me in a position of power. Power was something I didn’t have a lot of, but my language skills and connections built at St. Vincent’s made me the perfect candidate. The recruiters might have to look past my overall GPA, but I could be pretty persuasive. A 3.0 wasn’t that bad.

  “After the WRA, we moved into the end of the Cold War, the silent coup of the Russian oligarchy, and the rise of international terrorism,” I continued, winding down my explanation. “We just reviewed what could have happened if the 9/11 attacks succeeded. Instead, the hijacked planes shattered against the World Trade Center’s wards. That was yesterday’s class, so I’m assuming that’s where the cutoff for midterm preparation is,” I finished.

  I should have stopped there. It was a solid recap, but I just couldn’t help myself. “There might be more, but the way Sally’s head comes to a point in the back is just so damn sexy. I just can’t concentrate some days.”

  That got the reaction I wanted. Miller about had an aneurism as a purple vein throbbed in his forehead. Several classmates – mostly girls – inhaled at the horror of my comment, while a bunch of guys chuckled; one going as far to laugh heartily at my comic genius.

  Sally didn’t find it funny. She whipped around with pure rage in her eyes. Eyes that slowly began to sink into her head. Her salon-tanned skin paled several shades to a deathly pallor. Her perfectly-manicured fingers slowly extended. The colorful pink nail polish turned a sickly yellow as the nails stretched and morphed into serrated claws. Her dyed-blonde hair started to grow, tangle, and shifted to the gray-white of an old-crone. Her chocolate-colored eyes fixated on me as they shifted to a reptilian yellow, complete with the vertical slit of a snake. I half expected a forked tongue to lash out and taste the air, but I knew she didn’t have one.

  Sally McDougal, in addition to being the granddaughter of the current UN ambassador from Ireland, was a banshee. She hadn’t been alive during the Revelation, no one in the room had, but she was the descendent of one of the creatures that came forward during that date thirty-five years ago.

  On the Emerald Isle, banshees were spirits that heralded the impending death of a family member through a terrible wail. In the decades since the Revelation, the myth had been explained. A banshee’s wail didn’t necessarily mean someone close to you was going to die. However, it was a potent sonic attack. Many people over the centuries had suffered heart attacks, strokes, or aneurisms when faced with a banshee’s wail. So, as with most things over time, the myth of the banshee’s wail was born.

  As with most things humanity learned after the Revelation, the truth of the banshee extended way beyond the cultural myth of a single people. First off, not all banshees were women, and their legend blended with other folklore throughout Europe where they were known by other names and deeds. Most prominently, they were also known as the boogeyman; or boogey-people if you wanted to be politically correct about it. Parents throughout Europe told their children stories of the boogie to frighten them into doing what they were told. Legend said boogies would steal the children away if they misbehaved. Those myths were prevalent throughout every country in the world. While there were some confirmed cases of banshee/boogies stealing children, it was far less than the number of humans who stole children; so that myth was quickly dispelled.

  Perhaps the most frightening discovery, or most interesting depending on how you looked at it, was what scientists found out after the Revelation. Through the
WRA, voluntary, and sometimes involuntary study, humans soon realized that several of these creatures of legend and myth fed on people. There were plenty of species that physically fed on the flesh of humans, but banshee/boogies weren’t in that group.

  “Or is it kingdom? . . . phylum?” I was never sure which one it was. I hated science.

  Sally McDougal, and others like her, fed on the fear people radiated. It was a luxurious delicacy to her people. It was something they did frequently in the old days, but now kept to an absolute minimum for ethical and PR purposes. As the Irish ambassador’s granddaughter, the eyes of the world were on her family. They were attempting to bring leprechaun gold into the world market, and fighting to establish Dublin as a European economic capital. With fame and fortune came scrutiny, and she was always being watched. I knew this, which was why I just smiled as she revealed her true form to me.

  I was suddenly face-to-face with an ugly ass bitch whose scream would make my ears bleed. Still, I didn’t show a trace of fear because I knew that’s exactly what she wanted.

  “Ms. McDougal!” Miller’s voice cracked like a whip.

  Sally was mid-intake, her mouth half-open, showing rows of curved teeth in desperate need of a good brushing. Instead of letting loose, she growled and snapped her mouth shut. Her skin gradually resumed a healthy, tanned glow. Her hair grew fuller and silky; although, it was now her natural brunette color. Her fingernails stopped looking like they could carve me like a Thanksgiving turkey, and her eyes lost their hungry, reptilian look.

  “Sorry, Mr. Miller. It won’t happen again,” she apologized and pulled bubblegum lip gloss and pink nail polish from her backpack. She started to apply it right then and there.

  “As for you, Mr. Dupree,” he said my name like a curse. “At best, that was a rudimentary explanation of what we’ve been up to so far this semester. Also, your antagonization of Ms. McDougal is entirely unacceptable. I’ll see you for detention on Friday,” he looked at his watch. “That’s it for today. Class dismissed.”