Courts and Cabals 2

by G. S. D'Moore

  Even worse, Lilith wasn’t one hundred percent confident she had the power to break the wards anymore. So, instead, she’d worked to identify any weak points in the magical matrix so her attacks could be surgical. What she was doing right now wasn’t an attempt to escape. The fallow was short, shallow, and lined up next to dozens of others.

  “Time,” she thought, as she finished the hatch mark and stepped away from the wall. One more day, and she’d put a diagonal through this foursome.

  In a way, that was the worst part about her stay in Clark County’s worst-rated establishment. There were no windows to watch the sun rise and fall. The only way to count the days was by counting her meals. Being a high-powered supernatural, she didn’t get any yard time. There was too big a chance she’d hightail it out of there.

  “I almost did,” she thought, as she heard the beep of the door at the end of her cell block being buzzed open. Footsteps followed, and she knew they were for her. The only question was; who was coming to get her?

  The soft glow of the magical key appeared in Carl’s hand, and she gave a sigh of relief. “You know what to do, Lilith,” he stated, and she assumed the position with her hands and feet in the yellow circles.

  Carl was the gay guard who’d first imprisoned her. It didn’t take her long to notice he was one of the few decent people charged with guarding her. “Not like Bernie,” she hid the sneer as Carl did his routine pat down.

  Bernie was the muscle-bound fuckhead who copped a feal every time he patted her down. She was also supremely confident that at some point, while she’d been asleep, he’d stood outside her door and wanked it to her. A man’s seed had a very peculiar smell to a succubus, and she didn’t need a DNA test to know who’d spanked the monkey to her. Of course, Bernie had no idea what he was getting himself into. She smiled when she thought of how things could play out.

  “You’re clear,” Carl stated as he ordered her to put her hands behind her back so he could fit her with the handcuffs.

  “It’s not like I stuck the plastic knife from my last meal up my cooch,” she rolled her eyes, but let Carl follow the procedure. He was a very by-the-book kind of guy.

  “Your lawyer is here,” he told her as he led her out of the cell to the room where she’d met her lawyer every day before court.

  “Thanks, Carl.” If today was what she thought it was, this might be the last time she saw the guard. He didn’t say anything in return.

  She, Dani, and Xamira had a small army of lawyers working for them, but they couldn’t fit the battalion of JDs back here; so, it was just the named partner of the very expensive firm her mother kept on retainer. He was every inch the stereotypical lawyer; tall, strong, handsome, and effortlessly projected confidence. Clothes that cost more than some yearly household incomes said he knew what he was doing, and his white mane of hair said he’d been doing well for a very long time.

  “Miss Lilith,” he gave her a small bow and pointed to the garment bag hanging from her chair.

  Every day was a different outfit. It was picked by the fashion consultants, after speaking with the jury consultants, after figuring out who from the media was allowed in the courtroom that day, and finally signed off by her mother. The lawyer was just the delivery boy.

  She unzipped the bag. The outfit was conservative, as it had been every day so far. Today, it was a dress with a high neck that went down to her ankles, a heavy vest, and a pair of flats. Despite all of that, there was no way she couldn’t make it look sexy. It was the way of her kind, and was definitely a curse in these circumstances. Her defense team wanted to portray an innocent young woman, caught in the middle of a bad situation, who was forced to defend herself. Juries felt more sympathetic if they could relate to someone. No one could relate to a sex goddess sitting twenty feet from them. It turned the men on, and the women off. The prosecution had made sure to get as many anti-supernatural women as possible onto the jury.

  Lilith laid out the outfit, and the lawyer got up to turn his back. “You don’t have to,” she whispered, as she started to undo the buttons on her orange jumpsuit.

  “Um . . .” the man stammered.

  Lilith could feel his excitement. She had felt it the first day they sat together in this room. He was rich enough he could have any human he wanted, but he never imagined he could get her. It wasn’t just that he was old and she was barely legal; but that she was an honest to god succubus. In her experience, that fascinated men.

  “This isn’t really . . .” he fingered the wedding band on his left hand.

  His wife was probably some pretty, young, blonde thing who sat there and took his wrinkly, old dick once a week so that when he died, she inherited his fortune.

  “Shh,” she whispered, as she pulled her arms out of the jumpsuit and shimmied it down over her hips. She heard his intake of breath.

  The bra and panties were prison issue, and designed to be cheap and unflattering. That didn’t matter with her. Despite the depression-inducing lighting, her sun-kissed skin seemed to glow. Her flat, toned stomach tightened as she stretched her arms over her head. The bra wasn’t the right size, and the underwire failed to contain her. The lawyer let out a little gasp as it rode up to show some underboob, and almost resulted in a nip slip. She could hear his heart pounding out of control, and felt most of that blood heading south. He might not be old enough to need a Viagra to get it up, but the way his five-figure pants strained, he might as well have popped one.

  She smiled as she brought her arms down and slowly sorted through her outfit. As she did, she fed. It was nothing like taking a hot load in any of her holes. His desire, his tempered lust, was a drop in the bucket to the ocean of power Cam could produce; but it was food. She was by no means starving, but it had been a long time since she’d had a proper meal. The prosecution was making sure it stayed that way. It was an all-look-and-no-touch arrangement designed to keep her weak and at their mercy. So far, it was working. She wouldn’t normally be showing her tits to her lawyer just to get a snack.

  The power slowly trickled across the room to her. It was unseen, intangible, but it was there nonetheless. She breathed it in through her nostrils, tasted it on her tongue, and felt it energize her. It was just a bite of what could have been a full-course meal. Even if the prosecution had allowed her to take more, she couldn’t. If she did, her defense team would be leaderless. The last thing she wanted to do was distract her lawyer too much, or put him in a sex coma.

  She did have to give him some credit. He didn’t start panting like a dog, beg to touch her, or whip out his dick. “Maybe his wife isn’t some twenty-year-old bimbo after all,” she shrugged into the conservative outfit and took her seat at the table.

  “Where are we at finding Cam?” was always her first question.

  The lawyer’s dick was still prominently displayed against his pants as he took his seat, cleared his throat, and tried to settle his mind. She gave him a moment, because it was a few more seconds where she could believe people actually knew what the fuck they were doing.

  Her trial began as scheduled on January eleventh, but Cam went missing nearly a week before that. Word of what happened in New York didn’t take long to reach Nevada, and once word got to Lilith, she knew Cam was somehow involved. It wasn’t just a coincidence that Cam was spirited away to the Big Apple, and a few days later, something tried to open up the top of the UN HQ like it was a can of beer.

  Even worse, no one had any fucking idea where her First was. That’s when she nearly busted out of this joint. It took the lawyer, Aden, and a call from her mother to convince Lilith that they’d find the man she’d started to love. Marcella was on the case, along with the cabal’s New York assets. Lilith might not like the elder vamp after what happened in Reno, but there was no questioning her commitment to the cabal, or her ability to get shit done. Still, despite ongoing lawsuits, threats, cajoling, and no small amount of bespelling people; Marcella had nearly nothing to show for it.

  The only thing she did
have was recovered cell phone video of a hooded woman hitting a car engine like she was in the Little League World Series. It also caught a bit of the selkie attack before the recorder was eaten. It was likely none of the humans watching knew the twenty-foot great white-squid hybrid was a Fae, but that didn’t stop the sinking feeling in Lilith’s gut that something very, very bad had happened to Cam. There was only one reason the Fae would be after him, and considering her predicament, only one noble Fae could have made it happen.

  Venus was pissed as well, and under the covenants, her mother had reached out. That’s what she was looking for an update on.

  “We are still waiting for a reply from the Winter Court,” the lawyer informed. “Our allies are searching, but time doesn’t always work the same in the Faerie Realms as it does here, and if one of the Nine wants too . . .”

  Lilith tuned him out. The Nine were basically gods, if they wanted to fuck with time in their spheres of influence, they could do it. It also gave them plausible deniability. If they fluctuated time, they could say they just got the message and replied immediately; when in fact a year had passed in the mortal realm since the message was sent. It was the perfect alibi, and every second Cam was there, the less likely he would come back.

  Tears burned behind her eyes, but she refused to shed them. She needed to be strong. She couldn’t show weakness. Not today.

  “Okay,” she took a deep breath. “What’s the status of the case?”

  The lawyer’s expression was not reassuring. “From what all our consultants are saying, Dani will be acquitted.”

  “At least there is some good news,” Lilith didn’t want the cantankerous dwarf suffering just because she followed orders.

  “Xamira’s status is a little more touch and go. At best, the jury is deadlocked and we get a mistrial. We’ll see if the government wants to retry her after the media spectacle.”

  The cases of what the media had dubbed the Hamilton Three had been going on for a month. From the way the government was presenting their case, you’d think all three women were Charles Manson. They were pulling out all the stops, sparing no expense, and doing all of it just to give the cabal a black eye. Lilith knew both sides had spent a collective eight figures on nothing more than a manslaughter charge. She wasn’t Susan Wright, who’d stabbed her husband nearly 200 times. She’d regretfully killed six changelings when she’d been attacked by Aveena; there was a big fucking difference.

  All three of the cabal women had to sit there while the government brought out expert after expert to explain the issue to twelve people who’d been unintelligent enough to get out of jury duty. Despite all the ways the lawyers had approached the issue, it all boiled down to one argument.

  Like all things governmental and bureaucratic, the UN had developed a scale to rate supernaturals. The only people who understood, or cared about, the scale were paper-pushers, because within a month of the scale being published, people poked holes in its logic.

  Magic wasn’t cookie cutter. It’s scope and scale were a function of will as much as power. If a weaker mage had more willpower at any particular moment, they could beat someone classified as stronger than them. Then, when you added in all the rock-paper-scissors advantages and disadvantages of certain types of theurgy study, the elemental abilities, the different species, and things like cold iron and silverbane; you realized the supernatural rating scale was a giant waste of money and time.

  “This trial might be the only positive thing to come out of those millions of dollars,” her thoughts were bitter.

  What the prosecution had done, over and over and over, was drill into the minds of the jury that the difference between a changeling and a succubus was several orders of magnitude. There was no way even six changelings could hope to survive an attack from Lilith.

  All of that was completely true, and the defense tried to counter by explaining the attack wasn’t against the changelings, but against a noble Fae; who by the government’s convoluted standards, was on equal footing with Lilith. The prosecution countered the counter by saying that’s why it was a manslaughter and not a murder charge. Around and around they went, and the only thing that suffered from the weeks of testimony was Lilith’s psyche.

  “We need to talk about the offer,” the lawyer’s change in tone brought her back to the present.

  Lilith sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Despite a good eight hours of sleep, and the pick-me-up from the lawyer, she felt exhausted. “What’s your read on it?” she wanted his honest opinion.

  “We lost some people with the last character witness,” he looked uncomfortable admitting what Lilith already knew.

  Most of the families of the changelings had refused to testify; either because they’d been told to stay out of it by the Fae, or because the cabal had gotten to them first with financial incentive. That had allowed the defense to undercut five of the six cases, but number six looked like the straw that might break the camel’s back.

  The grieving mother of the sixth changeling had taken the stand, and it had been moving. Even Lilith had cried a little when the woman described her only child and the life they’d lived. It wasn’t a, “I’m crying to look sympathetic to the jury” cry either, she’d been genuinely distraught. Ever since then, the prosecution had leveraged that to screw Lilith.

  “You’ll plead guilty to one count of involuntary manslaughter,” the lawyer informed. “They’ve come down from a year to six months with time served; so, you’ll only be incarcerated for a little under five months.” The next words looked like it pained him to speak. “It’s a good deal, ma’am.”

  Something in his tone told her he wasn’t done yet. “Spit it out,” she sighed, as defeat settled into her bones.

  “They said they’d also dismiss the charges against Dani and Xamira,” he finished.

  “Fucking bastards,” she really wanted to dismember the government lawyers, but she had to admit, they’d done their homework.

  Dani was probably going to be fine either way, but if Lilith could save her niece, she would. “What the hell is six months against eternity?” she mentally shrugged in acceptance.

  The only downside was Cam. As far as she was concerned, everyone who was looking for him had their head so far up their asses they thought the news they were bringing her was chocolate and not shit. Unlike anyone else, she had the ability to go to the Faerie Realm; her half-Fae blood would be key to any parlay . . . or clandestine action. As important as she might be to any plan, there was no way in hell she would even know where to go when she got there. Faerie didn’t operate under the same physical laws as this realm. The Winter Court might be a one day walk from the inter-realm portal today, and a six month walk tomorrow. If the Lady of Winter wasn’t an idiot, and Lilith had to assume that was the case, the Winter Court wouldn’t be anywhere easy to access. It was better to clear up this legal nonsense now, and then search for Cam when she was released.

  “Let’s take it,” her answer seemed to surprise the lawyer; although, it was clear it was what he wanted to do.

  “I’m still confident we can . . .” he tried to act assured, but she raised her hand and silenced him.

  “I’ve got better things to do than spend another few weeks in trial, a week in deliberations, and then make a whole media circus of all this crap. We can always appeal to have the sentence vacated at an opportune time in the future; but I’d rather get on with my life,” she stood, signaling the end of discussion.

  “Of course,” the lawyer managed to look happy and defeated at the same time. He might lose his retainer over this. Her mother didn’t approve of failure, but that wasn’t Lilith’s problem.

  Gary and Bernie were outside and ready to escort her. Bernie’s eyes traced her new outfit; which despite being designed to be conservative and concealing, still managed to cling to her in all the right ways. He even unconsciously licked his lips. She ignored him as they put her back in shackles and marched to the judge’s chambers. Dani, Xamira, Judge Stan
ds Tall and the prosecution were already present.

  “What the hell is going on?” the dwarf shifted uncomfortably as she pulled on a bra that was clearly designed to flatten her bodacious breasts. It was having more success than Lilith’s outfit, but was clearly uncomfortable.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got it handled,” Lilith gave her a reassuring look, but the dwarf had known the succubus for too long.

  “We’ve reached an agreement, Your Honor,” the cabal lawyer stepped forward with the prosecution.

  “What are they talking about?” Xamira looked from the lawyers to Lilith.

  “I said don’t worry,” Lilith’s voice took on an edge that shut the other two women up, at least for a minute.

  The judge looked over the documentation with her usual thoroughness to determine everything was in order. “Miss Venitas,” she motioned for Lilith to step forward. The lawyers parted to let her through. “I want to ensure you completely understand what you are about to do,” the skinwalker’s tone was surprisingly gentle. She might be impartial, but for the first time, Lilith was seeing the woman behind the robe. “You will be pleading guilty to one count of involuntary manslaughter. Mandatory federal sentencing guidelines state that your sentence should be a minimum of ten to sixteen months. The government is choosing to request six months with time served. In addition, the government agrees to drop the charges against Miss Underwood and Miss Venitas.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” Dani piped up.

  “Quiet, Dani,” Lilith shot back, her voice as hard as iron. “I’ve made my decision. Honor it.” That shut the dwarf up.

  “Gentlemen,” the judge turned her attention to the lawyers. “This whole case stinks. The ulterior motive for this prosecution is plain as day, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the defense has an appeal in the works on the grounds of discrimination.”

  “Your Honor, I take offense to . . .”

  “I don’t care what offends you, counselor,” the judge shot the government lawyer down with a glare. “I don’t like what has gone on in my courtroom for the last month. I do not like that I’m going to be sending a young woman to prison on Valentine’s Day. It is because I don’t like this, that I will grant this deal, and offer probation after three months. Do you understand that, Miss Venitas? Behave yourself, and you’ll be out before Memorial Day.”