Page 20 of Heal Me

“So you take the lead.” Rumel likewise has the talent, but he prefers to operate behind the scenes. He analyzes all the potential outcomes of any given scenario and then puts his players into motion. He refuses to accept I don’t want to be one of his players. Hell, I’m not even in the game.

“Negative.”

“Why not?” I demand. “You can bend minds better than I can.”

“It’s classified.”

“Sorry, but I have an arbitration coming up. I don’t have time to freelance.”

“You make the time to see Charlotte Jasmine Patel.”

“The answer is no. And yes, I do make the time for Charlotte, and I’ll continue to make the time for Charlotte.”

“I do not understand you, offspring of mine.”

“Likewise.”

“What’s not to understand?” he asks, clearly mystified. “I have a job for you.”

“What’s not to understand? I already have a job,” I counter.

He begins walking and that’s my cue to follow. We reach the Watchers’ training facility—a nondescript windowless concrete building. Rumel bags my head and I hear him entering the passcode on the keypad. A beep goes off, and the bag over my head disappears as the reinforced steel door opens. Overkill, but that’s just Rumel’s way.

We step inside, and my clothes are gone—I’m now wearing an oversized white cloth diaper. “It’s Cupid!” Sam taunts, making a show of cracking his neck and then loosening his shoulders.

I use my power, and I’m now wearing my training gear and holding my bow with the quiver of arrows strapped to my back—both a gift from Sam when I was ten years old. The bow looks to be made of steel, but I know it’s a metal not found on this plane of existence. Hand-forged by Amer, the Watchers’ weaponry expert, it’s not as efficient as a composite bow, but it doesn’t need to be unstrung. Plus, it really is a thing of beauty. I waste no time, firing an arrow at Sam.

“Your aim still sucks,” he taunts as my arrow sails well over his head.

But what he didn’t anticipate was me hovering a mirror just behind him. The arrow hits the mirror, and shattered glass rains down on his head. “You’d think a Watcher would’ve seen that mirror trick coming,” I say with a smug smile.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says, shaking his head like a wet dog. Glass shards fly across the room, and I teleport behind a punching bag, as I would prefer not to take one to the jugular.

He appears beside me and gives me a hug with a back slap so hard it would knock out a mere mortal’s teeth. Sam appears around my age, and is shorter than me by a few inches, but is much bulkier. He has a warrior’s build of broad shoulders and huge biceps. Sam could outmuscle me, but I can always outsmart him because I know his weakness, and that’s women. He led my dad, along with the rest of the Watchers, to their “fall.” Sam because he was chasing tail, or so the story goes. My dad because…well I’m still not exactly sure of his motives. Whatever they were, I’m sure he methodically calculated the risk-to-reward ratio before proceeding.

“Cupid, you in?” Sam asks.

“Negative,” my dad answers for me.

“Why not?” Sam demands.

“I have an arbitration.”

“Laws are made to be broken.” Sam waves his hand in dismissal.

“That’s what makes you such a dream client. I know I’ll have repeat business.” I’ve represented Sam on more than one occasion.

“He is a good lawyer, Rumel. Just don’t tell him that, else he’ll get as cocky as Zazel’s boy,” Sam chides.

“Gabe is a Giant, and yet he chooses to hide behind books,” Rumel sighs. And here we go. As if I haven’t heard this a million times. Nephilims were known in the days of old as Giants. That’s not hyperbole. Their offspring were Goliath-style, warmongering giants. Rumel worked with what today would be considered a geneticist, and they figured out how to remove the giant gene. The tradeoff—and there’s always a tradeoff—is that it’s much more difficult for a Watcher to sire a child now.

“Rumel, don’t run the boy off. I still haven’t given him a proper ass kicking yet,” Sam says. He jerks his head to the arsenal wall. “Pick your poison.”

Rumel’s phone beeps and he looks at it. “I have to go.” With that, he disappears.

I stroll over to the wall, survey the large assortment of weaponry, and choose a quarterstaff. “And he chooses a short staff. Go with what you know, eh Cupid?” Sam taunts.

We begin sparring, and Sam has the upper hand. And that is why I don’t play fair. Using my power, pictures of scantily clad swimsuit models hover all around us. Sam gets distracted by T and A, and I take him down with a leg sweep, positioning my staff at his throat. “It’s not the size of the staff, it’s the size of the cerebrum.”

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