With gritted teeth, I kept running. Ten minutes later, my pulse beat in my temples and my entire body wanted to resign. Like hell I’d let it. I kept running. A few minutes later, I ran into a park and my head spun and stomach squirmed.

  I stopped by a tree, braced myself with the hand, and vomited on the ground. This was not graceful.

  “I see the morning workout’s going well,” Katherine’s voice slashed the air.

  Of course, I ran into her. I raised my eyes, watery as my throat still retched. She wore jogging pants, sweatshirt, and running shoes, with a water bottle by her belt. An amused smirk split her freckled face and she kept running in place. My face turned dark red. I pulled on my aether, filling my body with the arcane power. Strength intoxicated my senses and I straightened, cleaning my mouth with my sleeve. “Never better.”

  “Give it a bit.”

  I raised an eyebrow. The layer of aether I spread through my body wavered. I quickly withdrew the power back into my heart. My entire body got cold and my teeth clattered. What?

  Katherine roared out a laugh.

  Right, Paul wasn’t a mage. To use magic, one required two things. First, one needed the magical energy itself, and second, a mage needed a body trained to process the power. As a spirit, I had an excessive amount of magical power, but Paul’s body couldn’t process any of that. Once a body reached its limit, it got cold, which was commonly called backlash. And I just gone into one in under five seconds of merely strengthening my body.

  “Forgot what it’s like to be a common human?” Katherine asked, corners of her mouth twitching.

  As a son of a fallen angel, I have never even gone through that experience. I turned away from her and started running deeper into the park.

  She caught up in an instant, jogging next to me. “If you make it three hundred more feet, there’re nice bushes there, excellent for vomiting.”

  I wanted to reply but decided to save my breath. My cheeks burned and stomach clenched. This was the most humiliating thing I ever went through and it wasn’t even seven in the morning. There was no way I could solve any of this before Monday, when I would meet my squad.

  Chapter 3

  MONDAY EVENING came. My entire body screamed with pain from the abuse I forced it through. And I had yet to get used to the embarrassment. Katherine apparently made it her job to keep an eye on me, so I ran into her every time I went running, in every swimming pool and each time I went to a gym.

  And for a good reason, I had to admit. There was no telling how my body transfer would go, if I would grow horns and a tail or if I would simply explode from all the aether I had and now couldn’t use.

  Now, I had my things packed, stood on the pavement and waited for her to come pick me up. I kept repeating the name Paul Simmons in my mind, hoping I could trick myself into reacting to it.

  Katherine came in her green Mazda.

  I put my bags in the trunk and sat inside. “Thanks,” I uttered.

  She measured me with a worried look. “Promise me you won’t fuck this up.”

  The voice was too soft for her. I put on a compassionate smile. “It’s about time you told me why you’re so involved with this.”

  She frowned. “Can’t you for once not notice this type of stuff?”

  “Sorry.” I shrugged, realizing I treaded somewhere I shouldn’t have. This smelled personal and Katherine had most likely been sharp with me to hide that.

  We drove in silence for long minutes.

  The Vatican Inquisition barracks stood in Wakefield, East Bronx. Katherine stopped half a block away not to be seen. She sighed and leaned against the wheel, staring forward blankly.

  “Look,” I whispered, “I know we’ve had our fights in the past. But I cannot help you if I don’t know with what.”

  She lowered her gaze, but then her face hardened. “You’re right. You cannot help me.” She motioned to the door with her hand. “Go.”

  Not good. I got out of the car, picked my bags from the trunk, and headed toward the barracks. They were in a former school, rectangular with a closed courtyard in the middle. White plaster covered the building and a large cross hung above the entrance.

  No one moved around, so I entered. The similarity to a school ended there. A small reception sat by the side and turnstiles blocked the path ahead. I walked there, smiling at the tired woman. “Paul Simmons. I’ve been transferred here.”

  “Who hasn’t…” The woman heaved a sigh. “Give me your ID.”

  I did. She typed its details into her computer, clicked a couple times with her mouse, and reached for a drawer, from which she pulled out an access card. “Your room’s forty-six C. Mess hall is on the ground floor, shooting range in the courtyard, gym in the basement, and you’re supposed to meet Sergeant King after dinner in room fourteen B.”

  “Thanks,” I took the access card and my ID. The reader by the turnstile beeped and I passed through.

  My room was in block C, fourth floor. This place definitely was a school at some point since the rooms were obviously former classrooms, just split with thin, wooden walls to create an illusion of separation. Each classroom was thus sectioned into multiple smaller rooms that formed something like an apartment. On the plus side, the apartment featured its own bathroom.

  I dropped my stuff by the bunk bed. Now, I had to figure out what would I do with my original phone. I raised my bed’s mattress, opened the cover’s zipper and slid my phone inside, placing it to the bottom. After I returned the mattress, I slid under the bed to see the phone was placed so it pressed against one of the wooden slats supporting the mattress.

  This would create a slight bump on my bed, but I couldn’t care less about that. On the other hand, the phone would be extremely difficult to find and since LCorp phones were nearly indestructible, I was sure it wouldn’t be harmed.

  With that set, I headed toward the mess hall. This time, I met someone on the way, a pair of men in mid-thirties, also wearing jeans and shirts. We exchanged the customary nods and I kept going.

  At least I wasn’t dressed inappropriately. The mess hall was the former school cafeteria with no changes. A line waited on the way to the window where food was handed to everyone and people sat at rows of tables. The place was mostly empty with thirty or so people, mostly men. Their conversations were hushed.

  I got into the line to get my meal. Annoying familiarity washed over me. No, not from when I was in school, but from when I was in prison. This is exactly how it went there as well. Although this place had windows, so that was a plus. Then again, I destroyed the prison and killed its overseers. Here, I wouldn’t get revenge and the escape plan would be me casually walking out through the main door.

  I got my meal, a bowl with lentil soup, and a plate with potatoes and a piece of boiled pork with some brown sauce. Prison food was better.

  I grabbed the 16.9oz water bottle they gave me and took my tray to a table under the largest window. From there, I had a view of the empty, inner courtyard. I still enjoyed the rays of sunlight descending onto the mud.

  The metal spoon was a nice change to the prison’s plastic silverware though. The food was as bland as I expected it to be.

  Upon a closer look, the people inside the hall were unsurprising. They wore semi-casual clothes, so jeans and a shirt. Everyone was decently muscular, aside from me.

  A woman walked to my table, carrying a plate. She was tall, tanned, had well-arranged, semi-long black hair and piercing amber eyes. I gave her an annoyed glance.

  “Is this seat taken?” she asked with a sharp, Italian accent.

  “Yeah,” I said and turned my gaze back to my soup. Did I really look like I wanted to talk to her?

  She stood stunned for a second and then sat down at another table.

  A pair of men stood up from their table and walked toward me.

  I ignored them.

  “Hey,” a blond man said when he arrived at my side. “We’re all friends here and that was no way to treat a lady.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Think you’re impressing anyone?”

  The entire hall glanced at us and the man’s cheeks flushed. “Look, friend—”

  “Not your friend,” I snapped, interrupting him.

  A few people chuckled in the hall.

  “I’m only trying to say that you could perhaps try to tone down the attitude. This isn’t helping anyone,” he said.

  “Look, pal.” I smirked and rose. “I understand you’re trying to get laid, but this isn’t how it works.” The second I straightened, I remembered I wasn’t in my body. With that, I would have been taller than him and could have easily bullied him away. But being Paul, I was the smallest man in the room, so my dramatic standup didn’t achieve much.

  “How about you two take it outside?” the other man said.

  But I would look ridiculous if I backed off now. Ah well, I was going to punch his face in. “With him? He looks like he would miss a punching bag.”

  The blond man sighed. “All right, let’s solve this outside.”

  The people inside cheered and I motioned him to lead the way. He did and a small crowd followed us. The man I was about to fight was about six foot one, well trained with functional muscles, blond and handsome. He looked just like the type of guy I would punch in the face in high school since the whole establishing dominance thing wasn’t an animals-only business.

  We got to the courtyard, mud squashing under my shoes. I eyed him again. He had every physical advantage imaginable, so I had to bait him into a careless strike and then disable him with a swift counterattack.

  The blond man stopped before me, planting his feet on the ground. “Look, friend, you made me do this.”

  “Do what?” I took a stance in front of him, feet light. “Piss your pants?”

  He pivoted his body to punch. Too straightforward. The punch was wide, telegraphed, more for-show than to harm. This was a strike from a man who spent too much time training and not enough in real combat. I clenched my muscles, visualizing how I’d slide past the punch, kick his ankle, breaking a bone, and then hit his throat with an elbow as he was falling. That would bruise his windpipe and send him to the hospital for at least a week.

  I stopped before I started the move.

  Paul was a forensics expert, not a fighter. I couldn’t pull off a high-skilled Muay Thai combination and keep my cover. Fuck. As his fist was about to make contact with my cheek, I bent backward slightly. The punch grazed my face but didn’t reach the bone. Searing pain still shot through my face.

  I smirked. “Who taught you to punch like that? Your grandmother?” Why did I say that?

  The blond man frowned and punched again.

  Because I was too proud.

  As his fist flew toward my other cheek, I knew I should let him hit me, maybe even raise my chin a bit to get knocked out. Paul would have done that. I tried to swallow my pride and do so, but it wasn’t so easy.

  I slid from this punch as well, letting him graze the skin. While my body wasn’t up to par, I still had my skill and reflexes. And my pride didn’t let me forget that. Trying to get over the pride suddenly felt like trying to climb Mount Everest, naked while dragging a wagon full of coal.

  He punched again, and then two more times. Both strikes brushed my face. The crowd that watched stopped cheering and the blond man’s punches sharpened.

  They all could feel something was wrong because all those punches should have knocked me out.

  But I couldn’t do it. I destroyed a prison no one had escaped from in two thousand years, I regularly dealt with the Devil herself, and I killed a dozen demigods. There was no way I could let him knock me out.

  Four more punches grazed my face and I put on a cheeky grin. “Did they seriously not teach you to put weight behind punches? Geeesh, now I feel like I’m about to take ice cream from a kid.”

  He sped up, his punches became more compact and a lot more precise. Okay, he knew how to fight. I slid from the first one, got grazed by the second one, and then glimpsed Katherine in a window above the courtyard.

  I stopped dodging, put my chin up, got hit straight, and collapsed on the ground. My vision blacked out for a second. When I came back to my senses, the crowd was still leaving.

  The blond man stood above me and offered me a hand to help me stand. Another man, the one who came with him originally, said something I didn’t understand and led him away. The last person looking at me was the Italian girl. She scoffed, muttered, “Pathetic,” and walked way.

  Okay, getting knocked out was worse than I expected.

  That Katherine saw this amplified the humiliation tenfold. My face burned and so did my stomach. And my whole back was covered by mud.

  I gave myself a few minutes and then clawed up to my feet. The meeting with my new squad had better be done fast because my face would start swelling within the hour. With my hand, I scrubbed at least some mud from myself and headed back into the building. I headed to the designated room.

  The meeting place was a classroom, smaller. Inside were five people. A man around forty stood in front of the blackboard; and sitting by the single row of desks were two girls, the Twins, Sonya and Tanya who I knew from prison; the Italian girl; and the blond guy who just punched my face in.

  I put on an awkward smile. “Specialist Simmons. I suppose I’m in the correct room.”

  “Infirmary’s that way,” the Italian girl said, pointing theatrically where I came from. The others sitting behind the desks chuckled.

  The older man glared at her and then at me. “Take a seat, Specialist.”

  I sat down on the only available spot, right next to the blond man. So, this was our squad and if I was in my original body, my mission would have ended with a failure because the Twins would instantly recognize me. They looked the same as in the prison, with long, straight black hair, pale skin, and unnatural, violet eyes.

  “I am Sergeant King, the leader of this squad,” the older man said in a calm, but dominant tone. “We start by introducing ourselves. I’m from Colorado, served in the US army for twelve years and this is now my eighth year in the VI.” He motioned to the Twins.

  “We are Sonya and Tanya, but everyone calls us the Twins due to our interconnection,” they both said in perfect unison, which wasn’t creepy at all. In prison, they spoke individually, so this was an act. “We’re from Connecticut, and we’ve been serving in the VI for six years.”

  When? In prison, they looked like they were sixteen. Awkward silence conquered the room as everyone apparently pondered the same question.

  “Err...” they both turned their eyes toward the desk in front of them. A tingle of magic entering my body passed through my arm. They were scanning me with a spell.

  My instinctive reaction was to blend my aether with the invading one and absorb all of the energy. But I stopped myself, because they would recognize me as I did the same move when we first met.

  “We don’t age standardly,” they both suddenly said as the spell helped them figure out what was wrong. “We are twenty-five.”

  The Italian girl cleared her throat. “I am Specialist Amaranta Ricci, born in Rome. I’ve served in the Vatican Inquisition for eleven years, have been awarded with Gabriel’s medal for Distinguished Service, the Medal of Uriel, and about thirty minor medals.”

  Say, what? Medal of Uriel was the Church’s equivalent of Medal of Valor. What was someone so distinguished doing here among the suspects? Also, I needed to correct my age estimates because I thought she was barely twenty. But by how long she has served, she had to be in her early thirties.

  “Corporal Robert Kowalski,” the blond man said as he rose. “Born in California, I served for eight years in the US Army and this is my fourth year in the VI.”

  Okay, great. I was in a group where I would fit right in as my original self. Who the hell came up with me doing this as Paul? I rose. “Specialist Paul Simmons from Washington. I served in FBI, forensics team, for six years before I was transferred to the VI, where I’ve been for four years now.” At least so my file said.

  Both Robert and Amaranta gave me an inquisitive stare. Yeah, I haven’t been acting like a forensics analyst, I knew, all right? And I wasn’t nearly done getting beaten up for the previous incident.

  “Three weirdoes, a boy scout and a prima donna… great,” Sergeant King muttered loud enough for everyone to hear. “All right,” he said louder, as if the previous sentence never happened. “We’ve been assembled as an emergency strike team to operate in New York. In particular, we are to hunt down a rogue warlock, William Reid. By the intel I’ve received, he is to obtain an unidentified, illegal shipment three days from now at a location we know. We have until then to become a team.” He looked straight at me.

  I hoped he wasn’t intending to make me uncomfortable. In the past three days, I have received more humiliation than in the rest of my life and this sergeant wasn’t going to top that.

  “We meet tomorrow at 0600 in the courtyard for team exercise,” the sergeant added.

  “Yes, Sir,” everyone other than me replied.

  Right, soldiers would do that.

  “Dismissed,” Sergeant King said and sat down at his laptop.

  “Anyone up for grabbing a beer?” Robert asked.

  “Not me.” I rose and headed toward the door without a word. Yes, I had to investigate these people, but first I had to get some ice for my face, which had already started swelling. And I also had to deal with Katherine. She was not going to be quiet about today’s incident.

  From the kitchens, I got a bag of ice and headed to my room. Yes, I refused to call that place an apartment. I beeped the access card by the reader and entered.

  Katherine stood by the window, looking outside. “Close the door,” she whispered.

  The room already smelled of beer. I closed the door as commanded. “Look, Katherine, I—”

  “Shut up,” she snapped.

  I closed my mouth, dropping my gaze. No one ever managed to make me feel as guilty as she did.

 

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