If you selected answer A, give yourself a hundred percent and a loving pat on the back. You’re correct! If you selected answer, B, you were wrong. Take a shot or finish your drink as punishment.
I shoved the shit out of that statuesque waste of space. But, much like Callie in my dream, he didn’t budge. And, much like me in my dream, I staggered backwards instead, deciding in that second that I needed to hit the gym one of these days. Then—and get this freakiness—this dude twisted at the waist like a Barbie figurine. His feet still pointed away from me and the officers, but his eyes stared right into my soul. Not once did he blink, and when he spoke, his lips didn’t even move. They remained closed, like a ventriloquist.
“Joseph Hunter,” he said in a voice so monotone, I thought he might knock me out with drowsiness, “the Nephilim Council has placed a bounty on your life. Hephaestus has sent me to collect and return you to him, so that you may serve him forever.”
It all hit me like the shit storm it was.
Robot dude was an Automaton—or a cyborg—a human cursed by Hephaestus to work eternally in his service. Hephaestus used Automatons to assist with his creations. Similar to how Hecate used her Empousa, he used his Automatons to conduct his dirty work. Like finding and dragging me back to his dingy workshop—it’s actually a pretty badass workshop, complete with a forge. Since a Nephil can’t directly harm a human, they have Cursed servants and Acolyte followers to do the job.
Hephaestus mostly used his Automatons to assist with his work orders and different creations. They were more Santa’s elves than Dracula’s vampires, but without the whole singing songs and baking cookies vibe. Unlike vampire and werewolf Cursed, Automatons rarely interfered with human lives—other than to help Hephaestus create the latest and greatest technology, which he would then sell to the highest bidder.
And BOOM! We have nukes and mustard gas and Zeus’s lightning bolt and whatever else you can think of.
My old Nephil had sent this one to capture me. A couple days ago, before my fight with Medea, my old patron had found me, kidnapped me, and kindly allowed me a few hours of grace to find Mel. Once the timer expired, then—well, go ahead and drag a finger across your throat in a violent manner. He planned to kill me, or curse me into an Automaton—which would, in the end, equate to death. Unfortunately for me, my allotted time had expired over a day ago. The Automaton had come to collect and keep Hephaestus honest to his threat.
“What in God’s name,” Reynolds muttered, staring at the Automaton’s owl-head position.
“Get the fuck on the ground!” the large and in-charge officer said. I wished I had caught his name, because I liked him infinitely better than snot-nosed Reynolds. He had replaced his baton with his gun, too. I didn’t blame him for drawing his weapon, either. You couldn’t just provide a few kinky love taps with your nightstick to an Automaton—not that Dimwit One and Dimwit Two knew he was supernatural, per se. But the Terminator was standing there with his head facing one way and his body facing the other.
“Hi,” I said to the Cursed in my most innocent voice. “Can Hephaestus hear me through you? I’m just curious, because I have a very, very important message for him.” I fuddled around in my robe pocket in search of something. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the wisest move to make in front of two on-edge police officers who already had their guns fixed in my direction.
Reynolds shouted, “Get down, now!”
The big guy yelled, “Hands in the air! We will shoot!”
“Hold on!” I yelled, looking back at them and waving my free hand in front of the scrawny officer. I shook my head. “Just give me a second. It’s in here somewhere. Ah. Got it.” I delivered a short, stubby middle finger for Hephaestus to gnaw on. “Fuck you.”
The Automaton’s hands glowed orange with fire. Hephaestus prided himself on his fire talent and imbued all of his servants with some form of fire magic. With the Automaton’s palms aglow, its arm blurred like lightning and the thing gave me an uppercut to the stomach with the force of thunder. I folded in half, collapsing back onto the sidewalk, all my breath pressed from my lungs and my abdomen wound ripped wide open. The bandages had come loose, and warm blood spilled down my groin and legs. Flames spread over my robes. Thank God for second-grade education, though. I rolled like it would save my life, extinguishing the threat.
Four gun shots reported throughout the crisp November day, though they sounded about a thousand miles away.
I coughed, trying to restore oxygen to my body, but I had barely wheezed once before the Automaton’s foot kicked me in the face, crunching my nose and flipping me onto my back. Incredible pain washed over me. It was incredible because there was so much of it that my body stopped comprehending the agony and went numb. The Automaton’s hand gripped my left wrist, where I’d cut myself open—reminding me that pain was very real and very present in that moment. I screamed as an acrid, gray smoke billowed around us.
I recognized the surrounding smog. Hephaestus was about to teleport me back to his shop.
From the ground, I stared up through the smoke at the blue sky. The Automaton held me tight, absorbing more bullets from the deputies. A million black dots like stars blurred and danced around my vision.
Even though Hephaestus had stripped me of my fire magic, I’d somehow accessed a stranger power when fighting Medea.
Could I use that again?
I doubted it, believing it had either been a residual energy from having my power taken away, or a dormant power briefly awakened after experiencing the
