Chapter 4

Michael Reed, a tall six-foot-eight Indian guy, pressed his tenebrous hands against his office desk. It was a clean, neat, and tidy desk, a desk owned by a man with fantastic organizational skills. Everything had a place. He had two monitors on his desk with a fancy calculator in the right corner. Directly behind his desk was an authentic painting of Buddha, but at the same time, it was all for show. He had no true connection to his culture because his mother abandoned him when he was only a few months old.

It was six-thirty in the evening, and his secretary brought him an Apple Martini and set it in front of him. Her name was Pamela Khanna, a young, twenty-one-year-old Indian girl with a slight, Indian accent. Her hair was set right above her lower back, and she had thinly rimmed glasses. She wore a small amount of red lipstick, just enough to bring out the flavor of her beauty. She wasn't showy at all or flashy in any way. In fact, he thought of her as a sister, and never once made a pass at Pamela. He kept his relationship with her strictly platonic.

His paralegal, April Patel, didn't care for Pamela, and he didn't know why. When April walked into his office, she had a little more flare in her wardrobe, and then she said bitterly, "Your secretary keeps fucking up the schedule. It's a schedule for Christ's sake." April was fast and loose with her sexuality, the direct opposite of Pamela, and when Michael first hired her, she performed fellatio on him when he had gotten drunk at work. But after it happened, he immediately put some boundaries in place to try to keep it from happening a second time.

"Don't talk about her like that," he said with a grimace. "She's doing her best." He was visibly frustrated with April as she bad-mouth Pamela, and it showed in his visage.

"But why do you give her so much leeway to fuck up, Michael? If anybody else had an incompetent secretary, they'd fire her on the spot," she snapped. Frustrated, she shook her head in disbelief. "At least talk to her."

He pressed the office, intercom button, and called for his secretary, and she waltzed into his office with a nice smile on her face as usual. When she first started working for Michael, she had a chipped tooth in the front of her mouth that was a distraction. Michael had it fixed before her dental insurance kicked in with no charge to her at all. She had a peaceful demeanor about her, and it was because her parents were Sikhs. She had only been working for him for a little under a year, and at night, she attended the Little David's Catholic University. Sitting in the seat in front of his desk, he said, "I'm going to need you to work on your organizational skills."

"Yes, sir," she said with a quick response. "I didn't mean to mess up the schedule." She began to sob for a moment, and it immediately made him feel a certain way. He wasn't capable of being rational with her, and he knew exactly why. He didn't hire her by accident. When he went to the Sikh Temple, he spoke with her parents and told them he had a job for her, and they agreed it would help pay for her expensive college degree.

"Don't cry, Pamela," he said with compassion in his voice. "Just do better."

"I will," she said. "I hope your Apple Martini is to your liking."

He took a sip of it, and then handed it to her, and said, "Try it? It's really good."

She held it in her slender fingers for a moment, and then took a quick drink. A tad amount of lipstick was left on the glass. "No more than that," she said with a grimace. "My parents are very strict when it comes to spirits."

He thought for a moment as she left out of his office, and wondered why his parents gave him up as a child. It pained him to think about it, but he had to work through the agony every once in a while just to remember his humanity. But from the time of his youth, he knew he was different from the other kids. He had the ability to jump, run, and swim faster than all the other students in his high school. He was so much stronger than his peers that he had to scale back when it came to sports. Often, he let the other students outrun him so he wouldn't bring attention to his strengths.

Suddenly, he noticed a tall black man and a strange-looking caucasian woman burst into his office, and then Pamela ran in behind them, trying to reach Michael's desk before the mean-looking couple. "They just rushed past my desk, sir. It's the Gunns."

"Tell your little sister to have a seat back at her desk," Illyria said with a grimace.

"He's of no kin, Mrs. Gunn," Pamela said smiling. "Please tell Debra to drop by my apartment, Mrs. Gunn?"

"Sheesh," Michael said with a grimace. "Pam, let me talk to Charles and Illyria for a moment." He was a regular at the bar in the hotel that Charles owned, and was always paying his tab on time. He stood up behind his fancy desk, and said, "What do you guys need?" He closed the blinds to his office, and said, "I've paid my bar tab at the bar." He wanted to make sure that Pamela couldn't hear their conversation, so he closed the blinds to his office.

"It's not that. It's about Karen," Gunn said.

"Oh. I tried to contact her earlier," he said. "We have a dinner date this evening."

Gun placed a photo of Karen's deceased body on Michael's desk, and he looked at it for a second. His entire mood changed. "On my god," he said. "What the fuck happened to her?"

"It's a demonic attack," Illyria said with a calm visage. "We have to stop it, and protect your sister from it, Michael." Illyria looked down at his drink, and said, "Whose lipstick?"

"It's Pamela's. She took a drink from my glass," he said. He then whispered, "How do you know she's my family?" He asked with a grimace. "Nobody knows that."

Illyria pointed to her nose, and said, "I can smell it. You have the same mamma."

"I thought both of our parents were the same," he said with a certain sadness, "Then who was my father?"

"Most likely a Nephilliam," Gun said. Gunn looked at him for a second, and said, "You're like seven feet tall, drinking on the job, and obviously sharing it with your sister," he said, "Surely, that must have made you wonder. You can flip cars over with your bare hands." He smirked. "You're a demon. It takes a lot to get you drunk."

"What makes you say that?" He asked. "It doesn't mean I'm responsible for Karen's death. I really liked her."

"You're from an ancient race called the Nephilim, and you, sir, are infected with some kind of parasite," Gunn said. "It's infectious."

Illyria pulled out a cup of the potion, and said, "When you pass fluids to another human being, it draws out a Leech Demon who slays them. You have the parasite inside of you."

"Once you drink this potion it should kill the parasite in you," Illyria said. "Have you had sexual intercourse with anybody else in the last month?"

He paused for a moment, and then said, "Rachel Patel." A look of fear swept over him. "I tried to call her back after our fling, and I wasn't able to make contact."

"Call her now," Gunn said with a grimace.

He pulled out his cell phone, and it went right to voicemail, and then he set it on his desk. He placed his head in his hands, and said, "It's like I'm spreading a deadly venereal disease."

"You are," Illyria said. "Drink." She held the potion up to him, and then said, "You're like the host. The Leech demon won't attack you because you're a Nephilim, but it will kill those you infect."

He gulped down the medicine, and it was horrible to the taste, but he drank it nonetheless because he trusted Gunn. Suddenly, he began to convulse, and then a large, green insect-like creature flew out of his mouth. Gunn reached in his boot and threw a Blessed Blade into its scaly back, and it caught fire in the middle of the room. If not for the black gloves on his hands, the Blessed Blade would've burned him badly.

"That was in me?" He asked with sweat pouring down his face. He had a look of disgust on his visage.

"Yes. We all saw it," Illyria said, "And now it's nothing but a pile of ashes."

He watched Gunn and Illyria for a second as they scraped the ashes off the ground. "We'll be sending you a bill for our services," Gunn said holding the bag up to Michael's face.

"How much?" He asked with a grimace on his face. He reached into his back pocket, grabbed his wallet, and pulled out a stack of bills."

"Hold on a minute. It depends," he said, "We still have the matter of Rachel Patel."

"Yeah," Illyria said, "I hope she's still alive."

Michael paced his office for a moment after Gunn left, and the skeptical part of him made him think they had just scammed him. He didn't want to part with his money so easily, but he didn't know what had just happened. But at the same time, Illyria knew Pam was his sister, and he hadn't told anybody that he found his birth Mamma. He pressed the button on his intercom, and said, "Pam, I'm done with you for today. See you tomorrow."

"Sweet," she said.