Free Bad Grace (Watcher Chronicles Book 1) by N.P. Martin

were sometimes kept for interrogation or for more extended stays if they were deemed too dangerous to be let loose again.
    Frank walked down a long corridor with a concrete floor and gray walls either side, with strip lights on the low ceiling right along. He hated even being back in the place. It felt like a prison to him. He had excelled in his training when he was there, but he had hated having to spend so much time inside the place. It got claustrophobic after a while, made you stir crazy.
    As Frank moved down the corridor, he heard noise further down and soon he came to a large opening on the left that lead into a massive open room. There were about twenty young Nephilim kids in the room, girls and boys, all training in hand to hand combat. Frank smiled over at the instructor who was yelling at his trainees to make more of an effort as they practiced their striking skills on heavy pads held by their fellow trainees. The instructor looked over at Frank in surprise. “Well hole-e shit,” the instructor—whose name was Jack Burnharte—said, as he smiled broadly over at Frank.
    Frank smiled back as he walked into the room towards his old instructor, who didn’t look much different from how he was nearly fifteen years ago when he was training Frank and the others. He still wore the same black combats and T-shirt with matching boots, his hair still a gray crew cut, making him look every inch the Marine that he once was before he joined the Facility as a trainer twenty years ago. “Still giving these kids a hard time, I see,” Frank said as he shook Jack’s hand.
    Jack’s ice blue eyes looked into Frank’s, making Frank feel instantly like a trainee again. Jack had a way of instilling fear into even the most rebellious of trainees, as Frank once was. “They wouldn’t do anything otherwise,” Jack said in his gravelly voice. “You of all people should know that.”
    Frank did. When he first joined the program at eighteen, he was lazy and unmotivated, still caught up in the party mode he’d been in since he was a young teenager. He dragged his feet, refused to fully engage with the training. Then Jack came along one day and dragged Frank down to the prison level, showed him a rabid werewolf that was locked up down there. The werewolf launched itself against the steel bars of its cage while Jack pressed Frank’s face against it, causing Frank to scream in fear as the werewolf snapped its jaws only an inch from his face. “You see that boy?” Jack had bellowed over the noise of the snarling werewolf. “That fucking beast there will eat you alive and shit you out again if you don’t know how to stop it. To stop it, you have to train to stop it!” He pressed Franks face harder against the bars. “You hear me, boy? Train! That’s all you have to do and ugly motherfuckers like this won’t be able to eat you. You got it?”
    Of course, Frank had screamed, yes, yes he got it. After that, he made sure he fully engaged with the training. Jack had been right. The training did end up saving his life on many occasions.
    “So what brings you down here?” Jack asked after he’d finished yelling at some kid for not using proper body mechanics while punching.
    “Need to see a man about a feather,” Frank said. “Cunningham about do you know?”
    “What do you want to see that asshole about?” Jack had no love for the Council members either. According to Jack, if the Council members had their way, all Watcher’s would have to kiss the council members asses every time they met. Fortunately for Jack, he and some of the other long time instructors and teachers still had influence so they could stop things like that happening.
    “Just a case I’m working on. Speaking of which, you do much field work these days?”
    “Field work?” Jack laughed. “I’m not even sure what that is anymore. Hell, I can barely remember what the outside world looks like I spend so much time in this concrete box.”
    “I may need some