Free Cupid’s Misfire by Katriena Knights

Chapter One
     
     
    There was something...off...about this Valentine’s Day. Cupid couldn’t quite pin down what it was, but it definitely had his pinfeathers in a twist. Buzzing the streets, keeping himself just above the heads of the people swarming on the sidewalks, he just wasn’t feeling it. No single person caused the arrow nocked in his bow to quiver, shake, shudder, or otherwise respond.
    He’d been out since the clock had struck midnight, announcing the arrival of his most sacred day, and he hadn’t found a single unrealized romance with enough uumph to warrant an arrow to the heart.
    It just wasn’t possible.
    He pulled himself up to a hover, his wings whirring behind him. His wings were tired, his shoulders were tired—everything was tired. He only had about ten hours until Valentine’s Day was officially over for the year, and not a single target.
    With a sigh, he popped his neck and continued the search.
    And, ten minutes later, as he rounded a corner onto Tenth Street, the arrow jumped.
    He stopped, stared at it. Loosening his grip slightly on the bow, he let the arrow track its tip toward the target it had found. Cupid readied himself to draw the string back, to take aim...
    She was stunning. The most stunning creature he’d seen in centuries. She was tall, elegant, and possessed of a feminine power all too rare in these strange days when no one seemed to really know who they were. Her skin was what these unimaginative twenty-first-century humans would have called black, but in reality it was a rich, deep brown with a faint undertone of red. It looked as if it would feel like velvet under his fingers. Her black hair was drawn back and tied behind her head, but beyond the band that held it back it bloomed into a pouf of natural, unfettered, untreated beauty.
    Like a Nubian princess, was the first thing he thought, because his brain had suddenly screeched to a halt, leaving him in his most elemental self, which dated back so many centuries he couldn’t count them anymore. But this wasn’t Africa, or Nubia, or Egypt, or any of those places. It was New York, and he had his arrow pointed straight at her.
    His hand jumped. For the first time ever in his infinite existence, Cupid released an arrow before he had settled his aim. The arrow sproinged unelegantly from the bow, the shaft shivering, the fletching moving strangely, almost as if the arrow itself were trying to use those feathers to fly.
    Then it veered. Veered a lot. Veered so much that it reversed its trajectory and came straight at him. There was no time to duck. The arrow sank straight into his heart.
    No one had ever told him what might happen if he accidentally shot himself. No one had ever considered the possibility he could be so clumsy or ill-prepared. Then again, none of the old gods had been very specific in their instructions or their history or anything else for that matter. They’d basically handed him a bow and told him to get to it.
    It hurt. He should have expected that from the reactions he’d seen when he’d shot others, gleefully watching the arrow disappear into them, until the length of it, arrowhead, fletching and all, was absorbed into their heart of hearts. But holy shit it hurt like a son of a bitch. He sank to the ground, grasping his chest.
    Then he realized his chest wasn’t the only thing that hurt. His shoulders suddenly burned with a searing agony. Arching backwards, he reached with his other hand toward his wings.
    They weren’t there.
    What the hell? Gone? His wings were gone? How was he supposed to finish his duties for the holiday? How was he supposed to get back to Olympus, for the gods’ sakes? He couldn’t spend the rest of the year in New York City. He didn’t belong here.
    “Hey! Mister! You okay?”
    The voices did jumping jacks around him, and it took him a few seconds to realize they were speaking to him. Speaking to him? How was that possible? He wasn’t visible to mortals—he was a god, albeit