Read Sword's Blessing for Free Online

again. Giselle stayed close, stomach knotted. She knew it was the right choice but the cost terrified her.
    * * * *
    Eli hardly spoke as they walked back to the hotel and in to the covered garage. “Traffic’s going to be beastly,” he muttered.
    Samantha tossed him a set of keys. Giselle frowned. Of all things, a Subaru? “Where’d you get this car?” she asked.
    Samantha opened the back and set the seats down, letting Eli lay Armand flat as she faintly smiled at him. “Hijacked it the night I ascended.” She chuckled. “It’s a long story, and now it’s our lucky charm. The thing runs like a horse.”
    “From one end of the United States and Canada to the other,” Eli added as he arranged Armand. “I can move us a few states at a time, and the car doesn’t skip a beat.”
    “I didn’t know the Damned could do teleportation,” Giselle said cautiously, sliding into the back seat next to Armand. He was sleeping peacefully—his normally spiky hair going every which way, flopping into his eyes. She brushed it away.
    “Most can’t.” Eli hummed. “I’m not a Damned any more, though.”
    “Your files say you are,” Giselle pointed out, frowning.
    “No, your files say that,” Eli slid into the driver’s seat. Giselle blinked as she realized his horns went straight through the roof. “And frankly, to send you two when they must have known how badly Cyrene wants us, I wonder if she was right and they were trying to kill you.”
    Giselle gasped. “They wouldn’t do–”
    “Eli, no antagonizing the Angels,” Samantha said, patting his forearm. “Drive.”
    “Yes madam,” Eli replied with a low chuckle, and turned the key.
    * * * *
    Armand slept. Giselle watched him closely, stroking his hair. “His wings are gone,” she ventured after a few hours. “Did you put a glamor on him?”
    “No,” Samantha responded after a long pause.
    Giselle looked forward, taking note of the highway they drove on, no longer in the desert, surrounded by lush, almost pervasive greenery on both sides. She swallowed the lump of fear in her throat. “Where are we?”
    “South-east United States.” Eli craned his head at a sign. “Middle of Mississippi looks like.”
    “But... but how?” Giselle whispered. “We couldn’t figure out how you jumped from Canada to Nevada either.”
    “I’ve only got thirty-five thousand souls, but they’re thirty-five thousand willing souls.” Eli said, nodding to Samantha. “She figured it out. When you’ve got allies rather than prisoners you’re an awful lot better off.”
    Giselle drew a breath. “The souls you’ve reaped are allies? That’s... blasphemy!”
    “Not really.” Samantha shrugged. “They’re here of their free will. We keep them safe, allow them to interact within our own souls, talk to them once in a while, it works out.”
    Giselle covered her mouth, feeling ill and looking at Armand again. What would he say? Probably that it made sense, and as long as everyone was happy with the arrangement, there was nothing they could, or should do. Her heart rebelled. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! Souls of the passed were meant to go to heaven, hell, or reincarnation. Weren’t they? She held her tongue just long enough to let the indignation pass.
    “What if they aren’t willing?” she asked. “Aren’t there some in you that hate you? That you harvested wrongly?”
    Eli glanced at Samantha. “Sure there were. Most of Samantha’s souls were harvested by a Damned named Diego, and he wasn’t very nice. But they all know how much better they have it. There are some in me, about a thousand, who refuse to help me, but that number was much higher when we started. Samantha talked some of them around, some of them started out eager to help, and many others saw the good we were doing and came over of their own accord.”
    Giselle scrutinized him. “We’ve never heard of this.”
    “As far as we know, it’s the first time it’s been done.”
    There