Hero's Curse Read Online Free PDF

does that mean you’ll help protect me?”
    “Kind of—I think you’re asking about your tush, not your soul. Most humans don’t get guardian angels and it’s really, really rare for an archangel to be assigned as one. I hate to inflate your ego but you’re special. Most human souls are barely good enough to make angelic cannon fodder. As it stands right now, if you died, you’d make a pretty powerful angel.
    “Souls don’t shine until they’re tested—no risk, no challenge, no growth. You’re in the Great Game because you could be an archangel. I’m here to help you reach your potential or to make sure our side harvests your soul if you don’t make it. I’m not here to protect your life on Earth.
    “Vic, no one likes getting drafted-but Vic, if you go AWOL, odds are, all you’d be is a tasty snack for some other god. At least with us, you have a chance of surviving into eternity. You see, metaphysically you smell delicious. If a minion catches your scent, he’ll come running.”
    “If I know for sure I’m going to be an angel, what’s to prevent me from committing suicide right now? Will suicide send me to hell like the Catholics believe?”
    “No, suicide doesn’t send you to hell. But, dude, you’d hate being an angel. If I were you, I’d delay it for as long as possible. With your paladin genetics, you could live for a couple hundred years.”
    His comment about my expected lifespan didn’t surprise me as much as it should. I didn’t just look half my years; I had the same speed, metabolism, and the ability to recover as I did in my early twenties. It had been obvious to me for over a decade, there was something strange about how I aged. Right now, I wanted to know more about the afterlife. “Because then I’d become an archangel?”
    “No, not really. When I said you remind me of me, I meant it. Here’s the scoop. Being an archangel is a lot better than being anything else for any other god, but it sure as hell isn’t as good as being a human; it’s not as good as having free will. If you think you’re limited as a paladin, you should see how it is as an angel. The longer you wait, the happier you’ll be. Trust me, I know. It sucks to be an angel. Give you an example, no sex—can’t even spank the monkey. It is not cool…
    “Vic, you look puzzled. You know; choke the chicken, slam the ham, ride your own pony—masturbation? We don't have the equipment. Take our clothes off, we look like Ken dolls. Dude, you do not want to get rid of your junk!
    I laughed, “B, stop. I wasn’t puzzled; I just got an image in my head of you naked trying to whack without a pud and it’s disturbing. Can we change the topic? So, what’s in it for you? You don’t come across as an angel that does anything out of altruism.”
    B snickered along with me and then shrugged, “Yeah, you got that right; I’m no Goody Two-Shoes. You know how during World War II none of the Nazis wanted to be on the Eastern Front? It’s the same thing for me. Hanging out, making sure no one else snags your soul is a sweet deal. You die and I get sent back to the angelic version of the Eastern Front, fighting fucking Lovecraft-sucking Elder Gods. They come from a universe that is so different from ours that just looking at them drives most humans insane. Those weird sons of bitches give me the worst migraine headaches.
    “The bureaucrats messed up when you were orphaned. They lost track of you when your parents died. You’re a fricking product of twenty-four generations of Paladins and they sent you to a charity orphanage. You should have been sent to a ninja academy in Tibet. You were supposed to be a holy warrior monk, wandering the Earth and doing good deeds.”
    Every orphan wonders about his parents. The rest of what B said turned into white noise. I had been placed in a Catholic orphanage when I was a couple weeks old. The nuns at Sisters of Mercy hadn’t been able to tell me anything about my parents. As a kid,