Sword's Blessing Read Online Free PDF

her. “Do you want to save him or not? His soul is shattered, honey, and I don’t have a hope of fixing him if I don’t know what he’s supposed to be.”
    “Shattered?” Giselle whimpered. “But h-how?”
    “Steady,” Eli said. “It’s a shield, Samantha.”
    “How do you know?” Giselle turned to him and gasped as she found not a man but a beast. She hadn’t gotten a good look at Eli Tawson in his Damned form. Almost seven feet tall, with curling, sharp-tipped horns and proud black locks coursing to his hips. “Messiah save me,” she whispered.
    Eli snorted, lip quirked. “Souls are a Damned’s specialty,” he said. “Calm down, I’m listed as enemy number one with the Damned, remember?”
    Giselle looked down at Samantha, kneeling amidst the feathers of Armand’s wings, and took another numb breath. No. Not Armand. Not like this. “Please save him,” she pleaded. “Please.”
    * * * *
    “Yeah, working on it.” Samantha replied, not really paying attention to the angel as she pressed the back of her hand to Armand’s face. He was cooling quickly but he wasn’t gone yet. She blinked hard, shifting her vision over to the peculiar, half focus which allowed her to see souls in their raw form. She blinked again as she looked at Armand. The light was intense, amazingly bright. Nothing like a Damned’s rope of fire or a mortal’s nebulous soul aura. It was as if she were staring into one of those science experiments with flame so hot it could instantly melt anything. A bright, purple-white glow putting the sun to shame.
    Samantha let her eyes adjust and then looked again. If he was supposed to be a shield then he was in pieces. Hundreds of them. “What a mess.”
    The damage to his body didn’t even compare. Hell, she was shocked he was still alive enough to have a soul to look at. By this time most anyone else would have dissipated to their appointed realm. Heaven, hell, reincarnation, a Damned, an Angel, whatever. Samantha pursed her lips and squinted, studying the Angel in greater depth. What was keeping him together?
    The answer was obvious once she leaned back. A filament, like a spider web or the finest hair, reaching out, glittering in the air in front of Samantha. She climbed to her feet and followed the thread out and…she looked up. “Oh, duh. Of course.”
    “What?” the female Angel blinked.
    “Sorry…were you two…” Samantha pursed her lips. Was it even possible? Who knew unless she asked? “Lovers?”
    “What?” the dark-haired woman started back. “No!”
    “Whatever you were, you’re keeping him together.” Samantha followed the thread back and smiled. “And that actually gives me an idea. With you as an anchor, I can work something which would otherwise probably not work.”
    “What?” the Angel asked. “What are you going to do?”
    “Fix him. Hush.” Samantha knelt again and scrutinized the soul pieces again. There was too much to fit back together. Like a glass shattered into a thousand pieces, she doubted everything was even there. Cyrene had probably dragged some off, some had dissipated. The glass couldn’t be fit back together perfectly. She could melt it down and create something else, especially with the other Angel filling in the pieces. She took a breath and gathered the pieces together.
    In some ways, Angel and Damned souls were very similar. They were concentrated, molded and pressed tight into a form different from their original mortal bubble. She teased at the piece of soul the Angel had managed to keep around with apparently unconscious help of his partner. She pressed at the shattered bits. Thankfully, once touching, they more or less stuck together, like snow. First she had to get the pieces together, and then she could…
    A peculiar tension built as she pressed more and more together, a waiting explosion. The pieces shivered and dulled in brightness, and for a terrible moment she thought she had lost him completely. But the light poured