Sword's Blessing (2 page)

Giselle fell into his embrace, ringing her arms around his neck and nuzzling his shoulder. “They talked about it, Armand.” She shivered. “The Fore said only your conduct in Chicago convinced them we could be together again.”

Armand held her tighter, stroking her hair. “I guess we’ve always known you were better at this Angel business than I.”

“That’s not true...” She pulled back, looking him over. “What happened there, Armand? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Giselle.” Stroking her cheek, he smiled. Her eyes were so beautiful, hazel-green against the candlelit oak of her skin. How he had missed them. “One of the Damned went mad and started tearing up the riverfront. We lost two but managed to force a retreat.” He smiled tightly. “I tricked her back into her own portal and once she realized what we were doing, she lit off.”

“I’m glad they found you capable,” Giselle murmured, peering at him with a faint smile. “I still don’t understand why they broke us up.”

Armand’s heart jumped into his throat. They hadn’t told her? They hadn’t explained? “What did they tell you?” he asked, steadying his shaking hand.

She took his hand and kissed the fingertips. “You’d disobeyed a direct order for my sake in Rome and they thought you needed time to sort out your priorities.”

Armand wasn’t sure whether to relax or tense. They hadn’t told her what he’d done, what he’d said. Was that good or bad? He swallowed. Both? Neither? He let out a breath. “Yeah, they said something similar to me.” And they had. Just not quite for the reason she thought. “We’ll just show ‘em what’s what this time around. Do you know what our assignment is?”

“No,” Giselle said, and hugged him once more. “Our meeting is in two minutes.” She hugged him again, sighing. “Being apart is awful, isn’t it?”

“Utterly.” He kissed her mahogany hair, wrapping his wings around her form and chuckled. “It’s been what? Two years?”

“Close enough, yes.” She splayed her fingers across his chest, stretching her wings and brushing them against his.

“I’m so sorry, Giselle…if I’d kept my head…”

She laughed softly and shook her head. “Shut up, Armand. I don’t know why they expected anything else from you.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek. “Besides, I would have done the same.”

“Would you?” he asked softly, examining the dark tendrils of hair in his fingers, recalling the look of haughty disgust the Fore had given him when he made his case. The slow countdown of ways in which he was inadequate and unworthy of her and the greatness of the curse which kept them apart.

“Without a second thought.” She pulled away, smiling. “It’s about time.”

Armand nodded and kissed her forehead. This time, he wouldn’t screw it up. But he wasn’t going to let her come to any harm either. He’d die before that happened.

* * * *

“You are young, but we believe a bonded pair is better for this task than any of our single agents. We don’t know the extent of the problem, or if, in fact, these two will be a problem. They have not made trouble for any of our agents, and they have defied the Damned.”

Giselle folded her arms, staring at the picture–a side view of a man with dark hair and eyes, deep brown skin. A paler woman with mouse brown hair, arm in arm with the man. Samantha Parker and Eli Tawson. An Inbetweener who had defeated a greater Damned and turned away another, and the Damned who was, apparently, her lover. “Why are we watching them?”

The Fore handed her a file. A little strange how he almost seemed to ignore Armand’s presence. Maybe he was still cross with her partner. “As you may be aware, the balance has been off lately. Limited communication with the Damned office reveals they sense it too. They gave us the impression they knew what the problem was, but in six months it hasn’t righted itself. In fact, it’s grown steadily worse.” He tapped the file. “Turn to page six. Our Ibetweener contacts tell us Miss Parker was born under a prophecy to ‘right the balance’.”

“Seems a bit straight forward for prophecy.” Armand finally piped up.

“Quite right, Armand.” The Fore finally glanced over, only for a moment. Giselle found herself a touch offended. They were a pair, why was the Fore only addressing her? “This particular Inbetweener is rather bad at subtlety. She owns a voodoo shop on Bourbon Street.”

“Oh.” Giselle muttered. “That one.”

“I take it you’ve heard of her?”

“Said something about me being ‘fit for the cause’ at our introduction.” Giselle said, shaking her dark waves back. What the woman had said next still stung, but she made sure her face was calm. They always said her emotions, while admirable, were a hindrance to her work.

“She then turned around and told me I wasn’t quite ready.” Armand finished, rolling his eyes.

“Did she say which cause?” the Fore asked, narrowing ice blue eyes.

“No,” they said together.

The Fore sighed, addressing Giselle again. “You shouldn’t discount her. She has a reputation for a reason.”

“Yes, sir.” Armand cut in again. This time, the Fore didn’t even look over. “Just seemed strange, since we were already working for a cause.”

“I see.” The Fore eyed the pair before him with steely eyes. “Well, you’ve your orders. Find Samantha and Eli, follow them, assess the threat.”

“Do we report once we’ve found them?” Giselle asked.

“Just follow them until…” the Fore paused, and then shook his head. “For two weeks. Get a feel for their motives and goals. Then report back.”

2

Samantha Parker opened her eyes, sighing at the warmth of the sun on her face as she leaned back in the car, the smell of dust in the air. She sat up and glanced out of the window, finding a desert where before there had been pine forest. She smiled. Eli learned to teleport three months ago, but she didn’t think she’d ever get used to closing her eyes in one biome and opening them in another. “Where are we now?”

Eli tapped the map. “Nevada.”

“Explains why it’s so damn hot.”

“You weren’t asleep that whole car ride, were you?” Eli asked, quirking a lip.

Samantha beamed. “I was meditating. You’re the one who skipped us from Saskatchewan to Nevada. Do you know, immigration is probably writhing in their beds because of you?”

“Hey now, we’d been in Canada for six months, it was time to get going.”

“Ah, home sweet country. Can we please go to Rio next time?” Samantha’s smile was teasing, and Eli laughed.

“C’mon,” he said as they pulled into a hotel parking spot, “We’re in Vegas. Show it a little love.”

“Right, right. Can we gamble?”

“Mmm…” Eli eyed his credit card. “Not unless you want them to know right where we are. We’ve got enough cash for the hotel, but not so much on the splurging.”

“We’ll get some more cash right before we leave.”

Their luggage was small, two rolling bags with appointments for Samantha, some pictures and a computer she’d insisted they get so she could at least have a hobby while they waited for the buzz about her ascension and his leave taking of the Damned to settle down. Eli said it would take a year or two, but eventually someone else would screw up and
they
would be the enemy number one.

At least most of Eli’s money still worked. He’d said Hell probably wouldn’t bother cutting him off because of the paper work involved. She worried about it none-the-less. If anyone saw her account active, they be tracked right quick, if only by her father.

The unlimited cash had its uses besides the obvious, too. This was probably the plushest hotel they’d stayed in yet. Samantha leaned out the window, peering around the city with avid curiosity. There was one thing to say about being on the run. She’d never seen so much of the country. “Some time we should do Europe.”

“Are you ever going to try and get a hold of your father?” he asked quietly.

Samantha grimaced. “I don’t want Cyrene getting on his scent,” she said, thinking of the frantic search her father had put on for her in the weeks after their fight with Cyrene. “Leaving that note to stop searching for me was dangerous enough.”

Eli nodded. “I’m glad he listened, though.”

Samantha was silent for a few moments, still staring out the window. She wanted to see her father, apologize for not explaining things, but the notion was impractical at best. A frown tugged at her lips. “Eli. Come here.”

Eli made his way to the window, where Samantha pointed. “The couple down there, walking together, dark brown hair. Do you recognize them?”

Eli frowned as he looked at the crowns of the man and woman’s head. “Not off hand.” The man looked up, as if studying the sky and Eli drew a breath. “We saw them in Canada. In that coffee shop.”

“Yeah…I think I said I’d kill for the girl’s smooth hair.”

“That was only yesterday.” Eli frowned.

“Are they Damned?”

“No. Damned don’t run in packs. It’s just not done. We’ll meet, talk for a bit, but not travel together. Given their looks I’d say they’re actually Angelic.”

“How can you tell?” She frowned. “I would have expected blonde and blue eyes. They’re both…I dunno, eastern European?”

Eli nodded. “Damned change their appearance with a little thought, but Angels stay roughly the same as when they ascended. They might age in either direction, but other than that… No, it’s in the posture, especially on her. See how straight she stands? There’s a reason we joke about the angels having a rod up their as–”

“Eli.” Samantha rolled her eyes. So much for their nice clean life on the run she thought to herself wryly. “It can’t be coincidence.”

“No, it can’t.” Eli rubbed his temples. “They aren’t making trouble for us either.”

“Unless someone catches on they’re tracking us, and tracks them to find us.”

“Unlikely. But possible.” He watched as the two kept walking past the hotel without looking up again. “I don’t know. We’ll keep an eye out for them at dinner.”

Samantha nodded. “It’d be great if it were coincidence. We just shook that task force, what, a week ago?”

“Yeah.” Eli shrugged and then took her by the waist, kissing her neck. “You know, we’ve got some time before dinner…”

“Uh huh...” Samantha said. She walked a pair of fingers up down his arm, which snaked around her torso. “And I was going to get a bath.”

“Company?”

“Can you make the bath big enough?” she asked with a grin.

Eli beamed and held out a hand. “I can give it a try.”

Life with a Damned did have its perks.

* * * *

“I think they’ve figured out that we’re here.” Armand murmured as they turned into a coffee shop across from the hotel where Samantha and Eli were staying. “I swear I felt him.”

“Calm down.” Gisselle said softly, patting his arm as they sat down. “Eli isn’t like most Damned. You read the report.”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure I believe it.”

“Neither am I. They still haven’t told us why Eli turned against his orders for Samantha’s sake, nor why Cyrene is after them.”

“Cyrene!” Armand bolted upright “Where did you hear that?”

“It’s in an obscurely related file.” Giselle sat back, pursing her lips as she flipped open a folder. Golden sunlight caught in her dark, soft waves, illuminating them in silhouette. Armand had to blink. He’d known her all his life and Giselle’s beauty still caught him by surprise at least once a day. Her hair, her bright eyes, the way her fingers idly curved open and shut as she read. If he blinked right he’d be able to see her wings. Blinding ivory feathers which glowed with their own divine light, adding to the sun. She was poetry. Sometimes he wondered if he’d ascended of his own volition or just to follow her. They said such a thing was impossible. He wasn’t sure.

She was also easily distracted by reading rather than doing, so he nudged her foot. “And?”

“Hold on, I’m reading.”

“You’re always reading, Gis.”

“Only because you don’t, ‘Mand.” She smirked without looking up at him and Armand sighed. She had him there. He waited, and eventually she closed the file again, shaking her head. “Yeah. Says Cyrene and Eli have a history. Apparently Cyrene tricked Eli into becoming a Damned. They say that’s why he did it, to keep Samantha out of Cyrene’s hands. And that may be true…”