Genesis: A Soul Savers Novella Read Free

energy relaxed. But only for a moment. The Higher Angels had not finished.
    “You are sentenced to live in the physical realm.”
    Immediately he felt the pull. His spirit was jerked out of the Heavens and back through the Otherworld, toward the Earthly realm. He took physical form again, solidifying as he neared the veil. His soul felt split in two. He wanted to be in Zoe’s physical world, but not at this price. Never at the cost of losing his wings. His power. His ability to defend her. Who would protect Zoe’s soul if he could not?
    As he crossed the veil, he heard the Angels’ final words.
    “For two hundred human years, Andrew, you will live as a man.”
    Two hundred years. As a man. The words echoed in his physical mind as he fell into the human world. And into complete darkness.
     
     
     

Chapter 1
     
    200 Years Later
    Cassandra picked her way through the sea of broken and battered bodies, the blood-soaked grass squishing under her sandals. She tried to ignore the warm wetness seeping between her toes as she searched for signs of life. She doubted she would find any. This skirmish had been short and vicious, the number of soldiers on either side not nearly as large as other battlefields she’d come upon—the Romans, Greeks and Macedonians had been fighting for as long as she could remember. She hadn’t seen any nearby camps in recent days and assumed these two groups had surprised each other while en route to joining their legions.
    She’d heard the fighting while gathering berries this morning and waited several hours for it to end, listening—she could never watch the viciousness—with a knotted stomach as the last few surrendered. She then waited more hours for the field to clear as the survivors took their injured comrades with them and left the rest for dead. But she knew from experience there may be a few she could still help and so, even as twilight approached, she searched.
    To her right, one soldier’s chest barely lifted and fell and she quickly knelt by his side. His head and unlined face were covered with dark hair and beard, both streaked with crimson, which pooled under his temple. His eyes remained closed. When she lifted his hand by the wrist, he didn’t stir. His heartbeat came slow and faint under her fingers and her shoulders sagged with grief. He’d be dead in a matter of minutes, too far gone for her to heal. With tears stinging her brown eyes, she stood and continued searching.
    She wound her way across the battlefield, her heart sinking further with each body she passed. Occasionally she stopped to feel for a heartbeat or breath on her hand, but found none. Then, as she stepped over one dead man, another moved. Just barely—just a twitch of his finger. Cassandra hurried to his side. Please, God, let there be at least someone I can help.
    He was young, barely more than a boy, with black hair and darkly tanned skin, as if he worked in the fields. When Cassandra’s eyes traveled over his body, her stomach clenched. The lower half twisted at such unnatural angles, it sickened even her, who’d seen the worst of injuries. She pulled a berry from the pouch hanging at her hip, squished it and slipped it into the young man’s mouth. It would help alleviate the pain until death took over.
    With a heart that felt like a boulder in her chest, she reached the other side and turned to look out at the field. She swallowed the sob in her throat and scrubbed at her wet cheeks. She’d seen similar scenes over the years, but she never became used to all the carnage. She blew out a sigh heavy with grief and turned to head back to where she currently called home. As she stepped past the last body, only steps from entering the woods, a hand grabbed her ankle.
    “Oh!” she cried out and fell to her knees next to a soldier covered in mud and blood. I almost missed him! He looked at her with half-closed eyes the color of green olives. He stirred, as if to sit up, but she held him down. “Don’t