 |
| Heavenly War Propaganda by Beki Yopek |
Haloxite rounds exploded behind me and I fanned my wings out too late. The Reaper’s screeches pierced the cacophony of gunfire, tanks, and aircraft roaring below and above us. I forgot all about the fallen angel I was pursuing, forgot about The Battle of Amiens in full swing on the French countryside, and banked hard in a u-turn. Avarice and Rage, two of the Septuplets working for the Pneuma Coalition, flew after The Reaper with their one-shot pistols trained on him.
The Reaper would not die because of my screw up.
Wings pumping, I pelted after the two Septuplets and triggered the Blood Magic stuck to my throat under the crimson blouse. I sucked in lungfuls of air saturated with odors of gunpowder and blood, then screamed, “Prudence, to The Reaper, now!”
The picture of a chugging train stuck to my throat guided the Blood Magic and souped up the words to a hundred forty decibels. Everyone’s horns and halos were intact, so I wouldn’t be causing permanent eardrum damage no matter how much I yelled. Slowing them down was all I could expect.
Every being in the skies-Septuplets, fallen angels, and myself included-sagged in mid-air, stunned at the second overwhelming burst of sound in five seconds. Ebon smoke swirled up from The Reaper’s robes when I caught sight of him, the remains of his leg and foot that one of the Septuplets had shot off.
I recovered first and flapped hard toward Avarice. Her dark lace dress was torn at the knees and she flew like she was walking on a runway at a modeling show, swaying her hips and flashing leg. Avarice lagged a few feet behind Rage and his shirtless gray beefcake self, so I surged forth, grabbed Avarice’s blonde hair in my right hand, and set off the Blood Magic on my right bicep. The political cartoon of the charging bull stuck under the sleeve guided the spell and I hurled Avarice toward the earth at a right angle to the battlefield. She smashed to the mud a hundred feet down, but leapt back into the air, protected from all but haloxite by her horns.
Since I’d lost my focus in chucking Avarice to the earth, both stilettos I’d carried moments ago had fallen to the ground before I realized it. Great. Now I had no haloxite, and Rage was reloading his one-shot pistol.
Hot fear chilled its way through me and I rode the wave of it, soaring after The Reaper as he fled from Rage. In the hands of a demon or an angel, brimstone and haloxite rounds went off all at once if we fired one shot. Something about the magic in our veins screwed with the gunpowder and caused it all to kersplode, even the rounds in a magazine or a pocket. How the hell was Rage re-loading?
I pounded air in an arc toward a hilltop forest. It was the same forest I’d been chasing that fallen angel into. When did we get turned ar--
Tar black wings and a scarlet halo smacked into me as hard as an R.A.F. airplane. The fashion-less fangel had crept up on me, probably after giving Rage and Avarice more haloxite rounds. He wrapped me around the ribs and yanked downward. My wings tangled with the fallen angel’s and we plummeted, the yuck of too much cologne filling both nostrils. I jammed my hands up between my ribs and his forearms, then twisted hard to the right, channelling the Blood Magic on my bicep. One of his hands lost the hold and I beat both wings to break free. The second I slipped his grip, he butted me in the face with his halo.
It pierced my horns’ protection and ground against my nose, breaking it and snapping the bone to the side. Orange blood sprayed out of me onto his halo and I cried out with the pain. I lost track of where I was and tried to trigger Blood Magic to amplify my yells again, but the blood against my throat was dry and the picture had fallen loose.
A single bayonet made of haloxite zipped down in front of my eyes and I seized the non-pointy end. Prudence’s telekinetic self flew underneath me a second later, caught me under the arms, and hoisted me upright again. One second later she was off, flapping her honey colored wings and tearing after The Reaper and Rage. Pain blinded me for another few seconds, and I oriented on the forest a dozen yards away. Then I searched the skies for that fallen angel. He’d hesitated when Prudence was near, but he started to dive for me again headfirst, his red halo aimed straight at me.
I grinned, smeared fluid from my nose onto the bayonet’s ends, then flared guided and unguided Blood Magic. The unguided spell let me shove any object with my blood on it forward or backward, and I got the choice to let the Newtonian kickback affect me or not. Yay magic. I launched the bayonet sideways into the fangel’s vermillion skull donut, and it caught in the middle of it like the cross of a do not enter sign.
The fallen angel’s holey blazer and leather pants rocketed at me and he raved, “Jack Te-Konos is honored to kill you.”
Then I shoved the unguided spell forward using the increased strength of the guided spell on my right bicep.
His halo yanked him in the opposite direction so fast that his entire body became a wet towel. He flew. Away. Dragged by the bayonet I’d jammed in his halo. Haloxite ammunition tumbled from his pockets as he careened into the distance. I lost sight of Third Person Jack seconds later and flew into the woods after The Reaper, Rage, and Prudence.
Allied marines leapt over logs, took cover behind trees, and rooted out German gun emplacements with clusters of gunfire from multiple directions. I whipped through the trees, endorphins racing through me and dulling the pain. The Reaper led the pack and swatted backhand blows at Rage’s arms with Seversoul. Rage snagged one of Reap’s horns and slammed him into a tree where he fell in a heap to the forest floor. Rage dipped to the ground some yards away and landed in a thick copse of trees and shrubbery.
Avarice touched down next to Rage and he morphed into an exact copy of Avarice, complete with the torn dress, the hair, and the sweater cows. I’d forgotten about the Septuplets’ white collar superpowers. Just like Prudence and the Lucky Seven, each Septuplet had one to go with whatever magic they’d gone to college for in their seriously long lifetimes. Rage looked like himself until anyone looking at him got angry. Then he’d appear as the person that enraged each viewer the most. Red flecks swam in my vision and that demonic instinct for unrestrained violence threatened to rip control out of my hands.
Marines charged up the slope behind Avarice and Rage, cheering with victory at storming the German army’s gun emplacements at last. Both Septuplets unfurled their wings and pounced on the humans, slaughtering dozens with their wing claws and their horns. I swooped in a J shape past where The Reaper and Prudence were picking themselves back up, then pivoted mid-air and swung my right foot out in a flying side kick. I hit one of the Avarices and she flumped to the ground among human corpses and fresh souls. Life force from the newly dead flowed into her and I cursed at myself for letting her steal more thanks to my loss of control.
I pulled up and flapped back to Prudence’s side to regroup, reaching down to help the injured Reaper with his foot.
He wasn’t there.
The snap of robes and the swipes of a scythe came from the direction of the fallen Septuplet. Reap hovered over the Septuplet on the ground and drove Seversoul into its chest. One Avarice burst into smoke and disappeared into the air among the trees. The other Avarice screeched, “Lawbreaker. You slew a benevolent Septuplet and signatory of the Acheria Conference. The Seraph Police Department will hear of your treachery.”
I readied more unguided Blood Magic and made to fly after Avarice, but Prudence’s hand clamped tight on my shoulder. “Don’t. The Pneuma Coalition wants the law against us. The Reaper needs surgery at Abel Memorial Hospital. We must plaster Heaven with news of the war if we hope to prevent this rampant soul thievery.”
Three thoughts whirled in me as I watched Avarice flee. Did The Reaper kill Avarice or Rage? Would any angels choose to help us, or would Prudence be forced to draft angels? And what form did Rage take in The Reaper’s eyes to make him so pissed he’d abandon what we agreed on at the Acheria Conference of 1880?
No comments:
Post a Comment