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| Submission and Starvation by Beki Yopek |
The tank flying through the air at my face was a pretty good reminder I screwed up. Jack Te-Konos bellowed French words that echoed around the Outer Mongolian battlefield and I reacted slower than a salted slug. Tons of armor plated Russian tank barreled into me, landing on top and pinning me to the blood-soaked mud. His Heaven brand of magic couldn’t make mundane materials penetrate the protection of my brimstone horns unless it was haloxite that brought the pain.
Not that it made the space beneath the tank more comfortable or anything.
The Khalkin Gol river flushed past me twenty feet away, the banks swollen with rain and debris from the fighter planes and ground troops who’d died here. Burned out husks of a hundred tanks lay in the murk the way dead june bugs do. A late August sun beat down on the land like a burger joint heat lamp. Delicious souls bursting with life force peppered the entire landscape, and The Reaper darted among demon thieves in the skies above me, trying to carve an opening in the swarm with his scythe. For every bunch that burst into smog as he slew them, another cluster filled in the space and slung Blood Magic as they did.
Words were carved into the side of the tank just above my head. “Piege,” and “Prendre” and some others. French words on a Russian tank just had to be part of Jack’s magic. Craning my body up in a sit-up, I scratched the words off the metal with my left horn. The tank kept sitting on me, but the movement had given me space to wrench my left wing out from under me.
Jack rounded the tank’s upended side and waved behind him for someone to join him. I yanked my wing back down and jammed it a little way under the burned out machine, as though it was still held down. The fallen angel strode a whole lap around the metal monster, tidying up his blazer and waistcoat and indicating the tears and bullet holes in them. “See those, Ava?”
“What, you mean cojones? Nope.”
He whipped out a revolver from his torn blazer and shot me in the cheek. The blast echoed in my hearing and I knew the bullet struck me, but it was metal jacketed, so it bounced away into the mud and buried itself. I didn’t feel a thing except the jolts of fear that flooded my every nerve. If that round had been haloxite, no more me. I locked both eyes on the nearest cluster of souls and found they’d all expired or been drained by the swarming demon thieves, turning them all into ghosts. Except one. Sweat poured down my face and I swallowed.
Jack emptied the rest of the metal rounds from the chamber and loomed over me. “So many beings have tried to kill me that I wear their murder attempts with pride. This border dispute between Russia and Japan is about to go full war, here. After today, you’ll be nothing but another slash in the wardrobe.”
Another figure stepped past the tank, kicking muck off her do-me-now boots. Avarice was decked out in a lolita dress and wore a Japanese naval officer hat at a jaunty angle on top of her deep blonde hair. The Septuplet that had it out for me most crossed to Jack’s side and towered over my left shoulder, with Jack above my right. Avarice’s horns were brimstone, and Jack’s halo, haloxite, so I couldn’t even handle the bigger threat with the one wing I had free.
Something. Had. To. Give.
“Why were you so slow to react?” Avarice purred, crouching down. “Is Jack learning your secrets better than I did?”
I shoved the sharp words and the history I was about to spit to the back of my mind. I already knew that my haloxite knife, Blood Magic Folio, and something-toed boots were all stuck beneath the wrecked tank. No way to get blood for a spell. They’d known of course that trapping a demon like me was just as effective as killing one.
Jack yelled over The Reaper’s screeches overhead. “Every nation on Earth will be part of this new World War, and your ridiculous Seraph Police Department will be spread so thin enforcing their new T.V.T. laws that The Coalition will--”
Avarice horn-butted Jack faster than I could blink, and her horns penetrated the protection from Jack’s halo. He might be a fangel, but that halo’s still made from haloxite. Bruises bloomed on Jack’s forehead and cheek and he twitched away from Avarice. She hissed, “You are useful to us only as long as you delay The Reaper. Blabbing helps them.”
“Jack Te-Konos has already proven he is superior,” the fallen angel babbled. “I am only stating facts. We cannot kill The Reaper, so we target--”
He twitched away again when Avarice leaned her head back for another head butt. Then she produced a handful of haloxite revolver rounds from her schmancy dress and I tore my gaze away from the lone soul to focus on the only method of escape I had.
The Septuplet’s eyes locked on mine and she grinned like a demented fox. “Ah, you have not touched a mote today. Did your precious mote system fail you? You must be so close to starving from life force deprivation."
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