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| Sincerity And Sass by Beki Yopek |
I slapped my bleeding hand to my chest and The Reaper’s back, then shoved outward with unguided Blood Magic. Hundreds of Spanish Nationalists led by Avarice and Jack Te-Konos fired a storm of haloxite rounds up at us. Using the unguided Blood Magic, I shoved the both of us in opposite directions and plastered us against the two buildings on either side of the Madrid back alley. The glowing wave of death whipped right past us into the open sky. Since 1939 Madrid was a big city in the middle of a civil war, I’d assumed the SPD had cleared the place of Coalition thieves and left so we could do our job harvesting fresh human souls. That was how Avarice and Jack had found us.
My eyes darted to the lone Nationalist general among the Spaniards and I knew instantly how they’d done it. Just a few summoners, who’d summoned only a few demons, were taking orders from Avarice to band some men together and hunt us if they saw us. That’s why Avarice could order him and the few other summoners in the city around. No one else nearby had summoned any demons, and I’d bet those the others had summoned were flying our way right now.
Since I still had the bomber plane pictures in my good hand, I risked it and flew back over the alley-o-death again to get to The Reaper’s side. “Jack’s gun can only fire one shot, and those soldiers can’t fly. Let’s lose ‘em.”
The Reaper cackled and tore skyward with Seversoul tight in his grip. Then he right-angled over the rooftops and I flapped hard behind him. Nighttime air whisked through my hair and Reap’s robes fluttered ahead of me. He flew maybe ten blocks and caught sight of another cluster of souls at street level where a skirmish had left a whole lot of corpses. Salty odors of copper and blood wafted up while we landed and started harvesting in a hurry.
“You must be disappointed you didn’t get to use your secret-toed boots again,” The Reaper rattled while he swiped his scythe through dozens of souls.
“We’re too good,” I answered. “Don’t need them apparently.”
I was only watching the sky for a moment or two when Jack Te-Konos and Avarice arced above the same rooftop we’d flown over half a minute ago. The fallen angel belted out two French words and held his right hand over his head, his palm red with a glow like a mote’s. A rifle zipped down the building’s facade and into his hand. Its stock shone with a French word carved into it like the one I’d seen moments ago.
My eyes shot wide as gates. Brimstone and haloxite ammunition went volatile near demons and angels. All gunpowder near any of us went off at once if we fired one shot. Jack Te-Konos had found a way around the one-and-done nature of gunpowder.
Sighting on me, he fired and I leapt high into the air with a hard wingbeat. The haloxite round tore through my big toe and pain bit upward from the spot. Powdered haloxite poured out of the hidden space in my right boot while I screamed and flapped skyward in earnest. Reap spun in midair at the sound of my caterwauling, corkscrewing headfirst toward the fallen angel. Jack summoned another rifle to him, fired, and missed. Then he squealed and pumped his wings in a mad dash to get out of the way of The Reaper’s brimstone ram’s horns.
Another cackle and Reap swung Seversoul in a diagonal arc downward at Jack’s head. He back-bent like a limbo champ and dodged the two-toned scythe blade, but it sliced the ruff off that ridiculous shirt of his.
Glancing from my throbbing lack of a toe to the other shoe, a laugh snuck in among the groans. I still had one boot left intact, and now my palm and my foot were bloody with orange fluid.
While Jack righted himself, I slapped a picture of a bomber to the bleeding palm. Then I hauled air to get between him and The Reaper. Duty called, and I wanted that duty handled ASAP. Pumping both wings, I flung a side-to-back-side kick at the off-balance Jack.
My left foot cracked into his neck and the powdered brimstone in the toe burst forth. It coated his face and got in his eyes. He might have screamed. A little.
When my right foot connected, I knew my blood had soaked his shirt and I plastered the bomber picture to the same spot. I’d bled too much to use the spells I wanted, but one last surge of guided Blood Magic sent the fangel spinning away from me over the rooftops and out of sight. Literally spinning. Like the propellors on the plane in the picture.
Hey, magic is not a toy, and I didn’t use it like one.
The Reaper cackled behind me and I landed on the cobbles, then turned to find Avarice using her white collar power on him. Soliduction. Any one object that wasn’t magical or alive was hers to conjure over and over, including rinds, riches, and raiment. She slung bolas at The Reaper and tangled his legs, arms, and hood with them. A volcano’s eruption contained more mirth than my boss’s cackling and I flew at Avarice, not hiding the fury for her that I’d nursed so long.
The Reaper hit her first. He didn’t need wings to fly, and I’d bet that slipped her mind in the heat of how awesome she thought she was. My boss speared her with his spinning tackle and soared away with her so fast it looked like terminal velocity worked upward as well as down. Show off.
By the time I caught up to The Reaper in the skies above Madrid, Avarice had vanished. No smoke lingered in the atmosphere, and I knew he wouldn’t have ended her without some Seraphs to witness Avarice’s violation of Heaven Law first. Demons swarmed the streets below us, snatching up hundreds of souls and absorbing their life force. The Pneuma Coalition had won the overall battle even though The Reaper and I had defeated our own opponents.
“Avaline,” The Reaper said. “Could you please untie me now?”
I sliced off the bolas that bound him with my horns, having lost the haloxite knife somewhere during the fighting. Embarrassment shriveled me where I flapped. I’d done my job, but I hadn’t done it. The Reaper was safe, but stopping The Coalition’s soul thievery now would be certain death with that many demon thieves down there. Jack and Avarice had the planning on their side, that was for sure. Judging by all the soldiers back there, I’d bet good motes Jack had hundreds and hundreds of Incanted rifles he could summon at a moment’s notice.
A memory nipped at me through the pulsing pain in my foot and hand. Reap said earlier that the cities we visited were planned for us. That thought hadn’t meant anything in 1939 and I’d dismissed it so we could fly back to the Motery Center and recover.
But here in 2015 as I write this?
If someone’s job at The Soul Fountains was to schedule mine and Reap’s harvests, then someone had to be doing the same for The Pneuma Coalition all along. Whoever it was, they had to be manipulating human leadership as well.
Great Depression Seattle, World War II Paris, and Spanish Civil War Madrid each had crazy-powerful figureheads leading humanity that behaved in ways they shouldn’t, and the results were perennial soul stashes or wars that erupted like weeds.
That’s what The Reaper wanted to learn by writing these Case Notes.
He wanted to find the planning mastermind behind The Coalition.
Right?
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