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| A World For A Secret by Beki Yopek |
The shattered wall re-formed around me like a stockade, pinning both hands in front of me and leaving my wings and legs hanging back outside of the synagogue. Pride, in her fully decorated black-and-gold Convictionist uniform, kept touching the wall and cranked her white collar power all the way up. Overhead, the burning synagogue’s walls Re-Glorified and its stained glass windows assembled themselves from the shards on the sidewalk. Outside those windows, The Night Of Broken Glass raged on, and The Reaper harvested dozens of souls on the surrounding Munich street.
I could have screeched and brought my boss down my ex-instructor, but maybe too much of her nature had rubbed off on me.
While ceiling beams and capstones slid into place, Pride drew a haloxite flensing knife from within her uniform. She said, “You left me and latched onto the first organization that would support you.”
Pride drew closer and I pumped my wings hard, but I couldn’t move or reach the stained glass window six feet above where I was trapped. I sucked in a lungful of brick dust and smoldering wood. “I’d say you’re obsessed with the old Convictionists. Hell has moved on since then. Get with the times.”
Pride pressed the tip of the flensing knife on my scalp between the horns, but didn’t break the skin. “Humans used to summon us. Earth was a whole Domain where people devoted ceremonies and resources to attracting our attention. To feeding us the life force of their enemies. They were just like demons that way. Ever seeking the upper hand.”
“So you joined The Coalition,” I spat, trying to ignore the death that hovered two inches above my brain. “A build-it-yourself parasite system. Throw everything the Fountainians built straight to the Ninth Circle and sacrifice their cause for yours.”
Pride leaned forward at the waist like a sparring champion taking a bow. “I fight for something that will last longer than you and your Reaper’s Soul Fountains. Your way is a fad. A little for everyone. Who can be proud of a molehill? Demons want more.”
“There was nothing to stop us going extinct when the Industrial Revolution came,” I said, flapping my wings as much as I could with them half-encased in brick. “Factory production saved humanity and wrecked us. All the opportunities to get summoned and make a living vanished.”
Pride leapt up, pumped her wings once, and shattered the stained glass window overhead with both wings. She back-flapped out of the way so none of the sharp pieces would slice her immaculate uniform. Glass shards showered down on me, gouging holes into my blazer and blouse. The right sleeve tore loose and hung off me like a beggar’s rag. I kept pumping both wings even though I knew I couldn’t gain any momentum to power through the wall I was stuck in.
“The Coalition will have more,” Pride shrieked. “Your pitiful Soul Fountains will end because they don’t do enough for the beings that support them. Demons will not live on scraps. Angels will always demand more than they’ve earned. Why do you think they fall so often?”
The Hades watch on my left wrist flickered with the firelight outside. If I didn’t get free soon, my former instructor would kill me. Or The Reaper would find out about my history with his enemies. I tasted rage as I snarled, “Everything you ‘build’ is just going to get wrecked again. It doesn’t matter what you fight for, because you’re too conceited to maintain it.”
Pride bared her teeth and brandished the haloxite knife. “What’s more fragile? Pride, or prudence? I could slice your horns off inch by inch. That would guarantee a long lasting lesson.”
I cackled like The Reaper did when he was amused. “You just tack onto others’ accomplishments and call them your own. You’re such a bandwagon bitch you don’t even build anything yourself.”
She did exactly what I wanted and sank the blade into the back of my hairline until it touched bone. Pain bit through my head and I wailed, biting my tongue because I knew I couldn’t bite through it. My horns protected me from a lot of things, but haloxite was the only thing that could hurt or harm me. I clung to the idea that it was also the only thing that could save me and kept screaming.
Pride lapped it up. “Avaline, you were a great student who made a ridiculous choice. This is where it got you. Your adherence to prudence makes you more logical, and more predictable. I never could train that out of you. It is why your previous master fired you, and it is why I found you starving for life force. You should never have shared your life force network idea with us. If you had the proper amount of pride, you would have nurtured it yourself and flourished because of it.”
If The Reaper had come around the synagogue and heard any of that, he’d fire me on the spot too. It was time to cover up this history before he found out how much fuel I’d given The Coalition when I was younger.
When I wrenched my right arm up to my scalp, Pride laughed, clearly assuming I was flapping my wings harder.
Blood dripped onto the paving stones and I smeared my right palm and forearm with it. Then I screeched and unguided Blood Magic surged out of me.
The paving stone whipped upward and knocked Pride’s knife hand up and behind her. I knew she’d keep her grip-she was a trained martial artist-so I wrenched my body around and smeared blood from my forearm in an almost complete circle on the wall. Another blast of unguided Blood Magic shattered the wall in a ring around me and I pumped both wings at the same moment. Pride brought the haloxite knife around and sank it into the meat of my right shoulder. Agony seared me deep, but my momentum was too much for Pride and the full weight of Ava plus brick wall equalled one wrecked Pride.
Bleeding from the head and upper arm, I reeled and clove to the one thread of focus I had among the pain and chaos. My ex-instructor tried Re-Glorifying the wall again to pull me and it off of her. I panted and lashed out with a third pulse of Blood Magic. The ring of brick barreled forward and pancaked her like an anvil from an old cartoon. I flew straight out of the hole I’d just made in the synagogue wall. Seraphs were nearby in the skies above, and they’d stop any more violence between us and The Coalition.
It was about time Heaven Law worked in my favor.
Pride didn’t give chase, but The Reaper found me a couple hundred feet above the city of Munich. He hadn’t learned to speak bullshit-ese back in 1938, so I chucked him some deuces and he believed it. Blood on my head? I’d head-butted a demon thief and used Blood Magic to knock him into the next Domain. Blazer ripped to shreds? That’s what happens when you barrel roll through a stained glass window for fun. I still had a long shift ahead, and those souls wouldn’t harvest themselves.
Now all I had to do was keep pretending I hadn’t fucked things up so bad.
Don’t tell anyone else.
Please.
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