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| Soul Fountains Schemes by Beki Yopek |
“When we harvested souls in Mexico City,” The Reaper rasped, “they called this Montezuma’s Revenge.”
I bent over one of the hundreds of corpses at the edge of a rice paddy on the 38th Parallel in Korea. This young American soldier had died of intestinal disease, like a good third of the bodies around him. Flies buzzed in noxious clouds that shifted through the abandoned paddy like wind eddies made visible. The sun baked the Korean landscape and everything around us to the point where the trees were brittle husks, and anything in the half-dried-up paddy was a petri dish.
Oh, and half the soldiers had literally crapped themselves to death.
I plugged my nose with one hand and reached up to touch my left horn with the other. “Some days I’m real thankful that brimstone horns are part of the whole demon package. If I had to worry about infections from drinking the wrong thing, I’d be dead already.”
The Reaper paced around the edge of the paddy, swinging Seversoul and absorbing handfuls of fresh souls into the two-toned scythe blade. “You didn’t drink the water, did you Avaline?”
I kept both nostrils pinched closed while I talked. “Yes, I go around doing all the shit that would kill a human just to prove I’m superior. You sure you don’t want a day off from harvesting? This war’s not going to stop for a year at least.”
The Reaper tilted his skull under his brown hood like he was considering saying one thing, but went with, “I’d prefer to stay away from cities where humans carry cameras.”
I swatted both wings at a swarm of flies. Most of them tumbled helter-skelter, some of them died and peppered the mud. “Because cameras can see us when the human eye can’t?”
Reap nodded and jerked a phalange at a second paddy brimming with souls. “Humanity must have gotten enough powdered haloxite from The Coalition to design those cameras. The only way they could penetrate our horns’ protection to see us is if they combined that with some sort of spell equivalent to a summoning or a proper prayer.”
I unfurled both wings, then eyed Reap. “What makes you think that?”
He launched skyward and I followed, flapping up out of the miasma and over stands of trees and rickety farmhouses to the next paddy over. When we touched down, there were fewer corpses and more souls than last time. I wondered if even the dead could smell that stank blanketing the place. I drew out my Blood Magic folio in case there was trouble, but the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Americans, and the South Koreans had already withdrawn with as much of their dead as they could stand to haul away.
I asked again, “Reap, do you really think Avarice would give humans any magic at all? Human souls produce the life force that feeds all demons and angels. Last thing any of us wants is for our only source of food to kick our asses.”
He lifted his scythe in front of a soul cluster and hesitated. “Those smoke clouds that burst from their cameras have to contain haloxite. You must have seen--”
I slapped my knee and burst out laughing. “Those cameras are decades old. They have new ones now, Reap. This is the fifties. Cameras capture light and reality a lot better than human eyes and minds can.”
He harvested the cluster and moved to a larger one ambling toward the farmhouse shed. “So you believe that science trumps magic?”
I searched the area for more souls and intruders who might be gorging themselves since the former battlefield was deserted and Seraph-free. “Science can do things that magic hasn’t found a way to counteract yet. Humans get pictures of ghosts and demons all the time these days. All those hauntings and random demon attacks are really just the small-time souls in the backwoods we don’t have time to harvest.”
The Reaper hovered a couple feet off the ground and raised his scythe in both bone hands. “The Coalition must have demon supporters living as hermits among those small human settlements.” He pointed the blade at the line of souls lingering around the shed. “This is why we venture away from civilization on occasion. Coalition demons could sip life force from souls that are too far out from the major cities for us or the SPD to be interested in.”
When he stopped talking, voices permeated through the shed’s thin walls. I threw up a hand in warning and hissed, “Wait, there’s no reason for humans to hide in a shed this long after a battle.”
As though the beings within had heard me, the flimsy wood doors crashed outward and pelted at me and The Reaper. He swiped his scythe through one of the door missiles with a well-timed swing, and I flapped skyward away from the thing. Whenever magic fueled something mundane and wide that came for me, it was because someone wanted to entrap me. Aside from killing, a solid trap was the best way to get a pain-in-the-rump demon out of the way.
“Jack Te-Konos,” I shouted as the fallen angel emerged from the shanty. “What, did Avarice get sick of you painting her toenails?”
I back-flapped and dodged the door, watching for Jack’s next move. He stood at the door, adjusted his torn blazer and ruffed shirt, then combed his hair while a sheet of tin hurled itself at The Reaper next. By the time I’d drawn my haloxite knife and drawn blood from a palm, Jack had unfurled his oil-black wings, flown skyward, and arced toward me with another being flapping behind him.
I opened the other palm with the knife tip and groaned, then readied two unguided Blood Magics. One for the trap, and one for the fallen angel who’d almost entangled us again.
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