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| Soul Fountains Schemes by Beki Yopek |
It might be ridiculous to say I was flying away from a weaponized door, but when your attacker was a fallen angel who’d carved spells into the wood, that door became a demon trap. I pumped both wings and looped behind the door, then slapped one bleeding hand to the carved-out word on the back and flared some unguided Blood Magic. It splintered and tumbled to the ground where The Reaper was slashing away at tin roof slabs pelting him from the rapidly disappearing shed. Souls still swirled around the tools and equipment mounded up in the rice paddy’s lone shed where a well-sized hole in the ground emanated crimson light.
Every reason for Jack and The Coalition to hole up here in Korea on the 38th parallel hit me. They were building underground soul caches against both Heaven Law and The Soul Fountains.
Then Jack Te-Konos spear-tackled me in the chest halo-first.
Hot bruises welled up under the skin and I cried out, reeling at the dense pain radiating through my right breast. The agony sank deep under the ribs and wouldn’t let up. Flapping at random to escape made it worse and a scream tore out from my windpipe as soon as I could catch a breath. We plummeted to the dirt and rolled among American and Korean corpses, dust and rank fluids caking to our clothes and wings.
Gasping, I shoved myself up with both bloody palms only to have a blazer that was half-slashed to ribbons shove itself over both shoulders. The sleeves scissored my weight from under me and I face-planted in the muck, the pain re-doubling. He’d turned his freaking blazer into a trap with the same magic he’d used on the shack. Both slashed sleeves slid over my own blazer and the whole garment shoved downward, pinning me from neck to hips.
I flapped and snarled, then craned around to find Jack standing over me with the haloxite knife I’d been carrying pointed straight at me in his left hand. I surged the Blood Magic and the unguided spell ripped the arm from Jack’s ruffed shirt. He’d cleaned my blood off the knife with his sleeve while I’d been cringing in pain. It was a sign of how much he’d blindsided me. I’d forgotten fallen angels couldn’t be hurt with haloxite.
It took the brimstone of a demon’s horns to do that.
Wriggling both wrists underneath me, I spat, “You’re making underground soul stashes you fangel bastard.”
“Ava,” Jack scolded, walking around in front of me. “I thought you had more class than to use that word.” He took out a comb with his right hand and ran it through his ink black hair. “Fallen angels are rebellious leaders. We’re more worthy of the term ‘angel’ than the actual angels are.”
“You think you’re the one in control,” I grunted, still squirming. “You’ve just handed your leash to someone else besides The Big Man Upstairs.”
“I’ve heard He doesn’t like being equated with men. You know, I’m the only one of us who’s actually seen Heaven, so I ought to know. My proud support of The Coalition goes back decades, remember?”
“Brainless dogs like you will lick any master’s shoes.”
He dangled the haloxite knife over my head. “You’re just mad because if humanity keeps going the way it’s going, you’ll starve just like you almost did during The Industrial Revolution.”
Jack had been there when Avarice taunted me about nearly starving from life force deprivation. That was during World War II. I’d underestimated Jack before and paid for it. He’d read the subtext of my back-and-forth with Avarice back then. He was shrewd enough to combine that with my actions these past decades to make a snap judgment about me. Keyword: snap.
It wasn’t hard to writhe like I was in pain. Disguising where I put my hands was harder since Jack’s blazer was fueled by the same spell the door and tin slabs had been. A thought hit me and I strained to laugh. “So Avarice told you to get functional clothing and this is how you took it?”
He pointed the comb at me and kept twiddling the knife over my head. “That blazer that’s kicking your ass has more tears in it than last time. Those are my--”
“Yeah yeah, they’re from all the times someone tried to kill you and failed.”
Jack’s face curled in a smug grin. “You remembered. I’m honored. And look, your bonehead manager’s on his way.”
The Reaper floated in front of me at the top of my vision, sandwiched between several tin roofing slabs. Only his robes and the shadows undulating off his bones stuck out of the cracks. His scythe appeared in my vision next, followed by Apathy, the other being who’d been flying behind Jack on the soul-covered rice paddy. Apathy’s bald, rail-thin form walked a lap around me, his battered slacks and smoking jacket soaking up mud and blood from the human bodies that festered around us.
“This reminds me of Hell,” Apathy commented. He dragged Reap’s scythe so the blade carved a circle into the dirt around me. “Fifth Circle. The war Circle. Rage used to decorate his property with cadavers imported from Earthen war zones.”
“Yessss,” Reap said, cackling. “And I am now thankful I destroyed him at The Battle Of Amiens.”
Apathy rested his forehead against the tin holding The Reaper prisoner. “Hmm. Good memory. Yes, most unexpected. I shall speak for Rage when we have you in front of the Seraph Police Department.”
At the time, I hadn’t heard any significance to those words because that cheap shot to the boobs hurt like home. I lifted my head from the dirt and hissed, “So Fickle Jack gets a new master and thinks he can march us right to the Seraphs?”
Jack barked a laugh. “New master? I go where I want and build what I choose.”
Apathy dragged the scythe past my head, then started circling around behind me a second time. “That he does. How dare you see through my plans, Ava.”
“Cliches are lazier than original words, dick.”
“Now that’s just vulgar,” Apathy said, completing his second circle. “Jack, are our enemies always so un--”
I flared unguided Blood Magic and aimed both palms to point behind me underneath my body. Blood had leaked all over them and I used the magic to surge forth and sweep Apathy’s feet from under him. I knew he’d be too careless to expect a trap from the trapped, and he fell on his bohunkus a second before I plowed into Jack Te-Konos’s shins horns-first. I felt them pierce one foot and one calf before the magic within his entangling blazer weakened. Oh, he screamed like a pansy too.
Ripping off Jack’s grubby blazer along with the one I wore, I wrenched my horns left and right, tearing through the fallen angel’s bone and muscle tissue. Silver blood dripped from his legs onto my horns and into my hair. He dropped the haloxite knife and it sank point first into Apathy’s left shoulder, scraping bone and drawing out a screech. Tempted as I was to finish them both off, The Reaper’s freedom and securing his scythe came first.
I flapped toward the tin cage Jack had rigged up with his heavenly magic and searched for the French words carved into the metal. I found them and smeared orange blood onto each one, then let loose a third Blood Magic wave. The unguided spell tore holes in the slabs where the words were and ripped them straight into the mud like gravity had thrown a temper tantrum. The rest of the holey metal flopped to the ground, useless. With Reap free, I seized his scythe off the ground where Apathy had let it fall after he’d been tackled and knifed.
The scythe was a foot taller than me and harder to lug around than the staves and sticks I’d trained with as a martial artist. Reap’s wingless flight carried him a whole mile ahead of me. I didn’t catch up to him until I reached the outskirts of Seoul. Seraphs patrolled the skies above the South Korean city in search of demon thieves or any other Three Domains trouble. Tastes of mud and grit still clung to my mouth and I spat into the open air.
Handing The Reaper his two-toned scythe, I rubbed at my chest and groaned. “You can have this. I won't be swinging that awkward thing around any time soon. We should tell the SPD about those underground soul stashes The Coalition is setting up.”
Reap gripped the weapon and his voice became an ice floe. “It is best we did not end them back there. Better that we continue our work than sacrifice it in vain and only damage The Coalition. Let us return to the Seoul hell divide and unload what souls we have. Then we shall reveal this subterfuge to the Chief Seraph.”
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