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| How F'd Are We? by Beki Yopek |
The sun blared its white light onto the Florida Straits a thousand feet below. Salt tang crusted the air and I tasted the grit with each ragged breath. The Reaper gripped his scythe and flew at a fast clip ahead of me. I beat my wings in an hour-long back-and-forth to keep an eye on him and crank out Blood Magic for the flock of angels following us. Blood crusted both palms. It stuck to my forearms in orange runnels under the Hades Watch and the white-lined cerulean admiral’s jacket I wore. The haloxite knife I’d used to draw that blood was one of a dozen belted to my hip with a thick belt and holsters beneath the jacket.
I slung an empty tractor-trailer plastered with magazine ads at the hundreds of Volunteer Guardian Angels behind us. My magic, guided by the attached pages, made for a prop the size of a nuclear warhead that returned to me every time the Volunteer Guardian Angels caught it. Good practice for if a real warhead took flight, which damn well might happen today. For the past eighty-eight miles, they hadn’t let the rig touch water once. How they caught it was beyond me.
One angel would fly straight for the back of the truck, circle it top-to-bottom, then flap aside for more angels to do the same. After fifty or so angels ringed around the big rig, it would slow down. After a couple hundred, the truck would freeze mid-air. Then I’d boomerang it back to myself and try the whole thing again over the next mile of ocean. Thanks to the magic, I even got to choose whether the Newtonian kickback affected me or not.
What’s physics going to do, arrest me?
The Reaper swooped in close once I flung the truck at the angels for the eighty-ninth time. “What did you use for pictures?”
“Boomerangs,” I replied.
“Before the Fountainia sirens went off, you were rooting through toy store ads.”
“Where else was I going to find the right pictures?”
“I am not sure. Weren’t boomerangs always children’s toys?”
Two hundred angels looped the back end of the truck and stopped it dead in the air. Glancing behind me, I saw the Cuban shoreline and a hundred tiny winged figures standing in ranks with a familiar winged woman pacing among them. I flapped and faced The Reaper. “You should know. Reap, you’re so old that if you had wrinkles, they’d have wrinkles.”
“It is rude to comment on a Reaper’s age.”
Laughing, I summoned the big rig back to me with guided Blood Magic. A few of the boomerang ads had fluttered loose. One weakness of my magic: if the demon’s blood dried up, so did the spells. I wasn’t quite dizzy from blood loss yet, but this whole flight to Cuba combined with constantly re-attaching pictures took more out of me than The Battle Of Khalkin Gol did.
As we descended on the beachfront, Reap shouted, “As soon as our boss knew the likelihood of an Earthly catastrophe, the Fountainia sirens went off. We responded within two minutes. Over two hundred VGA angels rendezvous’d with us in that time. Your hasty training regimen will serve us well in preventing nuclear war.”
“And it’ll keep us in jobs,” I answered. “The VGA can catch one bomb, or slow down three long enough to stop detonation. If I did the math right.”
Touching down in the surf, I dropped the truck next to us and cut the magic. The rig pounded down amid plumes of sand and salt water, creaking to a halt. A quick jacket check confirmed that yes, I was still armed to the horns. The inner pocket held two Blood Magic folios. A chest holster snagged at my breast, but it held a snub nosed pistol with one haloxite round within easy reach for drawing. A new pair of haloxite-powdered boots were laced to my feet. One fresh scarlet mote was tied into Nia’s bracelet on my wrist, and the Hades watch on the other wrist showed it was business o’clock.
The feathered wings of the VGA fluttered behind me as The Reaper took the lead, marching toward the ranks of demons awaiting us. My best friend Nia had put in a call to the Make A Sin Foundation after I called her about the Fountainia sirens. The Foundation sent a hundred demons trained at Hell’s colleges in stealth and sabotage in war zones. Breathing the sea air deep, I strode up to the rows of demons and inspected their clothing, armaments, and magical objects of choice.
Some demons wore vials in pouches. Others had haloxite needles. A few stood naked with nothing on them but the wings on their backs and the horns on their heads. One blue-haired demon squeezed a fistful of red and white motes like a handful of candy he wouldn’t let anyone else have. If I didn’t absolutely trust Nia, I’d say she picked the crazy brigade to back us up. At least it seemed like none of them were Coalition spies. They liked to keep their followers close to starvation, which meant they’d have pounced at the mote I wore by now if they were here.
Prudence, one of Reap’s other bodyguards, emerged from the Foundation’s ranks. She was five-eleven, scowling, and her wings and full-moon halo were honey-gold. Everything else about her had changed in the past several decades. Prudy had grown her hair out in a long brown drape that fell down her back. A mote necklace similar to my bracelet dangled below her collarbone. The coin’s pale white aura set off the midnight blue of her business dress like a bleached skull on a velvet cushion.
Smiling at the demons, I gestured for The Reaper to continue inspecting. He did, and I took Prudy aside. “You look like a pissed-off mother.”
She nodded approvingly, her voice mellow but crisp. “Good. You look like a woman of authority for once.”
“For once. Pfft. It’s better when I’m in charge, and I don’t need clothes for that.”
Eyeing me up and down, she continued slower than before. “That jacket is far more commanding than your zoot suit. Are you ready for responsibility, or do you still insist on being the party girl in your off time?”
I raised an eyebrow and hissed, “Who do you think you are talking to me like that?”
“We Lucky Seven hone our powers to be sharper than any demon’s second rate magic. What do you do besides plunge The Reaper into trouble?”
“We’ve escaped Coalition traps dozens of times.”
“He is never in danger with me around.”
“So you wouldn’t know how to get him out of danger. It’s okay. I forgive you, but I do expect you to learn from this mistake.”
Before she could respond, I flapped to The Reaper’s side and kicked up sand when I landed. “Prudence has changed, Reap.”
“She recently finished an Incantment that prevents recording devices from capturing images of demons and angels. For my safety, of course. She is exhausted and grumpy. She will handle herself if a nuclear weapon gets launched.”
I made a mental note to dig up what Incantment was. Heaven magic, probably.
Warm winds whirled around the winged warriors gathered on the beach. The VGA behind us, the Make-A-Sinners ahead of us, and The Reaper and Prudence ready to give orders. I whipped out my folio and asked Reap, “When’s the SPD getting here?”
“No sirens in Heaven,” The Reaper rumbled. “The Seraphs believe they watch over the biggest targets in the world, so they’ll already be there in the big cities when a missile approaches.”
When Prudy approached us, I leaned into her space and whispered, “Do you want to tell them we’re fucked, or should I?”
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