Case 14 - Ep. 3: Engineered Starvation

How F'd Are We by Beki Yopek

“Do you want to tell them we’re fucked, or should I?”

I brushed sand off my cerulean admiral’s jacket and waited for Prudence’s response. The Reaper’s other bodyguard tied her long brown hair up and pushed past me with her honey-gold wings. She strode across the Cuban beach toward the Volunteer Guardian Angels I’d been training with moments ago. Prudy’s deep blue dress and sandals lent her a stiff movie-starlet image that she hadn’t exuded until recently. She might be one of the Lucky Seven, but her white collar powers and full-moon halo weren’t free passes to trample on others.

Her ugly mood and my blood loss would help us stop a nuclear missile strike. Yep, they sure would. Time to fake it like we weren’t underprepared and exhausted.

Breathing the salty ocean air wasn’t enough to calm my nerves. A last check of the weapons and the Blood Magic folios under my jacket helped more. I waved The Reaper over and crossed to the front of a company of a hundred demons from the Make A Sin Foundation awaiting us on the beachfront. Sand slid and squished beneath my haloxite-toed boots. The sun slathered us with so much heat I was surprised Reap wasn’t melting under that heavy brown robe.

Towering over me by a foot and a quarter, he pointed his brimstone-and-haloxite scythe skyward in one bony fist. His voice was a bone-on-bone bullhorn. “A bomb that would destroy the humans whose souls we harvest could launch into the sky above us. If that occurs, more could follow. It is our responsibility to prevent this. If you stand here with us Fountainians, then you believe in The Soul Fountains and what we do for all three Domains. For Hell to have a future, we must infiltrate Cuban bunkers and watch the skies for nuclear missiles. Are you prepared?”

One blue-haired demon called out to The Reaper. “We have brimstone horns, big guy. An atom bomb wouldn’t even tickle us.”

The Reaper’s voice was a cat-o-nine-tails. “Do you want humanity to nuke itself to death?”

On any other day, I’d be proud of Reap’s sarcasm. Speeches like that might set some of these demons off today, so I stepped up and announced, “We are all demons here. We’re the superior ones. You want to prove it? Then stop the men in this missile crisis from doing something that your inferiors chose to ignore. The SPD is ignoring this and so are all the demons that didn’t show up today.”

Blue-head blurted, “Maybe I like the idea of not having to work for my life force. That’s what The Coalition’s all about. They want abundance, and you want everyone to starve so that a select few can hoard the life force. Why not let the war happen? Free life force for all of us.”

Spots flared red in my vision and I almost pounced at the blue haired demon. What, was this guy the ringleader? Maybe he was Coalition, and maybe he didn’t know any better than to toss insults. I’d already assumed The Coalition had something to do with this global tension, especially after Reap and I discovered their underground human towns during The Korean War. It looked like none of these demons knew that. Arguing the opposite point would just turn the demons against each other and against us.

Calm washed through me and I put a hand on my hip. “An all-you-can-eat buffet this year means no life force next year. Think of humans as crops if you have to. We still need to keep growing them.”

Naked, armed, and crazy, the demons murmured and actually nodded their agreements. Blue-head tilted his horns sideways. “Guess that makes sense.  We can’t exactly eat happy thoughts.”

The Reaper cackled and all the Foundation demons flinched. Hundreds of angel wings fluttered in sync behind me, peppering us with sand. Fear needled every inch of my skin and I searched the skies overhead. A single dot rocketed upward from Cuba’s mainland, and Prudence led the Volunteer Guardian Angels in a webwork formation straight up into the bomb’s path.

I tasted dust when I shouted, “Live nuke overhead. Demons, hit all the Cuban bases you can find and kill the humans in charge of launching bombs. It's your job to prevent more launches. Reap, stay with the VGA or with me or Prudence. Blue-head and the naked ones, with me.”

At that, I launched skyward and re-opened the scab on my left hand with a haloxite knife off my belt. I checked behind me and found everyone was flying along in a loose cloud. Dozens of demons slugged vials, spun inland, and vanished from sight. A handful of full-frontal demons flapped closer, and the blue-haired demon opened his hand. Scarlet and white motes darted away from his palm and formed a bi-colored halo over his head, the coins spinning in a ring around his horns. He yelled, “Gonna cuddle me a bomb today.”

I didn’t have time to snicker. We were three-quarters of the way to the bomb when I noticed four more streaking along in a line behind the first. The VGA was already swooping around the first missile and slowing it to a stop. I recognized the Septuplet that was clashing with Prudence in mid-air alongside the first warhead’s flight path. 

It was Avarice. Her expensive hairstyle and pin-up girl’s uniform wasn’t made for fighting. The former tangled in her face and the latter tore a little every time she flapped her wings to dodge Prudy’s telekinetic blows. I hadn’t seen her cut loose with her white collar super power since The Battle Of Amiens. Dozens of broken, jagged, and half-sheared haloxite bayonets swirled around Prudence’s body in a spherical cloud. Pair after pair lanced out, missed Avarice, and returned to the sphere as she flew.

Only the seven virtues embodied and the seven sins re-branded had abilities, and only Avarice and her Soliduction power could gain airspace on one of The Lucky Seven. 

Avarice conjured an oversize bola in one hand and slung it at Prudence. She cut the flailing weapon out of the sky with one of her bayonets. More bolas appeared in Avarice’s hands. With each manic sling, she got closer to entangling Prudence.

She and I knew that traps were more dangerous to demons and angels than brimstone or haloxite. Prudence pumped her wings hard, staying close enough to the streaking bomb so Avarice couldn’t stop the VGA from catching it. An explosion now wouldn’t serve The Coalition, and Avarice knew it. A pair of Prudy's bayonets circled behind Avarice for a psychic backstabbing. Avarice shot toward Prudy and heaved two bolas into the open space in her sphere. Ropes wrapped around my colleague’s wings and legs. They cinched tight. 

Avarice conjured bola after bola and unleashed them at Prudence. Every time she sliced a rope free with her bayonets, she shredded her dress more and took two or three more bolas to the body. In moments, she was a mummified pincushion plummeting to the ocean’s surface thousands of feet below.

My pissed-off shouts did less than Prudy’s falling bayonets. She tried harrying Avarice with them, but the farther Prudy fell, the more the haloxite weapons became a danger to me and the Foundation demons following behind me. She wasn’t as experienced at escaping immediate traps like I was. It probably never occurred to her to try anything but slaying her original target.

Reap switched his grip on his scythe and tried to shoot forward, but I seized his robe and bellowed, “Stop. Avarice will trap you too.”

Before I could nab a picture from my folio, Avarice surged straight at the VGA flock. Soliduction wreaked chaos among them; every second it took us to catch up was another bunch of thrown bolas binding more angels’ wings to their sides. They flopped out of the air and plunged after Prudy’s form.

I caught up to Avarice first, snagged the bola she flung at me in my bleeding left hand, and hurled it back at her with an unguided surge of Blood Magic.

The Reaper shrieked behind me and I wrenched my eyes away from Avarice before the bola connected. I focused on Reap long enough to catch the words, “--Konos and more Septuplets. One with each bomb.”

My eyes found a being escorting each of the four warheads following the first.

So I didn't see as the bola cinched off my windpipe and wrenched itself too tight to yank off.

Case 14 - Ep. 2: Engineered Starvation

How F'd Are We? by Beki Yopek

Demon that I am, my trips to Heaven were next to nil until the 1960s. All I knew of angelkind was from the north side of Fountainia. Angels could construct wondrous temples, ziggurat offices, and cumulus cafes if you were into that kind of thing. Whenever mankind needed saving from a disaster-in-progress like the Cuban Missile Crisis, angels and their magic got shit accomplished.

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?”

Case 14 - Ep. 1: Engineered Starvation

How F'd Are We? by Beki Yopek

The Reaper whispered like a gossipy schoolgirl from his carved office chair in the Motery Center. "The Korean War was when we learned the worst about The Pneuma Coalition. They kept soul farms hidden below the Earth in caverns.”

“In that tone of voice," I murmured back, "I thought you'd be telling me who's having a workplace affair."

Neither of us was even thinking of the Sunday harvest we’d just finished. I managed to forget the sweaty blazer and blouse clinging to me only because I smelled like I'd spent eight hours fighting demon thieves. The Soul Fountains were flowing like usual thirteen stories below us. Reap’s office was silent except for his phalanges drumming on his glass desktop. Firelight LEDs danced and shimmered overhead, lighting the brick room lined with file cabinets. Contressa could come in early for her bodyguard shift and I wouldn’t notice even if she screamed like a banshee. 

Cackling, Reap went on. "We do not know if Avarice or Apathy is leading The Coalition. You live in New Purgatory, so you must fly past Apathy's keep on your way to work."

I nodded and fanned myself with my shirt. "It’s so like Apathy to set things up so he doesn’t have to do any work. Not that the SPD could act if we brought them these Case Notes for evidence. Ending a soul ring like The Coalition’s would take decades and thousands of angels ditching their duties to root them out.”

The Reaper steepled his phalanges. "How well equipped are Apathy and Avarice?"

I brushed back my scarlet hair. “Avarice owns Hell's version of Hollywood, and Apathy's slaves would do anything for him. The guy’s got a moat around his castle filled with motes. Full ones. And he’s got thousands of living humans stashed in caves in case of emergency. He's probably got even more souls than that.”

“The word The Coalition seems focused on is, ‘emergency,’ “ Reap rasped. “If humanity drives itself into the ground, Apathy will have what everyone needs. If The Coalition engineers an Earthly emergency, Apathy will have what everyone needs.”

Overwork and hunger clawed at my mind and stomach. The salt taste of Terrence’s warm skin under my tongue was not the distraction I needed right now. This morning with my angel with benefits had been the most explosive sex yet and--no, focus. Focus.

No one from The Coalition had bitten on our bait. We’d made ourselves look weak and open for a sneak attack, yet no one had struck. Not Avarice. Not Pride. Not Voracity. Apathy wouldn’t come himself, the lazy-horns. But someone had broken in a few days ago and stolen one of our Case Notes only to put it back again as though nothing was out of place. 

My body ached for more release. The mellow chill of a Moloch and Coke. That buzz combined with my angel with benefits’ tongue--

“No, Ava,” I snapped at myself. “Think. What can we do with what we’ve learned?”

The Reaper tilted his skull at me. “Are you asking me or yourself?”

“Look at Skully the Comedian over here,” I hissed. “What if The Coalition knows we're setting up this trap?

"Because we did not spring it when the initial break-in occurred. We are waiting to hook bigger fish, and that is the deception."

“Avarice and Apathy have got to be the biggest fish. Apathy seemed interested in your scythe too. The future of his plans mattered more to him than a one-object fix. From what we know of him over the decades, he'd be too smart to rely completely that.”

“That is bizarre. We’ve repelled hundreds of demons intent on obtaining Seversoul. It would benefit The Coalition to try and steal it, but they have never made the attempt.”

"And why is that?"

"Because I am too--what is the phrase? Badass?"

We had a good chuckle at that. I didn’t want to think of the power The Coalition would have if they stole that scythe either. Reap lived in the Sixth Circle where there was nothing but roiling charcoal clouds, graveyards, and The Vault Cabins. He was so secluded that only myself, Contressa, and Prudence even knew where he lived. Good thing too. A being like The Reaper who could fly without wings, carried a scythe that absorbed souls, and had bones blacker than a tuxedo would attract tons of needy demons wanting favors.

Raising a finger, I poked the air with each thought. “Apathy commented on your memory during the Korean War.”

“That matters not.”

“Terrence can’t do crap to get the SPD on our side without dozens of eyewitnesses.”

“That’s your man-toy’s name?”

“Prudence developed that GlassEye spell or whatever you called it to stop cameras from seeing us.”

“That was before her fall, and is not even relevant here. The Coalition will set off our trap today, and I have brimvisibility ready when they do.”

I stabbed that finger down on the glass and cracked it with a nail. “Maybe we should take Prudence’s fall more seriously. Why did Prudy fall recently? Why didn’t she fall when she designed a spell that blocks all cameras on Earth from seeing demons or angels? Anything that benefits The Coalition is enough to get most angels to fall, and then they join up.”

I let the subtext hang there like B.O. 

“Avaline,” The Reaper rasped. “We bought time with a double shift Friday. Jack Te-Konos and The Coalition interfered in Nepal and New York this week. The headway we have made is already gone. We released Hildariel from duties as my bodyguard, and that means another double shift after today. We have baited the trap as sweetly as we could. If The Coalition will meander into it, today will be the day. You can ponder the fallen virtue later.”

He was already calling Prudy, 'the fallen virtue.' 

Jack’s words from decades ago echoed in my head. We were about to be flying around in a hurricane whether this plan worked or not. I hissed, "The Coalition already engineered one disaster on Earth, and that was the Cuban Missile Crisis. They’re taking advantage of today’s disasters to engineer another one. I know Avarice. I know Pride. If they pull another Missile Crisis off and we can't stop it, Earth won’t be around in 2016 for us to harvest from anymore."

Reap ground his teeth. "Then you should speak with your man-toy soon and get us help from the SPD."

"Good idea, but not enough. We need to do more. If I was going to build a better system for harvesting souls than The Coalition’s, I’d need more time." I flexed both wings to try and vent off some of the frustration seething in me. "What if they don’t bite? What if they let us waste all this time?”

"Focus on tomorrow's disasters tomorrow. The Cuban Missile Crisis is The Coalition's biggest violation of Heaven Law. We were there in anticipation of a soul harvest so massive we called in the Volunteer Guardian Angels and the Make A Sin Foundation. Write this down, quickly and have faith in my plans. We may need to spring the trap and fight for our lives at any time.”