Case 8 - Ep. 3: Blind Faith's Soul

Submission and Starvation by Beki Yopek

Pinned beneath tons of World War II Russian tank.

Taunted by an old enemy and her new fallen angel pet. 

No haloxite for me to use to cast any Blood Magic.

Starving for life force because I’d worked more than a double and hadn’t touched a mote in almost 24 hours. 

There was only one way to save myself: I had to get shot.

“Take these,” Avarice spat, standing above me. She passed a fistful of haloxite revolver rounds to Jack Te-Konos, who slipped them into an inner pocket of his combat-shredded blazer. The sharp golden-glowing cartridges fell from a hole in the pocket and scattered in the mud around his shoes. Avarice’s lolita dress swished as she stepped away from Jack, pointing her finger first at the revolver in his hand, then at the rounds on the ground. “Get some functional clothing, Jack. You’ve got more than enough motes after what The Coalition is paying you.”

I glanced at Avarice’s do-me-now boots and the formidable cleave bulging from the dress’s bust. “Ha, ‘functional’ clothing.”

Jack, who’d assumed his pocket worked properly, was peering at the hundreds of demons harrying The Reaper in the skies above the Khalkin Gol river in Outer Mongolia. Clouds of smog that used to be living, fighting demon thieves obscured the sun the way millions of midges would. I sucked in a breath and nearly choked on the metallic odors of blood, earth, and rust on the air. I knew what was coming next. 

Jack gritted his teeth and grunted, “Jack did not realize The Reaper had been trained in martial arts. More than half of our--”

Both of Avarice’s horns whipped down and butted Jack in the head for the second time in five minutes. I flinched involuntarily, hissed through my teeth, and forced my eyes off the ghosts and the lone scrumptious soul fifteen feet away on the river banks. My old enemy’s shrieks hit plane-engine levels. “Incompetent slave. Give me that revolver.”

Pearly white blood dripped from Jack’s bruises that had torn open on Avarice’s second blow. He passed the gun to her on his flat palm, his eyes wider than I’d ever seen them in the years we’d fought each other. Then the fallen angel scrambled to retrieve the rest of the haloxite rounds he’d dropped. His shoes squelched in the muck and he stumbled in his hurry to obey.

I wriggled my left wing and claws, the only limb I had free that could help me escape this shit sandwich. 

Avarice batted Jack aside with her wing, loaded the haloxite round she held into the revolver, and fired at me the same instant I whipped my free wing up from the ground. Hot agony sliced along the ridge of the wing and I seized the pain with my voice and will. Blood Magic flowed unguided and I shoved it with every ounce of effort I had left. Bullet, gun, and shooter launched skyward along the line of blood I’d smeared onto Avarice’s revolver and arm. 

Gasping, I flipped my wing around and slammed the bleeding ridge into the tank that trapped me. Then I dragged it from left to right at an awkward angle. The smear I left was sloppy, but enough of my orange blood had slathered the metal for me to unleash a surge of unguided Blood Magic that covered most of the tank’s side. The tonnage tipped up at an angle and I pumped both wings, expecting to fly free. I’d been so hungry for life force I forgot to direct the Newtonian kick-back that came every time I shoved something with Blood Magic. 

Instead of soaring out from under the tank, I rolled in the mud like a drunk demon falling off his barstool. Human blood and churned soil from the recent Russia vs Japan battles caked my skin all over, squeezing into my boots and tangling my scarlet hair. When I struggled to stand straight, the ground-shaking thud of the tank landing on its treads wrecked my balance and sent me sprawling again. 

Jack face-planted too, and I couldn’t get my limbs to move for me to get the jump on him. 

Life force starvation. I had maybe ten minutes. 

The fallen angel sprang up, shook mud from his tar-colored wings, and took in everything happening around me. Then he stepped closer and crouched down, bringing his crimson halo whipping down at me. Pain crackled and burst at the back of my skull. Swirls lit up in my field of vision. All I could hear was Jack’s seething voice. “You are seconds from starvation. Your Reaper will return to find a cloud of dead Ava, or a hypocrite who’s forced to maintain a lie for her life’s sake.”

Feathery wing flaps pounded the air. Then nothing.

It might have been one minute or nine, but consciousness came charging back in time for me to register a small group of human ghosts had wandered close by. One isolated soul thrummed with life force. I swear I could hear each chiming pulse of it, and I drooled without meaning to. Blood surged through my pounding heart, oozing out the wing wound and onto the dirt. 

Life force. An arm’s length away.

With both arms, I propped myself up and squinted skyward.

There were no more demon thieves in the air above the river.

The Reaper descended from on high.

He was probably too far up to see me.

Case 8 - Ep. 2: Blind Faith's Soul

Submission and Starvation by Beki Yopek

The tank flying through the air at my face was a pretty good reminder I screwed up. Jack Te-Konos bellowed French words that echoed around the Outer Mongolian battlefield and I reacted slower than a salted slug. Tons of armor plated Russian tank barreled into me, landing on top and pinning me to the blood-soaked mud. His Heaven brand of magic couldn’t make mundane materials penetrate the protection of my brimstone horns unless it was haloxite that brought the pain. 

Not that it made the space beneath the tank more comfortable or anything.

The Khalkin Gol river flushed past me twenty feet away, the banks swollen with rain and debris from the fighter planes and ground troops who’d died here. Burned out husks of a hundred tanks lay in the murk the way dead june bugs do. A late August sun beat down on the land like a burger joint heat lamp. Delicious souls bursting with life force peppered the entire landscape, and The Reaper darted among demon thieves in the skies above me, trying to carve an opening in the swarm with his scythe. For every bunch that burst into smog as he slew them, another cluster filled in the space and slung Blood Magic as they did.

Words were carved into the side of the tank just above my head. “Piege,” and “Prendre” and some others. French words on a Russian tank just had to be part of Jack’s magic. Craning my body up in a sit-up, I scratched the words off the metal with my left horn. The tank kept sitting on me, but the movement had given me space to wrench my left wing out from under me.

Jack rounded the tank’s upended side and waved behind him for someone to join him. I yanked my wing back down and jammed it a little way under the burned out machine, as though it was still held down. The fallen angel strode a whole lap around the metal monster, tidying up his blazer and waistcoat and indicating the tears and bullet holes in them. “See those, Ava?”

“What, you mean cojones? Nope.”

He whipped out a revolver from his torn blazer and shot me in the cheek. The blast echoed in my hearing and I knew the bullet struck me, but it was metal jacketed, so it bounced away into the mud and buried itself. I didn’t feel a thing except the jolts of fear that flooded my every nerve. If that round had been haloxite, no more me. I locked both eyes on the nearest cluster of souls and found they’d all expired or been drained by the swarming demon thieves, turning them all into ghosts. Except one. Sweat poured down my face and I swallowed. 

Jack emptied the rest of the metal rounds from the chamber and loomed over me. “So many beings have tried to kill me that I wear their murder attempts with pride. This border dispute between Russia and Japan is about to go full war, here. After today, you’ll be nothing but another slash in the wardrobe.”

Another figure stepped past the tank, kicking muck off her do-me-now boots. Avarice was decked out in a lolita dress and wore a Japanese naval officer hat at a jaunty angle on top of her deep blonde hair. The Septuplet that had it out for me most crossed to Jack’s side and towered over my left shoulder, with Jack above my right. Avarice’s horns were brimstone, and Jack’s halo, haloxite, so I couldn’t even handle the bigger threat with the one wing I had free.

Something. Had. To. Give.

“Why were you so slow to react?” Avarice purred, crouching down. “Is Jack learning your secrets better than I did?”

I shoved the sharp words and the history I was about to spit to the back of my mind. I already knew that my haloxite knife, Blood Magic Folio, and something-toed boots were all stuck beneath the wrecked tank. No way to get blood for a spell. They’d known of course that trapping a demon like me was just as effective as killing one.

Jack yelled over The Reaper’s screeches overhead. “Every nation on Earth will be part of this new World War, and your ridiculous Seraph Police Department will be spread so thin enforcing their new T.V.T. laws that The Coalition will--”

Avarice horn-butted Jack faster than I could blink, and her horns penetrated the protection from Jack’s halo. He might be a fangel, but that halo’s still made from haloxite. Bruises bloomed on Jack’s forehead and cheek and he twitched away from Avarice. She hissed, “You are useful to us only as long as you delay The Reaper. Blabbing helps them.”

“Jack Te-Konos has already proven he is superior,” the fallen angel babbled. “I am only stating facts. We cannot kill The Reaper, so we target--”

He twitched away again when Avarice leaned her head back for another head butt. Then she produced a handful of haloxite revolver rounds from her schmancy dress and I tore my gaze away from the lone soul to focus on the only method of escape I had.

The Septuplet’s eyes locked on mine and she grinned like a demented fox. “Ah, you have not touched a mote today. Did your precious mote system fail you? You must be so close to starving from life force deprivation."

Case 8 - Ep. 1: Blind Faith's Soul

Submission and Starvation by Beki Yopek

Demons and angels didn’t need to sleep, but that didn’t stop most of us from being late to work on Monday mornings. We had brimstone horns and haloxite halos that protected us from pain and harm caused by anything except the opposite material. On top of that, the magic we worked with could re-build cities in days and made human science into rules we broke just for kicks. Over thousands of years, we’d survived apocalypses, rebellions, and The Industrial Revolution. 

Mondays were one evil we’d never magic our way out of.

Warm tingles rippled through me as I leaned against The Reaper’s balcony railing and took in the Fountainia skyline. Heaven’s extravagant architecture to the north, Hell’s neon signage to the south, and The Soul Fountains directly below me in the middle where the two halves melded. Besuited angels bustled this way and that around the Fountains, leading the last of the new souls into the splashing waters at the base and ushering the drained ones into the hell divides and heaven lanes that led to their fates. Crisp, fresh water and life force floated up and filled my nostrils and I grinned.

Yeah I had an awesome and helpful job, but today I’d rather be running my hands along the muscles and cornrows of the Seraph I’d had to leave behind in bed. That warmth swelled to a gush from lips to hips and I shuddered at the goose bumps spreading across my skin. Uniforms did something to--

“Hildariel needs training,” The Reaper rattled somewhere behind me.

I twitched up off the railing and spun to face the solid black skull in the hood that faced me, hovering at eye level three feet off the balcony. “You sneaky bastard, my guard was down.”

Cackling, The Reaper soared overhead and clacked down onto the balcony with Seversoul tight in his grip. “Be happy I am not Avarice, or a ninja.”

Thoughts blended in my head like a bad wop at a college party. “Uhm, that’s a good--ehh, why are you late too?”

Reap tilted his skull at me and I bit my lip. Stupid brain farts. I blame them for letting things slip. The Reaper tapped his bony foot and I answered the implied question. “I’d have been here sooner, but I got busy at home.”

My wings tensed at the ridiculous word choice, but The Reaper must not have picked up on it, because he said, “Working around Hildariel’s explosive weapons causes delays. Harvesting souls in the field is already hard enough with the T.V.T. law still in place. Now I cannot rely on our new bodyguard to cover me while I harvest.”

Since The Reaper was spitting business talk, I shook off thinking of my angel with benefits and crossed my arms. “Is Hildy really that bad at combat? Working as Nia’s bouncer probably made her complacent.”

“It is not her behavior that limits her, but her choice of weaponry.”

“I remember all the knives and arrows she had hidden under her track suit. Thought she was an amazon woman or something.”

The Reaper shook his skull. “Amazons did not bring explosive weapons to the battlefield.”

Leaning against the railing again, I adjusted my blazer and rolled both wings. “Please, elaborate.”

“Incanted arrows and blades that explode are available on the Vice Market in the Third Circle. Hildariel fired on demons with copper-coated arrows that burst with brimstone or haloxite upon striking a target.”

“Ah, so the shrapnel would catch you if Hildy came out shooting at demon thieves that got close.”

“That is the problem. Individual haloxite arrowheads are too slow, and she relies on the magic without considering the consequences.”

“It sounds like she’s a good enough bodyguard, but she has no foresight on how tactics and magic mix.”

“Odd, considering she is also employed at Niariel’s bar.”

I shrugged both wings. “I’ll work with her. Might be she just needs different tools, or better timing or technique.”

The Reaper rattled deep in his throat. Spine. Neck. “New tools will be problematic. The Vice Market is in Voracity’s Circle. He works for The Pneuma Coalition.”

“Go figure,” I said, groaning. “It’s always The Coalition or Heaven Law getting in our way.”

“Heaven supports the mote system a lot, but offers no angelic assistance to me personally.” Reap gestured to the angels working The Soul Fountains. The words ‘Vanna Black’ flashed through my mind as he added, “They send mote bankers and soul ushers to run the financial and distribution aspects, but we do the important job with no support.”

I counted off the work we’d done without any actual Heaven assistance. Soul Harvesting. Route planning across Earth. Building The Volunteer Guardian Angels. Busting Septuplets who worked for The Coalition when the Volunteers were too busy. We even had to call the Seraph Police Department in when Heaven Law forced us not to bust Coalition members ourselves.

“I’m sick of stealing humans’ cell phones to call the SPD while we’re harvesting,” I blurted. “Blind faith makes hypocrites of the faithees. C’mon, Reap. Let’s get this next Case written so we can train Hildy.”

Crossing the balcony, I held The Reaper’s office door open for him and cranked my hearing up to eleven. Sooner or later he’d drop a hint about his plans beyond ending The Pneuma Coalition. Then maybe I’d learn what scared The freaking Reaper so much he’d keep secrets even from me.

Case 7 - Ep. 3: Heaven's Blind Spots

Trapped and Bloody by Beki Yopek

When a fallen angel whoops your ass, you start to think Heaven has blind spots. If freaking angels can fall and trap you with magic, then someone up there must have screwed up big time. The Seattle Port Commission land that Hooverville had been built on already got burnt like fried chicken once. Government during The Great Depression wasn’t the smartest, so of course The Pneuma Coalition convinced the humans to burn Hooverville again and again when the homeless rebuilt there. That’s why I didn’t see signs of magic among the rubblicious shanties.

Continuous rebuilding plus continuous burning equaled thousands of free souls for The Pneuma Coalition. All without bending Heaven Law. They wanted the humans to burn it over and over, and they twisted the weakened American government to make it happen.

This was a cycle we had to break before Jack and The Coalition repeated it.

I writhed against the twin tin slabs that pinned me in mid-air. Jack Te-Konos’s conniving voice shouted more French words and the tin sheets sandwiched me horizontally. He switched to English and belted out a laugh. “Heaven’s only into itself, Ava.”

The words reverberated off the tin and I slid my left hand closer to the haloxite knife in my trench coat. I tried gripping the handle, but Jack bellowed and I slammed to the dirt between the two former shanty walls. Dust choked me and the grit turned to mud in my mouth. I spat and made to shout a retort when pain lanced along my left palm. My own haloxite knife had sliced my hand wide open while Jack contorted me against the ground.

“The Septuplets chose me to help them tear down the Soul Fountains,” Jack screamed. “Heaven has always held itself above everyone, like the other Domains owe them something.”

I let the idiot talk and ground my teeth, then twisted my bloody left wrist around.

Jack kept ranting. “Damn those who want to make their own way.”

The tin smooshed me awkwardly and whatever spell Jack was using to keep me trapped would have worked for decades. IF--

“Jack Te-Konos wants something better. A grand place he built with his own magic.”

I tossed a verbal knife. “You mean magic that Heaven taught you?”

“Shut it, slave,” Jack barked, adding some French at the end like vitriol.

The walls whirled and lurched, and the slit of daylight I could see above me spun in circles. Crimson locks of hair tangled around my face and horns, and red flecks swam behind my eyes. This fangel thought he could disorient me on his psycho merry-go-round, but I’d been flying since before some kings were born. Pressing the bleeding hand against the top-most tin wall, I winced and made absolutely sure that the orange blood seeping from the wound covered a long streak of metal.

“You’re a slave to a system that lets the useless have the same chance that geniuses do,” Jack rambled, stepping closer to my whirling prison. “Jack Te-Konos did the work. He earned his spot with the Coalition. Thanks to him, we’ve got more plans than this measly soul farm. Heaven doesn’t get to take what’s ours because they wrote some law saying they could. And you and your buddy The Reaper enabled it. You’re letting the SPD and Heaven itself take advantage of demons and humans.”

“Bahaha,” I blurted. “That’s what you think? Eat metal.”

Blood Magic surged out of me and I used the unguided flow to shove the top wall skyward. Snapping both wings out, I scissored Jack’s legs from under him and sprang to my feet, then allowed the Newtonian kick-back from my unguided spell to cement myself to the ground and stop the bottom sheet from spinning. Jack’s shocked yelp twisted into a snarl and he beat his wings, shoving himself back along the dust and away from the haloxite knife I’d just brandished.

Jack righted himself and brushed dirt off his slashed blazer and his ruff. “You can stab me all day with that and it won’t even tickle.” He switched to French, but I sprang up off the tin slab a second before his spell kicked in.

Wings pumping, I flew high, swerving behind the tin slab I’d sent skyward. I unleashed a second wave of unguided Blood Magic. The tin clashed against the slab Jack had magicked up from the dirt, and I spotted French words etched on both sheets. Details of Heaven’s magic were lost on me, but I recognized that for most angelic spells to work, words had to be either spoken or written on the object. Grinning, I barrel rolled and let the Blood Magic spin the tin along with me, scratching up the words on both slabs.

Jack’s mad yells filled the air as much as the screeching of metal on metal. About time too. I couldn’t stand any more of his shenanigans. Shoving forward on the Blood Magic, I pummeled Jack into the ground with both shanty walls and he flopped underneath them, helpless. Clouds of dust kicked up around him and humans from nearby shanties gathered around to see what must have looked like a collapsed shanty having a seizure.

The Reaper hovered up from somewhere nearby and cackled, his hood covering his solid black skull. “Thank you for killing your inner demon, Avaline.”

I narrowed my eyes and peered sideways at him. “You’re lucky I know what you mean by that. I wasn’t about to kill Jack. He was too busy waxing philoso-bullshit, and I’d rather bust every single member of the Coalition.” Patting the holsters at my back beneath the trench coat, I added, “I didn’t even need the stilettos or my new boots to wreck Jack.”

The Reaper gripped Seversoul in one ebony hand and pointed down at Hooverville with the other. “Apathy is in The Coalition. Whomever he answers to ordered a perennial soul farm to be built here, and I have ended it.”

Maybe it was the stress or the absurdity, but I laughed and watched Jack flump around and scream about himself. “A fallen angel babbled in the third person, and The Reaper said the phrase, ‘perennial soul farm.’ “ Thought waves washed over me and I added, “Jack the Hack down there mentioned plans within plans. Or multiple plans, or something.”

The Reaper raised Seversoul and looked at the carvings in both the brimstone and haloxite sides of the blade. “We have us, and the SPD, and the Volunteer Guardian Angels. The Coalition has an unknown number of Septuplets, and an unknown number of plans. The work is ours to do. Now that you have earned your bodyguard position again, let us move.”

Back at the Down South Lounge, I put the pen down, glanced at Nia behind the neon bar, then at Reap’s hooded skull. Hard liquor and cool ice filled the air with scents, a sweet distraction I had no choice but to block out. I slammed the rest of my now warm Moloch and Coke, never taking my eyes off my boss’s. 

Plans within plans. 

I’d been writing these Case Notes for a week now. Was The Reaper after more than just a way to de-throne the Pneuma Coalition?

Case 7 - Ep. 2: Heaven's Blind Spots

Trapped and Bloody by Beki Yopek

The Reaper and I swooped into Hooverville in the early 1930s, and it was prettier than a slumtown tornado, but not by much. Seattle city officials had burned down nine acres of shanties because homeless hobos had erected them on Seattle Port Commission land. The flames had killed the tin-roof shacks better than the residents, and hundreds of men were busy re-building the flimsy walls that went around their moth-eaten mattresses. Odors of burnt wood and b.o. mingled in the air like they did in my home Circle, New Purgatory. Only we had strippers’ perfume and sweet wine scents on the wind to spice up the place. 

I tucked my newly filled Blood Magic folio into the inner pocket of my trench coat and flew in close to The Reaper. “You can smell the death from here. Guess we’ll be busier than we thought.”

The Reaper shouted the way an avalanche does. “Keep your guard up, Avaline. Human death might be natural, or it might be engineered by The Pneuma Coalition.”

Raising a hand to block the sun’s glare off Elliott Bay on my left, I grunted. “Yeah, don’t remind me how powerless the law is. You’d think Heaven would be better on the enforcement end of things.”

“The Volunteer Guardian Angels can only watch so many cities at once. America’s economy is in a recession. Humans have thrown themselves from buildings rather than face reality. Do not forget where I found you last year after firing you.”

My lip zipped itself shut without me asking it to. That made two times The Reaper had worked with me after the biggest screw ups I’d screwed up. It was time to rebuild, not repeat the past.

I checked that the twin stilettos in the holster at my back were there, then touched down at the edge of the bay with The Reaper landing next to me. He gripped Seversoul in one black bony hand, and secured the hood of his robe over his head with the other. The sight of the scythe sent a spike of adrenaline through me and I marched right for Hooverville’s center, intent on finding the Septuplet who’d dodged Heaven Law, caused hundreds of human deaths, and blamed it on The Great Depression.

Mud squished under my boots and I made a mental note not to wear my Aurora flats or Persephone heels to work. Earning my job back with The Reaper meant utter professionalism, including work boots-with something in the toes-and weapons I’d left at home before. This was a trial run, so I paid attention to every fresh soul we passed on the way to Hooverville’s center. Half of them were chockablock full of life force, and the other half were drained husks that barely had any shimmer left to them. Every piece of information I could glean was a piece that could help me keep this job for centuries to come.

Spinning and tripping in the muck, I faced The Reaper and stood straight. “There’s no leadership here. The humans are rebuilding, but it’s like they expect to get burned out again.”

The Reaper swept Seversoul through a dozen souls and the drained ghosts around them. He made sure he didn’t hit the half-built shanties by accident. “Are there demons about?”

“No demon thieves,” I replied, “and no signs of any kind of magic. No Surface Magic, or Brimstone Chemistry, or--”

The Reaper harvested dozens more souls and a cluster of ghosts. “What are The Septuplets known for?”

I put a hand on my hip and watched raggedy men in dust-caked shirts moving in and out of the nearest shanty, carrying sheets of tin and hammers. “White collar super powers. Fourteen beings in existence have super powers, and The Septuplets make up half of them.”

“Can magic cause destruction like this?”

Taking in the burned soil and the plywood the men hauled into town, I said, “Blood Magic could. Or maybe some Heaven brand of magic. I can’t see a sign of it though. No demon’s blood, no pictures, no writings on the tin or in the dirt.”

“Logic should be telling you something important.”

No angel would use Heaven magic to burn a hobo homestead to cinders. Plus, no Septuplet I knew had a power that could immolate nine acres at once. Sure there were hundreds of souls here, but if The Pneuma Coalition was using magic or powers to devastate the homeless here, the SPD or VGA would have seen something by now.

A rolling tenor I recognized spoke from within the nearest shanty. “Thank you, Mayor Jackson. It is an honor to assist the residents of your little conglomerate. Rebuild. It is the best thing for everyone.”

Jack Te-Konos emerged from the shanty with Apathy following along behind him. Jack’s torn-up blazer and ruff flapped in the breeze, and that smug attitude matched his slicked down hair and tar-colored wings. Apathy, the bald careless Septuplet, cracked a smile when he saw me and The Reaper. One wink and Apathy was airborne, flapping toward Elliott Bay where the sun was setting into the rippling waters. 

I snarled and snapped both wings out, ready to stick it to Apathy in a high-speed flight. Jack spoke something in French and a tin wall from a nearby shanty blitzed me like a linebacker. I leapt upward and barrel rolled to avoid the attack, but the fallen angel yelled more French words while I did. A second tin slab sandwiched me against the first one in mid-air. 

Reaching for my Blood Magic folio, I screeched, “You don’t get to screw with me a third time.”

Jack’s shout reverberated against every air molecule around me and The Reaper. “Heaven intervened on your side and that backfired. Now The Coalition has human officials under our claws too." 

Pinned by two heavy slabs of metal, I couldn't even reach the stilettos in their holsters. 

The fallen angel extended a hand and hissed more French spell words. Then he swept his greezy hair back. "I explained you were flying into a hurricane. Not my fault you didn’t listen, Avaline.”