Repossessors of Souls: Expendable Pawns

by Danae Ayusso

  Karael smirked at me and a sword appeared in his free hand. “I’m going to enjoy this thoroughly.”

  “I welcome your attempt,” I said and smirked.

  Angelus suddenly appeared next to me. The wind from each flap of his wings blew my hair back and sent a chill down my spine. “You will not touch her,” he snarled.

  “But you have,” Karael accused, cocking an eyebrow.

  What does that mean?

  Karael’s head tilted to the side. “You don’t know, do you?” he mused, noting my dumbfounded expression.

  I jutted my chin out in defiance, not wanting to give him the benefit of hearing my admittance of ignorance.

  Slowly he paced back and forth, floating over the broken ground, and spun his angelic blades in his hands. “Many centuries ago, a demon prayed to our father for help. You see, this demon lost something that he held dear to his heart,” he explained and the corners of his full lips pulled up into a demonic smirk. “And when he couldn’t locate it, he called upon our father for help. Father sent his best, and with blind allegiance and faith, he blindly followed his father’s directive and went to Hell.”

  Angelus flew at the smug angel, a streak of white that slammed into Karael, both of their bodies tangling in a ball of feathers and flesh, and came to a rest when they slammed into the thick brick wall behind the altar.

  No!

  Karael pulled away and whipped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. Angelus was embedded in the brick wall, and his eyes rolled around as blood profusely flowed from the deep gash in the side of his head.

  “Now be a good little obedient pet and stay,” Karael snarled before turning his attention to me. “Now what do we do about you?” he mused.

  “Go to Hell,” I snarled, hovering above of the uneven ground.

  “No thanks,” he said and smiled wide. “I’m more of a child of light, if you catch my drift.”

  Smug bastard.

  “You know that this repo is a goddamn clerical error!” I snapped at him. “And yet you choose to continue knowing as well as I do that it will forfeit your own soul for repoing a soul that isn’t actually claimed by either side.”

  Karael’s head tilted to the side. “I’m well aware of all of that,” he said. “Did you honestly think that I would make the same mistake twice?” he mused. “Since the dossier was shit, I compiled my own. You’re a repo man, one of the best in the NYC Hub, thus there’s no way that you could be up for repo.”

  My eyes widened.

  “Zion, I’m not going to repo your soul, I’m just going to kill you,” he said with a smile.

  This sucks.

  “What did I ever do to you?” I demanded, stalling for time and silently begged for Angelus to pull his unconscious ass out of the wall and help.

  “You were born,” Karael said as if it were obvious.

  “Oh yeah, that’s totally a reason to go all fucking psycho and kill someone. Can someone say crazy? Because I think you should update your business card to reflect that. It would be the polite thing to do.”

  He glared at me, his hands tightening on the grips of his swords. “Crazy is forsaking ones people, their own blood, to help those that turned their backs on us and started a war that tore our world and family apart! Crazy is pledging ones allegiance to a father that is no longer here. Crazy is blindly following orders and having faith in something, something that takes you to the bowels of Hell to answer the pleas of a father that had no right to beg for help from my father, and suffer in silence through the repercussions of said actions when all your father had to do was say, ‘He forgives you’. I am the farthest thing from crazy, you disgusting demonic whore. I am the right hand of God, and his will shall be done,” he snarled and jumped at me with both blades at the ready.

  I squared my shoulders, stood ready for his attempt and folded my wings away, dropping to the uneven ground. The look of determination and demonic attitude was clearly visible on my face, and that really should have told him something. His blades came down, and I leaned and ducked away from the deadly angelic weapons. As fast as his swords could move, I was moving twice as fast, invoking the demonic speed that I kept deep within me, kept hidden away from everyone, and kept locked away because it made me feel as if I was soulless when I invoked it, but I didn’t have any other choice at the moment. The angelic asshole, the bloodthirsty repo man salivating for my blood, was going to kill me and without repossessing my soul.

  And that didn’t sit well with me.

  Karael snarled in disbelief and moved even faster, his offensive charge leaving his body open and I took advantage. I duck and dove, punched and kicked, elbowed and clawed, appearing as nothing more than a tan and blonde blur, a pissed off spirit looking for vengeance, a demon moving faster than this once high level of Heaven angel had ever seen a demon move before.

  Repeatedly I slammed my fists into his body; kidney shots in rapid succession that appeared as a blur of movement. He grunted then slammed his fist into my ribs, but he hit like a bitch compared to the demons in Hell so it didn’t slow me down.

  He dropped one of his swords and wrapped both of his hands around the handle of his remaining sword, and the length of the blade started to stretch and thicken before flames flared to life up the length of the great sword. Karael hoisted the ridiculously heavy weapon up and slammed it down with all of his strength. I crouched down and jumped, launching myself into the air, flipping around many times before erecting myself. Sparks exploded from the smashed, reduced to dust, marble floor the blade was embedded in.

  Karael’s head snapped up, and he snarled a fraction of a second before I slammed into him, knocking both of us to the floor. We punched each other as Karael’s body acted as a plow, pushing stone, marble, and splintered wood with his head and shoulders. Eventually the man-size mound of debris stopped our progression but it didn’t stop our assaults.

  “You won’t beat me,” he snarled through blood stained teeth.

  I smirked. “This isn’t a game, Karael. This is life, and you are trying to take mine. And this concubine, worthless whore that even her own master wouldn’t touch, can’t permit that to happen.” Mocking him seemed appropriate at that moment.

  “More will come for you,” he hissed.

  His comment distracted me, and he punched me in the face, causing my hold on him to loosen. He rolled us over then straddled me and lowered his face to mine when a gold dagger appeared in his hand.

  “You are nothing,” Karael informed me; each word that left his swollen lips was laced with venomous hatred. He pressed the angelic dagger against my throat and smiled when I swallowed loudly.

  “Kill me,” I snarled. “I don’t care. Just get it over with and take your happy ass back to wherever they recruited your punk ass from.”

  His head tilted to the side. “Not a chance in hell. When I am done with you, I am going to kill my bother and then go on my happy-go-lucky way. This will be nothing more than a bragging right and a slight inconvenience in my day.”

  I looked over at the bema where the unconscious angel was still embedded. Half of Angelus’ body was covered in blood, his wings were broken and their feathers of purity were stained crimson, as were his lips; the thick substance trickled down his chin and blemished his lean muscular chest.

  “Please don’t,” I whispered, my attention went past Angelus to the broken angelic script littering the walls around him.

  “Beg,” he smirked. “I want to hear you beg for his life.”

  “Karael,” I whispered and closed my eyes.

  “Yes?” he sang.

  After a deep breath, I hissed out the last of the air in my lungs, and the cathedral went eerily silent, causing the clicking of the hammer to echo around the room as if it was the loudest sound the world had ever known. I opened my eyes and smirked, admiring the look of my gun against the side of his neck.

  “Stupid bitch,” Karael snarled. “What are you going to do with that? I’m a fucking angel. You�
�re demonic toys won’t do shit to me.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “Persuader would be useless in this particular situation.”

  A smile filled his face.

  “That’s why I pulled Precious,” I informed him and his eyes widened as I pulled the trigger.

  Karael flew off of me from the blast, his body rolled across the uneven ground before coming to a rest and he writhed in pain on his back, his feet violently kicked and his hands clawed at the ground.

  I flipped from my back to my feet and strolled over to him.

  “What’s wrong, Karael?” I purred.

  He opened his mouth more than once, but his words were choked out in a gurgle of blood that was rapidly pooling around him.

  I squatted down next to the dying angel with my large silver and black gun in hand. I admired the smoke rolling from its barrel as I tenderly caressed the slide. “You see, Karael, what my dossier didn’t tell you is, Persuader is a demonic weapon, but his little redheaded stepchild sister here, my Precious, is an angelic weapon. A gift from my master,” I smugly informed him before kissing the hot metal. “Looks like you underestimated this demonic whore,” I informed him and pressed the barrel against his forehead. “I hope you burn in Hell, you winged piece of shit,” I snarled then pulled the trigger.

  The echo of the gunshot was drowned out by the violent shaking of the structure. Large fissures tore the ground apart, chunks of stone ceiling smashed to the ground around us, and most of the stained glass windows exploded, littering the area in a rainbow of razor sharp shards.

  My wings unfolded as I ran across the broken ground away from the angel, jumping over chunks of ceiling and glass as I went. I jumped over the large fissure blocking my path to the angel embedded in the wall, my wings pulled me up over the collapsing floor, and I narrowly avoided a bolder size piece of ceiling and it clipped my wing instead of my head causing me to smash into the floor at the base of the bema. I scrambled across the violently shaking ground and tried to pull Angelus free from his ancient stone tomb the wall had become.

  “Come on, wake up!” I screamed and slapped his cheeks.

  I looked over my shoulder at Karael while tugging on Angelus. Karael’s lifeless body arched off of the broken ground as pure white light poured from his gaping mouth and wide-open eyes, illuminating the entire cathedral in blinding light.

  “Shit,” I mumbled and spun around, pressing my body against Angelus’ and stretched my bloody wings out and around us as much as possible, a moment before Karael’s body exploded.

  The force of the shockwave slammed me into Angelus and the wall, my body felt as if it were melting into the unconscious angel in front of me, and the hellish high pitched shrill that accompanied it shattered the remaining glass and windows and ruptured my eardrums.

  When the light blinked out, it took the heavenly shrill of death with it and everything was as silent as death. Carefully I pulled myself back and looked at Angelus, to see if he was all right, and I jumped, startled, to find his eyes were wide open, the solid gold boring into mine. His bloody lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  “Huh?” I said much louder than needed, and he gave me a look. I wrapped both of my hands around his, and with his help, I pulled him out of the man-size indention in the wall.

  I wrapped my arm around his waist and offered him support as his broken, bloody wings folded away, his expressionless face showed no pain, but it was clearly visible in his eyes. We carefully navigated around the destroyed building and looked upon what was left of Karael. Only a blackened, charred into the stone and debris littered surroundings, outline of his outstretched wings remained.

  Angelus shook his head disappointedly then waved his hand through the air, and the discarded heavenly weapons pulled from under the rubble to his hand. The angelic weapons disappeared once they were within his reach.

  He looked over at me and I smiled wide. “How about that pie?” I yelled.

  Angelus shook his head then we disappeared.

  “So what number is this?” I asked and dabbed a wet towel against the side of Angelus’ head, desperately trying for small talk with the sullen angel. I was confident that he was pissed off at me, but I wasn’t entirely sure. From what I could tell, he was usually pissed off at the world and everyone so I could tell when he was specifically pissed at me or when he wasn’t.

  “Thirteen,” Angelus mumbled then hissed when I hit a nerve.

  “Sorry,” I cringed. “It’s really deep. Are you sure you don’t want to go to a healing center?”

  “Positive,” he snarled.

  Stubborn angel.

  “Fine, give me the needle and thread, and I’ll stitch it up for you.”

  Angelus started to hand it to me, but stopped. “Do you know what you are doing?” he asked skeptically.

  “No,” I said then smiled wide, and he gave me a look, the look that silently conveyed that he wasn’t in the mood for my bullshit right now—then again, when was he? “I used to be a seamstress so I know how to work a needle and thread. Stop being a baby and give it to me.”

  He continued to glare at me so I pushed on his head more causing him in wince slightly, and he threw the needle and thread at me.

  “There, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?” I smiled, batting my lashes at him.

  “Your bedside manner is less than desired,” he informed me, as if I didn’t know.

  “Stop being a pussy than,” I countered. “Hold this against your head so I can sterilize the needle.” He applied pressure to his wound while I rolled the needle between my fingers. The thin metal heated up and turned red hot from the friction. Once it cooled, I carefully threaded the blue surgical synthetic polymer fiber thread through the eye of the needle. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink or something first?” I suggested for the hundredth time.

  “Just stitch the damn thing up,” he snapped at me.

  Okay then.

  When he pulled the towel away, I quickly wiped it down with some antiseptic and smiled when he hissed in pain—that was what he got for being a prick. I pinched his torn scalp together and carefully went to work piercing the needle through both sides of the flesh before pulling the thread through it. “Are there any other wounds aside from your head and wings?”

  “No.”

  “Do I need to look at your wings?”

  “No.”

  “Is it really smart to be a short, snippy, asshole to the woman with a needle in her hand that she could easily jab it into your exposed brain?”

  “Have at it,” Angelus said uninterested.

  “What’s wrong, other than the obvious?”

  “I lost,” he pouted.

  Oh my god. Seriously? He’s pissed off because he got his ass handed to him by his brother?

  “Please tell me you are kidding,” I groaned. “You’re throwing a fit like a spoiled fifteen-year-old that just found out that she can’t have her sweet-sixteen at Amnesia over on 29th because you got your ass handed to you by your brother? You can’t be serious.”

  “He is not my brother.”

  “Whatever,” I scoffed then pulled the stitches tighter than needed and he growled. “We are all connected in this big ass circle of immortal life. Speaking of, what was he talking about? You were asked by God to answer the prayers of a demon?”

  “I did whatever my father asked of me,” he spit.

  No shit. I hadn’t noticed.

  “Would you care to elaborate?” I asked sweetly.

  “No.”

  “Humor me?”

  “No.”

  I finished with his head, knotting the last suture then just left the needle dangling from his head before heading for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Angelus demanded.

  “Anywhere but here,” I informed him. “I’m tired of your bullshit attitude. I haven’t done anything to you to deserve it, and I’m honestly tired of it. It doesn’t matter what I do, you just have to keep pushing and
pushing. It’s almost as if you’re trying to push me away or something. That kind of life may work for you, being closed off and having no one, and just bounce from lair to lair like a traveling Bruce Wayne, but that isn’t how Zion works or lives. I can’t! I have to have some kind of interaction where the person actually wants to interact with me on a mutual level or respect. All I get from you is the cold shoulder, and you look down your nose at me as all angels do. Guess what, Chief, I totally saved your ass!

  “That asshole was going to kill you after he was done with me. I even offered him the easy kill if he’d let you live, but he said no. Not in those exact words, but I knew what he was thinking by the look in his eyes. Damn it!” I screamed in frustration—how was it that he always got me rambling and venting? “I can’t stand you!” I took one of the flip-flops off and hurled it at him, and surprisingly he let it smack him in the shoulder. “I can’t stand the way you make me feel. I can’t stand the way you talk to me. I can’t stand the way you look at me. I can’t stand the way you treat me. But most importantly, I can’t stand the way I am okay with all of that because I feel as if I need you or some shit, which blows my mind because you’re the biggest fucking asshole I’ve ever met!”

  Angelus just sat there looking at me with that bored expression on his face, as if everything I just said didn’t mean shit to him, and that I was exactly as he kept saying I was—a demon whore that wasn’t worthy his time and was truly nothing more than an inconvenience in his life.

  “You know,” I said with a huff, trying to keep from crying, “I can’t shake this feeling that you’re keeping something from me. And that you want to be around me as much I’m feeling the need to be around you, but you can’t stomach the thought of being around me so you’re torn about something. Torn between hating me and loving me; between killing me and saving me... I don’t get it, and I want to understand, I really do, but at the same time I want to be as far away from you as possible because you’re driving me completely insane. I...” I shook my head then turned away from him and pulled the door open, “I have to dislike you...maybe hate you even. It’s the only way for both of us to be happy, and right now neither of us are remotely happy so I’ll leave and that should put our lives back in order. Everything will go back to how it was before; you can go on your cynically merrily-go-fuck-yourself way and I’ll take my happy ass back to 5th Avenue and drown my sorrows in overly priced shoes and handbags like the shallow demon whore that I am. Goodbye.”