Page 14 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

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I T’D BEEN IMPOSSIBLE TO see from out on the bright cliffside, but the tunnel that led into the Hells was just as horrible as the doors outside.

Also absurdly enormous. The arched ceiling was twice the height of even the tallest transformed wrath demon, and the walls were so far apart that the five of them could’ve walked side by side with room to spare.

The proportions were absolutely ridiculous for what was essentially a connector tunnel, but the longer Bex thought about it, the more convinced she became that that was the point.

This tunnel hadn’t been made to efficiently transport banished demons back to the Hells.

It’d been designed to dominate and oppress, and by those measurements, it succeeded spectacularly.

Just like the doors leading in, every inch of the gigantic, black-stone walls was covered in carved reliefs of demons being punished.

Some were being whipped by warlocks while others burned in giant fires.

Sometimes they were shown being tied to posts and carved open while they were still alive; other times they were simply cut into pieces that the sobbing survivors were forced to sort into piles.

Each torture was uniquely horrible and rendered in stomach-churningly lifelike detail. Bex was just glad they were carvings and not paintings. If she’d had to see all that torture in color, she would’ve lost her lunch.

She was already losing her cool. Even if it was just art, the sight of all those demons being abused while Gilgamesh’s warlocks watched and laughed sent her fury into overdrive.

If she’d still had her horns, her bonfire would be filling the tunnel right now.

Thankfully for their stealth mission, Bex’s smoldering was purely emotional.

She hadn’t produced so much as a candle flame since she’d lost her horns, and no matter how angry she felt, that didn’t change as they made their way to the doors at the awful tunnel’s end, which were carved in a giant depiction of Gilgamesh.

The symbolism was as subtle as a kick to the face.

The Eternal King’s image was twenty times the size of the largest tortured demon.

He had Anu’s crown on his head and Ishtar’s sword in his hands, and there were nine grotesque female figures with huge horns kneeling at his carved feet.

That was blatantly false since Pride was broken and Wrath had never kneeled, but propaganda didn’t need to be accurate to work, and as much as Bex hated to admit it, it was working.

Between the tunnel’s oppressively giant scale and the hopeless imagery, their whole group was quiet and downcast by the time Iggs and Kirok managed to push open the giant doors at the end.

Bex’s hand went instinctively for her weapon as the path opened, but there was nothing to grab.

Slaves didn’t get weapons, so she’d moved the explosive short sword into her backpack.

This left her with nothing to hold on to, so she focused on moving forward instead, walking practically on Lys’s heels as she stepped through the door into the most impressive cavern she’d ever seen.

Bex stopped short, her no-longer-glowing eyes going wide. From the little Lys had told her about their time in the Hells, she’d always imagined it as a big cave full of fire. That was technically what was in front of her right now, but she’d never realized it would be so big .

They were standing on a ledge at the top of the outer wall of a circular cavern the size of a city.

Not a small city, either. This thing was as big as downtown Seattle.

Bex couldn’t even see the other side thanks to the haze of smoke from the giant fires that lit the place.

They burned everywhere—in metal braziers that hung from the cavern’s arched stone ceiling, in troughs that ran along the walls, in big torch stands she could see burning like stars through the haze on the floor far below— everywhere .

All that dancing orange light made it look like the entire cavern was on fire, but the air was cold, damp, and acrid with smoke, so much so that her entire crew started coughing the moment they opened the door.

Even Bex, who was used to fire, nearly hacked a lung out.

She was still wiping the tears out of her eyes when she finally got enough usable air into her lungs to push past Iggs and look for her people.

Given how many demons were supposed to live in the Hells, she’d thought they’d be everywhere, but Bex didn’t see anything but smoke-blackened rocks.

As she looked harder, though, she slowly realized that the sooty, hunchbacked shapes below them weren’t stones. They were her people.

The sight made her stumble back. Bex had seen plenty of demons in rough shape before, but the ones she’d freed on Earth had been mostly house slaves and guards.

It wasn’t uncommon for them to be beaten and malnourished, but they’d still always been recognizable.

The figures moving below her now, though, looked more like dirty little shadows than Children of Ishtar.

Bex couldn’t even tell what type of demons she was looking at, but there were tons of them.

When she’d first stepped into the firelit cavern, Bex had assumed the walls here were stone like the ones she’d seen outside.

As she stared down at the wretched demons, though, she realized all the cracks and crevices she’d thought were natural formations were actually buildings.

The circular walls of the giant cavern were honeycombed with thousands of tiny caves.

They were stacked on top of each other like termite holes with no pipes or ventilation or safeties of any sort.

The only paths connecting them were climbing routes made by cutting handholds into the stone, some of which went upside down in places.

It was a basically vertical slave shantytown, and Bex wasn’t the only one who hated it.

“Is that where they made demons live?” Iggs asked in a deadly voice. “Those holes ?”

“The lucky ones live in holes,” Lys replied in a tight, hard voice that didn’t match the sneering face of the warlock they were impersonating. “I’ll have you know that a spot on the wall is premium property. The less fortunate sleep five to a bunk in the slave barracks on the ground level.”

“You’re kidding,” Iggs said.

“I wish I was,” Lys replied with a mirthless smile. “Welcome to the Middle Hells.”

“Middle Hells?” Bex repeated, confused. “I thought this was the Hell of Lust. Shouldn’t that be where you were banished to?”

“This is the Hell of Lust,” Lys said, waving the warlock’s arm at the giant space in front of them.

“Or at least it used to be. This cavern was originally five separate caves. As the demon population grew, though, Gilgamesh decided that maintaining five individual Hells for the most commonly requested demon slaves after War was inefficient, so he combined our prisons into one giant cave and dubbed it the Middle Hells.”

“That sounds even less efficient,” Iggs argued. “Wasn’t he worried about rebellion?”

“No,” Lys said bitterly, “because the demons down here don’t rebel.

We can’t when all our necks are bound with slave bands and sin-iron collars and we’re forced to work sixteen hours a day on just enough food to keep us from actually dying.

” They crossed the warlock’s arms over their chest. “There’s a reason so many demons volunteer to be slaves on Earth. ”

Bex could see it. Again, she’d seen plenty of abused slaves, but even the worst warlock slave quarters hadn’t been this bleak. She could barely see the demons climbing over the walls below them through the grime, but the ones she could make out looked like skeletons with horns.

“How many demons are here?” she asked.

“Who knows?” Lys replied with a shrug. “It’s not like Gilgamesh posts his census data, but it’s a lot.

The Middle Hells combined the Hells of Lust, Fear, Sorrow, Hate, Envy, and Greed.

Hate’s not terribly popular for obvious reasons, but the rest are all considered useful slaves, so the warlocks make sure to keep our populations high. ”

They frowned, tapping the blunt chin of their stolen face. “I’d estimate there’s around five hundred thousand demons in the Middle Hells at any given time. That number can dip if there’s been a famine or a plague recently, but it looks pretty full right now.”

It looked horrible . Bex still hadn’t caught a glimpse of the cavern’s floor through the haze of choking smoke, but she wasn’t holding out hope that it’d be better than the walls. Nothing about this place was acceptable, and the longer she looked at it, the more she wanted to burn it down.

“Let’s get going,” she growled. “Before I do something that blows the mission.”

Lys didn’t look like they’d mind that, but they followed their queen’s command, leading Bex by the collar as befit the slave she was pretending to be, with Kirok and Iggs, their two “guards,” following close behind.

Nemini was probably close as well. As usual, though, Bex couldn’t spot her.

She couldn’t see Boston or Bran either, which felt like a good sign.

If half their party was so good at hiding that they didn’t even need disguises, maybe they could pull this off after all.