Page 36 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

“I’d say we have a solid shot,” Bex whispered back. “Though whether any of this pans out or not largely depends on him.”

She nodded at Leander, who wasn’t supposed to hear that.

The prince’s ears must have been incredible, though, because he pulled himself straight as a sword.

“I wouldn’t have suggested this if I thought it was a suicide mission,” he informed them crisply.

“Unless Alexander himself is waiting for us, I’m confident I can stand against any of my brothers, provided you can keep them from getting on top of me.

I’m a damn good sorcerer, but I’m afraid my sword skills are lacking. ”

“What are you talking about?” Bex asked. “I fought you on the bridge. You’re a fantastic swordsman.”

“Not if I don’t have my sword,” Leander replied with a sad smile. “And before you offer, I’ll never use another. My sorcery should be sufficient provided you keep the enemy at least five feet away from me at all times.”

“I’ll do my best,” she said. “But my real worry is reinforcements. I’m confident we can take one prince, but if the Queen of War shows up, it’s over.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem if we’re quick,” Leander assured her.

“There are alarm bells all over the tower, but ringing one is the same as admitting you failed to keep Gilgamesh’s Hells secure.

No warlock or prince is going to risk that unless they have absolutely no other choice, which means we shouldn’t have to worry about reinforcements until the main force is already routed. ”

“I’d rather not have to worry about them at all,” Bex said with a sigh. “But I’ll take what I can get.”

“Adrian should be with us by that point,” Boston offered. “He’ll be able to tell us what’s going on.”

Hearing that brightened Bex’s mood enormously. “How close is he?”

“Very,” Boston said, jumping off Bex’s shoulder to start running down the tunnel. “This way!”

Leander looked miffed that a cat was taking the lead, but he got over it a second later, summoning a blue ball of sorcerous fire to light the way as he followed Boston into the dark.

Iggs trotted after next, shooting a curious look at Bex as he passed, but she shook her head and motioned for him to go ahead.

She did the same for every other demon, shooing the whole group ahead of her down the tunnel until, at last, she was alone with the one member of her crew who kept sitting out important discussions.

“Hey, Nemini,” she said when everyone else was gone. “Are you okay with this?”

“It’s a little late to ask, isn’t it?” Nemini replied as she emerged from the shadows. “The decision’s already been made.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to go along,” Bex said, glancing at the snakes that were curled in tight, protective coils around Nemini’s hornless head. “If you want to sit this one out, I’ll understand.”

“What’s the point?” Nemini asked, staring listlessly down at the hole in the floor that led to the Lowest Hells. “I’ve already passed through the worst part. If I quit now, the pain will be the same, so I might as well keep going.”

“There’s my optimist,” Bex joked as she put her arm around Nemini’s shoulders. “Thanks for sticking it out with us, Nemini. Your help means a lot.”

Nemini shrugged off the gratitude, but she didn’t duck out from under Bex’s arm, allowing the crownless queen to walk her down the tunnel following the noise of clomping demon feet and the ghostly blue light of Leander’s sorcerous fire.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Let me get this absolutely bleeding straight,” Desh was saying when Bex and Nemini caught back up with the front of the group.

“You used tunnels made by our ancestors, the ones they dug to escape the Hells, as cover so you could move your troops around where we couldn’t see them? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Leander replied, ignoring the fear demon’s rant as he carefully studied what looked like a perfectly normal section of the tunnel’s stone wall.

“The so-called ‘Founders’ Tunnels’ have been known to Gilgamesh since their creation.

He was planning to have them filled in once he’d amassed enough spare stone, but I convinced him it’d be more efficient to use the paths as a quick-access network for our own troops instead. ”

Desh rolled his orange eyes. “Sounds like you were quite the little suck-up.”

“I prefer to think of it as good strategy,” Prince Leander said.

“Gilgamesh has always favored efficiency above all other virtues. I merely used his cheapness to my own advantage. By convincing him the Founders’ Tunnels were more useful open than closed, not only did I avoid having to oversee a construction project involving miles of passageways filled with violent, rebellious slaves, I also gained a secret tunnel network unknown to the rest of my family.

My ultimate plan was to dig a new tunnel that Mara and I could use to escape, but I didn’t get to finish it before I got the summons to destroy the Queen of Wrath. ”

“That’s a pity,” Bex said, pointedly choosing to ignore the ‘destroy the Queen of Wrath’ part. “We could’ve used an escape tunnel.”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” Leander said morosely. “Digging the tunnel was merely a matter of labor, but I was never able to figure out a way to cross the void between life and death safely without a chain.”

Adrian had, but Bex didn’t think bragging to Leander about the awesome accomplishments of the brother Gilgamesh had chosen to replace him would go over well.

Leander was too busy staring at the wall to listen to her anyway, though Bex wasn’t sure why.

This part of the tunnel didn’t look any different to her, but Leander was squinting at the wall like he was trying to read a novel written in a very tiny font.

This went on for two entire minutes before Leander suddenly reached out to press his fingers against a patch of stone that looked exactly like every other part of the wall and began speaking loudly in Ancient Sumerian.

“ Blow away all that impedes royalty’s presence, Passage of the Summer Storm. ”

The sorcery was still ringing in Bex’s ears when the stone wall in front of Leander rolled away exactly like a summer raincloud to reveal a dark staircase as wide as a two-lane highway.

“Whoa,” Bex said, backing into Nemini, who was still hovering behind her like a nervous cat. “What is that?”

“The continuation of the central stair,” Leander replied, lifting his ball of blue fire to show Bex the enormous, open, corkscrew staircase that went both up and down the giant cylindrical shaft in front of them.

“It used to go all the way up to Heaven, but the entrance to this part was sealed off when Gilgamesh started using the Lowest Hells as a prison.”

Bex could see why. Now that he’d opened the wall, she could feel the crushing, falling terror of the void demons seeping up from the darkness below. It was just an echo of what she felt when she actually jumped in, but it was still enough to make their whole attack force stop in its tracks.

“Well,” Lys said with a swallow, breaking the sudden silence. “At least this explains why the Middle Hells tower has a floor at the bottom. I always wondered how the warlocks got down to the Lowest Hells, but now I see. They didn’t.”

“No one comes down here,” Leander agreed, tossing his glowing ball of fire up to illuminate the stone ceiling that abruptly cut through the giant black stairwell fifty feet above their current position.

“The Lowest Hells have been off-limits to everyone except Gilgamesh and his princes for eons, which makes it the last place they’ll be expecting an attack from.

” He flashed Bex a superior smile over his shoulder. “Convinced I’m on your side now?”

“It’s a good start,” Bex said, stepping gingerly through the hole he’d made in the wall to join Leander on the spiral staircase. “Ask me again after we’ve actually won something.”

The prince scowled, but he let the comment lie as he started up the steps, which looked very different from the ones in the Middle Hells.

Bex had only gotten a brief glimpse of the inside of the warlocks’ tower before the princess spotted her, but everything she’d seen had been as white and fancy as the Holy City itself.

The walls here, on the other hand, were the blackest Bex had seen since entering the Hells.

She didn’t know if the stone was naturally dark or if years of sin had just stained it that color, but the matte black soaked up the light and made it very difficult to see.

She’d just put her hand on the wall to make sure she didn’t miss a step and accidentally fall to her death when Bex felt the familiar, toxic burn of sin iron.

“What the—” She snatched her hand away, squinting at the walls in the faint light of the prince’s distant fire. “Are these pipes ?”

“Sin-iron water pipes,” Leander confirmed with a nod. “They’re what bring the deathly rivers up to the other Hells. How else do you think we maintain a steady stream of river water for the demons to strain sin out of?”

He reached out to rap his knuckles against the wall, which Bex only now realized wasn’t made of very dark stone like she’d thought.

It was sin iron. All the walls of the circular, spiral stairwell they were climbing were covered in sin-iron pipes of various sizes.

She was scrambling to think how they could use that to their advantage when the prince tapped her on the shoulder.

“Don’t dawdle, please,” he said in a low voice. “We’re in a place only Gilgamesh and his direct family are allowed to access. The security measures aren’t checked often, but they do exist. If we linger long enough to get caught, our advantage will be lost, and this place could turn into a trap.”

“Right,” Bex muttered, turning to signal General Kirok to start moving everyone in before jogging up the long spiral to join Boston, who’d already galloped up to the wall that separated the bottom of the Middle Hells tower from the terrors below.

“I can’t believe Gilgamesh just bricked it over,” the familiar said, standing on his hind paws to get a better look at the white stones mortared together just above his head. “There’s not even a support beam to prevent collapse. What if it broke and someone fell through?”

“I told you Gilgamesh was cheap,” Leander whispered as he joined them. “Speaking of which, please lower your voices. There’s only one layer of stone between us and the main security desk.”

Bex could hear it. Now that she was crouching right below the floor, she could hear the warlocks walking around in the tower above them.

She could even hear the murmur of their voices, though she couldn’t hear what they were saying or pinpoint where exactly they were standing.

She was pressing her ear to the stone to see if she could pick up something more useful when Leander pressed his palm flat against the stones beside her.

“Eyes of Curiosity.”

The moment the whispered words of sorcery left his lips, a shimmering window appeared in the bricks. The unexpected burst of light made Bex jump, and then her face broke into a grin.

Thanks to Leander’s spell, she now had an unobstructed view into the tower above them.

The huge, white, cylindrical building looked exactly like she remembered, but there were a lot more warlocks on the stairs this time.

It almost looked like they were standing in line, waiting their turn to talk to a person she couldn’t see, who was standing next to the golden armored prince Bex had seen before.

“Ah,” Leander whispered in a relieved voice. “That’s Demetrios, Prince of Hate.”

“Is he going to be a problem?” Bex whispered back.

“Not for me,” the prince said smugly. “Of all the replacements Father could have chosen, Demetrios is actually the least suited to handle my sorcery. His princess will be difficult, though.”

Given the chase she’d put them through last time despite her chains, Bex believed it.

Even more worrisome, she didn’t see the princess anywhere inside the square of the magical window.

She was moving her head from side to side, trying to see into the parts of the tower the window’s viewpoint didn’t include, when Bex finally caught a glimpse of the person the warlocks were lining up to meet.

The sight stopped her cold. Standing on the stairs with the golden prince and all the fawning, white-robed Heavenly denizens was a man dressed entirely in black. Bex couldn’t see his face from way down here, but that didn’t matter. She’d know that coat and pointed hat anywhere. It was Adrian.

Just knowing he was close sent Bex’s heart thudding up into her throat.

She’d thought about him so much over the last week, part of her was worried that she was hallucinating him now.

Then Boston made an excited sound, and Bex knew this was no dream.

After weeks of loneliness followed by losing him to the enemy, Adrian was only half a tower above her head, and nothing was going to keep Bex away from him this time.

“I know that look,” Boston whispered with a sharp-toothed cat grin. “Ready to get our witch back?”

Bex nodded rapidly but signaled for him to wait.

Her demons were still coming through the tunnel below.

They’d lose their advantage if they got excited and started blasting before everyone was in position.

But when she leaned over the edge of the spiral stairs to tell the demons to get ready, something slammed into the stone floor above her head like a dropped piano.

Wham!

The sudden noise almost made Bex fall off the stairs.

Thankfully, Iggs was just a few steps below and was able to grab her before she went over.

Bex nodded her thanks and scrambled back to Leander’s sorcerous window, but when she looked through to see what in the Hells had just hit them, the chained princess was staring right back at her with golden eyes full of hate.

She bared her white teeth next, snarling through the cage of her sin-iron muzzle as she began punching a hole through the bricked-up passage with her carved white fist.

“Forget getting into position!” Boston yowled, pawing something out of his cat pack as the stone began to crumble. “Just go! ”

That was all the warning Bex got before the intense smell of forest mixed with the violence of a thunderstorm exploded through the ceiling above her like a magical bomb.