Page 38 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)
The roar of gunfire that followed was deafening.
It echoed up the tower like a hail of ball bearings, drowning out every other sound except Iggs’s scream of fury.
The giant gun had to be kicking like an elephant, but Iggs held it rock-steady, using his enormous strength to keep the barrel leveled at the Princess of Hate’s chest.
It was such an impressive display, Adrian almost didn’t notice that the flying bullets weren’t even chipping the alabaster folds of the princess’s carved dress.
But while the mundane, human-made weapon clearly wasn’t enough to bring down Gilgamesh’s sorcerous masterpiece, the kinetic force of all those bullets was doing an excellent job of pushing the princess back.
No matter how hard she dug her carved feet into the broken ground, the Princess of Hate was unable to step forward, buying time for the rest of the demons to surge out of the hole in the floor like a tide.
There was a staggering number of them. Uncollared demons of every type, size, and shape were pouring into the guard tower from below.
Aside from Iggs, Adrian had no idea who any of them were, though he swore he saw Desh at the front of the pack.
The fear demon was leading the charge up the tower stairs with his black scales pulled up to his neck and an automatic weapon of some sort clutched in his clawed hands.
All of the demons had guns, actually. That struck Adrian as very strange but also highly effective, because unlike the princess, Gilgamesh’s warlocks were not immune to bullets.
There were a few who managed to throw up sorcerous shields or hide behind their bronze-armored war demons, but most were caught flat-footed by the storm of bullets, falling off the tower’s spiral staircase like white silk sandbags as the demons swarmed up the floors.
Adrian was watching them push the line against the warlocks who’d managed to defend themselves when Bran’s broomstick suddenly dipped.
His first thought was that his loyal broom had just dodged a bullet for him.
When Adrian looked back toward the broom’s bushy tail, though, the truth turned out to be the opposite.
While he’d been watching the fight, his princess had kept her eyes on him.
Adrian didn’t even know where she’d come from, but the Princess of Wrath was suddenly hanging from the back of his broom, her white hands crushing Bran’s broomstick as her golden eyes locked onto Adrian’s in fury.
“We have to leave,” she hissed as she began hauling herself hand over hand up the broomstick toward him. “I won’t let them steal you from our king. I won’t let them steal you from me !”
Her carved hand lashed out, grabbing the ankle of Adrian’s black boot before he could snatch it away.
“You’re mine !” she screamed. “ My prince! My love! I won’t—”
Her voice cut off as Adrian whipped his hand down and launched a blast of sorcery into her face.
It wasn’t even a proper spell, just the manifestation of his wish to make her go away fueled by the power of his white blood.
It never would’ve worked if they’d been facing off for real, but the princess was dangling from a broom that didn’t like her anyway.
The moment her fingers loosened in surprise, Bran flicked like a whip, slinging the shocked princess off his broomstick and straight through the window across the tower to their left.
“Nice shot!” Boston cried as her white body crashed through the glass and vanished into the smoky darkness of the Hell outside. “But what was that?”
“A problem,” Adrian muttered, bending over to prod the ankle she’d grabbed. It hurt enough to make him gasp, but it didn’t feel broken, so he pushed the pain away and got back to the matter at hand.
“What’s the plan?”
“You’re looking at it,” Boston said, running down the broomstick and up Adrian’s chest to take his usual position on his witch’s shoulder. “I’m rescuing you, Desh and his team are going for the keys that will unlock all the demons in the Middle Hells, and Iggs and Bex are—”
“Bex?” Adrian interrupted, jerking around so fast he nearly fell off his broom. “Bex is with you ?”
“Of course she’s with us,” Boston said. “Who else do you think could put all of this together?”
Adrian stared at him in shock. “But…” he said at last. “Didn’t Gilgamesh defeat her? Isn’t she locked up?”
“Come on,” the cat said with a scathing look.
“Have you ever known Bex to stop after a defeat? I’m not entirely sure of the sequence of events, but she reappeared at the Seattle Anchor shortly after Heaven stopped its bombardment and just seconds before the Old Wives arrived to evacuate everyone to the Blackwood. ”
“The Old Wives went to Seattle ?” Adrian repeated, dumbfounded. “How? Why? The Blackwood never gets involved in outside affairs, so why did—”
“I’ll explain it to you later,” Boston snapped. “Right now you need to pay attention before—”
His voice cut off as the river of bullets that had been roaring nonstop since Iggs climbed out of the hole abruptly ended.
A loud curse came next, and Adrian looked down to see the mad Princess of Hate standing with her carved hand wrapped around the muzzle of Iggs’s gun.
She must’ve been slowly pushing forward against the bullets this whole time because there was a mountain of flattened slugs in front of her.
The princess, however, was uninjured. A fact Iggs clearly recognized all too well from the look of horror on his face as she grabbed the gun out of his hands and broke it in two, snapping the metal barrel like a twig before throwing it aside to free her hands so she could drive them into the demon’s chest.
It happened with the same horrible slow motion as a car crash.
Adrian was certain he was about to watch his friend die in front of him, and he didn’t even have a spell to stop it.
There was nothing in his pockets but cat hair, the finding charm, and the Queen of Pride’s horns.
He was about to try sorcery again even though he already knew it was too late when the white hand the princess had been about to stab through Iggs’s ribs was suddenly knocked off course.
The chained princess herself staggered a second later, kicked nearly off her feet by someone moving faster than Adrian’s eyes could track.
It wasn’t until the black blur stopped to help Iggs get free of his ruined gun’s shoulder strap that Adrian realized he was looking at a petite woman dressed in black combat gear with long, midnight-dark hair pulled into a ponytail, pale skin, and a look of pure fury etched into her lovely, determined face.
“Bex,” he whispered, lurching toward her so fast that Bran had to swerve to keep him from falling. “ Bex! ”
She didn’t look up, and thank the Forest for that, because the Princess of Hate recovered from the kick immediately.
If Adrian had distracted her, she would’ve gotten blindsided.
As always, though, the Queen of Wrath didn’t flinch.
She ducked the princess’s punch like she’d seen it coming for miles, letting the white doll’s manacled arm fly over her hornless head before lunging forward to slam a short sword Adrian vaguely remembered Iggs wearing once into the Princess of Hate’s muzzled face.
The explosion that followed rocked the tower and sent the princess’s white body flying into the air.
If her head hadn’t been enclosed in a sin-iron cage, Adrian was sure that hit would’ve blown it off.
Her jaw and neck were still blackened when she landed on the second loop of the tower’s spiral stair, snarling at Bex like a rabid animal.
Bex snarled back, showing the princess the full spread of her fangs as she lifted her short sword for the next attack.
Adrian’s heart lifted with it. Great Forest, it was good to see her.
From the moment he’d first felt Heaven’s attack through his tree, not an hour had gone by that he hadn’t worried about her.
He’d imagined all sorts of horrible scenarios where she suffered for his stupid mistakes, but at no point had he expected to find her already free and in the Hells leading what appeared to be a full-scale demon rebellion.
Dunderheaded assumption on his part. Adrian still wasn’t sure how all of this had come to be, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized he should’ve expected it from the beginning, because this was what Bex did.
She rose from her ashes. She picked up her sword and came back swinging every single time.
Nothing— not death nor defeat nor Gilgamesh himself—could keep her down for long, and Adrian was so proud of her that he felt like he was going to burst. He was scrambling to think of a way to help her that wouldn’t get in her way when a flash of white shot through the golden doors at the tower’s base and tackled Bex off her feet.
It happened so quickly, Adrian didn’t recognize the white streak as his own princess until she smashed the real Bex through the wall.
When he rushed Bran to the window to look, he saw the two of them lying outside the tower in a kicking tangle, rolling through the dirty water while rows of chained slaves desperately tried to get out of their way.
This was normally the point where Bex would’ve lit up in a blaze of fury, but no flames appeared.
She actually seemed to be struggling to keep her hornless head above the water as the princess crawled on top of her, using the weight of her carved body to pin the flesh-and-blood Bex to the ground.
She grabbed her by the throat next, holding the real Bex in place with her carved hand while her gloved one curled into a fist to start pounding the queen in the face, but Bex didn’t give her the chance.
She’d already wiggled her good arm free to slam her explosive short sword into the princess’s unprotected side.