Page 5 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

“It’d hardly be useful if they didn’t,” Bex said as Iggs started pulling out belts of the biggest bullets she’d ever seen. “But can those sorts of mundane weapons even hurt Gilgamesh’s constructs? I thought we needed sorcerous weapons for that.”

“Enough kinetic force hurts anything,” Iggs insisted.

“These are actual military weapons, not the low-powered civilian and militia stuff we were stuck with before. Each of these bullets can punch a hole through a fifty-millimeter armor plate, and the heavy machine gun fires fifteen hundred of them per minute.” He gazed at the giant gun lovingly.

“I bet I could Swiss-cheese a prince with this baby.”

“I’ll leave it to you, then,” Bex said, hefting her own backpack higher on her shoulder. “Use that bag well, and if anything happens to me, make sure all the guns inside get into demon hands before you give it back to Felix.”

“I swear I will,” Iggs said as he carefully replaced the ammo and the giant gun into the sack. “But you don’t need to make plans like that. We’re going with you this time, so nothing’s going to happen.”

“Survival is never guaranteed,” Bex reminded him, then she smiled. “But it’d have to go pretty horrible to end up worse than my last mission, so at least the bar’s on the floor.”

That was supposed to be a joke, but Iggs wasn’t laughing. “We won’t let that happen,” he promised, his red eyes determined as he stared at her. “We’re going to get through this alive, all of us, and we will win.”

His sudden seriousness caught Bex by surprise, though it really shouldn’t have.

Lys’s reluctance this afternoon had thrown her, but Iggs had been ready to charge all Nine Hells at once from the moment she pulled him out of Limbo.

That was pretty much the plan tonight, so of course he’d be pumped.

Bex just wished she could steal some of his confidence as she set her backpack down for a final check.

Iggs was the most tactically-minded of their group thanks to his obsession with war games, so she always liked to get his opinion.

She must’ve done a good job this time, though, because the only addition he suggested was the exploding short sword he normally used as part of his backup-roll-everything loadout.

“So,” Iggs said as he helped Bex adjust the short sword’s sheath at the small of her back so its handle wouldn’t knock against her backpack. “Now that we’re doing this for real, have you made a final decision about who you’re bringing? I’m going, obviously, but who else?”

“I was planning on just our normal crew,” Bex said with a frown. “Why do you ask? Did you have someone in mind?”

“There’s a few extra candidates,” Iggs said when he was finished strapping her in. “You’ll see when we get outside.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked as Iggs maneuvered Solomon’s Armory—which, as a knapsack sized for the average human, now looked comically small on his giant frame—over his shoulders.

“You’ll see,” he promised, waving for her to lead the way out of the RV.

Bex did so with a scowl. One of the big reasons she’d decided to go ahead and do this tonight—other than all the obvious ones—was because she’d hoped to avoid making a scene.

Her demons were jumpy enough after having their safe haven bombarded and seeing their queen crawl back defeated.

She’d hoped to sneak out and score a victory before anyone outside her inner circle even knew that she was gone, but she should’ve known better.

There was nothing demons paid more attention to than a queen, even a hornless, handless, swordless one, so Bex wasn’t actually surprised when she stepped through the RV’s busted door to find a crowd waiting for her.

Nemini was there, of course, and actually looking combat-ready for once.

She normally went into battle in the same sweaters and running shoes that she wore to read books in the RV all day.

This evening, however, she was wearing a sleek, dark-gray turtleneck and the same practical black military fatigues as Bex.

She still had her usual comfy sneakers, but her snakes were all up and looking around above her head, which Bex took as a good sign.

Lys looked similarly battle-ready standing beside Nemini in a no-nonsense older female form.

They also had what appeared to be a tied-up body with a black bag over its head squirming on their shoulder, but that was fairly normal for Lys, so Bex didn’t think much of it.

What she hadn’t anticipated was the crowd of witches standing in front of the forest to the lust demon’s left.

There were over a dozen of them, all ladies of various ages dressed in the same all-black clothing and pointed hat that Adrian always wore.

His mother, Agatha, was at the head of the pack, along with a shirtless, fully transformed General Kirok.

That would have been strange enough all by itself, but the witch wasn’t just standing close to the four-armed demon.

She was painting him, using a brush made from nightshade flowers to trace spiraling black patterns all over the towering war demon’s bronze chest, neck, and shoulders.

“What is going on?” Bex demanded as she stomped down the RV’s bent metal steps. “Kirok! You’re supposed to be guarding the eastern road with the other war demons.”

That wasn’t entirely true. The war demons weren’t actually “guarding” anything.

They’d been sent to the other side of the Blackwood to keep them away from the rest of the refugees because (a) no one wanted to be around them after the betrayal that had gotten half their army shot in the back, and (b) no war demon could be trusted so long as their queen was still alive to give them orders.

Bex knew Kirok understood these points because he was the one who’d volunteered to separate the war demons in the first place.

He wasn’t even supposed to know she was leaving since Bex didn’t want to risk Heaven getting a heads-up, but here he was.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, looking him up and down. “And what are you doing to him?”

That last question was directed at Agatha, but the old witch just flashed Bex a smile that looked so much like Adrian’s it made her heart skip a beat.

“Helping,” Agatha said as she returned her attention to the intricate patterns she was painting into the hollow of Kirok’s bronze clavicle.

“We’d hardly be good hosts if we let you go into battle without backup.

Of course, a good guest would have warned us sooner that she was planning to leave, but we Blackwoods are an adaptable lot, and as you see, we’ve made do. ”

“Made do with what?” Bex asked, more confused than angry now. “What kind of backup are you sending? And you still haven’t explained what you’re doing to Kirok.”

“She is doing what I asked,” the war demon replied, tilting his head to look at Bex around the tall point of the witch’s black hat. “The Old Wife of the Future informed me that you were beginning your assault tonight, so I am here because I’m going with you.”

“The Hells you are,” Lys snapped, tossing the tied-up body they’d been carrying onto the ground, where it landed with a startled grunt. “You’re a war demon whose queen is still alive and proudly on Gilgamesh’s side. Saying ‘we can’t trust you’ is a fact , not an insult.”

“I’m well aware,” Kirok replied curtly, pointing one of his four hands at the black spirals that now covered most of his upper body. “That is why I asked the witches of the Blackwood to curse me.”

He said that last part as if it were the ultimate argument in his favor, but Bex immediately shook her head. “A curse can’t make you ignore orders from your queen.”

“But it can render me incapable of following them,” Kirok insisted, turning his head so that Bex could see how the black markings curled all the way up his neck and past his ear to the underside of his flat horns. She was still trying to figure out why that was important when Agatha explained.

“I’m cursing him against disobedience,” the witch said, keeping her eyes on her work as she deftly added more spirals to the dip between Kirok’s pectorals.

“If he disobeys any order, even a minor one, the paint covering his body will release a poison that even demonic regeneration can’t keep up with.

I’ve warned him it will be a slow and painful death, but he said he’s willing, so I’m making sure to be thorough. ”

“The curse part I get,” Bex said. “By why would you rig it to trigger on dis obedience?”

“Because I still intend to obey your orders,” Kirok explained gravely. “The poison is only there to ensure that, if I am given a command I do not wish to follow, the mere thought of refusal will activate the curse and kill me.”

“Again,” Bex said, “why would you do that?”

“Because death is the only force strong enough to allow me to ignore my queen’s commands,” the war demon replied, lowering his horns as far as he could without getting in the Witch of the Present’s way.

“I am prepared to endure any suffering,” he said before Bex could get a word in.

“Even a slow, agonizing death is acceptable if it means my queen can never make me a traitor again. I beg you, Queen of Wrath, allow me this opportunity to make amends for the evil my demons and I were forced to commit. I used to be a slave trainer in the Hells. I can guide you to whatever goal you seek in that terrible place. Just give me a chance to redeem myself and the soldiers under my command, and I swear on my life and my name that I will never betray you again.”