Page 52 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)
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“I CAN’T BELIEVE HE made a princess out of me while I was still alive,” Bex growled as she raced toward the tower, curling both of her hands into fists because she could do that now. “Seriously, did Gilgamesh think you’d roll over and become his prince for real just because he kidnapped you?”
She looked at Adrian, who was hovering beside her on his broom, but he was too busy staring at the tower ahead to answer.
In his defense, it did look really different.
The whole place had been a raging battle when the princess tackled Bex through the wall just a few minutes ago.
Now, Desh and his team of Lowest Hells escapees had taken it over top to bottom.
They’d already torn open the central security cabinet and were frantically handing out keys, which made Bex feel a lot better about the reckless promises she’d just made to the slaves on the floor.
Lys was supposed to be helping with that, but Bex didn’t see them anywhere.
She did see Kirok, though. The former general was on the bottom floor, addressing all the war-demon guards who’d suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of a revolution.
He nodded to Bex when she and Adrian rushed by but didn’t try to stop her, proving yet again that he was an invaluable addition to the team.
Bex was going to have to thank him properly when she got a moment. For now, though, she focused on running down the spiral stairs as fast as possible. She’d already cleared two full rotations when Adrian hovered down the open center beside her.
“Would you like a lift?”
Bex grinned and grabbed his offered hand, leaping onto the broom in front of him.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Adrian said, sounding extremely pleased with himself as he wrapped his arms around her and signaled Bran to start the descent, which the broom did like a falling elevator.
“He didn’t bring me here to be a prince.”
“What?” Bex asked, clinging to the broom as it dropped into the dark.
“Your question earlier,” he clarified, completely unfazed by their rapid descent.
“You asked what Gilgamesh was thinking. I won’t pretend to know his actual logic, but I’m certain he didn’t bring me to Heaven because he wanted to add another son to the family business.
I was more like one of those captured scientists who worked on the atom bomb.
Even the princess he made out of your hand was only there to make sure I stayed in my cell and on schedule. ”
“On schedule for what?” Bex asked nervously. “Because ‘atom bomb’ doesn’t sound good.”
Adrian opened his mouth to answer, but they were almost at the floor by this point, and whatever he’d been about to say was drowned out by Iggs.
“ Bex! ” he shouted, waving his giant red arms. “ Adrian! Over here!”
Bex jumped off the broom the moment Adrian touched them down, running across the dusty, blood-splattered bottom of the stairs, the seemingly last level of Hell.
“What’s going on?” she demanded as she ran to join Iggs at the edge of the circular floor. “Where are the…”
Her voice trailed off as her brain finally caught up with what her eyes were seeing.
Iggs was fully transformed and standing in front of a pair of giant doors carved with a terrifying image of Gilgamesh.
It looked just like the doors they’d passed through to enter the Middle Hells, except this pair had an Iggs-shaped dent in the middle.
He’d clearly been throwing himself at them for a while, but a door strong enough to keep Iggs out wasn’t the most alarming thing down here.
That honor went to the giant splatter of white blood that covered the entire back half of the stairwell’s circular floor.
It looked like a prince had exploded, but before Bex could congratulate Iggs on what had obviously been a massive win, she spotted Leander sitting on the only remaining clean spot with a very bloody-looking Lys laid out beside him.
“ Lys! ” Bex shouted, sprinting over. “What happened?”
“They took a hit from a Blade of Gilgamesh,” Leander replied calmly, waving his hand at the wad of black-drenched bandages wrapped around Lys’s shoulder. “It wasn’t a fatal wound, but the bleeding has yet to stop.”
It would never stop. Bex knew that firsthand, but it didn’t stop her from dropping to her knees beside Lys’s body to check for herself.
“How long have they been unconscious?”
That question came from Adrian, who was suddenly right beside her, gently pushing Bex’s shaking hands away so he could examine Lys’s wound.
Leander shot the witch a cold look and said nothing. Fortunately, Iggs was on it.
“They’ve been out since we jumped down here,” he reported. “So maybe ten minutes?”
Adrian nodded and reached back toward Boston, who was already dumping a cornucopia of witchy-looking items out of his cat pack.
“I can’t heal a Blade of Gilgamesh wound down here,” he said in the clipped, stern tone Bex thought of as his doctor voice. “But I can stem the bleeding and help them regain consciousness.”
“Are you sure?” Bex whispered, hands shaking.
“Nothing is sure when it comes to living bodies,” Adrian warned her, then he smiled. “But I’ve treated Lys before. They don’t give up easily, and blood loss is much easier to deal with than sin-iron poisoning.” He gave her a nudge with his shoulder. “I’ll take care of them. You go help Iggs.”
Bex didn’t want to leave. This was too close to what had happened the last time Lys faced a prince. They’d survived that, but Bex was still shaking from the idea that Lys could have died down here and she wouldn’t even have known.
“They’re not dead yet,” Adrian said, reading the fear right off her face. “And they’re not going to be. I’m fighting with them now, so you go do what only you can do and leave me to do what I do best, okay?”
“Okay,” Bex whispered, giving Lys’s too-cold hand a final squeeze before she forced herself to get up and go to Iggs, who was bouncing nervously on the balls of his giant feet.
“Are they going to be okay?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Bex said, forcing herself to sound confident. “Adrian’s on it, and you know how good he is. Lys isn’t going anywhere.”
She clenched her fists as she finished, squeezing her fingers hard like she could squeeze the words into being true, and Iggs’s red eyes widened.
“Hey, you got your hand back!” he cried, ducking his giant horned head to get a better look. “And your ring, too! When did that happen?”
“When I ripped the head off the doll Gilgamesh stuck them to,” Bex replied, lifting her restored fist. “The princess that tackled me out of nowhere was the one Gilgamesh made for Adrian out of my stolen hand.”
“Adrian got a princess ?” Iggs said, his eyes going even wider. “So does that mean Drox is a gross white Blade of Gilgamesh now?”
“No,” Bex said quickly, looking down at the band on her right ring finger. “Or, at least, I don’t think so. I still don’t have a name, so I haven’t been able to draw him yet, but he doesn’t feel like a tool of Heaven.”
“That’s good to hear,” Iggs said, but he still looked disappointed. “Gotta admit, when I heard Desh and the others cheering upstairs, I was really hoping you’d made a comeback.”
“Who says I haven’t?” Bex replied as she called her flames to surround her body.
Iggs staggered away, his shocked face lit up by her blazing light. Instead of jumping for joy like she’d hoped, though, her demon collapsed on the ground.
“Whoa, Iggs!” Bex cried, snuffing her fire as she rushed to grab him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Iggs said, his voice thick with emotion as he bowed his horns to the floor. “I’m just happy you’ve returned, my queen.”
“I never left,” Bex reminded him, but she stopped trying to pull him out of his bow.
She still hated when Iggs got like this, but she’d learned long ago that he needed to do this stuff sometimes.
It was like she’d told Adrian in front of the boba shop months ago: Iggs bowed for his own reasons.
All Bex could do was stand there and take it until he decided to get back up.
“Sorry,” he whispered, scrubbing his face as he lifted his head at last. “Got something in my eye.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Bex promised as she reached up to dry his cheek.
“You held the line and saved us all. I don’t know if I could’ve taken a prince by myself even with my fire back, but you made it so I didn’t have to.
” She gave him a huge, proud smile. “You’ve served me very well, Iggerux.
I couldn’t have done any of this without you, and I am very grateful. ”
She ducked her head, lowering the place where her horns used to be. Naturally, this sent Iggs into a panic. Before he could go too far off the deep end, though, Bex lifted her head with a smile.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go save our people. Where are they?”
It took Iggs a few seconds to snap out of the daze of everything that had just happened. When he did, though, he was all business.
“Over here,” he said, striding across the white-blood-soaked room toward a large set of black doors with a fresh, Iggs-shaped dent in the middle.
“I heard them yelling after the Prince of Hate died, which was some scary shit, by the way. I dropped him down here to get him away from the others, but it was his princess who actually dealt the killing blow.”
“I was wondering what happened to throw his blood ten feet up the walls,” Bex said. “But where’s the princess? Did she get away?”
Iggs shook his head. “Leander evaporated her. He’s not half bad now that he’s on our team. I was going to ask him to blast the door open for me, but I didn’t want any of our people getting hurt.”
“Are you sure they’re in there?” Bex asked, cupping a hand to her ear. “I don’t hear anything.”