Page 6 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

“He won’t be able to,” Agatha added, putting the final touch on her painting before stepping back to admire her work.

“If he even thinks about disobeying your orders, the curse will kill him. Likewise, if his queen tells him to slay you, all you have to do is say ‘don’t,’ and the poison will cripple his body before he can react.

It’s a custom mix of all my best toxins, and now that it’s on, they won’t even be able to see it’s there. Watch.”

Bex squinted in the fading sunlight, but the witch was right. The black lines that had looked so vivid just a few seconds ago were already fading into Kirok’s metal skin, seeping beneath his armored exterior until she could no longer tell which parts of him had been painted and which hadn’t.

“The poison will stay until the next new moon,” Agatha said as she wrapped her toxic paintbrush in a square of stained leather and handed it to one of the witches behind her. “I suggest you don’t give him any controversial orders until then. That curse has a hair trigger.”

“All the more reason not to risk it,” Bex argued, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m doing this to save demons, not kill them by accident.”

“And that is why I must go with you,” Kirok insisted, squeezing his giant fists. “War demons are the guardians of all of Gilgamesh’s domains. If you wish to infiltrate them successfully, you’ll need an inside man. One who isn’t a transformed lust demon.”

He finished with a glare at Lys, who glared right back, but as much as Bex hated to admit it, Kirok had a point.

One of their plan’s biggest weak points was the fact that Lys was the only one of them who’d actually been to the Hells, and they hadn’t been back in centuries.

An updated guide who knew both the jailer and the jailed’s side of things would be extremely useful, but Bex still shook her head.

“It’s too much of a risk,” she said. “Once we start, we can’t afford to make any mistakes. If that curse screws up, you could betray us to the enemy.”

“My curse won’t ‘screw up’,” Agatha huffed, glaring at Bex. “Who do you think taught Adrian how to do these things?”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Bex said quickly. “It’s just—”

“You’re much more likely to kill him by accident than he is to kill you,” the witch spoke over her. “This curse will punish him for disobeying any order, no matter how insignificant. If you tell him to go left and he goes right, he’ll be dead within five minutes.”

That sounded like the biggest reason yet not to bring Kirok along, but the war demon’s bronze face was resolute.

“I don’t care,” he said, dropping to one knee in front of Bex.

“When I was trapped in the Anchor doing those horrible things under my queen’s command, I swore a thousand oaths that I would make it right.

If I do not go with you, and you die while attempting this attack, I’ll never get a chance to keep my word.

I don’t care if my life is lost. I’d rather die by accident tonight than live another thousand years with this betrayal and no way to make amends. ”

He looked her straight in the eyes as he spoke, and Bex’s whole body slumped with the force of her sigh.

“Can’t argue with that,” she said, holding out her hand. “Welcome to the team.”

She’d meant to help him back to his feet, but Kirok took her hand and bent his horns over it instead.

It was the same position Iggs came out in whenever she used his name to calm his raging demon, the one that had made Adrian so angry after their first trip into Limbo.

Bex secretly hated it too. It looked so subservient, but she knew better than to say so in front of old demons.

To them, it was still the greatest show of respect, and it was a queen’s duty to accept that, even if she didn’t have a crown anymore.

“Does the paint come off?” she asked instead, turning back to Agatha as Kirok rose to his feet. “Like, do we have to be careful about getting him near water or anything?”

The Old Wife of the Flesh laughed. “What’s the good of an obedience-enforcing curse if it could just be washed off? No, no, no. I’m afraid the only way that poison’s coming off before the new moon is if I lick it off him.”

Bex blinked. “I’m sorry, but did you say ‘lick it off him’?”

“It’s a very specific sort of paint,” the witch replied, looking at Kirok’s towering, muscular, four-armed body with a wicked gleam in her blue eyes. “Please make sure he survives to come back for his cleaning. I’m quite looking forward to it.”

By the time she finished, all the demons except Lys and Nemini were blushing to the roots of their hair.

If Adrian had been here, Bex was certain he’d be dragging his hands over his face.

She was smiling at that mental image when something heavy and warm slammed into her arm like a furry cannonball.

“ Oof ,” she grunted, looking up just in time to see a pair of green eyes staring back. “Boston?” she said, leaning away from the extremely large cat that was suddenly sitting on her shoulder. “You’re here too?”

“Of course I’m here,” the familiar replied in an insulted voice. “You’re sortieing into the afterlife, correct? That’s where my witch is, so, naturally, I’m coming with you. I’m just borrowing your shoulder for a moment to give Bran something to aim at.”

“Aim at?” Bex repeated in alarm. “Why is he aiming—”

Everything else she’d been about to say was lost in a loud whoosh as Adrian’s raven-carved broom swooped out of the evening sky like a diving falcon.

It missed Bex by a fraction of an inch, shooting past her shoulder before pulling up at the last second to finish in a hover position over the ground right in front of her feet.

“ Bran! ” Boston cried, ignoring Bex’s startled gasping as he leaped off her shoulder as hard as he’d just landed to go bump noses with the broom. “So good to see you again! How was the flight from Seattle?”

The broom hovered silently while Boston nodded.

“That does sound dreadful,” the cat said after several seconds of this. “I’m glad you made it here in one piece, and you brought what I asked for! Thank you.”

He trotted down the broom’s length to pull a large, oblong object out of the cone of bristles at the end with his teeth.

Bex’s first thought was that Bran had brought him one of those giant dock rats that were always scuttling around Seattle’s piers.

Then Boston began wiggling his paws through the loops on the front, and she realized it was a backpack.

A tiny backpack. For cats.

“Boston,” Iggs said, desperately trying, and utterly failing, to hold in his laughter. “Is that a cat pack ?”

“It’s a work pack that my witch sewed specifically for me ,” Boston told him angrily.

“And before you say another word, it’s filled with things that are going to save our lives.

” He turned his head around to nudge the top of the pack open with his nose.

“It’s got all sorts of useful reagents collected from Adrian’s Blackwood before Gilgamesh corrupted it, which I’m certain my witch will appreciate.

Spell components for witchcraft are probably impossible to find in Heaven, and no one would be stupid enough to imprison a Blackwood without emptying his pockets.

” He smiled smugly. “Adrian will be overjoyed when he sees this!”

“I’m sure he will be,” Bex said with a smile, crouching down beside the cat to get a better look in his bag. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything in there that could help us find Adrian’s location.”

Boston huffed. “What kind of slacker familiar do you think I am? Of course I’ve got finding spells tuned to my witch, though once I get close enough, I should be able to find him using only my nose.

Bran also has his own means of locating Adrian, which is a good Plan B, though he’s mostly coming along because he also wants his witch back. ”

The carved broomstick rattled furiously, and Boston gave it a sharp nod. “Well said, my friend, well said. We’ll show Gilgamesh the vengeance of the Blackwood!”

“No one deserves it more,” Agatha agreed, her previously flirtatious voice now as sharp as a knife.

“No one escapes their karma forever, and Gilgamesh’s wheel is heavy indeed.

” She nodded at Bex. “I think throwing the Queen of Wrath at him is quite fitting, considering the great anger his actions have built up over the years.”

Bex dropped her eyes at once. As always, the urge to insist she wasn’t the Queen of Wrath anymore was burning on her tongue, but she’d learned the hard way not to say such things in front of her demons, especially not Lys and Iggs.

Horns or no horns, they needed her to be their queen, and Bex had always done what her people needed.

Right now, that meant keeping her mouth shut, so she stood by with her lips dutifully sealed while the witches moved out of the way to allow Boston and the demons to form a circle around her.

“Okay,” Bex said when everyone was in position. “We’ve got me, Nemini, Lys, Iggs, Kirok, Boston, and Bran. Is that everybody? No more last-minute additions?”

“Better not be,” Lys grumbled. “This boat’s full enough as it is.”

“Let’s do it, then,” Bex said, putting her hand on the lust demon’s shoulder. “When you’re ready.”

Just like in the café earlier, Lys gave her a pleading look.

But while they didn’t hold their opinions back in private, Lys never contradicted their queen in public.

When Bex didn’t back down, Lys’s transformed face pulled into a determined mask as they reached down to grab the bound human with the bag over his head, who’d been wiggling in the grass at their feet this whole time.

The man yelped when Lys pulled the bag off, raising his tied hands as high as he could in a last-ditch effort to protect his face. Bex already knew what to expect, but she still glowered when she saw his tattooed fingers. The look of utter terror on his face, however, was quite enjoyable.

“Hello, little warlock,” Lys said in a deadly voice. “Ready to do the job we discussed?”

“Hells no!” the man yelled, undulating his bound body like a worm in a desperate attempt to get away from them. “You said you were the wife of a sorcerer who needed a demon banished! Then, when I said I’d do it, you clubbed me over the head, tied me up, and dragged me out to…”

His voice trailed off as his eyes finally moved away from Lys to all the other figures standing around them.

“Great Gilgamesh,” he muttered, his goateed face going pale. “Are you all demons?”

“Not the cat,” Bex said, crouching in the grass beside him. When they were face-to-face, she pulled a small velvet bag out of one of her many cargo pockets and shoved it at the warlock’s chest harder than was strictly necessary.

“Oof,” he grunted when the bag hit his sternum. “What’s that?”

“Fuel,” Bex replied, pulling the string to open the bag so the warlock could see the quintessence glittering inside.

“I know the cabals are short on magic right now,” she said. “So I’m giving you what you need to banish all of us to the Hells.”

“You want to be sent to the Hells?” the warlock asked, flabbergasted. “Why?”

“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you,” Bex replied with a smile. “We’re not fans of your profession here, so I suggest you get to work before Lys decides it’d be more fun to gut you.”

Lys punctuated that with a crack of their knuckles, making the warlock jump.

“I can certainly perform a banishment, if that’s really what you want,” he told Bex with a swallow. “But you’ll have to untie my hands, and I’ll need to know all of your true names.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Lys said, waggling their finger at him. “You only need to know one of our true names. Banished demons can take anyone they want to the Hells with them if the passenger doesn’t fight, though it’s much more fun when they do.”

The warlock scoffed. “That’s not true.”

“Of course it’s true,” Lys said. “I’ve done it. Where do you think the phrase ‘drag me to Hell’ came from? It’s for demons who fight, and I’ve always loved a fight.”

“That’s ridiculous,” the warlock insisted, though he sounded slightly less certain this time. “How can a common lust demon know more about the mechanics of banishment than a cabal-trained warlock?”

“Easy,” Lys replied. “I’m older than you are, and, unlike all you ‘trained’ warlocks, I’ve actually been banished. Now, are you going to do this, or should I take the easy kill and go find someone who asks fewer stupid questions?”

The warlock looked over his shoulder for help only to cringe back to the grass when he saw the witches standing next to their forest, which was looking very foreboding in the evening light.

That must have been enough to convince him there was no way out of this, because he lowered his head a second later, holding out his tattooed hands for Lys to untie before meekly opening the bag of quintessence.

“Which one of you will I be banishing?” he asked politely.

Lys dropped their human guise, shifting back into their true, towering form as they wrapped their dusky pink, leathery wings around the entire group. When at least one inch of their body was touching everyone, they answered.

“Lysanae.”

The warlock’s hooded eyes went huge. “Lysanae?” he repeated in a fear-choked voice. “Right hand of the Queen of Wrath?”

“That’s my title,” Lys said proudly, leaning forward until they were towering over the much shorter human. “Now put it to use, or I’ll show you how I got it.”

The warlock got to work in a panic, grabbing the quintessence out of the bag and shoving the only four coins Bex had managed to scrape together into his mouth all at once.

He cracked them with one bite and began speaking the words of sorcery.

He was going too fast for Bex to translate, but she heard the world Lysanae right before the ground split open under her feet, and a coil of chains shot out to drag Lys—and everyone Lys was holding—straight down into Hell.