Page 67 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

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T HE CITY-SIZED CAVERN of the Middle Hells was packed when they finally made it back.

Demons of every sort had formed a massive crowd around the tower’s base.

The only reason they weren’t inside the tower as well was because Kirok had organized the war demons into a perimeter so the evacuating wrath and pride demons would have room to actually get off the stairs.

Iggs was standing right beside the general, as was Nemini, who was still holding the ball of Bex’s fire over her head like a snake-haired Statue of Liberty.

They all looked relieved when Adrian’s broom popped into view, but that was the only positive expression to be had.

“I’ll be with you in a second,” Bex said to Kirok and Iggs as she vaulted off the broom. “Nemini, can you take a look at our sisters? They’re not waking up.”

The Queen of Pride nodded and handed Bex’s fire back to her.

Bex wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with that, but the moment she touched the flames, her body sucked them back in.

When everything was back where it was supposed to be, Nemini hopped onto the broom to join Adrian and Leander while Bex jogged over to Iggs and Kirok, who were standing in a grim huddle on the first loop of the white tower’s spiral stair.

“How bad is it?” she asked as soon as she got close.

“Not catastrophic yet,” Kirok reported with the stoic calm of a lifelong soldier. “But we’re getting close.”

“I’d say it’s pretty damn catastrophic,” Iggs growled, turning to look at Bex with red-rimmed eyes. “Did you hear about—”

“I did,” she said sadly, reaching out to touch his arm. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” her demon muttered, wiping his nose. “That bastard king killed them before we even got here. I did find my sister, though.”

Bex’s face brightened. “Iggs, that’s great!”

“It’d be a lot better if I’d found anyone else,” he said, clenching his fists. “There were a lot of people running by, so there’s a chance we just missed each other, but there’s so many dead, Bex. What if my whole family’s—”

“It’s too early for that,” Bex reminded him firmly. “Forty thousand’s too many faces to search in the time we’ve had. Your family could still be alive, so let’s focus on keeping them that way.”

Iggs nodded silently, clenching his jaw tight in a desperate attempt to keep his emotions locked. Bex didn’t ask him to speak again, but she didn’t let go of his arm as she turned to Kirok.

“How many people are still waiting to be unchained?”

“Hard to say,” Kirok replied. “I believe Lys explained this earlier, but the current Middle Hells used to be divided into five separate caverns. The walls were proclaimed inefficient and knocked down centuries ago, but the chains are still organized by the old divisions. Last I heard, Desh’s team had finished unlocking the Hells of Envy, Lust, and Greed, the biggest three after War.

They’re currently working on Sorrow, which is medium.

The chains for Hate haven’t been touched yet, but they were always the smallest of the five, so I’d say we’re about seventy percent done. ”

“That’s a lot better than Lys thought,” Bex said with a grin, happy to have some good news at last. “What about exits?”

“That’s less promising, I’m afraid,” the general said, turning to point across the smoky Hells at the lines of glimmering torches marking the stairs through the vertical slave towns on the cliffs that covered the cavern’s walls.

“I asked the winged demons for volunteers to fly the perimeter and check the banishment gates. They’re not officially considered exits since all banished demons arrive on cliffs, so I thought the lockdown might not have included them. ”

“And?” Bex asked hopefully.

“And I was wrong,” Kirok reported with a shake of his head. “The scouts that have come back all reported finding the banishment tunnels blocked with the same sin-iron security doors used to cut off the stairs to the Upper Hells.”

“Sin-iron security doors, huh?” Bex said, tapping her boot. “How thick are we talking?”

“Thick,” the general replied grimly. “The security doors are Heaven’s final defense.

They’re designed to hold back hordes of rebelling demons.

I actually used to train my war demons on them back when I was assigned to the Upper Hells.

Young demons get cocky, so the warlocks considered it good practice to pit them against a wall they couldn’t possibly break in order to curb their spirits. ”

“You mean break their spirits,” Bex growled, craning her neck back to look up the spiral toward the top of the tower. “But there’s no such thing as an unbreakable door. You keep things moving here. I’m going to go see what I can do.”

“Yes, Great Queen,” Kirok said, bowing his horns as Bex gave the still-silent Iggs a final squeeze before calling her fire and blasting herself up the broken tower.

Ten seconds later, she landed back on the platform where she’d confronted Nemini.

She’d been too distracted by the miraculous revival of the Queen of Pride to notice anything else at the time.

Now, though, Bex wondered how she could’ve missed the gigantic slab of sin iron that filled the entire ten-foot-wide entry tunnel to the Upper Hells.

The black metal was so thick, it didn’t even clang when she banged her fist against it.

The banishment hallways were bigger and taller, so maybe the doors blocking them weren’t as ridiculously thick, but Bex didn’t feel like going all the way out to the edge of the Hells to check.

Even if the banishment tunnels were easier to break into, jumping off a cliff wasn’t an escape.

Enough of her people had died already. If she was going to do this, Bex was determined to take them on the path that led to Heaven.

That was where the chains that could take them safely back to Earth were, along with everything else Bex was now determined to seize.

This wasn’t just about getting her horns and name back anymore.

She wanted it all—her sisters’ crowns, the destruction of Heaven, the rebirth of the Riverlands, and Gilgamesh’s smug head on a pike.

That wasn’t just her anger talking. Even if the banishment tunnels had been open and jumping off the cliffs wouldn’t kill them, getting back to Earth without destroying Heaven wouldn’t change anything.

Even if they all made it, Gilgamesh would just rebuild the Hells and hunt them down again, and without her horns or sword, Bex wouldn’t be able to stop him.

There was a chance she could do it right now, though.

The fact that the Hells were still on lockdown proved they had Heaven on the back foot.

If they kept pushing, this could be their best opportunity—maybe their only opportunity—to topple Gilgamesh’s Eternal Kingdom and set Ishtar’s children free for good.

Bex just had to get them up there alive.

She was superheating her fist to get to work on that when she felt someone step out of her shadow.

“I didn’t realize you could still do that,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to see Nemini standing behind her.

“As you said, I’m still me,” the Queen of Pride reminded her calmly. Then her face fell. “I wasn’t able to wake them up.”

“Oh,” Bex said, crushingly disappointed. “Does that mean they’re lost forever?”

“I don’t believe so,” Nemini said. “Their souls still exist, but they’re in a very different situation than you were.

We were together when you fell, so I was able to hold on, but our sisters were alone.

They’ve also been falling for five thousand years.

They could be anywhere in the infinite void at this point, and unlike you, none of them love me enough to answer when I call. ”

“Would they come back if we return their horns?” Bex asked desperately.

“I don’t know,” Nemini replied, which wasn’t the answer Bex had been hoping for. “They’ll probably respond to their Ishtar-given names, but only if we get close enough for them to hear us across the infinite void,”

“Damn,” Bex muttered. There went her dreams of backup. Not that she wasn’t happy her sister’s souls were just far away rather than lost forever, but she didn’t have time for things that didn’t fix problems right now, and six comatose bodies were not what she’d hoped to get out of this.

“Okay,” she said, rubbing her hornless temples. “What else have we got to work with?”

Nemini tilted her head to the side. “Seven hundred and ninety-four thousand demons.”

Bex stared at her in awe. “How do you know that?”

“My sword counted their names for me.”

“I thought you said it was broken!” Bex cried.

“It is broken,” her sister said. “It can’t speak or tell me what those names are, which is why I can’t cut their slave bands. It does still give me a nudge every time it finds a demon, though, so I counted those to get the tally.”

Bex still couldn’t believe it. “You personally counted seven hundred and ninety-four thousand demons?”

Nemini nodded. “I’ve been working on it since we arrived.”

Bex whistled, stupidly impressed, but Nemini wasn’t finished.

“I’m fairly certain of my accuracy within the bottom eight Hells,” she went on. “But my sword hasn’t given me any taps for the war demons above us.”

“Probably because the Queen of War is hiding their names,” Bex said, glaring up at the ceiling. “I bet she’s got the whole damn Hell waiting to ambush us.”

“That is what General Kirok suspects as well,” Nemini agreed, staring through the broken windows at the distant walls of hovels that ringed the Middle Hells. “Maybe we should try jumping off the banishment platforms.”

“No way,” Bex growled, calling her fire back to her hands. “I didn’t break everyone out of the Hells just to turn around and tell them to jump off a cliff.” She nodded at the sin-iron-filled tunnel in front of them. “I’ve beaten war demons before. I can do it again.”