Page 76 of Hell Hath No Fury (Tear Down Heaven #4)

Bex embraced it with open arms, because these were also Ishtar’s children.

They were not traitors. They were proud, brave demons who’d been forced to kill their own people to satisfy their queen’s twisted grievance.

They were victims of Gilgamesh the same as her own wrath demons, and they were begging for her help.

They offered their anger up to her like a sacrifice, and Bex was happy to accept because the creature crouching over her was no longer her sister.

Ishtar’s poison had scarred her body and mind, but she was the one who’d made herself a monster.

She could have taken her freedom and run when Gilgamesh pulled her out of that pit, but she’d gleefully joined him and turned her sword on her own people instead.

She’d killed demons who never had a prayer of standing up to her.

She’d killed Kirokaltos, who’d barely been able to keep himself upright, merely for the crime of calling her out.

She was a spiteful, selfish creature who chose Gilgamesh again and again with no concern for the people she dragged into slavery behind her.

That made her even worse than the warlocks in Bex’s eyes, and for that, she was going to die.

The moment the goal crystallized in her mind, Bex’s wild flames grew steady.

Her mind stilled, her heat sharpened, her breathing slowed.

There was no more flailing, no more wasted movements, not even any pain.

As the war demons’ ancient anger filled her to the brim, Bex finally became what Drox had always told her she was: a weapon forged in fire, the Blade of Wrath.

It was the one truth that had never been tied to her crown.

Bex didn’t need a name or a divine sword to burn like she was made to.

All she needed was fuel, and she had that in plenty, adding her own fury to the war demons’ silent scream as she shot up to wrap her flaming arms around the Queen of War’s armored body.

They were deep in the hole by this point.

War had pounded her about halfway through the floor, but the pit she’d dug for her sister left her no room to maneuver as Bex locked them together.

She filled the hole with her fire at the same time, blasting the two of them with her full heat until they molded together like two metals in a crucible.

Bex was so hot at this point that bits of her body were turning to ash faster than her regeneration could replace them, but her sister had it even worse.

War had always been resistant to her heat, but everything had its limit, and from the sound of her screams, War was rapidly approaching hers.

Her bronze body was bubbling like a molten river, but when she tried to rip her sister off, Bex’s body was too hot to touch.

She was still desperately trying when Bex heard something big go crack .

The sound brought a smile to her burning face.

She was pressed against War’s armored chest, which meant she had a front row seat for the moment the heat got too much for Havok.

His black ring was still untouched, but the white armor plates he used to cover his queen were breaking apart like bones in a blast furnace.

Bex could see the fractures spreading like lightning across every piece of War’s armor, and the moment they got big enough, she released her sister to swing again.

The punch landed very differently this time.

Even fresh off the anger of Kirok’s death, the best Bex had been able to do was knock War around.

Now that they’d both been fired in the rage of an entire demon tribe, though, one hit was all it took to shatter Havok’s armor.

His defenses broke like glass turning back to sand, the little bits burning up in flashes when they hit Bex’s flames as she slammed into War again, smashing her into the air this time before following her out of the hole in a blaze of white-hot fire.

If she’d been anyone else, that would have been the end.

Despite her treason, however, War was still a queen, the strongest of all Ishtar’s daughters.

When Bex landed back on the floor of the tower outside their hole, she was already waiting with her black sword in her hands.

She was no longer covered in Havok’s armor, but like every war demon, her own skin was armor enough.

Her body didn’t even look naked thanks to the smooth bronze of her true self, but what should have been gleaming perfection was marred by huge pits where her body had corroded.

The scars that covered her face covered the rest of her as well.

Her body’s regeneration was rapidly fixing all the places Bex’s fire had melted, but it couldn’t touch the deep gouges that covered her metal body like corroded canyons.

The old wounds still looked raw and painful, but War didn’t let that slow her down as she braced her exposed hooves—the same hooves all war demons had in their true forms—on the bloody ground and swung her giant sword like a bat at Bex’s head.

Even with her rage-fired speed, Bex knew immediately that she wouldn’t be able to dodge.

War was too close, and Havok’s blade was too long.

Even if she jumped straight back, the sword was going to hit something, so Bex did the only thing she could think of.

She held up her right hand, tilting her palm at the perfect angle to catch the edge of Havok’s sword on the band of Drox’s ring.

The sound of the two swords clashing rang through the tower like the great crash of Gilgamesh’s bell.

Bex hadn’t been sure it would work, but while Havok’s swing drove her back several inches, it didn’t knock her over, and it didn’t cut through her hand.

His black blade had been totally stopped by the thick band of Drox’s sleeping form, and the moment Bex saw it, she knew what to do.

Moving fast as lightning, she clamped her hand down on Havok’s sword, using the width of Drox’s band to keep the blade’s sharp edge from actually cutting into her skin.

The second she had a good grip, Bex darted forward, using War’s shock to get behind her.

She dragged Havok with her as she went, forcing War to choose: Would she let go of her weapon, or would she let Bex wrench her arm behind her?

It turned out not to matter in the end. War was fast, but Bex was moving faster now than she ever had.

By the time the disgraced queen realized she had to make a decision, Bex had already twisted her arm behind her back, using War’s grip on her own sword as leverage to snap the joint where her top right arm connected to her shoulder.

She’d only been aiming to dislocate her shoulder, but Bex must’ve been moving even faster than she realized because she ended up tearing the ligaments out completely.

She could actually feel the moment War’s arm went slack in her grip as her muscles disconnected, and then her sword clattered to the ground.

Bex was on it in an instant. She literally dove at the ground to grab Havok’s hilt in her own burning grip.

The sword fought back with all the violence she’d come to expect from him, but Bex was burning with the righteous fury of all the war demons who’d been forced to bow their horns to this traitor.

Their rage had built her bonfire into something even the Blade of War could not overcome, and she got her way in the end, forcing the massive sword off the ground by pure burning strength until its black tip was pointed at its own queen’s throat.

“ No! ” War shrieked, clutching her useless arm, which was healing much slower than Bex expected. “You’re a crownless worm! A defeated coward ! You can’t possibly use my—”

Bex swung before the queen could finish.

The Blade of War did his best to spoil her shot, but Bex had fought Havok enough times now to know that he didn’t retreat.

Where her practical, loyal Drox would’ve vanished back into his ring the second he realized he was up against an enemy he couldn’t overwhelm, Havok stayed stubbornly on the field, forcing the Queen of War to leap out of the way before she was beheaded by her own sword.

“Enough of this!” she cried as she landed on the broken stairs one spiral up from where Bex held the tower floor. “Demons of War, attack her! Defend your queen! ”

The command came down like a hammer. Bex couldn’t feel it through the raging inferno of her wrath, but she saw the crowd of war demons watching from the tower’s edges shudder as one, which was a problem.

Unlike her sister, Bex would never kill her fellow demons, which meant if they rushed her, she’d be trapped.

She had to defeat the Queen of War before that happened, but as she struggled to force Havok into position for another strike, something incredible happened.

Something she never would’ve expected in all her lives put together.

The war demons didn’t move.

“What are you doing?” the Queen of War shrieked, forgetting Bex for a moment as she whirled to stare in shock at her people. “I said attack !”

Once again, the order slammed down, but once again, the watching demons did not respond.

Now that Bex had time to look, she realized there were even more of them now than there’d been at the start.

Most had been forced out when the Queen of War had brought the fight to the bottom of the staircase, but Bex could see huge crowds of bronze faces watching through the large doors that opened into the rest of the Hell outside the tower.

She could see the pain resisting the order was causing them, but even though some demons were clenching their fists so hard they drew their own black blood, not a single one of them moved.

They stayed just as they were, standing in perfect, defiant stillness, and the longer it went on, the more furious the Queen of War became.