Tear Down Heaven: Urban Fantasy Action with Witches and Demons, page 1
TEAR DOWN HEAVEN
Tear Down Heaven : Book 5
Rachel Aaron
PROLOGUE
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THE KING OF HEAVEN was disappointed.
Here he was, standing in his full regalia in the Desert of the Chains, surrounded by piles of perfected sin-iron ingots. He had a forge of Enki painstakingly reconstructed from the wreckage of the crafter god’s main facility on the banks of the River Lethe. He had Enki’s golden Hammer of Creation, the only tool the divine forge would accept, as well as the Crown of Anu, which gave him the authority to swing it.
Every element of his great work—possibly the greatest work ever attempted by man or god—was finally at his fingertips, but King Gilgamesh was not laboring at his forge. He was not firing the perfected sin iron the war demons had made for him. He was not swinging Enki’s golden hammer to craft the solution that would save all mankind. No. He was standing in an otherwise unremarkable corner of the new workshop he’d built beneath the chained Wheel of Rebirth, staring down at the dented bronze disaster that had once been his Princess of War.
Such a disappointment.
“Please, greatest and most sacred king,” she sobbed, splattering her ugly black blood all over his work floor as she prostrated herself at his feet. “Repair this broken body. Use Enki’s hammer to make me whole again, and I swear I’ll—”
“What’s the point of that?” Gilgamesh interrupted with a cold look down his nose. “You were given a simple task, Dalanea: Kill a crownless, weaponless queen. You didn’t even have to do it alone. You had an entire Hell’s worth of war demons to assist you, and yet, somehow, you still failed.”
The bloody queen began to shake. “I—”
“If you can’t win a battle so heavily weighted in your favor, I don’t see how it makes sense to give you another chance,” Gilgamesh continued. “Would you show mercy to a subordinate who failed to produce a victory under such grossly advantageous circumstances?”
“No, Great King,” the fallen Queen of War whispered, clenching her three remaining fists. “But, in my defense, this was not my idea. It was Crown Prince Alexander who sent me down there. He said he’d take full responsibility—”
“And what should I hold him responsible for?” Gilgamesh snapped. “Expecting the strongest Blade of Ishtar to triumph over a severely handicapped opponent? Believing that a general backed by her entire army would be capable of defeating a single foe? If I have any criticism of my son’s judgement, it was that he was too cautious. He handed you the Coward Queen on a platter, and you still managed to drop her.” The king shook his head. “This is your failing, Dalanea, and you know it. You were the one who shamelessly cried out for my help, so don’t try to lay this at Alexander’s feet.”
“Forgive me,” the queen whispered, pressing her corroded bronze forehead to the bloody ground. “The Eternal King’s judgement is infallible. If you say it is my fault, then it must be so, but our enemy is not so weak as you describe. Even without her crown, sword, and name, the Bonfire of Wrath’s fire was greater than I have ever seen. It infected my demons and turned them against their queen. That’s the only reason Rebexa was able to best me, but I know the extent of her powers now. If you’d just restore my body one last time, I swear she will not triumph again. I’ll fight to the death to—”
“Fight to the death?” Gilgamesh repeated with a scoff. “What a theatrical waste of time. If you couldn’t achieve victory under the ideal conditions my son arranged for you, it’s obvious you never will.”
“Then make me better,” the queen begged, lurching forward to wrap her bloody arms around the Eternal King’s armored legs. “You’re the one who improves the creations of the gods. If I am weak, use your skill to make me strong. Just please, my king, my savior, give me another chance! I swear by my name that I will never fail you again. I’ll—”
Her desperate pleading cut off as King Gilgamesh reached down to lay his golden-gloved hand upon her hornless bronze head.
“Foolish Dalanea,” he said sadly, “we both know that’s not true. Ishtar created you perfect, but the trouble with divine perfection is that it can never exceed the static vision of the gods who created it. Perfect creations cannot grow. They cannot evolve or exceed their limitations. Even with all my brilliance, I was never able to do more than cover you up. No matter how beautiful I made you on the outside, your inner truth remained what you have always been: an insufficient bronze statue, howling in pain.”
The Queen of War’s grip loosened in shock as the king stepped out of her hold.
“That is why the gods fell in love with humanity in the first place,” Gilgamesh explained as he walked back to his repaired forge. “Unlike you, we were not their creations and thus were able to exceed their stagnant imaginings. Even my betrayal was treated with wonder because it was a surprise. That’s a rare and precious thing to immortals, but you have never possessed such talent, which is why I’m not going to waste my time repairing you again. No matter how many gifts I bestow, you will never change, never flourish or excel. I already know that you are incapable of surprising me, so I’m afraid this is as far as we go.”
He finished with a benevolent smile, but the Queen of War’s fists were already clenched. “No,” she snarled, pushing off her knees. “You promised me. You swore that if I served you, I would never be cast aside again!”
“And you were not,” Gilgamesh said. “I’ve known all of this since we met, and yet I tolerated your shortcomings for five thousand years. I made you my general, gave you dominion over your sisters. I even assigned my best son to be your prince. I have been infinitely patient, rained favor after favor upon your dented head, and still you let me down on the eve of my greatest victory.” His blue-gray eyes narrowed. “That makes you the one who betrayed me, but unlike the gods, I find no novelty in that. I’m sorry, my dear, but this is the end.”
“No!” she screamed, summoning her sacred sword. “You promised! You—”
Her voice cut off like a switch as Gilgamesh waved his hand, and what was left of War’s scarred body dissolved into bronze pellets. They rattled like hail onto the stone platform the king had built to keep his golden boots out of the black desert’s sin-iron dust before rolling into a neat pile around a woman’s bronze-skinned hand with a black ring on its third finger. The king was bending over to pick the hand up when his eldest son finally huffed his way to the top of the steps that connected Gilgamesh’s new workshop to the rest of his palace.
“Oh,” Alexander said when he saw what his father was doing. “Looks like you already know.”
“It was fairly obvious,” Gilgamesh replied, tossing the severed hand to his son. “She doesn’t yell for help when she’s winning.”
“Looks like she won’t be yelling for anything anymore,” Alexander said as he snatched the Queen of War’s severed hand out of the air.
“Is that bitterness I hear?” Gilgamesh asked as he grabbed the forge bellows he would have been working all this time if a whining failure had not interrupted him. “I’m sorry, Alexander. Did I destroy your favorite?”
“Of course not,” the Crown Prince replied. “The Princess of War has always been more burden than help. If I’m upset about anything, it’s that you didn’t save the eye I gave her. I was hoping to get that back someday.”
“I’ll make you a new one,” his father promised. “A proper one crafted from flesh instead of gold. I should have ample time to master such arts now that I’m about to solve our greatest problem.”
“About that,” Alexander said, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the staircase to the lower levels. “What do you want to do about the Coward Queen? I feel it’s accurate to say that we’ve completely lost containment at this point.”
“Don’t worry about her,” Gilgamesh replied dismissively, reaching up to tap the golden circlet of the Crown of Anu that he’d incorporated into his lion-headed helmet. “Even the Coward Queen can’t threaten what she can’t reach.”
“I see,” Alexander said, even though there was no way he could. Alexander had never truly understood anything about Gilgamesh’s great work, but that was why the king trusted him. Clever, creative sons like Leander and Adrian had their uses, but a practical, unimaginative man who viewed the world in simple terms was the one you wanted watching your back. And speaking of trust…
“Come,” the king said, letting go of the forge bellows to hold out a golden-gloved hand to his Crown Prince. “I owe you a gift for turning your sword into bronze pellets.”
“I am blessed to receive anything you deign to offer, my king,” Alexander replied with flawless politeness, though even his famous discipline couldn’t completely eliminate the tremble from his voice. “If it’s another princess, though, I don’t think I can—”
“Not a princess,” Gilgamesh assured him. “This is something I’ve never offered to anyone before. I wasn’t planning on ever giving it away, but I think this is the right time, and you are definitely the right person.”
“I am honored,” Alexander said, sounding like he meant it this time. “What is it?”
Gilgamesh smiled wider and crooked his finger, beckoning his most competent prince to a reward that only the man who slew the gods could bestow.
CHAPTER 1
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IT WAS COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE, but all Bex could think about as she and Adrian climbed the steps out of the Hells was the feel of his work-roughened hand where it wrapped around hers. Going up to scout the situation in Heaven had been her idea, but as they left the war demons’ tower and started up the long, enclosed spiral staircase that led to the final door, her feet moved slower and slower. It wasn’t that she was afraid—she was actually more convinced than ever that they could do this—it was just…
“Bex?”
She raised her head to see Adrian looking at her, his mirrored eyes glowing in the dim light like torches. That should’ve freaked her out, but not even Gilgamesh’s prince eyes could make Adrian look like anything other than Adrian, and Bex’s pace grew even slower. She was practically standing still when Adrian finally turned to face her with a huff.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, placing a hand on Boston’s arched back to keep his clearly impatient familiar from blurting out something insulting.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Bex replied, looking up the torchlit spiral stair behind him. “That’s the problem. We still don’t know what Gilgamesh is up to, but I know we’re going to be neck-deep in trouble again the moment we step outside, and I…”
Her voice trailed off, but Adrian didn’t say a word. He just stood there, watching her patiently as Bex slumped against the sin-stained black stone wall with a sigh.
“I don’t want to jump back into that mess again so soon, you know?” she admitted in a tiny voice. “We just freed all of demonkind from the Hells. This is the biggest victory I’ve ever won. The biggest any version of me has won, and it feels like we’re blowing right by it.”
That was the most selfish thing Bex could bring herself to say out loud, but it was only the tip of the iceberg. It’d been so easy to keep rolling when the thrill of beating the Queen of War was still pumping through her veins. Now that it was just her and Adrian on the stairs, though, Bex was discovering that the closer they got to Heaven, the less she wanted to let go of this moment. This rare, beautiful fragment in time when she wasn’t fighting or burning or being stabbed. When no one was looking to her for orders or depending on her to save them.
It felt like something precious, a treasure to be savored, but Bex couldn’t stop to enjoy it. The battle wasn’t over. Everyone was still depending on her. She needed to stop being selfish and keep moving, but when she shoved herself off the wall to keep walking, Adrian reached out and pulled her into a hug.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, squeezing her close with his arms while his clever fingers worked her hair out of the wet, bedraggled ponytail she hadn’t even realized was pulling on her head. “It’s okay, Bex.”
As always, he didn’t say what was okay, and, as always, it didn’t matter. Her subjects needed her to be strong, but Adrian wasn’t a demon. He didn’t need her to hold him up, which meant she was free to break down.
Bex did so with a sob so hard that even she jumped. The ugly sound was both mortifying and terribly timed, but Bex had nothing left to stop it. It’d been a long, hard push even before they’d left for the Hells, and she was so tired. Tired of fighting, tired of being responsible, tired of forcing herself to be brave. The moment they stepped into Heaven, she’d have to do it all again, but they weren’t there yet. They were hidden in a dark stairwell where no one could see. Even Boston had hopped off his witch’s shoulder to give them some privacy, which made it dangerously easy for Bex to pretend it was just her and Adrian.
That thin pretense was all her body needed. Her demons were just a few spirals down in the Hell of War, so she couldn’t bawl like she really wanted to, but she was still a mess. Adrian had to be disgusted, but when Bex tried to move away, he pulled her back, pressing her face against his shoulder as she cried and cried and cried.
“Sorry,” she whispered when the storm finally passed. “I’m always doing this to you.”
“I’m glad,” he insisted, petting her loose hair. “It makes me feel special to be the one you cry on.”
“Well, I hate it,” she muttered, scrubbing her puffy face. “What kind of queen cries after she wins?”
“One that’s not a robot,” he replied, bending down to press a kiss against the top of her forehead where her horns used to be. “Winning can be as hard as losing sometimes. Just because you came out on top doesn’t mean the fight wasn’t brutal, or that you didn’t get hurt. You’ve been waging this war for your entire life. That’s a lot of damage to carry, so I think it’s a good sign that you can still cry. It means you’re healthy.”
Bex thought it meant she was a weepy embarrassment, but while her cheeks were burning with shame, she did feel a lot better.
“Okay,” she said, pulling herself straight again. “Let’s do this.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “We don’t have to move just yet.”
“I’ve already wasted enough of our advantage,” Bex insisted, finger-combing her hair back into a fresh ponytail that she fixed in place with one of the spare hair ties she’d stashed in the back pocket of her black fatigues. “Gilgamesh is probably scrambling his troops as we speak. If we want to take a look at the battlefield before it gets swamped, we’ve got to go. Besides, if I cry anymore, I’ll dehydrate myself.”
Adrian’s shoulder was damp enough already. Thank Ishtar he always wore black, or her ashy tears would’ve ruined his clothes. It was pathetic how much she liked knowing that she could cry on him without leaving a trace, but Bex was used to her heart being an idiot by this point, so she rolled with it, grabbing his hand so they could run together up the staircase’s final spiral.
Boston was already waiting when they got there, pawing at the bottom of yet another set of massive sin-iron doors. It was the biggest, heaviest, most ornamented doorway Bex had seen yet, which she took as a sign that they were on the right track. Gilgamesh had always been a sucker for grandeur, and those definitely looked like the gates of Hell.
“Finally,” Boston said, looking over his shoulder with a lash of his tail. “I’m not sure if the doors are locked or just heavy, but I can’t get them to budge.”
“Have you heard anything from outside?” Adrian asked as he crouched beside his cat.
“Not a peep,” Boston reported, leaning down to push his nose against the perfectly fitted seam where the giant doors met the floor. “I haven’t smelled anything, either, though that could be because the doors are so tightly sealed. They were meant to keep the Hells out of Heaven, after all.”
“Let me give it a try,” Bex said, pressing her hands flat against the cold, ornately carved metal. “Um, you might want to give me some distance.”
Boston leaped out of the way at once, scrambling up the front of Adrian’s coat to his damp shoulder like a fluffy black squirrel. When Bex was confident she wouldn’t have to worry about singeing anyone’s fur, she closed her eyes and called her fire.
As always since she’d reignited during her flight with the princess version of herself, the flames came over her in a rush. That was normally a good thing, but Bex was only a few minutes off the blinding-white, cutting-torch burn that had taken down the Queen of War. Her arms started shaking the moment the fire engulfed them, but she’d wasted too much time being weak already, so she forced herself to push through, silently reciting all the things Gilgamesh had done to her people to stoke the flames of her anger higher and higher, hotter and hotter. She was closing in on the sin-iron melting point when Adrian said, “Hit it here.”
Bex turned in alarm to see him standing way too close. She was pretty good with her fire these days, but one mistake was all it would take to burn him to a crisp. Adrian had to know that, but either he was very good at hiding his nerves or he trusted her to an insane degree, because he’d planted his hands less than an inch away from her flaming ones without a trace of fear.
“There’s a smaller door hidden inside the big ones,” he explained, running his fingers over a crease in the sin iron that Bex had assumed was just part of the decoration. “I saw the war demons using it when I was here earlier. It might be easier to open.”
Bex nodded but waited until Adrian stepped back to lean in for a look. Sure enough, when she got her face right next to the metal, she spotted a hidden seam exactly where Adrian had put his fingers. The rectangle it made was still pretty big for a door but much smaller than the rest of the massive gate and sealed only lightly with a few pins at the corners. It looked more like it’d been made to stop bad smells and noise than demons, which made a weird sort of sense when Bex thought about it. If a rebellion ever did get this far, Gilgamesh would stop it with an army, not a door. This gate was probably meant to be more of a logistical barrier than an actual security measure, a suspicion that was proven correct when all the pins snapped like cheap birthday candles the moment Bex’s flames touched them.
