Tear Down Heaven: Urban Fantasy Action with Witches and Demons, page 12
“Maybe he’s out of princes,” Bex said hopefully. “We have been burning through them pretty fast.”
“Gilgamesh never runs out of princes,” Nemini replied, pointing a calm finger at the white castle covered in golden lions and constructs. “Even if he’s running low on active sons, his fortress is well defended. I’ve been fighting Gilgamesh since the day he first marched into Paradise. He’s an audacious general, not a cautious one. If he’s holding back, it’s because he feels he has no need to attack us, not because he’s afraid.”
“Then he’s an idiot,” Bex growled. “We all know Gilgamesh is up to something. He’s always up to something, but there’s no way the thing he’s using all this new sin iron to build is so powerful that he doesn’t have to worry about the army standing in front of his…”
Her voice trailed off. Bex hadn’t actually thought about the words until they came out of her mouth, but after what her mother had said about resetting the world, Gilgamesh’s intense focus suddenly seemed a lot less suicidal. There might be an army on his doorstep, but he was already inside his citadel with the Crown of Anu, the Sword of Ishtar, the Hammer of Enki, and who knew what else at his disposal. Gilgamesh had always stolen his powers. His sorcery, the warlocks’ use of demon names, even Heaven itself all came from the gods, so if they could turn the wheel to reset the world, then Gilgamesh…
“Oh, ho, ho,” the Morrigan cackled from her perch on the tallest stone. “The little fire finally sees it, does she?”
“The future is rarely clear to those in the present,” Muriel observed, turning to gaze up at the palace towers Bex had yet to destroy. “Gilgamesh’s greatest strength is that he’s always kept his eyes upon it. But focusing on the future blinds one to what is happening right now.”
“And right now is always when we die,” Agatha finished, turning to Bex with an expression that was nothing like the kindly mother she liked to play. The woman who faced her now was the Old Wife of the Flesh, Witch of the Present, and she had only one question.
“Do you understand what must be done?”
“I do,” Bex replied, looking over her shoulder at the plaza full of rushing demons. “There’s no time to wait for the army to organize. I’ll march right now with whoever’s ready.”
“We are ready,” promised Lydia, looking less like a crone and more like a vengeful wraith as she gripped her raven-carved broomstick. “Our coven has spent the last two hundred years preparing for today. This time will not be like all the ones before.”
“Because if we fail this time, there won’t be another chance,” the Witch of the Future finished.
“We’ll never get a chance if we keep wasting time talking,” the Witch of the Present scolded her sisters before returning her gaze to Bex. “If we take care of your weak and wounded, can you fight unhindered?”
“I’m going to do that no matter what,” Bex promised. “If my guess is right”—she looked up at the Morrigan, who nodded her black beak—“then this is now an all-or-nothing fight. That means no breaks, but it also means no rules.” She pointed at the golden peak of the castle’s highest tower. “You can fly, right? Can you take me straight to the top?”
She was pretty sure that was where Gilgamesh was hiding. Going straight for the head was usually a good strategy, but the Morrigan was already shaking her head.
“We can, but it won’t work,” the goddess said, turning her black beak toward Gilgamesh’s gleaming towers. “Everything you see in front of you is an illusion built to flatter the gods’ vanity and serve their convenience. Gilgamesh divided Paradise in two so that it would be easier to oppress Ishtar’s demons, but what he calls ‘Heaven’ is just another factory for processing human souls, same as the Hells. Even if I flew you to the top of the tallest tower, Gilgamesh would not be there, because overseers do not live with workers.”
“Then where is he?” Bex demanded.
“Somewhere else,” the Morrigan replied, searching the empty sky with her beady eyes. “This is my first time setting foot in the folly known as Paradise, so I don’t know where that is, but I do know there will be a gate. The gods have always created divisions and hidden places to suit their needs, but even their most secret spaces must always have a door or a bridge back to the living world. The connection can take many forms, but if they don’t have something tying them down, their creations would be washed away by the stream of time that flows through the void.”
She snapped her beak back to Bex. “My suggestion is to follow the chains. They also can’t be interrupted or the strength that binds the Wheel would snap. Follow them, and you’ll find Gilgamesh.”
“If we’re looking for chains, I know where they are,” Adrian volunteered. “But I’m not clear about what’s going on. Why are we in such a hurry all of a sudden?”
“Because Gilgamesh is probably about to end the world,” Bex explained.
Adrian’s already pale face turned ashen. “Why would he do that?”
“So he can restart it anew,” the Witch of the Present replied with a sigh. “For all that he claims to hate the gods, he always did love pretending to be one.”
“He’s about to stop pretending,” Muriel warned, gazing into the middle distance like she was staring down a horror only she could see. “I’ve never been able to foresee exactly what Gilgamesh is plotting, so nothing is certain, but resetting the world would be the most efficient way to solve his problems, and he’s always been an efficient man.”
“Whatever he’s working on, I don’t intend to let him finish,” Bex said as she turned back to Adrian. “Can you fly me up to somewhere everyone can see?”
“Of course,” he said, pulling his broom off his back and dropping it to the ground so it could turn back into a raven. “Hop on.”
Bex was already stepping onto the broom’s wings before he finished. Nemini got on next, followed by Adrian, who still looked confused but determined not to slow things down despite that. He had them twenty feet off the ground in seconds, giving Bex a high platform to address her people.
“Children of the Riverlands!”
The chaos in the plaza surrounding the entrance to the Hells paused as all the demons stopped what they were doing and looked up at their queen. When Bex was certain she had everyone’s attention, she drew her sword and pointed him at Gilgamesh’s fortress.
“Our enemy is on the move,” she announced. “We’ll have to go even faster if we want to stop him, so I need everyone who’s willing and able to fight to meet me on the road to the palace. Those who cannot join the battle, your job is to get down the roots to safety as quickly as possible and deny Heaven the opportunity to attack our flank. Our allies, the witches, have food ready to help those who are too weak to make the journey. Do whatever you must to get back on your feet, but do not stop moving until you’re out of Heaven!”
You should command them by your name, Drox suggested as the plaza exploded into chaos. What’s the point of taking Ishtar’s power if you don’t use it?
“Because I don’t want to use it like that,” Bex grumbled, pulling him back into his ring. “My people gave me a name so I could set them free. I don’t want them to spend what could be their final hours scrambling to obey an order they can’t ignore. If I do things this way, at least they’ll die free inside their own heads if we fail.”
She’d been talking to Drox, but Adrian was the one who whirled around. “Okay, what is going on?” he demanded. “What might we fail? How is Gilgamesh going to reset the world? And while we’re at it, why do you have six horns now?”
Presumptuous human, Drox muttered. You don’t owe him an explanation, my queen.
“Yes, I do,” Bex said with a scowl. “Adrian told me what he was doing before he did it. I’d be a terrible partner if I didn’t give him the same courtesy. Also, no matter how hard we rush, it’s going to take at least thirty minutes to get the first attack force in position so we’re not running into battle one at a time like a bad kung fu movie.”
“I’m curious as well,” Nemini said from the back of the broom. “Not that knowing the future changes it, but it’s still comforting to know what to expect.” Her yellow eyes flicked up to Bex’s horns. “I’d also like to know your new name since it feels like you’re officially my queen as well now.”
“Wait, I am?” Bex said, shocked. She hadn’t had time to think too deeply about what accepting power from all nine varieties of demon actually meant on a metaphysical level. Now that Nemini mentioned it, though, Bex realized she could feel the pride demons the same way she normally felt her wrath demons. She could feel every sort of demon, actually, which was pretty overwhelming now that she was paying attention to it.
I don’t see why you’re so surprised, Drox said as Bex grappled with the new sensations. What do you think all those extra horns signify? You took Ishtar’s place. Her demons pray to you now. Not that that changes much since you’ve been acting like a queen to every demon you’ve met since the fall of Paradise, but it’s nice to have some new powers to go along with all the extra responsibility.
Bex hadn’t even considered that angle yet. She knew her firepower had gotten a boost, but the way Drox and Nemini were talking made her think that her new name had much more to it than four extra horns and bigger flames. There was no time to sit down and figure it all out, though. The demons in the square below were already scrambling to obey her orders, and Nemini and Adrian were still waiting for their explanation.
She really did owe them one. They’d been nothing but patient, and it wasn’t like her new crown came with an instruction manual. She’d figure herself out eventually. Right now, though, the people she depended on most had to come first, so Bex put her arms around her allies and pulled them close to explain all the world-upending things that had happened to her in the last twenty minutes.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Well,” Adrian said shakily when Bex finally finished, “I’m very glad we never managed to cut more than one chain now.”
“It was a good plan given the information we had at the time,” Bex said, reaching out to pat his arm. “How were we supposed to know that Ishtar was planning to destroy everything the moment the gods came back? She was supposed to be on our side.”
“The gods have never been on anyone’s side but their own,” Nemini stated in a matter-of-fact voice.
“So much for the ‘Merciful Mother of the Riverlands’,” Bex agreed bitterly. “But at least we know what we’ve gotta do now.”
“And we’ve got the power to do it,” Adrian added optimistically, shooting another look at Bex’s magnificent new horns. “You took the prayers of all demons and used them to give yourself a new name! Does that mean you’re the new Ishtar now?”
Bex shrugged. “Maybe? Sort of? I don’t know. All I wanted was for Ishtar to help us, but she wouldn’t do that, so I said I’d do it, and then I ended up with this forest on my head.”
She reached up to smack her horns and nearly hit Boston, who’d put his paws on her back to get a better look at her new headgear.
“What I want to know is why do you have six horns,” the cat said in a fascinated voice. “If your new authority stems from the combined wishes of all demonkind, shouldn’t you have nine horns? One for each type?”
“She has six horns because Ishtar has six horns,” Nemini explained before Bex could open her mouth. “It’s a mark of her divinity, not a direct representation.”
Adrian’s face lit up. “So you are like Ishtar!”
“If I am, it’s only because she wouldn’t do her damn job,” Bex said angrily. “I don’t care about gods or crowns. All I want is for demons to be able to live in peace without having to be anyone’s slaves. Why is that so hard?”
Her black ring was buzzing like a hornet by the time she finished, causing Bex to lapse into another of her whispered finger arguments that Adrian didn’t even bother trying to eavesdrop on anymore. Bex and Drox had always had their own dynamic. He was far more concerned about everything else she’d said.
Ever since his first conversation with the Morrigan, Adrian had been focused on cutting the chains as the magic bullet to bringing down Gilgamesh. If the gods were serious about a reset, though, that made them as much of a threat as the Eternal King. He supposed that didn’t actually change much since, aside from the Morrigan, the gods had never helped them, but it was still depressing to know their one-cut solution was off the table. Even if Bex was some kind of mini-Ishtar now, beating Gilgamesh was always going to be an uphill battle, and now they had to do it without accidentally bringing back the gods. That sounded like fighting a war on a tightrope, but the factor that still worried Adrian the most was his father.
He shot another nervous glance at Gilgamesh’s palace, but nothing had changed since the last time he’d looked thirty seconds ago. The constructs were still standing ready on the battlements, and the lions were still gleaming on the roof, but nothing had opened fire. The glittering shield hadn’t gone back up, either, which struck Adrian as crazy, considering that Gilgamesh had lost a tower and a good chunk of the fancy mansions near the castle. There should have been some kind of retaliation by now, but the White City was as empty and silent now as it’d been the first time he and Bex stuck their heads out of the Hells. It almost felt like Gilgamesh wanted them to think they had victory in the bag and didn’t need to rush.
If that was the image the Eternal King had chosen to project, then Adrian’s first instinct was to charge the doors as fast as possible. He wasn’t a general by any stretch, but Adrian had a pretty good feel for how his father thought now, and in his opinion, Nemini’s earlier assessment—that Gilgamesh was holding back because it served him, not because he was afraid—had been right on the money. If Gilgamesh was keeping the pressure off and giving them room to breathe, then that room had to be his goal. He wanted them to feel like they had time to prepare, which meant that time itself had to be his victory condition.
In that case, they were already falling behind. Adrian had known his father was working on something huge since before he’d been kidnapped up to Heaven. Since they were all still alive, the king must not have finished it yet. That explained why he was giving his enemies so much room to dally, but it also meant they could still stop him if they moved fast enough. Bex had already figured that much out herself, but despite her big call to war earlier, only a handful of the most eager demons had actually made it to the rally point.
More were on the way, but it took time to move that many people. The same went for the Blackwoods. The Old Wives’ preparation was amazing in hindsight, but even the giant tree he’d grown with all of his quintessence blood could only funnel so many witches into Heaven at a time.
Add in the hundreds of thousands of weakened demons frantically trying to go back down the other direction and the whole situation was starting to feel impossible. The only reason Adrian wasn’t already falling into a panic was his firm belief that his Aunt Muriel wouldn’t have brought the coven here if they really didn’t have a chance. The same went for the Morrigan. The goddess of prophecy definitely wasn’t the sort to waste her time on lost causes, which meant that victory had to still be possible. They just had to find and stop Gilgamesh before he finished… whatever it was he was doing.
Once again, Adrian found his lack of knowledge supremely frustrating. His only consolation was that he didn’t need to understand something to break it. He just had to get close enough to throw the wrench into his father’s works. Fortunately, when it came to being destructive, Adrian knew exactly whom to talk to.
“If speed is the name of the game, then we’d better get moving,” he told Bex when she finally stopped whispering at Drox. “Is it okay if I set you down at the rally point?”
“Of course, but where will you be?” Bex asked with a concern that warmed Adrian’s heart.
“Not far,” he promised as he landed his broom on the road where the first batch of battle-eager demons was already waiting. “I just need to take care of some long-overdue family business.”
That statement earned him a funny look, but one of the qualities Adrian loved best about Bex was how she always seemed to know when to step back. She didn’t even ask what kind of business he was talking about. She just said, “Don’t take too long.”
“I won’t,” Adrian promised, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before kicking his broom back into the sky to go find his brother.
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Finding a Prince of Gilgamesh was normally pretty easy, but locating Leander in the swirling sea of demons rushing either to war or away from it turned out to be a tall order. Every time Adrian convinced a demon to slow down long enough to answer his questions, none of them seemed to know who he was talking about. He was starting to think Leander had vanished into thin air when he felt his brother step into the rootway.
The moment the banished prince’s bare foot came down inside his heart tree, Adrian ordered the roots to snatch it. The forest here was so big now that he could feel every muscle in the prince’s body go stiff as he realized he was trapped. He started struggling immediately, but it was too late. Adrian had already flown over, pulling Bran to a stop just shy of the warehouse-sized opening in the fir tree’s base where two entire populations—the Blackwood witches and the demons of the Hells—were switching places.
Fittingly, Leander was on the side that was going down. The far, far side, as if he wanted to put as much distance between himself and the arriving Blackwoods as possible. He was carrying a wrapped body Adrian assumed was Bex’s sister Mara, but none of the other unconscious queens Leander was supposed to be keeping an eye on were anywhere to be seen.
The prince didn’t even have the decency to look guilty when Adrian hopped off his broom in front of him. He just lifted the hand he’d been using to tear the roots off his bare feet and gave his youngest brother the scowl to end all scowls.
