Tear Down Heaven: Urban Fantasy Action with Witches and Demons, page 13
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what the hell you think you’re doing,” Adrian said, scowling back. “You promised Bex you’d help her if she rescued Mara. You don’t get to turn your back on that and run away through my tree just because you got what you wanted.”
“Better than dying here,” Leander snapped, clutching Mara tighter. “I saw how many horns were on the Queen of Wrath’s head when she came out of that fire. Add in the Morrigan’s presence and even an idiot can see what’s coming. This is no longer a simple rebellion. Those fools are about to kick off a second war of the gods. Even if they win, the devastation will be catastrophic, so I’m taking my princess and getting us out of here while the concept of ‘out’ still exists.”
“You can’t run away from something this big,” Adrian argued. “Where were you even planning to go? The Blackwood?”
“Never,” Leander spat. “I’d never cower in the forest my mother sold me to Gilgamesh to protect. Even if I was willing, the Blackwood is the first place our father will crush for his revenge. I have a much better plan in mind. I’m going to go back down to Earth, where the teleportation ban isn’t in effect, and then I’m taking us to Father’s private island. No matter what happens up here, Gilgamesh would never allow his precious collection to be destroyed, so I’m going to take Mara down to his wine cellar and hide there until somebody wins. Once the fires die down, we’ll see about making something out of the ashes, but my part in this is finished.”
“No, it isn’t,” Adrian said, grabbing his brother by the neck of his filthy white silk tunic. “Bex pulled you out of the Lowest Hells. She left her people and braved the toxic flood to help you save your precious princess. She could have taken Mara and left you to rot down there, but she didn’t.”
“And I’ve paid her back for that,” Leander snarled. “I helped her escape the inescapable Hells. I fought my own brother to the death alongside her wrath demon. I did everything she asked of me, but this goes too far.”
He looked at the woman bundled in his arms. “You’re welcome to die with your love if you want to, but I’m keeping mine alive. And before you try guilting me again, know that it won’t work. You have to have honor to feel guilt, but I’d happily trade the lives of every demon and human on this planet to see my Mara smile again.”
Leander finished with a defiant look, and Adrian let go of his collar with a sigh.
“If that’s really how you feel, then you’re making the wrong choice,” he warned. “Running away might save her for a little while, but there’s no future for your Mara if Gilgamesh wins. You’re right that this is no longer just a rebellion. The reason the Morrigan and Bex are pushing so hard is because we’re already in Gilgamesh’s endgame, and the future he’s planning doesn’t include witches or demons.”
He stabbed a finger at the unconscious woman Leander was clutching like a lifeline. “The only thing that can save your beloved now is if Bex wins, so if you actually care about Mara like you say you do, you won’t leave our victory to chance. You’ll fight with us to make it happen, or you might as well have killed her yourself.”
That last part was cruel, but Adrian didn’t take it back. If Mara was all his brother cared about, then Mara was the lever he would use, because they needed Leander. He was their inside man. If anyone knew where Gilgamesh was hiding, it would be him. But while Adrian’s threat had clearly struck a nerve, Leander still wasn’t moving.
“You don’t understand,” he whispered, his black-bloodstained hands shaking where they clutched Mara’s wrapped body. “I can’t fight Father, and not just because he’s a better sorcerer than I am. No prince can fight Gilgamesh because he controls the quintessence in our blood.”
Leander looked pointedly at Adrian’s once-again-human eyes. “You got free because you’re the damn golden child the entire universe bends over to save, but I’ve never been so blessed. If I give up my quintessence, I won’t just lose my sorcery. My true age will catch up with me, and my body will turn to dust. If I go in as I am now, though, Gilgamesh will be able to put me on my knees with a flick of his finger. I’ll be no better than a demon defying their queen, so it’s pointless to ask me to help.”
“I don’t know,” Adrian said with a smile. “I’ve seen a lot of demons defy their queens recently. But just because you can’t face the king directly doesn’t mean you can’t fight. If nothing else, we need your help navigating the palace, because we don’t actually know where Gilgamesh is right now.”
The desperate look fell off Leander’s face. “Oh,” he said, straightening up. “Is that all you need?”
“That’s it,” Adrian promised. “Just take us to Gilgamesh, and we’ll do the rest. I’ll even have my forest hide Mara’s body to keep her safe while you’re away.”
Leander scowled. “You mean take her as a hostage.”
That was not what Adrian had meant, but he didn’t bother to correct his brother, because Leander had already sighed.
“Very well,” he said, cradling Mara to his chest. “It’s pointless to stay in denial when presented with facts. You’re right. I knew running was a temporary solution, but do you think you can actually win against Gilgamesh?”
“I think we’ve got a good chance,” Adrian said. “As you’re constantly complaining, our mother always puts the Blackwood first, but she’s brought the entire coven to Heaven for this. She’d never take such a huge risk if she didn’t believe it would pay off, but even sure bets can fail without support, which is why we all have to do our part. If we do win, though, you can be absolutely certain that Bex will make sure her sisters survive. That makes this a fight for Mara’s future, and isn’t that what you said you’d do anything to protect?”
“Don’t turn my own words against me,” Leander muttered. “But very well. I’ll help, but you have to swear on your forest that you’ll protect Mara with everything at your disposal. No matter what happens to the rest of us, Mara must survive. Swear that, and I swear I’ll guide you to Father.”
“Done,” Adrian said, sticking out his hand.
Leander shook it grudgingly before returning his grip to his princess. “Where can I put her so she’ll be safe?”
Adrian looked around the crowded tunnel for a moment before pulling his brother over to the rootway’s far wall and giving the wood a knock. The new forest responded at once, opening the swirling roots to reveal a hidden grotto that looked like a wooden bunker complete with a mossy bed hidden inside a nook in the wall. Adrian was certain none of that had existed a second ago, but just like Heaven itself, the forest up here seemed to have looser rules than the groves he was used to working with back on Earth. Adrian wasn’t sure if that was a good change or a bad one yet, but the extra wiggle room did make it easier to accommodate his brother as Leander carried Mara inside.
“Where are the rest of the queens?” he asked as Leander set Mara carefully on top of the moss.
“I left them with the evacuation team,” Leander replied as he arranged the Queen of Sorrow’s dark hair behind her head so it wouldn’t get tangled. “The queen’s favored lust demon came into the building we were using as a shelter and started yelling at everyone to get to the tunnel. They were already prioritizing the unconscious, so I left the queens in their care.”
That was pretty irresponsible behavior for someone who’d volunteered to look after Bex’s sisters, but if Lys was on it, Adrian wasn’t worried. They’d absolutely make sure the other queens made it down the rootway safely. Right now, his job was to get Leander to the front, but no matter how strongly Adrian stressed their need to hurry, the prince refused to leave until he’d tucked the feather comforter he’d clearly stolen off some warlock’s bed around Mara’s shoulders.
“I’m going to win us a future,” he whispered, leaning down to kiss her fingers. “Wait for me.”
“She doesn’t even remember him,” Boston muttered before Adrian shushed him, holding his cat impatiently in the doorway of the new bunker until his brother finally finished fussing and walked out to join him.
CHAPTER 8
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DESPITE BEX’S BEST EFFORTS, they didn’t get underway for another thirty minutes. She’d dealt with big crowds before, so she knew that was actually lightning fast, but it still felt like victory was slipping through her fingers with every minute that ticked by.
It didn’t help that the army that did show up looked so shabby compared to the grandeur of Gilgamesh’s palace. Zargrexa and the demons from the Seattle Anchor had come prepared with the weapons and combat armor they’d gotten from the witches, but the demons from the Hells had nothing but the guns from Iggs’s bag and the clothes on their backs. Most of them weren’t even wearing shoes. She knew she shouldn’t underestimate them for that, but it was hard to feel like a mighty queen when half her army was starved and barefoot, not to mention grossly outnumbered.
That was the real problem Bex didn’t know how to overcome. Thanks to the hard deadline, lack of any communication except yelling and word-of-mouth, and the congestion caused by the evacuation, only fifteen hundred demons actually made it to the rally point. She could’ve doubled that number if she’d been willing to wait another hour, but even if they’d had a full day to rally everyone into position, nothing could change the fact that the majority of the demons they’d freed from the Hells were in no condition to fight. Plenty had volunteered anyway, but Iggs and Captain Roga—who was leading the war demons, their largest contingent of actual soldiers—had ended up sending most of them away again for being too weak or too wounded to join the battle. Including, to everyone’s consternation, Lys.
That had been a whole thing, but Bex had put her foot down. Thanks to their fight with the Prince of Hate in the Hells, Lys still had a giant bleeding wound through their shoulder. They’d also stayed up to manage the camp while Bex slept, which meant they’d been awake for two days straight.
Putting Lys on the bench for the final assault was a sorry way to repay such devotion, but between the constant blood loss, the lack of lust to feed on, and the sleep deprivation, Lys was looking even worse than the demons they’d rescued from the Hells. Taking them into a battle in that condition was just asking for them to get killed, so Bex had ordered Lys to stay behind and coordinate the evacuation instead. A critically important job that Lys absolutely did not want.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” they groaned over the black plastic comm in Bex’s ear. “This is the final assault on Gilgamesh. You can’t leave me out!”
“A battle is fought on many fronts,” Bex replied sagely as she followed Iggs’s scout team into the silent streets beyond the mossy edge of Adrian’s forest. “The only reason we’re able to have this conversation right now is because you remembered to charge the comms. You’ve always been our ace when it comes to logistics, and getting our people out of the line of fire is arguably the most important job of this entire operation. If I don’t save my demons, what am I even fighting for?”
“Don’t feed me that ‘wise leader’ crap,” Lys snarled. “I’m the one who taught you all that stuff! I know why you’re not bringing me along. I just hate it. I’ve been fighting at your side for centuries, but when our big moment finally arrives, I get left behind with the witches!”
“What are the Blackwoods doing, by the way?” Bex asked.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m serious,” Bex insisted. “I thought they came to fight, but we’re the only ones out here.”
Lys sighed at the obvious distraction, but they’d been a soldier for too long to ignore something as important as troop position.
“So far as I can tell, the witches are all still up in the big tree,” they reported. “They’ve been arriving in a steady stream since the rootway opened, but other than the support teams distributing bottled sin, I haven’t seen so much as a stray cat in the last twenty minutes. Even the Morrigan’s vanished.”
That didn’t sound good. Now that they were out of the tree cover, Bex could see there were even more war constructs and lion cannons on the palace battlements than she’d initially estimated. Both were bad news for her army of mostly unarmored infantry. She’d been counting on the Morrigan’s big fat target to draw some of that fire, but Heaven’s blue sky was empty.
“Do you think they’re going to be coming out of their tree anytime soon?” she asked nervously.
“Not sure,” Lys replied, followed by a glugging sound that Bex really hoped meant Lys was finally drinking one of the witches’ bottles of liquid sin. “They’re up to something, though. I can feel the magic rising like the wind before a thunderstorm.”
That was a relief to hear, though Bex was all too aware that feeling magic didn’t mean it would arrive in a timely fashion. Witchcraft was an infamously slow art, and Bex’s army was coming up on the palace fast. Adrian had a comm of his own, so she supposed she could’ve just radioed him and asked, but she didn’t want to interrupt anything important and risk pushing the schedule back even further.
“The Blackwoods always come through,” she said, as much for herself as for Lys. “Let’s just focus on our own job. The palace is probably going to start firing soon. I’ll do my best to stop the lion cannons, but I want you to keep our people as deep in the big tree’s shadow as possible in case any shots get through.”
“You’re using Adrian’s heart tree as a bomb shelter?” Lys whistled. “That’s harsh.”
“That’s war,” Bex said grimly. “We don’t have enough advantages to waste any. We’ll make use of what we’ve got and focus on getting our wounded out of harm’s way. The fewer targets we give the enemy, the less we’ll have to worry about.”
“I’ll get on it, then,” Lys said grudgingly. “Ishtar guide your sword, my queen.”
It was the same blessing Lys always gave her before battle, but the familiar words made Bex wince. Not counting Drox, who shared her head, Adrian and Nemini were the only ones she’d told about what had happened with Ishtar. She’d thought about telling the others, but revealing the ugly truth of the goddess who’d been worshiped as the mother of their race for eons right before the biggest battle of their lives felt like a terrible tactical decision.
Honestly, Bex didn’t even know if she’d ever spread the truth wider than she already had. What good would it do for someone like Lys, who’d been a devoted follower of Ishtar all their life, to know that their goddess didn’t even consider them worth saving? That useless knowledge would bring only pain, so Bex kept her mouth shut and focused on the fight in front of her.
It was going to be a tough one. Just like when she and Adrian had first poked their heads out of the Hells, Gilgamesh’s capital was silent as a tomb. Now that they’d left the neon-green grass and bubbling water of Adrian’s forest, the armed column of demons was the only thing moving in the entire city. The architecture got fancier as they got closer to the palace, but otherwise everything was the same monotonous white, marred only by the occasional hunk of blackened debris from the destroyed tower.
Bex smiled every time she caught sight of one. The rubble was a good reminder that Gilgamesh’s fortress wasn’t as perfect and unassailable as it appeared. As they marched into the final ring of buildings surrounding the palace, she spotted the top half of the tower she’d chopped lying to the left of the road they were walking down. There were no crushed buildings directly in their path, but the blocks west of their position had all been flattened.
The sight was enough to make Bex grin. She kept her eyes on the gap she’d made in the skyline as they marched closer, moving from the middle portion of the city into the even fancier neighborhood that seemed to be reserved for Gilgamesh’s most favored sycophants. Finally, when the white mansions had grown so tall and ornate that it felt like they were walking through a marble canyon, Bex spotted the entrance to the palace itself.
It was separated from the residential buildings by a white wall that was much smaller than the one surrounding the city, but still annoyingly tall at twenty feet. The ornate golden gate was already open, so they didn’t have to worry about bashing their way in. But the wall combined with the tall buildings on either side meant that Bex’s entire army had been channeled into a long line, the front of which was now in perfect shot from the palace’s battlements.
The whole setup was clearly designed to be a killing jar, but no arrows were raining down on their heads yet. Nothing had fired, actually, which made no sense. They were so close now that Bex could see the bowstrings in the golden constructs’ articulated hands, but not a single metal soldier was moving. The lion cannons’ mouths were closed as well. If Bex hadn’t caught glimpses of movement through the tower windows, she could almost have believed the palace was as empty as the city.
The whole thing reeked of a trap, and Bex held up her fist. The stop spread through the marching army like a slow wave. Once everyone had come to a halt, she turned and waved for Leander to come and join her at the front.
The prince tromped up the line. Bex had barely seen him since they’d left the Hells, but Adrian must’ve said something, because the normally bossy son of Gilgamesh had been oddly obedient since Adrian had dropped him off before flying up to join his coven. He hadn’t argued with any of her orders, but from the way he kept constantly looking over his shoulder, Bex could tell Leander’s heart was no longer in the fight.
“Hey,” she said, snapping her fingers in his face when the prince glanced back at the giant tree for what had to be the millionth time. “I need you to focus. What’s going on in there?”
She pointed at the silent castle, and Leander turned around with a sigh, using his hands to shield his mirrored eyes from the glare as he scanned the white battlements.
“Looks like the standard palace defenses,” he reported a few moments later. “Though it is strange that we were able to get this close.”
