Tear Down Heaven: Urban Fantasy Action with Witches and Demons, page 27
“Rebexa,” he said in the same commanding voice he’d used to order her sister, “kill yoursel—”
“That’s not my name, asshole!” Bex roared, spinning around to unleash a blast of fire straight to his face. The flames were roaring around her body by this point, stoked by the wrath of what had been done to her sweetest sister. Their heat was already turning the golden floor under her feet to mush. The conflagration should’ve scorched the flesh off the prince’s quintessence-caked bones, but Alexander paid the fire no attention. He simply flicked his wrist.
What happened next was too fast for Bex’s brain to follow. One moment, her fire was about to cook his face. The next, it was gone, cut out of existence by a sword so sharp, the fabric of reality snapped and frayed wherever its edge rested. Bex was still trying to wrap her mind around the concept when that impossibly sharp sword swung at her.
She barely got her own sword up in time. She blocked with Drox out of five thousand years of habit, but the moment the Blade of Ishtar touched her own, Bex knew she’d made a fatal mistake. Her Drox was normally an unbreakable wall. Even when he’d been whittled down to a sliver, he’d never failed to stop an attack. But when the enemy’s sword met Bex’s this time, that unthinkably sharp edge sliced through him like a razor, cutting the unbreakable metal of the gods, the blessing of Enki himself, like it was paper.
If Bex hadn’t been burning with the combined fire of all of Ishtar’s demons, the prince would’ve cut her sword in half before she’d realized what was happening. Bex was burning, though, and she moved as fast as her flames, snatching Drox back into his ring before the prince’s terrible weapon could do more than nick him.
That quick thinking saved her sword. Unfortunately, it also left Bex without a defense when the prince swung again, his stolen sword moving so fast she didn’t have a prayer of dodging. Frantically, Bex pulled up the fear-demon scales she’d used against today’s first prince, but she already knew it was useless. If a Divine Blade of Enki couldn’t stop it, flesh and bone had no shot. The prince’s sword didn’t even slow down as it sliced the black scales off her with effortless grace to cut into Bex’s side.
It was the same place she’d gotten hit the first time she’d faced a prince at seventeen. Bex had gotten faster over the years, so the wound wasn’t as deep this time, but the damage was still done. She could actually feel her regeneration recoiling from undoing the work of Ishtar’s weapon. The result was a gush of hot black blood running down her side as she rolled to a stop and whirled back around to face the smugly smiling prince.
“Now you understand,” he said, turning Ishtar’s black sword to show Bex the cutting edge, which was so sharp that blood didn’t even cling to it. “I might not be able to name you, but no creation of Ishtar can defeat their goddess’s sword.”
“And you’re telling me this why?” Bex demanded, pressing a hand against her wound. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to surrender now?”
That was what the princes who talked to her in the middle of combat were usually after, but Alexander shook his head.
“It wouldn’t matter anymore if you did,” he said as he stepped back into his stance. “Didn’t you hear me earlier? This world is as good as gone. You could throw yourself at Gilgamesh’s feet, and he would no longer care. It’s already over. We’re just killing time until the countdown’s finished.”
“If that’s how you feel, why don’t you get out of my way?” Bex offered. “It’ll save you a lot of pain.”
The Crown Prince didn’t bother with a response. He just attacked, moving faster than any opponent Bex had ever fought as he swung his sword at her neck. She moved just in time to save her head, lighting up in an explosion of fire the second the prince got close. If she couldn’t block his sword, Bex reasoned, she’d burn off his hands instead. Even the Blade of Ishtar still needed to be swung, but no sooner had her flames shot out than the prince’s sword flicked back, and all the fire she’d just thrown at him vanished without so much as a puff of smoke.
He cut them out of existence, Drox explained when he felt her shock. The Blade of Ishtar is the sharpest tool Enki ever made. It can cut things I can’t even conceive of.
“Then we’ll just have to get it out of his hands,” Bex snarled, drawing her sword again.
She pulled on her own power at the same time. Not the Bonfire of Wrath again. This was an ability Bex hadn’t tried yet but had already seen in action. She even had a pretty good idea of how it worked. All she had to do was focus on her refusal to let this son of her hated enemy take anything else away from her. Gilgamesh already had enough, as evidenced by the golden room they were standing in. To demand her defeat as well was pure greed, and the moment Bex threw that sin onto her fire, the notch Ishtar’s Blade had put in Drox repaired itself.
The hole in her side closed up as well. Not because it had healed—her regeneration still refused to touch any damage done by Ishtar’s sacred weapon—but because that was Greed’s power. Her sister permitted nothing of hers to be stolen, and now that Greed’s demons had bowed their horns to her, neither did Bex.
She could already feel the protection wrapping around her like a fist. While the Queen of Greed’s power was squeezing, nothing that belonged to her could be taken or broken. Bex wasn’t sure if that protection extended all the way to death, but after watching Greed’s sword put the haughty prince she’d diced back together in Adrian’s forest and repair the madman she’d burned to a crisp in Limbo, she was feeling pretty confident. Keeping the power up took a lot of energy, but Bex’s flames were getting her nowhere, so she threw it all in, pouring herself down Greed’s maw as she dug her boots into the softened gold floor and charged, turning the tables on the Crown Prince as she swung for his head instead.
He dodged the attack with room to spare, moving with beyond superhuman speed to strike Bex’s open flank. She spun around to meet him, slamming Drox’s blade into the Sword of Ishtar. Just like before, the black blade cut straight through hers. This time, though, Bex was able to push back, using Greed’s power to replace Drox’s sword as fast as Ishtar’s blade cut it. The victorious smile was still spreading across her face when Alexander hooked the toe of his golden boot around the back of her ankle and yanked Bex’s legs out from under her.
She fell on her back with a slam. The prince’s sword followed, almost slicing her in half before Bex rolled away. She’d thought she’d made it until she felt a cold breeze on her left shoulder and realized Ishtar’s unthinkably sharp blade had cut her arm off.
Bex was still staring at the bleeding stump in shock when Greed’s power reversed it. Just like when the princess pulled her prince’s white blood back into him, Bex’s severed arm picked itself up off the floor and stuck itself back onto her shoulder like the damage had never been done. It was an unnatural, almost comically macabre sight, but the moment Bex saw it, she saw her path to victory.
Be wary, Drox cautioned as she rolled back to her feet. Greed’s power is not natural to your body. You were made to burn, not to replace. If you keep using it so recklessly—
“It’s the only thing that works against him,” Bex argued, fixing the circling prince with her eyes as she raised Drox’s once-again-pristine black blade. “We’ll just have to end this quick.”
A tremor of fear ran through her sword at those words, but Bex didn’t have time to heed it. The prince was already swinging for her knee, his sword moving like a bolt of black lightning. Bex couldn’t possibly dodge something so fast, so she didn’t even try. She opened her defenses instead, practically offering the prince her leg, because if his sword was in her thigh, then it couldn’t block her counter. She could already feel her balance tilting as the black blade cut in, so Bex swung with all her might, throwing what was left of her weight into the strike that should have taken off the prince’s head.
“Should have” turned out to be the operative phrase. The blow had looked certain when she’d started, but by the time Drox’s blade was actually within range of his neck, the prince had already ducked. His attack changed with him, transforming what had been a chopping strike into a thrusting one as the prince’s body went down and forward, driving Ishtar’s thin black sword like a nail through Bex’s kneecap.
She howled in pain. Even with Greed’s power reversing it, that hit hurt so bad she saw spots, especially since the prince still hadn’t pulled his sword out. He used it as leverage to push her over instead, toppling Bex back onto the floor she’d just gotten off of. She responded with a kick from the leg he wasn’t pinning, slamming her boot into the prince’s armored elbow, but not nearly hard enough. The moment she made contact, the prince shifted his weight, fading under her foot and spoiling the kick’s momentum. He twisted his sword at the same time, almost taking off the bottom half of her right leg before Bex got herself together and ripped free, dumping a ton of black blood on the floor in the process.
Greed’s power pulled it right back into her, but the few seconds it took for her mangled leg to revert back to its pre-injured state felt like running a marathon. It was the biggest wound she’d undone yet, but while Bex did eventually get her knee—and even her leggings—back together, her heart was pounding like a jackhammer.
I warned you, Drox said as she gasped. You can’t keep this up.
“What else am I supposed to do?” Bex demanded, rolling to the side just in time to avoid the prince’s next deadly swing. “This is the final prince before Gilgamesh. If I can’t kill him, we did all of this for nothing.”
It’s going to be the last thing you ever do at this rate, Drox snapped, his voice more terrified than Bex had ever heard it. Please, my queen, you can’t—
“I can,” Bex said, tightening her grip on his hilt as her eyes flicked to where Adrian was still saving Leander’s life. “I have to, or it’s all over.”
There was nothing Drox could say to that. Even if he’d had something, Bex didn’t have time to listen. She’d already launched into her next attack, ignoring the sword flying at her stomach as she leaped into the air to bring Drox’s enormous blade down on the Crown Prince like a guillotine.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adrian had never been so scared in his life, which was saying something, considering the past six months. He thought he’d become hardened to fear by this point, but there was something uniquely terrifying about seeing Bex—the fastest, strongest, most unbeatable person he’d ever met—being forced back by a prince who moved faster than lightning and cut through anything he touched without breaking a sweat.
Even thinking about it felt like a betrayal, but Adrian was pretty sure the Crown Prince was better than Bex. Add in his unbeatable sword that could cut through Drox’s blade and slice her fire out of the air, and it was no wonder that there was now a pit where Adrian’s stomach used to be. The only good thing he could say about the situation was that at least the horrific damage she was taking seemed to be instantly repairing itself.
He wasn’t sure how she was doing that, actually. Adrian was used to Bex’s amazing regeneration by this point, but he’d never seen Drox heal before. He would’ve called it a miracle if it hadn’t been so clearly taking a huge toll. He’d seen Bex go entire fights without getting winded, but this battle had lasted less than a minute, and she was already gasping like a landed fish.
He had to go help her before she ran out of whatever she was using to power her miraculous recovery, but Alexander was moving too fast for Adrian’s once-again-mortal eyes to follow. He’d get cut to ribbons if he tried to stick his nose into their fight. Also, as much as Adrian wanted to focus on Bex, he had his own problems to worry about.
“Would you stop moving?” Boston snarled, sinking his teeth in Leander, who hadn’t stopped thrashing in Adrian’s arms despite the enormous amount of white blood he’d already dumped on the floor.
“I can’t!” Leander cried, lurching against the bandage Adrian was attempting to tie around the hole in his chest. “I have to help her!”
“You can’t help anyone if you bleed to death,” Boston pointed out, smacking the frantic prince on the head with his paw before turning to Adrian. “You should knock him out.”
“I’d love to,” Adrian replied through gritted teeth as he wrestled with his bloody brother. “But princes are immune to most common poisons, and I didn’t think to grab any uncommon ones from my cabin before we ran off.”
“Who said anything about poison?” Boston huffed. “Just hit him over the head. I know blunt trauma is risky, but you can’t possibly do more damage than he’s already doing to himself.”
Adrian didn’t know about that. Even for a Witch of the Flesh, the brain wasn’t something that should be damaged on purpose. Leander really was going to bleed out if he didn’t stop thrashing, though, so Adrian decided to try a different tactic.
“Calm down and listen,” he said, pressing the ball of his palm into Leander’s wound until the prince collapsed on the ground with a gasp. “Your princess is not in danger. Look and see for yourself.”
He grabbed his brother’s chin with the hand he wasn’t using to grind into his wound and yanked his head around to face the battle happening on the opposite end of the throne room from Bex’s. Adrian hadn’t had time to glance in that direction yet, so he wasn’t actually sure if what he’d said was accurate, but he’d overheard Bex telling Nemini not to hurt Mara, and despite being revealed as a queen herself, Nemini always did what Bex said. That fact held true yet again when Adrian turned to see Leander’s princess swinging wildly at Nemini, who was not swinging back.
It was a shocking sight to see. Despite working with Bex’s team for almost half a year now, Adrian had never gotten the chance to watch Nemini fight for real. She normally just knocked her opponents out with a touch. That trick must not have worked on princesses, though, because while Mara’s wild attacks were leaving openings so big that even Adrian could spot them, Nemini never tried to touch her. She was just keeping Mara busy, exactly as Bex had ordered.
That would’ve been great if Bex’s fight with the Crown Prince had been going better. The way things were looking on the other side of the room, though, Adrian decided he’d better do something before they all died tragically on Gilgamesh’s threshold.
“Leander,” he whispered, keeping his voice as low as possible, even though none of the combatants were paying attention to them. “Do you have a spell that can restrain a princess?”
“Nothing that will work on her,” the prince whispered back, his frighteningly gray face pinched as he stared at his beloved. “Mara’s not as physically powerful as War or Wrath, but she knows all my spells’ limitations. She can easily break out of any of my nonlethal restraints, and I’d never use a lethal one.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Adrian said, using his brother’s distraction to finally finish wrapping the bandage around Leander’s perforated chest. He just hoped he’d stemmed the bleeding in time. A chest wound like that would have killed a normal human in seconds, but the princes’ quintessence bodies seemed as sturdy as the queens’, so Adrian had hope. He was checking his pockets to see if he had anything that might help with Leander’s pain when his brother began pushing to his feet.
“What are you doing?” Adrian hissed, grabbing his arm. “Don’t move yet! We just tied you back together!”
“I have to move,” Leander wheezed. “I have to stop them. This fight is killing her!”
Adrian didn’t see how he’d arrived at that conclusion. If anything, Nemini looked like the one who was having a hard time. Adrian had known for a while now that she had some sort of instant-movement power, but he’d never seen her use it like this before. The Queen of Pride was blinking all over the throne room like an afterimage, her normally emotionless face scrunched up in concentration as she fought to stay ahead of Mara’s wild jabs.
She must not have been able to dodge them all, because there were splashes of black blood on the golden floor beneath their feet. The Princess of Sorrow, on the other hand, looked completely uninjured. Adrian would even go so far as to say she was winning. Then he caught a glimpse of Mara’s face, and he understood what Leander had meant.
Gilgamesh’s princesses had never had the biology necessary to produce real tears, but the Princess of Sorrow was certainly trying. Her carved white face was twisted in anguish, and her golden eyes were squeezed shut as she tried in vain to stop herself from attacking her sister. She looked like a puppet fighting against its strings, but no matter how hard she tried to throw the battle in Nemini’s favor, her body kept attacking with the ferocity of the weapon Gilgamesh had carved it to be. It was a heartbreaking sight, but then, everything about what Gilgamesh had done to Ishtar’s people was a tragedy, and Adrian was sick of seeing it.
With that, he let go of his still-bleeding brother and started digging through his pockets. He’d filled his coat from his cabin before they’d marched on the palace, but most of what he’d grabbed was raw materials. He hadn’t had time to craft anything useful out of them yet, but Adrian had an idea for how to cheat on that. He might not have Gilgamesh’s quintessence blood in his own veins anymore, but Leander had spilled a ton of his, and while Adrian had sworn never to touch sorcery again, picky witches were dead witches.
Someone was almost certainly going to die in the next few minutes if he didn’t do something, so Adrian grabbed a handful of leaves, sticks, and sticky sap out of his supplies pocket and dropped them on the golden floor. He got down on his knees next, using his bare hands to scoop his brother’s white blood over the materials. It was a total hack job, but improvisation was a Witch of the Present’s greatest strength, and Adrian had gotten pretty good at speeding up witchcraft with sorcery. It helped that he’d done this spell a thousand times before. All he had to do was mash the appropriate ingredients together with the power of the living forest that once again thrived inside his heart, use quintessence to replace the normal twenty-eight-day curing period, and when he pulled his bloody hands aside, what he wanted was sitting right in front of him.
