Tear Down Heaven: Urban Fantasy Action with Witches and Demons, page 34
Bex jerked her head up with a curse. Things hadn’t looked dim because there was still a spell in her eyes. It was shady because she was standing in the shadow of a falling mountain.
She had no idea how Gilgamesh had done it, but a rock big enough to crush a city was suddenly plummeting through the empty sky where the Wheel of Reincarnation had been. It wasn’t going as fast as an actual meteor, but even at that relatively slower speed, it was so big that getting out of the way was going to be impossible. It was already only a few dozen feet above her head, so Bex did the only thing she could think of. She slammed both her swords together in front of her and blasted all her fire out behind, turning herself into a rocket-stabilized knife as the giant stone crashed down.
If she’d been any less than what she was, that would’ve been the end. Even the original Rebexa would’ve been crushed, because no fire was hot enough to burn through all that stone before it hit her. But Bex was no longer that Rebexa nor merely the Queen of Wrath. She was the combined hope of all of Ishtar’s creations, and she pulled on every single one, coating her body in both Fear’s scales and War’s bronze armor to keep her arms from buckling as the falling mountain crashed into her.
She’d never been hit so hard in her life. Even with all her fire blasting, the initial impact almost smashed her into the ground. But Bex was the Bonfire of her people’s Wrath, and she had five thousand years’ worth of shit to be mad about. When the crashing rock pushed her down, she dug in and pushed back, reaching deep not just into the well of their righteous anger but also their sorrow, hate, and fear. She pulled from the suffering of the war her people had been fighting and dying over for fifty centuries and the pride they’d held onto despite that. She used everything her demons had ever given her, turning herself into a white-hot star as she drove her two swords in like a wedge to split the falling meteor in half.
The giant rock broke with the biggest crash she’d ever heard. Then, as fast as it had appeared, the enormous meteor vanished, revealing a clear blue sky filled with golden lights. They looked like motes of dust floating in the sunlight, except there was no sun in this cursed place, and they were all getting brighter. That was when Bex realized she wasn’t looking at motes or lights or anything so benign and beautiful.
They were lions.
A thousand golden lion cannons were standing in the sky above her. Just like the vanished meteor, Bex had no idea where they had come from, if Gilgamesh had pulled them from some ancient stockpile or simply created them out of thin air. All she knew was that they were about to fire. The air in front of them was already shimmering with the first gleams of the destructive white light that had obliterated the Seattle Anchor. But while Bex had smacked the lions’ shots away plenty of times, she’d never faced this many at once. She was wondering if she still had time to run when Gilgamesh—whom she’d just spotted standing in the air behind the cannons—waved his golden-gloved hand.
The lions all roared as soon as he gave the signal, unleashing a wave of white fire that, once again, Bex had no choice but to cut through. Just like before, she did it with both blades at once, holding Drox on her left and Ishtar’s sword on her right to slice the barrage right down the middle. When her swords made contact with the blinding fire this time, though, the shots didn’t bounce off. They exploded, blasting through Bex with enough force to make the world go white.
When she came back to herself, she was lying on the ground in a pool of her own black blood. She must’ve already healed a lot of the damage, because her body had that tingly, fragile, overused feeling she remembered from the day and a half she’d spent battling Havok nonstop. Drox’s voice was buzzing in her ear, but she couldn’t focus on his words long enough to comprehend them. The only thing she understood was that she probably shouldn’t take another of those.
You absolutely shouldn’t take another! Drox yelled through her ringing head. Your regeneration is nearly instantaneous now that you’ve got six horns, and you still almost died before it could catch you! She felt his blade shake in her limp hand. I’m starting to understand how Gilgamesh defeated Ishtar now. You absolutely cannot let him hit you like that again.
“Not planning on it,” Bex muttered as she pushed herself up. “But how are we going to—”
She cut off as the healed injuries she’d been about to inspect were suddenly illuminated by a white light so bright it washed all the color out of the world. Bex didn’t even have to look up to know the lions were getting ready to fire again, but if she couldn’t block the shots, couldn’t take them, and couldn’t dodge, what was left to do?
Who says you can’t dodge? Drox demanded. You’re faster than you’ve ever been.
“Not fast enough when all they have to do is turn their heads,” Bex said, glancing around for cover.
There wasn’t much. The wall of tanks full of injured princes was still standing, but Bex was pretty sure Adrian was hiding back there, and she didn’t want to bring the fire to him, especially since she was certain now that Gilgamesh wouldn’t pull his punches for his son. She could try diving into the cracks between the giant god coffins, but even with her new improved speed, she didn’t think she could make it that far in the few seconds before the lions fired.
That left her pretty cornered, but Bex was used to having her back against the wall. In a way, having no other options was actually freeing, because it gave her the courage to do what she really wanted to.
What’s that? Drox asked in a terrified voice.
There was no time to explain. The next barrage of glowing shots was already leaving the lions’ mouths, so Bex decided to show him instead as she blasted herself into the air. This put her straight in the path of incoming fire, but now that the shots had left the lions’ mouths, their trajectory could no longer be changed, which meant she could dodge them.
Bex did so like a fighter jet, shooting into the sky so fast that the air started to drag like water. She pushed until she was going the same speed as the white shots themselves, which made it even easier to dodge over, under, and between them in midair, but Bex didn’t stop there. Once she’d cleared the explosive barrage, she kept going up, using her fire to blast herself faster and faster until she was flying like a rocket at the king hiding behind the cannons like the coward he was.
By this point, Bex was going so fast that the world was a blur, but she still saw Gilgamesh’s smug face go blank in shock beneath the visor of his new lion helmet. She saw him tense next, which she realized probably meant he was about to teleport. For once, though, the King of Heaven was too slow.
Bex crashed into him the same way she’d hit the meteor—swords first and blazing like a comet. It was impossible to aim for anything specific at this speed, so Bex settled for just striking her target. And in that, at least, she seemed to be successful. She felt her swords go through Gilgamesh like two guillotines. When she finally stopped blazing and looked back to see how she’d done, though, the result was a mess in every sense of the word.
She definitely hadn’t missed. Gilgamesh’s golden armor was covered in red blood. It was splattered all over the lions in front of him, almost like he’d exploded. But while the evidence of her victory was painted all around him, the king himself didn’t have a scratch. His armor wasn’t even dented, and his grinning face showed no sign of pain. It was just like when he’d come back before, but Bex barely had time to gawk before Gilgamesh swung his sword at her.
He was still standing twenty feet away, but that turned out not to matter. Now, at last, Bex understood how he’d broken the Wheel from the ground. His white sword was less than half the size of Drox, but the magic coming off it was like an avalanche. It hit Bex full in the face, sending her body tumbling back down to the ground.
Her flames caught her before she fell too far, but Bex was still a mess. Not in her body—she’d actually escaped with minimal damage this time—but her mind was in chaos. She was sure she’d killed Gilgamesh twice now, but the king floating above her didn’t even look wounded. If anything, he was smugger than ever, strolling through the empty air like it was a paved path as he twirled his white sword and looked down on her in pity.
As she watched him gloat, Bex realized this was the same place she always ended up: on the bottom, under Gilgamesh’s boots. The view was extra bitter now, because Bex had really thought this time would be different. She’d fought a war, destroyed the Hells, and betrayed her own mother, all to make sure this never happened again. Now, though, Bex was starting to wonder if this ending was inevitable. She’d beaten lots of enemies who were tough to kill, but they’d always had limits, lines she could push them over to win. So far as she could tell, though, Gilgamesh had none of those. His magic was seemingly infinite, his life apparently untouchable. For the first time ever, Bex understood how the gods had fallen before him, but how in the Hells was she supposed to win?
You can’t think like that, Drox ordered, digging into her palm. I already told you, if you start thinking you’ve lost—
“I know,” Bex said, raising her two swords to face her seemingly unkillable enemy. But just as she was about to plunge back into the fight no amount of positive thinking could convince her wasn’t hopeless, she heard the soft sound of glass breaking in the distance right before the smug smile slipped off of Gilgamesh’s face.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Three minutes earlier.
Adrian needed to get to better cover.
He’d scrambled behind the wall of princes because it was the only thing up here other than Enki’s forge now that the golden banquet table was shattered. But while the tanks Gilgamesh stored his broken sons in had been stacked high, a see-through barrier of glass, gold filigree, and glowing water was not the most confidence-inducing shelter when a battle of almost-gods was going on fifty feet away. The best survival move would’ve been to run back downstairs into the cavern where they’d found the queen’s horns. That was where Boston was tugging him toward, but Adrian couldn’t take his eyes off Bex.
She was shining like a supernova. Her body was a white-hot silhouette inside the halo of her flames. Every time she moved, she left a blazing trail, filling the pale sky with an aurora of yellow, orange, gold, and blue fire. It was unspeakably beautiful, unspeakably powerful on the primal level that all witches loved. If Adrian hadn’t been head over heels already, the sight of her right now would’ve sealed the deal for sure. As glorious as Bex unquestionably was, though, she didn’t seem to be winning.
His eyes weren’t fast enough to keep up, but Adrian couldn’t miss the stream of black blood that was constantly hitting the ground. Gilgamesh didn’t need to speak to cast his sorcery, so it was hard to tell exactly what he was doing, but it looked like he was using a variation of Leander’s Fifty Steps of the Pilgrim to teleport into all her blind spots. The fact that Bex hadn’t already fallen out of the sky meant she was healing the damage, which was good, but Adrian knew better than anyone that Bex had a hard limit. The more blood she lost, the harder she’d fight until she hit the wall, and then she’d die.
Adrian wasn’t about to let that happen. He had to find a way to help, some edge he could push to shift the fight in Bex’s favor. Gilgamesh was still in his casual blacksmithing clothes, so he couldn’t be taking this battle seriously. Abusing that overconfidence was probably the winning move, but how? Gilgamesh was using sorcery with no incantations or pauses, and his one sword was moving faster than both of Bex’s put together.
As more and more of Bex’s blood hit the ground, all Adrian could think was that this whole situation was supremely unfair. Where was Gilgamesh getting all that power from? Was every bit of his body made of quintessence now, or—
A fiery explosion blasted Adrian out of his thoughts. He wasn’t sure what had caused it, but Bex suddenly had only one sword, and she was using her free arm to pull her burning body as close to Gilgamesh’s as possible. Adrian could see the king struggling to push her off, but Bex was stuck to him like flaming napalm, and the brighter she burned, the more of Gilgamesh vanished.
Literally vanished. The hands she was holding on to Gilgamesh with must’ve been hot enough to vaporize, because the shadow of his body was disappearing into Bex’s light at an astonishing rate. His arm turned to ash as Adrian watched, followed by his shoulder and then his torso. Bex had only been blasting for a few seconds, but at that temperature, a few seconds was all it took to reduce the Eternal King, the slayer of gods, Heaven’s immortal tyrant, to dust.
Bex looked as surprised by that as Adrian. She was shining too brightly for him to make out her expressions, but the glowing hand she’d used to grab Gilgamesh was fumbling through the suddenly-empty air. She turned around after that, her flaming head moving in a circle, but other than ashes, the sky was empty. He really did seem to be gone. Dead! Finished! Adrian was about to leap out of his hiding place with a whoop of joy when Gilgamesh suddenly reappeared twenty paces in front of him.
It felt like seeing a ghost. He’d watched Gilgamesh’s body turn to ash with his own two eyes, but the Eternal King was suddenly right there, standing next to the destroyed table. It wasn’t because he’d teleported to safety either. Adrian had been looking right at him when it happened. He’d seen the king’s body reform itself from the inside out, starting with his bones before moving on to organs, then muscles, then skin.
By the time he’d capped his miraculous resurrection off with a suit of glittering golden armor, fewer than three seconds had passed. It’d happened so quickly that part of Adrian was sure his eyes must’ve made a mistake, but the rest of him—the witch who’d been trained to be watchful from birth—knew what he’d seen. Gilgamesh had just resurrected himself from the dead, and he hadn’t used quintessence to do it. Adrian had seen his body rebuild itself from the inside out, and his blood had been unmistakably red. Other than his bones, nothing white had been involved. There’d been no giant bag of quintessence coins or gallons of liquid magic. He’d simply reformed himself out of empty air, but… that was impossible.
Adrian dropped his eyes to the ground. He could hear his father saying something cocky, but he didn’t have a spare brain cell left to interpret the words. Every thought in his head was focused on what he’d just witnessed: the miracle everything he knew about sorcery told him shouldn’t have happened, yet clearly had. Even his aunt Lydia, the Old Wife of the Bones herself, couldn’t pull off a total resurrection on a vaporized corpse, and while sorcery’s claim to fame was doing the impossible, the sorcerer still needed fuel to do it. Gilgamesh himself had taught Adrian that, so how had he pulled it off? Where was he getting that insane amount of magic from if it wasn’t in his blood?
“Adrian?”
The whisper was soft and close, and Adrian looked over with a jump to see Boston crouching on his shoulder.
“If this is about getting to safety, I already know,” Adrian said, heading off the lecture. “But I can’t leave Bex alone to—”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” his familiar assured him. “We both agreed to this fight, which means no running. I only interrupted you because I saw something.”
He pointed his paw at the row of glowing glass-and-gold boxes above them. “You see that prince on the corner?”
“Not really,” Adrian said, craning his head back. “That tank looks empty to me.”
“Precisely,” Boston said with a lash of his tail. “It wasn’t empty when we got here. I didn’t see what happened with everything else that was going on, but I remember distinctly that every tank on this wall was full. Now there’s one vacant right after Gilgamesh—”
“Brought himself back to life,” Adrian finished excitedly, stepping back to get a better look at the giant display case. “That’s how he’s doing it. He must be using the injured princes as replacements!”
“It’s too soon to jump to conclusions,” Boston warned, but his green eyes sparkled with excitement. “If that were the case, though, it would explain why this wall is here. I thought it was odd that Gilgamesh was storing his injured sons so close to him when he had no problem sending off all the functional ones to die stopping us. If he’s using them to give himself extra lives, though, it all makes sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Adrian agreed, ignoring the odd darkness in the sky as he pressed his face against the glass wall of the closest tank.
Like all the princes he’d seen up here, the man floating inside it was mortally wounded, with stab holes through his stomach, heart, and head. Now that Adrian knew what he was looking at, he could practically see Drox’s old shaved-down shape in the puncture wounds. This prince had definitely been killed by one of Bex’s previous incarnations, probably not even that long ago. But while the lack of scar tissue proved that this prince had died from his wounds, there was no white blood clouding the tank’s beautifully glowing blue water. If he turned his head sideways and pressed his cheek flat against the freezing cold glass, Adrian could actually see the liquid quintessence shining inside the prince’s severed arteries, and that made him more excited than anything.
“I don’t think they’re just replacements,” he whispered. “All of these princes still have their quintessence blood! That’s how he’s able to—"
“Adrian,” Boston interrupted in a terrified voice, his black ears flat against his skull as he stared at the sky. “Do you see what’s happening above—”
“No, and I’m not going to look,” Adrian interrupted, keeping his eyes firmly on the tank in front of him. “Bex is strong. I know she can handle whatever Gilgamesh throws, but she can’t win if he’s got a whole wall full of extra lives while she only has one. It’s our job to level the playing field, and this is how we do that.”
