CHAPTER 1 #3
Even after Iggs and a bunch of war demons shoved the main doors wide open, only so many demons could go up the spiral staircase at a time.
Once they got outside, there was another slowdown as everyone stopped to let their eyes adjust to the brightness of Heaven’s day.
It caused a backup every time, but Bex didn’t have the heart to hurry them.
Even if it was just Gilgamesh’s sunless fake, this was the first time some of these demons had ever seen an open sky.
Bex always let them stare as long as they wanted, though she did encourage them to step to the side so the demons behind them could keep moving.
At least there was no shortage of places to put people.
Just as it had looked from the air, the White City really did seem to be completely abandoned.
All the elegant apartment buildings surrounding the Hells had even been left unlocked, some with food still set out on the tables as if the residents had been in the middle of a meal when they got the order to flee.
That was great news for Bex, Adrian, Boston, and Leander.
True to Heaven’s reputation for excess, every apartment they checked had a modern, state-of-the-art kitchen stuffed to the rafters with food.
It was all shelf-stable pantry items since the Anchor Markets—the only place where the Heavenly denizens could purchase fresh produce—had been closed for weeks, but the Holy City’s emergency supplies were still gourmet.
There were so many cocktail crackers, olives, summer sausages, packets of dried fruit, and bottles of wine that Bex could’ve survived for years off just what they found in the first apartment building alone.
But while she was okay since Adrian had filled her with the fires of life, her demons were a different story.
Most, like Iggs, were happy to eat the party food along with anything else they could get their hands on, but that just filled their physical bellies.
Their actual hunger could only be met by human emotion, and with no humans around aside from Adrian and Leander, that was a problem.
They couldn’t even scrape sins out of the flooded Hells since Gilgamesh had polluted the water.
It wouldn’t have been an emergency if everyone had started out healthy, but many of the former slaves and all of Bex’s wrath demons had come out of the Hells on the verge of starvation.
They needed actual food, not cocktail party fillers, which was why, the moment the last demon made it up the stairs from the Hells, Bex took over the rooftop deck of the apartment complex with the best view of Gilgamesh’s tower and called a meeting.
It was a pretty motley affair. The evacuation from the Hells had been chaos, but now that everyone was settling into the empty buildings, leaders had started emerging to speak for their representative factions.
The final coalition included Bex’s crew, who seemed to be universally revered as trusted servants of the Bonfire Queen; Nemini, who was a queen in her own right; Desh, who’d been elected to represent all the escaped demons from the Founders’ Tunnels plus the demons Bex had freed from the Lowest Hells; Captain Roga of the war demons; a variety pack of respected elders from all the various segments of the Middle Hells; and a tall pride demon who refused to look at Nemini or give his name.
None of the wrath demons were strong enough to sit through a meeting yet, so Iggs had volunteered to represent their interests.
Leander had also refused to attend, since doing so would mean leaving Mara’s side, but this wasn’t his business anyway, so Bex let him be.
Adrian was there, though he’d been forced to hover off the edge of the roof on his broom since his mirrored eyes freaked the other demons out.
This arrangement left Bex alone in the middle, but it was a position she was used to now, so she didn’t waste time fretting as she hopped up onto the marble-and-steel patio set the warlocks had placed up here for their deck parties and announced the obvious.
“We can’t stay here.”
“It’s not a bad place,” said one of the wizened elders from the Middle Hells. “Even abandoned, Heaven’s luxuries abound. We have soft beds to sleep on, rooms for privacy, clothes to wear, and wine to drink. Truly, this city is a paradise compared to where we were.”
“But we have no food,” Bex reminded him stiffly. “The Rivers of Death don’t flow up here, and there aren’t enough humans to pull sins out of directly. If we don’t get back to Earth or find something else to eat up here, we’re going to lose even more people.”
“Is there any way to clean the floodwaters?” asked Lys, who’d put on their neutral, genderless body for this meeting plus a big black coat to hide their still-bleeding shoulder. “That stuff’s so packed with sin it’s sludgy. There has to be some way to get it out.”
“There isn’t,” Desh insisted from the side table where Streya was playing with the jewels she’d found in one of the bedrooms. “Not only did the flood protocol dump in poison at the start, the whole Middle Hells cavern was coated in eons of toxic ash and grit. The water’s actually getting even more poisonous as it marinates.
” He shook his pale head. “There may be a way to clean it, but I don’t know what it is, and we don’t have time to figure it out.
I’d much rather just abandon ship. This whole place is cursed so far as I’m concerned. ”
“I agree with that,” Adrian said, moving his broom a little closer so he could join the conversation without yelling. “But getting out is going to be a challenge. While you were busy getting people out of the Hells, Boston and I flew over to take a look at the shield.”
“And?” Bex asked.
“And it’s impenetrable,” he replied with a shrug. “But we knew that already.”
“What my witch is trying to say is that the barrier is immune to sorcery,” Boston explained with a swish of his tail. “I still maintain that a strong enough blow from a different magical source could crack it. If we were in the Blackwood, for example, I’m certain we could beat our way through.”
“But we’re not in the Blackwood,” Adrian said in the exasperated voice of someone who’d already made that point many, many times.
“We’re not on real land. We’re inside a magical construction where nothing grows, and I’ve still got a block inside my chest. I can’t even reach my heart, never mind my forest, and if I go through you again for something that big, I’ll kill you. ”
“There are many difficulties,” Boston admitted. “But it’s hardly impenetrable. We just haven’t found the right mechanism yet.”
“Then we’d better get to finding it,” Bex said, interrupting Boston before he could draw Adrian into one of their hours-long technical arguments.
“Just because nothing’s come out of the palace to kill us yet doesn’t mean we’re in the clear.
Until we’ve got everybody safely back on Earth, this is still an active war zone.
I want everyone to stay together at all times and keep an eye on anybody more injured than yourselves.
When our window comes, it’ll probably come quick, so sleep in shifts and be ready to move at a moment’s notice. ”
“What kind of window are you expecting?” Iggs asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Bex admitted. “But I’m going to find one. I didn’t break Ishtar’s children out of the Hells just so we could starve to death while Gilgamesh laughs at us from his palace. We’re getting out of here, so stay close, stay safe, and stay together until I give the order to move.”
Despite the direness of their situation, that seemed to raise the demons’ spirits, especially the former slaves.
The representatives from the Middle Hells all bowed at once and left to spread the queen’s word to all the other demons sleeping in the apartment blocks that surrounded the entrance to the Hells.
If they’d spread out, they probably could’ve filled the entire city, but the demons were afraid of Heaven and preferred staying together.
They’d packed themselves into the luxury apartments ten to a room, for which Bex was very glad.
Protecting people was a lot easier when they were clumped together.
She couldn’t protect them from their biggest threat, though, which was why, the moment everyone cleared off the roof except for her crew and Adrian, she called a huddle.
“Is there any way we can get to the chains that doesn’t involve going into Gilgamesh’s palace?” she asked as soon as they were all together.
“There’s gotta be,” Iggs said. “We saw the chains from the cliff where we got banished. If we can get to the edge of this place, I bet we could hop right off and walk our way down them to freedom.”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Lys warned, their androgynous face pinched and frighteningly pale from the wound Bex knew was still bleeding under their coat.
“You can’t see it right now because of the high walls, but the Holy City is famously surrounded by the Goddeath Wastes.
In case you couldn’t tell from the name, that’s not exactly a place you can just walk across. ”
“I’d rather take my risks in a desert than starve here doing nothing,” Iggs argued. “We also won’t have to endure it for long. We saw the edge of Heaven above us when we landed in the Hells. It can’t be that far away.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Adrian said in a grim voice. “The barrier wasn’t the only thing Boston and I checked when we were flying around. We also went up on the walls to do a triangulation spell.”
“Surveying magic,” Boston explained at everyone’s blank looks. “Normally used for mapmaking.”