There was also the sin to consider. Bex was normally pretty resistant to sin toxin, but she’d been exposed to the polluted water for a while now, and all that burning had left her exhausted. Now that that flood was lifting her booted feet off the ground, she was quickly realizing that she didn’t have enough strength left to tread water fully clothed. She tried climbing the walls, but they were smooth and coated with slippery black grime from the freezing, polluted water pouring over them. It poured into Bex’s face as well, leaving her drenched and gasping. She was scrambling to find something to brace her feet against when a pair of strong hands reached down to hook her under the arms.
“Gotcha,” Adrian’s strained voice said as he hauled her out of the water. She landed on Bran’s back next, gasping on the broomgrass like a landed fish next to the neatly arranged bodies of her unconscious sisters.
“That’s everyone!” Leander’s voice cried somewhere to her left. “Go!”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Adrian growled, hunkering low over Bex and digging his fingers into Bran’s bristles as the faithful broom shot them forward.
Bex relaxed into the familiar stiff bristles as she felt them start to move. She’d been so desperate to get out of the water, she hadn’t noticed her fire had gone out until she realized she couldn’t see. This left her body cold and shivering, but Adrian was warm as a blanket above her. She’d thought that was why he was doing it until she heard something scrape uncomfortably close to her head.
When she managed to get the flames going again, Bex saw it was the top of the Hell. The cavern’s ceiling was flying by just a few inches above Adrian’s uncovered head. He had his hat off and was lying flat on top of her, giving Bran room to work as the broom frantically wove them around the rocky juts and other uneven bits that hung down from the cave’s roof.
It was an incredibly dangerous way to fly, especially in the dark, but there was no other option. The rest of the cavern was already filled with choppy, foam-topped, polluted water, leaving them racing through a rapidly closing gap. Bex couldn’t even see Nemini’s light at the exit anymore, assuming there was still an exit at all. For all she knew, they’d already been flooded in. She couldn’t do anything about it, though, except lie flat and hold on as Adrian pushed his broom faster and faster, shooting between the water and the roof like a bullet until, at last, Bex saw a glimmer of fire through a pointed gap she recognized as the top of the Hell’s arched doorway.
“Get flat!” Adrian yelled, rolling off Bex to press himself into the broom beside her. Leander did the same, shielding Mara’s head with his body as Bran hurtled toward the shrinking exit. For a heart-dropping second, Bex wasn’t sure if they were going to hit the water or the wall. Somehow in the end, though, they missed both. Bran put on a burst of speed at the last second, slipping them through the final gap like a letter through a mail slot.
They burst into the bottom of the stairwell, which was much brighter than Bex remembered. She was still pushing her head up when she heard the familiar flap of wings coming down from above.
“Bex!”
Bex looked up just in time to see Lys land in front of her, using their wings for balance as they touched down on the tip of Bran’s carved beak, the only empty space left on the extremely overloaded broom.
“I’m so glad you made it out!” they cried, reaching out to hug Bex as much as they could without overbalancing. “Cut it kind of close, didn’t you?”
That second comment was directed at Adrian, who gave a dazed shrug. Bex had just reached down to help him up when Leander charged past them to teleport himself and Mara, who was still cradled in his arms, onto the stairs.
Theveryfullstairs. The bottom of the spiral staircase was hidden under twenty feet of black, foamy water now, but the rest of it was lit up bright as day thanks to all the torches being carried by the crowd of demons going up. Mostly drenched and dazed-looking pride demons, but there were wrath demons in the mix as well, plus a ton of others.
Envy and hate demons were scattered all through the crowd with torches to light the way up for those who could walk. Those who couldn’t were being carried up the center by a flock ofwinged sorrow, lust, and greed demons. The fear demons were there as well, using their ability to walk on walls to create a bucket chain of helpers that carried weakened demons straight to the stairwell’s top.
It was the most beautiful display of spontaneous cooperation Bex had ever seen. The sight of so many demons helping each other made her heart swell up so big and fast that it was painful. The only reason she didn’t start jumping for joy was because, while there were a lot of demons on the stairs, there still weren’t nearly as many as she’d expected.
“Where is everyone?”
“That’s the bad news,” Lys told her with a somber expression.
“They drowned, didn’t they?” Bex said in a shaking voice. “I was too slow.”
The guilt was already pulling her down when Lys shook their head. “That’s not what happened.”
Bex stared at them in confusion, and the lust demon sighed.
“The evacuation went faster than expected because there weren’t nearly as many demons down here as we thought,” they explained. “We assumed Pride would be as big as Wrath with a population of around a hundred thousand, but they turned out to be a lot smaller. According to the pride demons I talked to, most of their villages were wiped out during the war, and the ones who survived were decimated by the Queen of Pride’s death. By the time we got their Hell emptied, there were almost as many banished demons from other clans as actual void demons. The good news is that—between the unexpectedly low numbers and Nemini using your fire like a lighthouse—we were able to get everyone out before the cave flooded entirely.”
That was good to hear, but Bex still clenched her fists. “What about my demons?” she demanded. “What about wrath?”
She knew it was going to be bad when Lys dropped their eyes. “That’s the worst news,” they said quietly. “What Gilgamesh did to them in there caused heavy casualties. The demons by the doors were exhausted and worked to the bone, but they were still able to move. The ones in the back, though…”
They didn’t have to finish. Bex already knew. She’d seen her people when they came out of Limbo, how exhausted and starved they always were. The idea of Gilgamesh forcing those same demons to work until they collapsed made her black blood boil, but she understood exactly how it had happened.
“How many survived?”
“Hard to say,” Lys replied, looking up at the spiral of figures climbing the stairs above them. “We’d need Drox to get an actual headcount, but Iggs thinks it’s around forty thousand.”
Bex’s stomach dropped to her feet. Forty thousand. That was twice the number of demons she’d led at the Anchor, but only forty percent of the hundred thousand wrath demons Drox had always told her were in Limbo. If Iggs’s number was accurate, then sixty percent of her people, the demons Ishtar had created her to protect, were gone. Worked to death by Heaven’s selfish, arrogant, murderingtyrant.
“I’ll kill him,” Bex snarled, causing Lys to leap back into the air as her flames roared up like an inferno. “I’ll kill him!”
“That’s what we’re counting on,” Lys said as they fluttered back down. “We’re all hoping you turn Gilgamesh and his entire Heaven to a pile of ash, but we’ve got more immediate problems right now, so I need you to stop flaming and listen.”
