“Aw, crap.”
Gilgamesh’s entire multi-tower fortress was covered in a shimmering golden shield. It hadn’t been visible down in the square, but now that she was above the rooftops, Bex could see that the glittering spell went all the way from the castle’s white-paved courtyard to the tip of the tallest golden tower. It was the biggest barrier spell she’d ever seen on anything, but other than blocking access to the palace, it didn’t seem to be a threat, which meant Bex was now very confused.
“Wait,” she said, leaning so far over that Adrian had to stick his arm out to keep her from falling off the broom. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Bad,” Adrian replied at once. “The chains we need to get back to Earth are in there.”
“That’s a long-term problem,” Bex argued. “Our biggest immediate worry was retaliation, but it seriously looks like Gilgamesh evacuated his city and retreated into his fortress.” A smile spread across her face. “If he’s in there and we’re out here, does that mean we’re safe?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Boston warned. “Just because he put up a barrier doesn’t mean he can’t take it down again.”
“We’re not safe until we’re out,” Adrian agreed, pulling his witch hat out of his coat and placing it back on his head to shield his eyes against Heaven’s eternal glare. “Gilgamesh is absolutely not defeated. He probably just pulled back because a palace is easier to defend than an entire city, and because he knew we wouldn’t be able to get in. It’s a lot bigger this time, but that barrier looks exactly like the one I saw over the entrance to the chain back when I infiltrated the Boston Anchor. Malik claimed it could only be crossed by those in Gilgamesh’s favor. Thatcould’ve been another lie, of course, but I’m sure it won’t be easy to break.”
He glanced over his shoulder for Bex’s reaction, but she just blinked at him.
“You infiltrated the Boston Anchor?”
“I did a lot of stupid things while we were apart,” he confessed, turning back to the glittering palace. “That said, I think you’re right in the short term. The barrier is cutting us off from the chains, but it also means that our biggest immediate worry is solved. If Gilgamesh has retreated into his fortress and the city really is as empty as it seems, then—”
“We can evacuate into it!” Bex finished with a grin, reaching up to tap the comm in her ear. “Lys? Iggs?”
“We’re here,” Lys’s voice crackled over the connection. “Iggs is standing right next to me. What’s the bad news?”
Bex’s grin got wider. “Believe it or not, it’s good news this time. Heaven is clear. Go ahead and start moving everyone up.”
“Wait, did you say Heaven is clear?” Iggs demanded.
“Clear how?” Lys asked at the same time. “Did you already beat the army or—”
“There was no army,” Bex interrupted, looking down at all the giant empty buildings with a new eye. “Gilgamesh has abandoned the city and retreated into his palace. I don’t know if he’ll stay in there, but for the time being at least, it looks like the whole place is ours.”
“You’re kidding,” Iggs said excitedly. “That’s great!”
“It’s suspicious,” Lys argued. “How do you know this isn’t a trap?”
“I don’t,” Bex confessed, sliding her arm around Adrian’s waist as he flew them back down to the ground. “If it is a trap, though, it hasn’t gone off yet, and I don’t intend to wait around until it does. Just come on up. Whatever Gilgamesh has in store for us, it’s gotta be better than the Hells.”
“That wouldn’t be hard,” Iggs muttered. “But if you say it’s safe, that’s good enough for me.”
“We’re on our way,” Lys confirmed. “See you in a minute.”
Bex nodded and released the button, leaping off the broom the moment it got within safe jumping distance of the ground to go meet her people.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It took a little over six hours to evacuate everyone out of the Hells. Part of that was because the former slaves were starved and exhausted, especially Bex’s wrath demons. Mostly, though, it was simply a matter of throughput.
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 denizenscould 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 neededactualfood, 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.
