She finished with a glorious smile, but Bex just moved closer to Adrian.
“No.”
The goddess’s beaming expression faltered for a second before snapping back into place.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” she said in a decidedly less magnanimous tone. “I am offering to wipe the slate clean. Your sins against Enki, against myself—they will all be forgotten. I’ll even spare the life of your handsome paramour.”
She winked at Adrian, who shivered.
“This is my reward for your eons of loyal service,” Ishtar went on. “But such divine mercy shall only be tendered once. I know many things were said in the heat of our last meeting, but I’m willing to put all that behind us if you bow your head right now and return to where you belong.”
She held out her hand as she finished, reaching for Bex not as a daughter but as one would grasp the hilt of a sword. It was a move she must’ve made often, because part of Bex instinctively responded, stepping closer to her mother before she could drive her foot into the ground.
“No,” she said again, digging her boots into the sloping sides of Gilgamesh’s empty quintessence collector. “You were our goddess once, but the demons born today don’t belong to you.” She reached up to grab the six horns that still rose from her head. “They put this crown on me so I could free them from Gilgamesh, but I didn’t go through all of that—theydidn’t go through it—so I could turn around and hand them back to you.”
“There’s nothing to hand,” Ishtar snarled, snatching her radiant hand back to her side. “They are demons. Therefore, they belong tome. There’s no such thing as freedom for them, just like there’s no such thing as a crown for you unless I put it there. I am your creator, yourgod. You will bow to me, or you will be destroyed.”
Bex lifted her swords in reply, both Gilgamesh’s white blade and Drox’s black one. The latter was shaking like a leaf against her palm, but he didn’t flee back into his ring, which steeled Bex’s determination even more. No matter what happened next, she was determined to be worthy of her sword’s loyalty. Worthy of everything she’d been given as she moved to stand between Adrian and the furious god that had once been her mother.
Ishtar scowled in reply and held her arm out to the side. Bex wasn’t sure what she was doing at first. Then her ears caught the faint ringing of metal right before the goddess’s sword flew past her to slap itself back into Ishtar’s palm. Drox did the same thing when Bex called him, so it wasn’t surprising that Ishtar could do the same. It was, however, extremely intimidating. Taking a stand against Gilgamesh was one thing, but when the Goddess of War, Life, and Death turned to face her with Enki’s greatest masterpiece in her hand, even Bex felt like she was about to faint. She was telling herself to go ahead and get it over with before she lost her nerve entirely when Adrian grabbed her shoulder.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “They’re almost here.”
“Who’s almost here?” Bex whispered back frantically.
“Just five more seconds,” he promised, giving her a wink. “Trust me.”
Bex trusted him with every single life she’d ever had. If Adrian said wait, then her feet were welded to the ground. Unfortunately, the same did not apply to Ishtar. The goddess was already darting forward with her razor-sharp black sword to remove Bex’s head. Bex responded by throwing up Gilgamesh’s white sword since she’d much rather lose that ugly thing than Drox, but she’d barely gotten the block in position before something huge and dark erupted out of the ground right in front of her.
Bex’s first thought was that it was a tree. Adrian’s forest hadn’t stopped growing since he’d used it to destroy Gilgamesh’s prince tanks, and trees were how her witch solved most problems. She was wondering what sort of tree had such dark leaves when the black shape suddenly opened its beak to snatch the charging Ishtar off the ground. It rocketed into the air next, carrying the screaming goddess high into the pale-blue sky. It wasn’t until it spread its huge black wings, however, that Bex finally realized what she was looking at.
“That’s the Morrigan,” she said, staggering back into Adrian. “The Morrigan just ate Ishtar!”
“The Morrigan didn’t eat her,” countered a familiar voice as Muriel, Witch of the Future and Adrian’s youngest aunt, hauled herself out of the hole the Morrigan had just made in the tank’s sin-iron floor. “She’s disciplining her.”
“The gods have always been excessively violent with each other,” agreed Lydia, Witch of the Past, who popped through next. “That’s one of the reasons the Morrigan left in the first place.”
“I’m just glad we got here in time,” finished Agatha, gracefully bringing up the rear on her broom. “Not that I didn’t think our Bonfire Queen could win, but nothing good ever comes of family trying to kill each other.”
The Three Sisters all chuckled like that was an inside joke, but Bex was too alarmed to find anything funny.
“What are you all doing here?” she demanded, finally pushing off of Adrian, who’d been graciously holding her up. “You’re supposed to be in the Blackwood, fighting with my demons!”
“The rest of our coven is there,” Agatha assured her. “But Muriel foresaw that our work here wasn’t finished yet, so we stayed behind with the Morrigan.”
“And it’s a good thing we did,” Muriel muttered, tugging at her shiny black hair. “I don’t like giving odds, but your chances against Ishtar after the amount of fire you used to beat Gilgamesh werenotgood, especially since all the demons who could’ve provided you with more are back in the world of the living.”
“All of them?” Bex repeated as a weak smile crossed her face. “Does that mean everybody got to safety?”
“Only if you want to call evacuating into an active war zone ‘safe’,” Lydia said.
“What matters is they’re not here anymore,” Agatha added tactfully. “That’s about to be very important, Muriel tells me.”
The Witch of the Future nodded and turned her blue eyes to the sky. Bex looked up as well, biting her lip as she watched Ishtar stab her sword into the Morrigan’s beak. The Morrigan still didn’t let go, but she did swoop back down, throwing Ishtar to the ground at the last second so she couldn’t use her wings to avoid the impact.
“Youheathen!” the goddess screamed when she’d clawed her way out of the crater. “What are you doing in this sacred place?”
“Getting a little payback while you’re still too weak to fight properly,” the Morrigan replied, licking Ishtar’s white blood off her beak with a forked black tongue as she set down next to her trio of witches. “Say what you will about Gilgamesh. He always was the best at bleeding you pigs dry. Just look at you! Shriveled up like a raisin.”
