Hell's Heroes is the tenth and final book in Darren Shan's The Demonata series.
Darren Shan wished that nothing about this book, not even the title, be known to the public until late December 2008. This was the second time this has happened with any of the Darren Shan books, possibly initiated by the recent popularity increase in the author's works.
It is published in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Plot
Grubbs and Dervish are talking in the cave. Dervish is dying and only has a short amount time left to live, but he and Grubbs take it in their normal humorous stride. Grubbs reflects on how Dervish has always been there for him and begins to recall memories of his time with his uncle. Dervish dies during Grubbs' reflections. Grubbs takes his body into the open air and begins the slow, painful process of digging his uncle's grave.
Nearly a month later Grubbs is fighting a snakelike demon that killed the granny Disciple. He kills it then finishes up the battle. He has been fighting wave after wave of demons that are breaking through all over the globe. He has gathered another group of werewolves but is slowly being worn down. He goes to see Kernel and Kirilli in the hospital. He has been having a reoccurring dream of Bec in Lord Loss's kingdom, and in one of his torture chambers he sees Bo Kooniart. Bec then gets Lord Loss to take them into Earth's first chessboard. Time seems to freeze as Grubbs keeps on peering into the chess room. They return and it seems that Bec has made a deal with Lord Loss, and this assures Grubbs that Bec has betrayed them. For as Bec goes back to her room she hugs Lord Loss after he has agreed to something. Something to do with lodestones. Therefore, they decide to destroy as many lodestones as they can before Bec can get to them, and go to the only lodestone that they know the location of, the one at Carcery Vale. Grubbs, Kernel, Kirilli and two werewolves Curly and Moe with the help of the government and military of the world are quickly there by plane, which the werewolves hate and helicopter which they love. When they get there, they walk around Dervish's old mansion for a while, before going to the cave. They remove the dirt and go into the tunnel and the second cave with the lodestone after Kernel tells Grubbs this might be exactly what Bec and Lord Loss want them to do.
They carry on and Grubbs destroys the lodestone by throwing it at the cave wall and grinding the other pieces together and into the ground until nothing of it remains. Then footsteps approach and Shark and Timas Brauss reveal themselves. They discuss everything that has happened, Shark confronts Grubbs and forces him to confront his fears. He apologizes to Kernel and tells him he will let him go after he opens a window to Bec, regardless of whether he wants to come with them or not.
Grubbs works for hours to open the window, Shark, Timas, the werewolves and Kirilli all go through, and Kernel is lead into it by Grubbs. Going to the Demonata Universe makes him happy for the first time in a long while. The Kah-Gash questions Grubbs before he goes through as well. Kernel sets to work on his eyes while the others relax, then Curly starts acting strangely and Bec's face comes out of her body. Bec tries to convince Grubbs it is over and that he should choose to live like she has. When he refuses, she laughs and warns him about the incoming attack. A window opens up and Lord Loss's familiars pour out as Bec's face disintegrates. They start fighting the demons then four, four-metre tall demons come through and start throwing their fellows into the lake before bowing to it, allowing the lake to kill them. Grubbs realizes that this was the reason why they were sent there to wake the lake, the real, demon master of this realm. Who up to this point was starved of food. They back away but as it splits up, they are out of time. Grubbs takes Kernel and jumps through the window towards Lord Loss's realm followed by the others. Here Grubbs convinces Kernel to help him free the prisoners after he has remade his eyes. They do so, setting all the prisoners free and sending them through a portal to Earth, killing those too weak to move through as an act of mercy. He then gives Kirilli, Timas and Shark the chance to go back but they refuse, he then goads Kernel saying he can't leave now and he doesn't.
They confront Lord Loss and Bec and start fighting the pair of them but Grubbs quickly realizes they are fully outmatched. Moe, Shark and Kirilli all fight Lord Loss but he makes short work of them. Lord Loss tells Bec to kill one of them but she can't. When Grubbs and Kernel try to reason with her, she tells them all those she was loyal to are gone, she gets the original board and the walls melt to reveal thousands of humans. Their souls are trapped inside the board and Bec melts the board killing all of them. When the last human falls the board is still glowing and Death comes from it. Its tendrils caress Bec and one of them enters her throat as she calls for Grubbs to come to her. Kernel has opened a window and Lord Loss, stunned from Grubbs's last attack can't stop him. Shark and Kirilli flee through the window followed by a reluctant Timas. Grubbs follows after the Kah-Gash tells him they could be a quartet with Death, Grubbs refuses to go through and Kernel destroys the window.
Kernel realizes that now that Death is back on the scene there is no hope for the Earth, so he decides to go back to the Ark to save a small part of the life from this universe. Kirilli has the idea to get the Old Creatures to help protect the Earth, so Grubbs agrees to the plan. Kernel can't open a window from Earth so they go back to the Demonata Universe and after passing through several worlds, Kernel starts working on a window to Atlantis, on the barren asteroid world. As he opens the window, he tells the others he can only take Grubbs with him for they will be going through space and he only has power to protect one person from it. They travel through the space tunnel of light and arrive in Atlantis. Grubbs begins to make the request to Raz, but, having read his mind, Raz states that the Old Creatures will not help. He freeze Grubbs promising to send him back to die alongside the other earthlings. But then another window opens and a Deathified-Bec comes through, explaining that she can go anywhere Kernel has been, and that she knows where the 'Ark' is. Raz loses hope and attacks her, they fight and she kills Raz, but this drains some of Death's power, and she regains enough control of herself to shout at Kernel and Grubs to get away before Death kills them and can reunite the Kah-Gash. They do as she suggests and return to the others, but Grubbs is now suspicious that Bec is not as evil and demonic as they thought.
They resign themselves to the end of the world, but decide that they should try to kill as many demons as they can before the world falls. When they go back to Earth, the world is being besieged by demons, who have managed to open several tunnels, in the six weeks that have passed on earth since they left. They decide that they might as well try to close the tunnel and forestall the annihilation of Earth. They meet back-up with Prae and a new set of werewolves and all fight with new vigor (even Kernel, who didn't like the fighting, has decided that there is nothing to lose anymore), they make it to the tunnel entrance and destroy the lodestone, causing the demons to be sucked back to their realm, alongside some unfortunate werewolves and humans. They go to a tunnel on the opposite end of the earth next, but they quickly realize it is futile and they have everybody pulled out. Grubbs decides they should wait for the tunnels that threaten the whole world and throw everything they got at it, and leave the ones that can only cover a few hundred kilometers alone.
After four days Kernel sees the lights going wild, the sign that a tunnel of great power is opening. A team fronted by Grubbs, Kernel, Kirilli, Shark and Timas go to the edge of a cliff where the tunnel is (this most likely is the place that Bec and Beranabus travel to in the fourth book and where we see the Old Creatures for the first time). Grubbs uses the power coming through the forming tunnel to re-enact Moses and he parts the sea, and then creates steps down on the cliffside to the cave and tunnel. Timas stays on top, and he and Shark inform the others that they have arranged for nuclear devices all over the world to be detonated if the team fails, therefore causing the humans to be killed instantly, instead of waiting for the demons to torture them.
On the way down the Kah-Gash informs Grubbs that it never wanted to manipulate them, and isn't working for the demons or humans. This means that Grubbs can use the ancient weapon as much as he wants, and it will do whatever he wants. When they go in, they find the tunnel entrance and Lord Loss and Deathified-Bec waiting for them. While the tunnel is opening, a fight breaks out, and Grubbs manages to catch Lord Loss by surprise using his and Kernel's parts of the Kah-Gash, taking him out of action for a while. The pair begins to seal the tunnel again, but then Bec steps in. She diverts Kernel and Grubbs's power into herself, giving the masters in the tunnel the opportunity to burst through. This is when Grubbs realizes that Lord Loss, who he has been afraid of since his parents and sister were slaughtered, was only one of the lesser demon masters, and that the ones that are pouring through at the moment are many times stronger than him.
In the following fight Kirilli is decapitated, and Shark is melted along with most of the other werewolves and soldiers, by the far stronger demon masters. In a last attempt Kernel and Grubbs grab Bec, after being unable to beat her up, they do this to try to blow her up in the tunnel to close it, but when they get to her and direct all their energy into her, she just feeds it back to them increasing it, letting the weapon rise in power. Bec begins to control the weapon, and in a last attempt to stop her, Grubbs cuts the flow of energy to her, but then she winks at him. This catches him by surprise, and he quickly makes the decision that she wasn't trying to fool him, so instead of cutting the power to Bec, he increases it, directing all the power around them into her. The Kah-Gash becomes fully active, and starts a similar process as it did in the sixth book, but at a much grander scale. Both the Demonata a human universes begin to tear apart into the Kah-Gash, while Bec intently watches everything Bec then tells them to go to the Crux (the point the big bang occurred, where the two universes expanded apart), and reveals that she is following a plan devised by Beranabus. When they arrive at the Crux, they shatter into sixty-four pieces and merge the original universe back together, with the Kah-Gash once again forming the boundary. Time and entropy no longer exist, causing the Demonata to celebrate in their white universes, the remaining Old Creatures in their black universes. Death returns to a mindless force. However, the Kah-Gash is now controlled by the triumvirate of Bec, Kernel and Grubbs.