threateningly. 'Shall we continue?'
'I see little need,' the devil said with a sigh, the skin along the right side of his face drooping, slowly sliding away. 'You know I will not betray him.'
'I must ask. Tradition demands it, especially now.' Jinn took another step toward the devil, gold eyes flashing with hunger as the old question came to his lips, heart beating with faint hope that he might yet receive an answer. 'Where is Sathariel?'
'He is beyond you. Better to seek a cleaner death with me,' Belsharoth answered, his shoulders popping and shifting beneath a rubbery sheet of skin, tearing in places to reveal black scales and bony barbs, muscles rippling with a power that the illusion of the child could no longer contain. 'I will merely break you, but him, the angel, he shall devour you.'
Jinnaoth rushed forward and gripped the devil by the throat, hauling him into the air and slamming him against a fragile table covered in a bloodstained cloth, a meager altar to Asmodeus. Flesh squirmed and changed beneath his fingers as Belsharoth laughed, a hollow chuckle that shook his small frame.
'Then bring him!' Jinn shouted, struggling to hold the devil emerging from the child. 'Have him kill me, rip me apart, devour me, but bring him to me!'
A small, freckled hand rose at Belsharoth's side, shaking and twisting unnaturally as if serpents coiled beneath his skin in place of muscle or bone. Daggerlike claws erupted from the fingertips, followed by a long, powerful arm that struck Jinn across the chest. He flew backward and slammed against the back wall of the chamber, though he swiftly rolled to a defensive crouch, ready for the devil to pounce.
'The Vigilant Order is fallen, Irramael,' Belsharoth said, shaking his head in mock compassion, one black eye bulging from the child's face, a horned brow piercing through his hair. 'It lost the favor of Asmodeus some time ago due to your efforts. Enjoy your victory and be pleased that your soul shall escape Sathariel's gut!'
The half-changed devil charged with a blinding speed, but Jinn was prepared, hurling a small vial from his belt that shattered on Belsharoth's broken face. Holy water steamed on the fiend's flesh, and he screamed, an unholy sound that sang in Jinn's blood like a trumpet of war.
Gods, he thought as age-old memories surfaced in the depths of his being. The trumpets, how I remember the trumpets!
Belsharoth turned away, momentarily blinded, but an inky darkness swirled into being behind him, and pale hands reached for him as he stumbled into a soft embrace. Mara appeared from the smoke, turning the thrashing devil around and whispering words of magic as she caressed the remaining thin wisps of orange-red hair atop his head. She smiled close to his pointed ear, her teeth yellowed and lionlike, her eyes burning like coals.
'Hush,' she whispered as Jinn approached and tendrils of energy flowed from her fingertips, slowing Belsharoth's transformation and leaving him trapped between two awkward forms, neither recognizable. 'Be still and parley with us.'
The devil's spiny back arched as he attempted to resist her magic, mismatched eyes rolling ceaselessly, mouth working as he drew long breaths, trying to speak.
'Leave me be… traitorous hag,' he wheezed, his voice also trapped, shifting between the thunderous tone of the devil and the sweet lilt of the young boy whose form he had stolen. 'How much does he pay you? Allow me to make an offer…'
'He pays me in revenge,' Mara said, smiling sweetly and licking her long incisors. 'Do you propose there is commerce more appealing?'
'Enough,' Jinnaoth said and knelt, leaning on the point of the stolen long sword, the silvered runes down its length glittering in the candlelight. Belsharoth squirmed a moment more then shuddered, falling into Maranyuss's grasp like a scolded child. Bloody tears welled in his horrible eyes and streamed across the two sides of his malformed face, an inexplicable sorrow twisting his features into a helpless look of pure hate.
'Kill me,' the devil whispered through clenched fangs. 'What you want… is not mine to give.'
'Where is Sathariel?' Jinn pressed. 'How do I find him? How do I summon him?'
'Fool,' Belsharoth replied, a wave of renewed strength trembling beneath his flesh that caused Mara to hiss, straining to hold the fiend. 'The angel is merely a means to an end… the First Flensing will come… no matter how you struggle against it.'
'Flensing?' Jinn looked to Mara curiously, but her concentration was stolen by the effort of keeping the devil still, a battle she was quickly losing. 'What is the Flensing?'
'None shall know when… or how… but it is near,' the fiend replied, a barbed tail snaking out from his back, growing longer and lashing weakly.
Mara gasped, growling in frustration as the energy of her spell flickered like a dying lamp.
Belsharoth smiled, the symmetry of his face more distinct, red eyes glowing bright as he added, 'And this wretched city will know that my lord is coming.'
'Asmodeus,' Jinnaoth whispered, wondering what horror he had stumbled upon.
'Jinn!' Mara cried as the devil broke free, his true form bursting forth: a hulking beast of scales and bone spurs with a beard of tentacles writhing beneath his fang-filled mouth.
Jinn rolled to the side, narrowly dodging the fiend's whipping tail, and rose to face the devil. Mara fell back against the wall, clutching her chest as she caught her breath. Jinn cursed and leaped at the devil, slashing madly to distract Belsharoth long enough for Maranyuss to regain her strength; he would likely need her magic. He twisted and turned through the devil's claws, dancing beneath its reach then lunging upward to open fresh wounds in its stomach.
Belsharoth's clumsy attacks grew more precise, the effects of Mara's spell wearing off, and Jinn made one lunge too many, leaving an opening for the fiend. A claw closed around his leg, squeezing tightly and lifting him into the air. As he spun he tried to keep his focus, to lash at the arm holding him, but the devil kept him off balance long enough to hurl him against the far wall.
The small chamber became a swift blur followed by a sudden stop. Stars streaked across his field of vision, and slow throbs of pain arced through his back. He blinked and fell forward on his hands and knees, barely aware that the devil had turned on Mara. Hellish shrieks filled the chamber as the pair tore at one another like animals. The scent of blood brought Jinn to his senses, and he found his sword.
A glimpse of crimson streaking across Mara's forearms in little rivers brought him to his feet, and he charged back into the fray. In a breath Mara fell back, dissolving into smoky mist and leaving Belsharoth to pound only at the wall, clouds of dust and splinters of rotted wood surrounding him as he turned. Jinn jumped over the barbed tail as it swung toward him, turning as he landed to slice an arm's length from its end. Belsharoth seemed unbothered by the wound as they circled one another, the face-off drawing Jinn back to another confrontation with the devil from another time, another life.
'You die again, half-blood,' Belsharoth growled and pounced, claws outstretched, his hulking form enough to easily crush anything in its way, but Jinn saw his opportunity and rushed into the fiend.
He accepted the deep wounds in his shoulder as he rolled beneath the fiend's right claw, gaining position to use Belsharoth's momentum against him. The point of his blade slipped beneath the mass of bone that served as the devil's rib cage, sliding through thick skin and dense muscle, scraping along the spined backbone to emerge from Belsharoth's back.
'This isn't Myth Drannor,' Jinn said as he twisted the blade and pulled, bracing his boot against the devil's right leg. The wound opened like a toothless grin, and Belsharoth roared, steaming blood pouring from his side. Before he could take breath to roar again or twist to dislodge the blade, blue fire arced through his chest, a bolt of lightning silencing his pain and throwing Jinn away from the thrashing fiend.
Jinnaoth's hands tingled and shook, numb as the devil rolled onto his back, reaching blindly and kicking before falling still, a smoking hole in his chest filling the chamber with the scent of charred flesh.
Mara knelt over the defeated fiend, tracing the edges of the wound with a deft hand, drawing little symbols in the air and smiling cruelly when the ritual was done. As Jinn sat forward, he watched her palm a small, red gem that she quickly placed in her purse.
'We should be quick,' she said, flinging droplets of blood from her claws. 'That last roar may have drawn the Watch.'
'Right,' Jinn replied and stood, pulling his sword from the devil's corpse before scanning the chamber, his eyes quickly falling on the stained tablecloth of the makeshift altar. He turned his head to the side, studying the shape of the dried blood in the cloth. 'Flensing?' he asked.
