The Shade Square stood in a vacuum of horrified silence, the only sound the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the Crescent blade's gears holding the weight of death. Thousands of demon eyes shifted from the defiant girl hanging in the air to their Lord.
Hebner Grand raised a single, gloved finger.
"Stop," the Demon Lord commanded. His voice was a low, velvet rasp that carried more weight than a scream. "Bring her down."
A collective gasp rippled through the stadium. The Master of Ceremonies nearly dropped the lever in shock. The demons in the stands began to murmur, their voices a confused hiss. Their Lord had been insulted, called a coward and a fool by a creature whose life was worth less than the dust on his boots—and he was letting her live?
The executioners scrambled to obey. The iron chains groaned as they were lowered with frantic speed. Hannah McKay didn't wait to be unstrapped; as soon as the tension slackened, the demons roughly shoved her off the rigging. She hit the bone-white stone of the podium with a sickening thud, the wind knocked from her lungs.
Hebner descended from his platform, his boots clicking with predatory precision against the stone. He stopped before her, reaching down to bunch the collar of her dirt-streaked tunic into his fist. He hauled her upward until she was forced to stand on her tiptoes, her face inches from his icy, perfect features.
"You think a quick death by the blade is what you deserve after such a performance?" Hebner whispered, his amber eyes burning with a dark, sadistic promise. "You will find out just how ruthless I can be before I allow you to die. This death is too decent for you. You shall die a hard death—one that lingers—within the walls of my palace."
He shoved her toward a group of elite guards. "Tie her. Ensure the binds are tight enough to bruise. She is no longer a sacrifice for the vat; she is my personal project of agony."
Thorn Theodore, still atop his Maqded, felt a sharp jab of frustration. He had intended to use Hannah to satisfy his own carnal appetites, but he knew better than to challenge the Demon Lord when he was in this state. He saw it as a tragic waste to subject such rare beauty to the Demon Lord's torture chambers, but he remained silent. Hebner's word was the law of the abyss.
Hannah, gasping for air and fighting the sickly tremors in her limbs, turned her gaze toward Robert, who was still hanging above the silver bucket, weeping in terror.
"My Lord," Hannah rasped, catching Hebner's attention before he could turn away. "I... I request that you set my friend free."
Hebner didn't even stop walking. He ignored her as if she were a buzzing insect.
"Since I am sickly," Hannah shouted, her voice cracking, "he is the only one who knows the chemistry of my medicine! If you want me to live long enough to face your 'ruthlessness,' you need him. Unless, of course, you want me to die before tomorrow even arrives. My body is failing, My Lord. Without his care, I won't live long."
Hebner halted. He didn't want this woman to escape into the peace of death so easily. He wanted to break her spirit until she begged for the blade. Without looking at her, he gestured dismissively toward the rigging. "Release the other one. If he fails to keep her breathing for my amusement, he will be fed to the hounds."
Robert was dropped to the floor, collapsing in a heap of tangled limbs and sobbing relief. But the mercy ended there. Two other humans were dragged from the pens to fill the gaps in the line. The ceremony resumed with a brutal finality. The Crescent blade swung—a flash of silver and a sickening, wet thud. Hannah and Robert squeezed their eyes shut as the blood of their kind rained into the silver vat, the cheers of the demons rising into a deafening roar.
The Demon Lord stepped toward the podium, lifting the massive silver chalice. To the horror of the two humans, he drank the raw, steaming blood of a hundred souls. When he had finished his fill, he raised his arms, sprinkling the remaining droplets over the crowd. The demons below opened their mouths, scrambling to catch the blessing like starving animals.
Then, the transformation began.
The handsome mask of the man shattered. Hebner's body began to expand, his bones snapping and elongating with the sound of a forest breaking in a storm. Thick, midnight-black fur erupted from his skin. His fingers curved into talons, and his face pushed forward into a terrifying, bestial snout filled with six-inch fangs.
He stood twenty feet tall—a monstrous, bear-like titan that radiated an aura of pure, primordial slaughter. He reared back on his hind legs, slamming his massive paws against a chest that looked like armored granite, and let out a roar that shattered the glass windows of the surrounding spires.
Hannah felt the blood drain from her face. She had read about this. This wasn't just any demon. He was a Lympory.
A rare, ancient existence, a Lympory was said to be a creature of such sheer power that it could wipe out an entire army in a blink. Her mind raced through the archives of her research. Lympory... allergic to rabbits. They hate them... it's their only biological weakness.
She looked at the beast's massive, gore-stained claws. How am I supposed to seduce THAT? the thought screamed in her head.
Robert looked at her, his eyes wide with a terror that transcended words. He was thinking the same thing: My boss has to get that monster into a bed? We are dead. We are absolutely dead.
Hebner shifted back into his human form, his breathing even, though his eyes remained glowing pits of gold. He looked at the stadium of depraved, drunken demons.
"Have fun with this ugly, human filth all you want," Hebner commanded, his voice cold. "It is your day. Indulge until the city reeks of it."
The demons let out a bloodthirsty roar, lunging for the remaining captive men and women. Hannah and Robert watched in paralyzed horror as their people were dragged away toward the pleasure fields behind the square. The realization hit Hannah like a physical blow: if they didn't succeed, and soon, the human race was nothing more than a biological resource for these monsters.
"Thorn," Hebner barked. "Take the man with you to the palace. Secure him in the lower labs."
"And the woman, My Lord?" Thorn asked, eyeing Hannah with a lingering, lustful hope.
"She will ride with me," Hebner replied, his gaze pinning Hannah to the spot. "She is cunning. She has already escaped your Crying Pillars once and was caught for sacrifice. I will not trust your incompetence to keep her contained a second time."
Hannah expected to be placed behind him on his great beast, the Clemadead. Instead, Hebner showed his true lack of mercy. He didn't place her in a seat; he had the guards bind her feet and hands to a set of suspension ropes hanging from the beast's underbelly.
While Robert was placed in a decent carriage behind Thorn's Maqded, Hannah found herself suspended in the freezing air, her body dangling like a piece of luggage beneath the Clemadead.
As the beast took flight, the high-speed winds of Voidmore whipped against her face, the cold biting through her thin clothes. She looked up at the massive, scaled belly of the creature and the dark silhouette of the Demon Lord sitting high above her. There was no warmth here, no mercy, and no humanity left in the man she was tasked to seduce.
As the palace spires loomed in the distance, Hannah McKay shivered—not just from the cold, but from the realization that she was no longer the hunter. She was the prey, and she was entering the lion's den hanging by a thread.