MAMMON
There was a time when I tolerated Asmodeus. There was a time when we all tolerated him. Never too eager to please, yet never too aloof that he reeked haughtiness, either, unlike Lucifer who I'd always despised despite my respect for his strength. Asmodeus was much easier. By far the youngest of us, he never resented his lacking seniority among the Seven as he grew into his power. He even humbly learned from us all, never stirring up contentions like most of us would do out of sheer boredom, and instead growing his appeal, treating us as elder brothers, trusted mentors. In those days, before we came to know he exercised his influence over us while hiding his incubus nature, he was even almost a friend.
But all along, he had always possessed secrets and hidden sides, deceitful and treacherous. We all of us had shadows and skeletons we kept from one another, not out of shame but simply because it was no one's business but our own. But Asmodeus was the only one to deliberately deceive and mislead purely out of enjoyment, not necessity, not indifference. It was a game to him, like everything else, his subtle seductions and charms as he grew into the fold and insinuated himself in our Covenant. All along, it had been a performance meant to make idiots out of us.
But for the first time, I saw the true Asmodeus. On an island that reeked of unnatural interference and powers, in the middle of nowhere while trapped at the mercy of his missing Shard and a dormant witch who made my blood run hotter than lava, Asmodeus became transparent as glass, every one of his pretenses and insidious charms melting away. Drive. Desperation. Fury so madly intense it became as clear as still water. I saw right through him, deeper than bone.
He had been mastered.
The contract I already knew about. He had already taunted me about it, declaring his bond with her just to get a rise out of me. But I had ignored the signs and told myself it was the witch who was in danger of crumbling just like all his prey, doomed to become a hollow puppet whose sole purpose was to present her cunt for his pleasure upon command like a good pet.
False. Completely, stupidly wrong. I'd blinded myself from the start and ignored what lay in front of me.
Mastered.
Whatever contract they had, whatever scheme Asmodeus had originally hatched to outfox the witch, it had all come to nothing. He was sold now, like a common imp shackled into a slave contract and rendered powerless by some hack magician. The so-called Prince of Lust who had struck fear into the heart of every realm he walked for generations, for centuries, for millennia — now an unleashed dog rendered mad in the absence of his master.
Without the witch, he was empty, hollow like a clay vessel left out to dry in desert sun. The only thing that echoed inside him was the need to restore his master and have her by his side once again.
The desire was poison, insanity turned venom. It flowed thickly through his veins and into the very center of him, radiating and calling to the Shard buried inside my flesh. The poison seeped. The poison spread. The poison...
Was paradise.
The witch should be mine. If I hadn't chased Asmodeus' falling Shard into that trap in the mountains, I would have caught the scent first. It should have been me. I should have been the one to brand her with my mark and sink into her essence, threading it with mine and claiming her for eternity. Because Asmodeus had practically confessed it: she was the one. The heir of Lilith. The lost seed of the ruins of the First Houses. And in every incarnation... hunted and eradicated to legitimize the claims of pretenders to the Triple Throne.
It had been three thousand years since the last. Since then, not one had arisen. Three millennia with no incarnation walking the realms had been enough to kill the legends and reduce the Heir to only ancient myth, wisps of stories so old no one knew even a single one of them from start to end anymore.
But it was no longer myth. It lived again. The seed had grown undetected under the sun and moon, somehow surviving even though she was no more powerful than a defenseless human walking the earth naked.
Or maybe that was why she had survived this long at all.
Whatever the explanation, I believed it now. I had believed from the start as soon as I caught her scent, no matter how I wanted to deny it out of raging envy that Asmodeus had found her first, but that didn't matter anymore. Sable Solaria was gone, and he had lost her. He had failed to protect her when he had pledged his life in contract.
And now there was nothing in his blood-red eyes but the calm insanity of a monster who had lost everything. He would not rest until he regained his reason to live.
But I was here now. And that precious thing, so priceless that it compelled a Prince to give all of himself to it — could become mine.
Prey. Enemy. Force of nature. Whatever this oversized beast was, it didn't matter. Once I tore it asunder, I would retrieve the witch from inside it. I would prove Asmodeus an unfit servant and find a way to dissolve their contract.
I would make her mine.
My teeth were in its neck, the tough hide so strong even my fangs almost failed to penetrate. Infernal power pulsed through my body, strengthening muscle and sinew and pumping so fiercely that my black body glowed with a dark red flame, throwing dancing, bloody lights across the bony ridges that framed the beast's neck. My claws gouged deep, reaching for the closest eye to carve it out and maim. Even when the beast began moving its head side to side to shake me off, waving my body around high above the ground, I only tightened my jaw and dug deeper, fangs sinking through layers and layers of what felt like pure armor, not mere gristle.
Persist. Endure. The wolf outlasted its prey. This was my nature. Nothing I hunted could escape my claws once I caught the scent, beast or man, Infernal or Celestial, anything under the suns. This savage creation of an unknown god was a true titan, but predator to predator, I would come out the victor.
Mine. Everything was mine. All the world and all things in it, grasped in my fist and never to escape my conquest, my dominance, my everlasting possession.
An unfamiliar strength flooded me, empowering my body beyond my limits. I should have been weak. Spending years in a desiccating prison that drained me of all my strength had cracked the core of my Infernal essence down to the foundation. Not even a full day had passed since I broke free, and I was barely recovered despite all my threats to Asmodeus. So where was this strength coming from? Asmodeus' Shard inside me? But I knew his power, what it felt like, what it smelled like, and it wasn't this. This was something else, something I had never felt before. It curled around every straining muscle and twisted, grinding and contracting and pumping with fierce pulses of thrumming force like lightning coursing through metal. My blood surged and scorched. Shimmering heat waves radiated from my body and rippled the fur of my pelt.
Strong.
I hadn't felt like this for far, far too long, shackled and dried out like a husk left in the sun. No more. This strength — I didn't care enough to question it. It was mine. Mine. Mine!
My fangs lengthened, slicing deeper into tough hide, and for the first time, a gushing of warm blood assaulted my tongue. It dribbled out from between my teeth in small rivulets at first, then thickened and quickened as it pulsed out faster and faster. It flowed down my throat, hot and salty. Blood. My hunger surged, primal violence blowing like a furnace until it congealed around me, thickening and darkening the red glow of my Infernal aura. The beast's flesh burned against it, hissing as it seared against the heat and darkened coal-black as thin strips charred and curled.
The beast bellowed in pain. The beginning of its raging howl started low and sonorous, then grew like a hurricane gale gathering strength in the sky. Its throat vibrated, sending shock waves to rattle my buried teeth and crash through my bones like a pounded drum.
But my victory was short-lived. As its roar intensified, the beast's form shifted, the first twitches of change rolling over its leathery skin and tightening, shrinking. With my fangs still buried deep in its flesh, the creature transformed, its speed belying its giant size as bones and muscles morphed under me with liquid squelches and reverberating cracks.
Shapeshifting again. I braced myself for whatever came next. I hadn't injured it enough to force it into a retreat, which could only mean it was shifting into a form meant to fight harder and bloodier. This was only the beginning of the struggle if I let it have its way.
I couldn't afford to. Sable was inside its gullet. Who knew how injured she was? Who knew if she was being slowly digested by the acid boiling in the beast's stomach, if she was unconscious or screaming for help from inside that living prison?
I was Mammon, Prince of Greed, of the famed Seven who ruled the realms with terror and blood. The pathetically weak were too afraid to even utter my name. I was a secret too terrifying to place in the light. What I said, went. And I said — the witch was mine to keep.
I wouldn't watch her fall like this. Nothing that belonged to me ever would.
I dropped to the ground ten meters below before the shapeshifting could become swift enough to dislodge me by force. I landed hard on two feet, hunched to absorb the impact with my clawed hands on the wet grass. The beast wasn't the only who had transformed. My body had contorted and expanded until I could rear back on two legs, like in my half-wolf form but larger and more hulking. I stood to my full height with my teeth bared as the creature glared at me, its giant body still morphing. Now was the time. Before it could finish, at its most vulnerable, I would—
The wide slash Asmodeus left across its belly ripped open with the contortions of its transformation, and a wave of a familiar scent struck my nostrils.
It was gone even faster than it had come, but it was too late. I had the scent. I could never forget it.
But how the hell was that possible?
Belphegor, I almost snarled. But one glance at Asmodeus and I knew it was pointless. There was no intelligent thought anymore behind those red eyes except of saving the witch. Or maybe I didn't want him to hesitate at all.
Belphegor. Covenant brother. Missing for centuries. And the first clue to his whereabouts since he vanished, right in front of me.
But if following the trail came at the cost of the witch...
I was Mammon, Prince of Greed.
Who could blame me for choosing my nature?
Keep going for the belly! I snarled at Asmodeus. I'll keep him busy.
I didn't have to tell him twice. He dove under the creature's belly again, tail lancing up to pierce the wounded flesh, while I lunged forward at the lowered, elongated neck.
Belphegor could wait.
The witch came first.