Demon Bound

know exactly where Teqon is, where he moves. I can shoot through his walls, and slow him before I draw close enough for him to retaliate. I will weave webs at his doors to catch him should he try to escape. I will have him at my mercy within moments.”
    “And then you torture him.”
    “If I must.”
    “I’ll do it, Alice.”
    She smiled. “And now who is trying to do what he thinks is best for the other?”
    He fell into frustrated silence. In the distance, a call to prayer sounded, signaling the approaching dawn.
    “I wonder, however,” Alice said when it faded, “if I have not been looking at Teqon upside-down, as well. Because he has had so much power over me, I haven’t thought of him as a pawn.”
    “Belial’s pawn?” Jake sounded thoughtful. “Yeah. How much is Teqon really willing to endure if whatever he gains isn’t personally for him? You wonder if a demon is willing to take one for the team.”
    “Yes. And I think that because I’ve been afraid of him, I never considered the possibility that he might be a coward. Perhaps we don’t need to torture him now. Perhaps we just need to give him something to look forward to.”
    “You mean, scare the shit out of him.”
    “And if we fail, perhaps we can torture him next week.”
    “Right on. Now we just need—” He broke off, gave her a considering look. “You don’t still have that dress you wore in Hell, do you?”
    “Yes.” Alice grimaced. “But I have not had an opportunity to wash the smell out.”
    “Good—especially if some of that smell is from a female hellhound.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked out over the pyramids, grinning. “You never know what kind of bribe might come in handy.”

    Though her plan of attack played out very much as she’d told Jake it would, Alice had not expected that she would be literally looking at Teqon upside-down.
    But the most sensible thing to do with the demon after she’d wrapped his body in enough silk to form a cocoon was to hang him from the date tree in his private courtyard. He’d struggled against the web, at first. And when he stopped, she feared it was not because he’d given up, but because he’d realized they did not intend to kill him.
    And demons, unfortunately, did not appear to have an irrational fear of spiders.
    Hellhounds were another matter entirely.
    Sir Pup in his demon form stood taller than Alice. The sun gleamed over his scales and the barbed spikes that ran the length of his enormous body. He did not growl, but stood salivating as Alice asked whether he preferred to eat demons from the feet to the head, or the top down.
    “I suppose you would have to start at the feet,” she mused. “And stop below the heart, or else it would kill him. Once it all grew back, however, you could begin again.”
    The hellhound stretched his left head forward and took the whole of the demon’s head between his jaws, as if measuring the bite. He drew back, swiped his tongue over Teqon’s too-handsome face, and snapped his teeth closed a centimeter from the demon’s nose.
    The demon’s pulse raced. But, Alice realized with growing dismay, this fear was not the whimpering terror that she’d hoped to see. Teqon was afraid because any sensible creature would be—but with an enduring strength and resolution behind it.
    Even if Sir Pup did eat him slowly, he would still not release her.
    Very well, then. She reached out with her Gift, holding it steady as she called the widows to her. “I could have them come and devour your eyes,” Alice said softly, “but I do not see the point in it, and I do so hate to be wasteful.”
    “It is good that you do not leave them.” Teqon’s eyes flared. “I would rip off their legs, one by one.”
    “Would you? Sir Pup, his left leg. Just the bone.”
    They’d agreed upon a signal that would let the hellhound know if any command she issued was designed to merely frighten the demon and not be carried out.
    She did not give it.
    Sir Pup lifted his heads, closed his jaws over silk, and bit down. There was a snap—two, three. Teqon hissed.
    Alice crouched until she was even with his face. “I don’t know if you can feel empathy. I imagine that, despite knowing that what you feel now is similar to what the spiders would, you’d still enjoy inflicting that pain.”
    “Perhaps,” Teqon said through his clenched teeth, “I would not enjoy it so much now.”
    “Perhaps,” Alice agreed. “Do you know, when I was in Hell