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Chapter 11: Wicked Little Town

Even as his wings lifted Tuco from the ground, dismay seemed to bear him down again. What had he done to his father? What was happening to the grass beneath his feet? It made no sense. The words of Belial echoed in his ears: Wherever you go, you will fit in. No place will be closed to you, no doors barred. All will accept you as one of their own.

But how could that be true? If anything, he stood out more than ever. Could the devil simply have lied to him? But then that would make their deal invalid. The souls he had given, the promise never to act against the Count of the Abyss... all of it negated. If Belial had truly reneged, then perhaps there was some way to undo the change, some way to transform his father back. But the devil was surely craftier than that. There must be something Tuco didn't yet understand.

He flew higher, and glided through the night on outstretched wings, circling his hometown in thought and worry. After a time, he fretted that someone might look up and spy him, so he spiraled down toward the town commons and alit on the hill at the center. Here there stood a few wooden stalls, a pillory, and a raised platform that could be used for speeches, as a stage, or, more rarely, as a gallows. He settled there, and the boards creaked in complaint, but after a moment, they too began to change, hardening into something like glossy black stone. At least here there was no one he could accidentally change.

As if in answer to that thought, an owl swooped toward him out of the night sky and perched atop one of the stalls, watching him idly as it settled its wings. He gazed back at it, thinking to himself that he'd never seen an owl flying so visibly; before now, his eyes had not been able to penetrate the darkness. Even as he watched it, a change began to thread through its feathers. One by one, they turned brilliant red, and it seemed that flame flickered among them. The owl turned its head about, and then about again, and when it looked back at him, four eyes blinked in separate pairs. Its talons thickened, digging into the wood of the stall as though it provided no more resistance than cold butter. Sparks lit in its eyes, and it took to wing again, leaving smoke trails in the air as it flew off.

Tuco stared after it in bemusement, hoping it didn't end up burning down a forest or someone's barn. What could be happening? He watched it wing its way over the town, a burning spark sailing over the houses. Beneath him, the odd, smooth stone continued to shift and change; he felt as though he were sinking into it, and yet his eyeline was rising. He looked down and saw that what had once been a wide wooden platform was now a strange, arcane-looking outcropping of mirror-black stone. It lifted up under his arms and rose behind his back, allowing space for his tail to slide through the support. It was oddly comfortable, he thought, as he leaned back into it, and it conformed to his shape, his muscles and spikes, supporting under his wings, as though it were a chair or... no, he realized. A throne. And it was rising higher. The town itself was changing to accommodate him.

He caught his breath as the import of Count Belial's words suddenly became clear to him. He had assumed Belial's spell would transform him to fit in anywhere he went. But what if, instead, it transformed everything else to fit him? Ludicrous, he told himself. It would be inefficient and costly, a tremendous waste of souls.

But Belial wouldn't be wasting his own souls, now would he? Not when you've committed all of yours to his needs.

The ground rumbled as his stone chair ascended, more of that glossy black rock spreading everywhere. It reminded him a bit of limbostone, but no souls were trapped within. He wondered if the sound would wake the town, and scanned the houses nearby. No lights illuminated nearby windows. All around him, great claws of stone were erupting from the earth, curving toward him, as though he were held in the palm of a giant, many-fingered hand, or as if he had become the still-beating heart in the ribcage of some titanic beast. Staying seemed dangerous, but he could scarcely leave; his wings were still exhausted from the flight, and traveling on foot meant spreading this infernal contagion, altering any passersby he encountered.

Now, it seemed, people had a legitimate reason to fear him-despite his good nature, he could not keep from altering those around him. Besides, he couldn't leave until he found some way to help his father. Looking like a devil in a God-fearing town like this could end up with him tied to a pyre. But what could Tuco even do about that? He could swear up and down that his changes were not evil, but who would ever believe him?

He sat in his rising throne and watched with interest and dismay mingled as his influence spread, the wooden market stalls lining the commons growing and stretching into twisted, eldritch shapes. Even the nearby homes appeared to be warping and stretching a little. Were there people in their beds changing, even now? Uneasily, he wondered if he oughtn't to fly out to the middle of a field until he could decide what to do. At least there he wouldn't risk changing others.

He caught a flash of eyes glinting in the night. Someone was coming toward him, someone with horns and a wildly waving tail, running awkwardly as though unused to the weight and shape of his body. There was only one person that could be.

"Stop!" he called out before his father could get too close, and winced at the way his voice boomed through the night air. All the birds and insects went abruptly quiet. His father stopped running, but still continued forward, his large, taloned feet crunching along the road soil. He paused when he reached the black mirrorstone, but continued after testing his weight on it. "Don't come any closer, Father," Tuco beseeched. "I'll only change you more."

"Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say," his father said. His tail waved in the air behind him as he approached. "What have ye done, son?" He stared up at the shining, black throne that towered over the town. "Do ye mean to rule us?"

"No!" Tuco burst out, and then winced again at the timbre of his voice; if he didn't want people coming to investigate the indignant lion roaring in the center of their town, he'd better moderate his tone. "No," he said again, more softly. "This is... a curse of sorts that's been put upon me. I didn't know this would happen."

His father scratched the back of one leg with his foot, toe talons shredding his legging. "Then what is it ye intend?"

Tuco shook his head. "I've no idea now. I just need to think. I can't easily go back to the Abbey. There are people there who mean to kill me, and-" The cavalcade of impossible experiences queued up behind his lips, and he realized he could not possibly explain to his father everything that had happened to him, or why he'd made the decisions he had. How would he start it? On the day I was admitted to the Abbey, I looked at a man so beautiful he turned me into a buggerer. What a beginning. No, this story could not be told. He sighed. "I'm so sorry this happened to you. I didn't know."

His father looked down, horns lowering. It looked to Tuco that they were still growing, even at this distance. "I believe ye son, and I trust ye, but... it weren't only me. That were changed, I mean to say."

Tuco stared at him. "What?"

The man spoke reluctantly, not meeting Tuco's gaze. "I first noticed the goats in the yard. Twice their size, they were, and four-horned. Evil-lookin', if ye don't mind my sayin' so. And then there came cries from inside. I rushed in, callin' your mother's name, and-sure an' they screamed at the sight of me at first, but whatever ye'd done to me... your mother, son. The horns. Her eyes."

"No," Tuco breathed in horror.

"And not just her. The curse, as you name it, has touched all of them. Horned every one. Teeth like wolves. Some grown half out of their clothes. Tails whipping around their ankles. Crying, afraid. And so I ran after ye. I could see in the night like t'were day. I knew it were risk to me but I thought maybe, were I to catch ye, ye'd know what ye'd done and could undo it." His clawed hands opened and closed into fists at his sides. He looked up at Tuco with a flash of hopeful red eyes.

Unwillingly, Tuco spoke the awful truth. "I cannot undo it, Father. I fear no one can. The changes wrought by a devil cannot be undone. Even my own cannot be taken away. Surely the Almighty could restore you, though, should you beseech Him."

There was a long silence. "Aye, and I will pray for it. I've not been the most righteous man in my life, but perhaps He will hear me-if not for my sake, then at least for the little'uns. But what are we to do? The townsfolk are good people, but not always... understandin', if ye take me. If they see us creepin' around with horns and fangs, they'll..."

He didn't need to speak the words he could not utter. Tuco knew what they would do. Hang them, if they were lucky. More likely, burn them at the stake. He thought of his sisters, his brothers, crying as they were tied to wooden poles, the flames rising toward them, and before he realized it, he had leapt to his feet, spreading his wings, his claws splayed. "I will never let that happen!"

His father flinched back, putting both hands up, his red eyes wide, as though he expected Tuco to swoop down on him. He shivered and resettled himself. "Then... you mean to stay and protect us?"

The words "of course" hung on Tuco's lips. He could try. He could stay here and greet the town, seated on his rising throne of black glass, and with his impossible strength and impenetrable scales, defend his family from the townsfolk. And the corruption that spread away from him at each step would gradually make its way through each of them, transforming them into creatures in his own image. Their houses would turn into dark palaces, their animals into demonic beasts. In time, brambles would envelop the town, and he would belong to it, a dark lord ruling over his dominion. And sooner or later, minstrels and tradesmen would carry the tale of what had happened to other towns. Word would reach the Empress, and she would send hunters, soldiers, perhaps an army, and Tuco would be forced to combat or corrupt them all. His influence would spread across the world, costing him countless souls.

Surely this was what Count Belial had intended-not to take Tuco's souls, but to use him and his power to spread infernal influence across the world, to corrupt everyone he could. And when the armies of Paradise arrived for the final battle, they would find it already lost. Abyss on Earth. And then Tuco realized something else: the choice to stay and keep his family safe was a false one.

"I cannot," he admitted. "If I could, if staying would help you, then surely I would, but there are dark forces after me, Father. The one who cursed me and worse than him. Remaining here, even to defend you, would only put you in greater danger. When they come for me-and they will-it is better that none of you are close to me."

His father stared at him in dismay, the light in his eyes dimming. "Then we must flee," he mumbled. "All of us. Find some abandoned hut in the forest and live on our own. We can hunt and fish, perhaps, enough to feed us, if we find the right place, but... there is no other choice for it, is there? We cannot risk what they'll do to us if they find us."

Tuco thought for several minutes. "There may be something I can do. It might be enough to protect you all. For a while, at least."

"Aye?" A thread of hope in his father's voice.

"I'll do my best," Tuco promised. "Go home and wait for me. Hide with the others, and I'll return when I think it's safe for you."

"I knew ye wouldn't let us down," his father said, his voice cracking with relief. And growing deeper, Tuco noticed, just from being near him. His tail seemed to be lengthening as well, swaying behind him.

"Go, then. I have a busy night to come."

Tuco leapt into the air with a great push of his wings, rising up into the night sky. He looked back at his father, scurrying toward their home. In the market square, the black seat jutted high, both regal and ominous, a throne for a devil lord.

---

Candlelight still burned in the sanctuary of the cathedral, and from within came the mumbled tones of Father Thomas, saying Compline before bed. Though prayers were meant to be open to all, the doors to the cathedral were barred, a fact Tuco learned by accident when the crossbar splintered when he tugged at one of the doors. The priest whirled around at the sound, dropping his prayer book at his feet. "Almighty preserve us," he breathed as Tuco squeezed his bulk through the entryway and stood towering over the pews.

Tuco had expected brambles or more of that black mirrored stone to sprout around his feet, but here, the rough stone of the cathedral floor lightened in color, changing to smooth marble, a gleaming white with veins of gold running through it. He stepped forward, his talons clicking against the spreading marble. The support pillars of dull grey turned a palatial alabaster, and the rough-hewn pews of pine transformed into rich, shining cherrywood. Plush cushions of gold and forest green and fuschia blossomed like flowers along them.

The scriptures slipped from Father Thomas's fingers to lie strewn across the floor as he backed up against the altar. With one hand he made the sign of the tree before him. "Vile creature!" he stammered. "How dare you enter this holy space?"

"But I am not vile, Father Thomas," Tuco purred, dipping his talons into the basin of holy water along the aisle as he passed-the tarnished brass brightened to a brilliant gold, the water turning crystalline. "You see? Could one who has no love for the Almighty enter here?"

He breathed in, tasting the priest's sins, and was shocked to discover there were so many. The man's hunger for a life of ease was a powerful scent among them, but he had lusts, too, lusts for men and women of the town that were amplified by his vow of chastity, his staunch determination never to sate them. He yearned for belonging, and guarded jealously his position of respect in the town that kept him superior to others, and he longed to give in to these feelings, to enjoy them, not to toss with guilt and shame over whatever paltry desires he allowed himself to indulge. Position and Ease, those were the temptations that dominated him. But Tuco was a devil of carnal pleasures, after all, and so he let a thread of his power loose, untying all the psychological knots that poor Father Thomas had bound around his desire.

It was like poking a hole in a dike; the priest buckled to his knees before the altar of his lord, his hips twitching as he painted the inside of his cassock with his seed, crying out in shock and pleasure and shame. "But-but you have caused me to sin," he panted, his cheeks going red.

"No one can cause another to sin," Tuco answered with a sharp smile.

"But I did not intend it!"

"Then it cannot be a sin, can it? It is a gift I give you, one of pleasure." He strode forward, spreading his wings. Around him the rough stone cathedral was transforming into a gleaming temple of light. "Would you like me to give you more?"

Father Thomas shook his head, sweat shining on his reddened face. "I-"

"You would not lie in the house of the Almighty, would you?"

The priest cast his eyes down. His hands were white where they gripped the altar behind him. "You are a fiend. A creature from the other side. You must be. I confess I would like it, but-but it is due to my weakness, my sin that I-"

"Your desire." Tuco allowed that thread of his power to grow stronger as he approached the altar, and the priest moaned, his dark eyes rolling back as he found his vigor renewed. "And who gave you that desire, Father Thomas? Who gave you your balls, your cock? Was it not He who calls himself Father, just as you do? And what is a Father but someone who has felt that pleasure? It cannot be wrong. It brings us children, ecstasy, love. It is good, and all good things..."

"...come from Him," mumbled the priest.

"Remove your vestments," Tuco suggested. "Show the Almighty the body he gave you."

"In-in the Garden, our progenitors knew they were naked before the Almighty, and were ashamed."

"It was their shame that was the sin," Tuco answered. The words seemed easy, true. "What else could shame over the bodies their maker had given them be but sin? Rejoice in the nakedness the One Above gave you." He moved closer and, as if in a trance, Father Thomas untied the laces of his vestments and pulled them up over his head. So, too, he stripped away his undergarments, standing nude and rigid with lust before the altar.

He was an aging man, in his early sixties, and the thick pelt of hair that curled over his frame was dusted with white. His body was round from a life of ease, sagging with both age and fat, and his short prick jutted up into his belly, oozing his desire. His cheeks were splotched scarlet with embarrassment and lust. And Tuco saw in him one of the many shapes of Elf.

"You are beautiful," Tuco said. He discarded with a casual flick of his tail the canvas he had wrapped around his middle, revealing himself to the priest, and as he did, he felt his shaft change to something human in shape but inhuman in size, extending up and spilling its liquid pearls across the marble.

And now his influence touched Father Thomas as well: the nubs of horns appeared on the priest's forehead. They thickened and grew backward, curling like ram's horns. The shepherd becomes the sheep, some part of Tuco's mind said with a chuckle. "You want me," he told Father Thomas. "And you shall have what you want." He stepped forward, placing his hands on the trembling priest's shoulders, and as he did, the effect of his magic increased. The hair on the priest's legs grew denser, coarser, thickening into fur that spread across his thighs and down his calves. His feet stretched out, toes extending, becoming encased in cloven hooves.

"What-what are you doing to me?" the priest stammered.

"Blesssing you," Tuco told him, and he did not even know the lie until he heard the hiss of his tongue, but Father Thomas's eyes lit with reverential awe. This was it, Tuco knew. This was how he could save his family. Deviltongue could save them all, at least for a time. He leaned down to press a kiss on the priest's mouth, and the priest opened to him, soft and hungry. "All who carry my touch are blesssed," he hissed in the holy man's ear, and then with both arms he lifted Father Thomas and laid him back on the altar, candles and reliquaries spilling to the floor behind.

A moment of panic broke through the priest's arousal. "The reliquaries," he protested.

Tuco looked over the altar, where his influence had already begun changing the fallen tallow candles into sweet beeswax, the wooden sticks transforming into gold. The relics, too, changed in their boxes, their lids adorned with his mark, the three circles nested in the larger one. "They... they are blesssed too," he said.

In the back of his mind, he wondered - how could his influence change the artifacts of the Almighty? Surely they should be immune to his fiendish aura, blessed as they were by Paradise. But perhaps these things were not holy? Perhaps Father Thomas was false? Still, he could not deny the effect he was having on this supposedly sacred place as he cradled the stout priest in his arms and felt the fur spread, mingling with coarse hair as it formed a line up to the matted tangle covering Father Thomas's chest. "Do you wish me to enter you?" he asked, as he gripped lengthened ankles and lifted them high, seeing that a short goat's tail had sprouted behind furred buttocks. He let his tip rest against the entrance, which jumped at its touch, and he coated it with his precome, giving a little nudge.

"Forgive me," murmured the new satyr. "Forgive me, but yes."

"There is nothing to forgive. Pleasure is sacred," Tuco told him, and slowly sank his shaft into Father Thomas's inner sanctum. It felt like weeks since he'd felt the warm grip of a rump around his cock, even though it had scarcely been more than a day. The incubus in him had hungered for it, and the heat and thrill flooded through him. He could tell by the way the priest twitched and clenched around him that he had never experienced this pleasure before, but Tuco was an incubus, and knew just when to push forward, just when to pause, just when to feed little threads of lust to override the tension that might make Father Thomas clench and hurt himself. It was an art, pleasing men this way, and he was swiftly becoming a master. The priest cried out his pleasure in rising tones that held hints of a bleat in them now, and Tuco paused, watching his wondering eyes widen, the pupils stretching into bars. He leaned up, planted deep inside the reverend, and with the fingers of one hand tugged the satyr's cock, pulling it longer, thicker, until it jutted up past his navel, his wooly balls sagging with new weight as his transformation into satyr completed

"Ble-e-e-ssed," Father Thomas bleated as Tuco gripped his ankles again and rocked into him. He gripped the sides of the altar, holding himself in place as Tuco thrusted into him, groaning with pleasure and staring upward at the temple as the white marble spread to the upper vaults and the scenes in the stained glass windows transformed into images of Tuco and his many encounters with both friends and devils.

All too soon the pleasure overwhelmed the new satyr, and he tilted his head back, bucking helplessly around Tuco as his shaft jerked with climax, eyes fixed on the figure of the Almighty on the tree, the last thing in the temple to be changed, as wounds faded from the carved image of the deity's body, and the expression on his face transformed from one of agony to ecstasy.

It was tempting, so tempting, to take some small portion of Father Thomas's soul for himself, and for a moment Tuco opened his mouth, feeling the pull of the light inside the priest, desperate to come out and join him, but Tuco resisted the urge, and instead withdrew his staff from his follower and anointed him with his climax.

He fed Father Thomas a little more lust before he cleaned himself with the cloth from the altar and withdrew, leaving the satyr drenched in come atop it, bleating the word "blessed" over and over in a deliriously happy, if somewhat caprine, voice.

---

Tuco wandered along the town streets, trailing his clawtips against the buildings as he walked, in a haze that felt almost giddy. What he'd just done was so perverse, and yet it had felt so natural, so right. His conscience twinged him not the slightest. He'd given their town priest a better church, a better form, a night of pleasure he'd never forget, and on top of all that he'd protected his family as well. He barely noticed the grooves his talons carved in the stone as he walked, nor the black color that spread outward from his touch in spiraling, splitting patterns, like dark frost crystallizing across glass. Father Thomas was his; he couldn't speak a word against Tuco's family without turning fear against himself. One of three leaders of the town was Tuco's, and before the night was up, he swore he'd have the next two.

Shouts came in the distance, and a torch flared, and Tuco realized he'd not been paying a thought toward stealth; his heavy footfalls were leaving deep, taloned prints in the muddy earth, with spikes like nails growing out of them. Guards rounded a corner, peering into a night that blinded them, so Tuco took this moment to bunch his legs and leap into the air, quickly rising with powerful beats of his wings. As he caught the wind, he looked over his shoulder, and could easily mark the trail he'd taken through town, the changes his influence wrought leaving an indelible path through the muddy streets. The black throne still rose from the market square, and behind it rose the gleaming white marble of the temple.

Next would be Justice Wrightwell, the town magistrate, who dwelled in generous apartments above the local courthouse. It took little time to wing his way there; Tuco couldn't imagine how he had ever managed without flight before. He made a wide circle to be sure he hadn't been spotted, and caught the wink of torches in the distance where guards were following his infernal trail. None of them were coming this way, and since he'd flown, it seemed unlikely they'd find their way back to his family's house tonight.

He tried to land lightly on the roof of the court, but his wings made a great deal of noise, and the planking there didn't look terribly sturdy. After a brief, horrifying image of crashing through the ceiling and crushing poor Justice Wrightwell to death, he decided to land in the street instead and make his way up to the apartments. There, however, he encountered another difficulty: the stairs that led to the upper floor were too narrow for him to navigate, and when he set one foot on it, the step broke through with the splintering of wood.

Well, Belial had said he'd fit in wherever he went, hadn't he? Tuco waited, holding one foot hovering above the next step, and, after a moment, the magic set in, and the steps widened to accommodate him, bolstering themselves with wrought iron laced with silver, the wood transforming to polished granite. Each step embossed itself with a print that perfectly matched his foot when he set it down, as though inviting him upward. It was surprising to see how large his feet had grown, now that he was looking at them, each taloned toe looking large as a fist. But the stairs had reinforced themselves to support his weight, and did not even creak as he headed upward, though their widened breadth now jutted out into the alley next to the court building, which would surely annoy the drivers of any delivery carts.

At the top of the stairs, Tuco looked down at the tiny doorway. There was no possible way he would be able to squeeze himself into that little entrance. He considered tapping with a claw to summon the magistrate to the door. A moving glow of candlelight within suggested that the man had already risen. But Tuco was rather enjoying himself, and this was his town now, was it not? He would not knock like a petitioner! Instead, he braced his palm against the beam of the roof and pushed upward.

It was, he realized immediately, a mistake. With a groan of straining wood, the entire roof of the building rose, and then, cracking and snapping loudly, separated from the walls. Tuco had meant only to break the doorframe to make space to enter, and now he was holding the roof of the courthouse building over his head, the weight of it inconsequential on the heel of his hand. Dirt and splinters of wood sifted down, and below him the segmented rooms mapped out the magistrate's chambers. Justice Wrightwell himself was scrambling into the protection of a doorway, wearing only his nightshirt and a sleeping cap. He seized a lit candle from his bedside and waved it aloft, yelling in such a comically terrified manner that it was all Tuco could do not to chuckle. At his side, a young woman whom Tuco recognized as Mrs. Beckett, the apothecary's wife, scrambled to bunch up the sheets around herself and made a faint, quivering moan that she had probably meant to be a scream.

He hadn't intended to frighten anyone. But you didn't worry whether you would, did you? "Easy, easy," he rumbled, sending out a faint pulse of lust to calm them. People couldn't be terrified and aroused at the same time, could they?

Around his fingers, the roof of the courthouse twisted into carved, white hollywood, wide elfin branches suspending the planks between them as those melted into delicate swaths of gauzy fabric of soft and ethereal colors. The walls of the apartments lowered, until they were the low boundaries of a rooftop terrace, the roof itself supported by marble statues of Tuco, their wings spread to block the wind, the hollywood supported by their bulging arms upraised.

Justice Wrightwell was a stout little man, with thinning red hair and a meticulously shaved face that was blotched from overconsumption of spirits. Not unhandsome, in his way, but hardly the commanding figure he had seemed to Tuco when meting out judgments from his magisterial bench. He fell to his knees in amazement and lust, his mistress cowering by his side. "I pray you, do not harm me, devil! I am-I am a child of the Almighty, who has strayed but a little, but a little. I know in my heart I have committed the sin of adultery. Many, many times, perhaps, but I see now that I have erred, and O! My heart cringes at the thought of my sin."

Tuco strode into the airy rooftop terrace, pleasantly surprised at how it blocked the cold. The magistrate and Mrs. Beckett pressed their foreheads to the floorboards, trembling. "I come not to judge you, Lucius Wrightwell, but to warn you."

The man looked up, squinting his watery blue eyes. "Warn me?" Even as he spoke the words, Tuco's corruption set into him, and thin black horns erupted from his brow and began to arch backward on his skull. His ears turned up into points, furring red like a fox's, and this fur spread across his balding head, rejuvenating him.

"Indeed," Tuco rumbled. "I share my blessing with you, as I have shared it with others. There may come those who would claim it a curse, that those like you should be shamed, punished, or ostracized. Even killed."

The Justice blinked, and the blue of his eyes changed to a slitted red, widening as the dark of the night fled them forever. "Those like me?"

Tuco inclined his head. "And Mrs. Beckett beside you."

Startled, she glanced up at him, and her tongue fell from her mouth, elongated and serpentine. Unbidden, it probed down beneath the bundle of sheets she clutched to find her sex, and snakelike fangs showed in her widening mouth when she gasped. "My-My Lord," she lisped through sharpening teeth.

Tuco almost answered that he was no lord, but that would be a falsehood, wouldn't it? He was a baron. Any lie would cement itself in their minds through his deviltongue, and these people respected nobility. It would be advantageous to have them accept it. And he could not risk the lives of his family for anything.

"You must protect and honor those whom I have blessed. Let no one within or without the village harm them. Otherwise I shall be displeased. Do you understand?"

The two pressed themselves to the floor again, even as their nails sharpened into claws, and even as their tails lengthened behind them and nestled mischievously between their legs. They both gasped with surprise and pleasure as incubus magic surged through them. "I... understand..." each managed between panting breaths.

"Good. And now I have others to visit-"

"Master?" Justice Wrightwell murmured, his eyes glowing faintly, red fur sprouting down his cheeks.

"Yes?"

"Would you not-" The new fox-demon looked down.

"What is it?"

"Would you not lie with us before you go? You seem... ready."

Tuco glanced down and saw that he had changed shape again, his cock having twisted into a bestial form, oversized, pointed, and dripping. The lust of his nature roared in his blood. He could hardly decline.

---

Sighing with satisfaction, he winged his way above the town streets. One more town leader left to affect, he thought. The priest and the magistrate were influential, but he doubted they alone could prevent a frightened mob from building pyres all over town. The Church and the Law might be powerful, but there was nothing so powerful as money. The wealthy would use every resource at their disposal to protect themselves, and there was none in town wealthier than Lord Dacre, who owned a sizeable manor on the south side of town, and had been gifted many of the surrounding lands. A good fifth of the village worked for Lord Dacre, in one form or another. None would risk turning against him, no matter how changed he might become.

Tuco landed lightly outside the manor grounds, his wingbeats kicking up the dust, and thought of how he might approach. Already the earth beneath his feet was transforming to black stone, and he thought of the white gravel paths of his own manor. It was, he realized, far finer and grander a home than Lord Dacre's, a fact which he found greatly amusing. As a child, Lord Dacre's wealth seemed unfathomable, and now he found the gates small and clumsily worked, the home beyond them a shadow of the splendor of his own.

The gates were barred, but he didn't notice until he'd wrenched the bar and bent the iron pushing them open, noting ruefully that he could simply have hopped over the wall. He looked up toward the manor again and stopped in surprise. Belial was standing only a few paces away, a lazy grin on his split-stone face. One minute he hadn't been there and now he was.

"Well, someone has been busy," the creature purred, giving Tuco a sidelong glance. "Making a home for ourselves again, are we?"

Tuco flushed with anger. "You didn't tell me I'd change everyone I approached!"

"Didn't I? My, my. Well, being a Baron of the Abyss, I'm certain you don't resent a few surprises. Especially not from your Count. Especially since any devil worth his sulphur would have seen it coming." He glanced about. "My, but you've changed so many things in the short time you've been here. The mortal world hasn't seen the likes of you in thousands of years."

"And I've more to change, if I want to keep my family safe," Tuco growled. "So if you've come here to do something other than sneer, let's have it, or I'll be on my way." He strode forward as if to push past Belial, though he had to brace himself against flinching as he neared the devil.

Belial opened one wing, barring Tuco's passage. "You're upset, so I forgive your impertinence. But as you say, I have business with you. The changes you have wrought on the mortal plane have required a great deal of infernal power. I'm afraid, my plucky little Baron, that you have run quite out of fuel."

"What?" Tuco asked, puzzled.

"Souls. It takes a great number of them to change the mortal world like this. And you have depleted the supply I took from you earlier. But I can't have you not fitting in, can I? That would break our deal. I will be taking more now."

"But it's not even been a week!" Tuco protested.

"Well, as I said. You've been busy. In fact, I fear you've run up a deficit. I'll be collecting now." And with that, Belial took his souls. It was not like before, when Tuco was simply compelled to give them up against his will. Belial plunged into the darkness inside Tuco, his shadowy, taloned hand descending like a storm toward Tuco's voidsea, dipping deep, scooping up the floating lights of souls as though catching tadpoles from a stream. Frantically, Tuco tried to separate the good from evil, keeping those who had committed minor sins from Belial's grasp, but it was too quick, and there were too many. Belial lifted his hand from the sea, filled with hundreds of little lights, souls that darted around in frantic circles, as though aware of their danger. Then he closed his hand into a fist and snuffed them out entirely.

Tuco felt their existences vanish into nothingness-their memories, their awarenesses, all their crimes and kindnesses, all that they had been, extinguished like candle flames in a sudden gust. He heard a roar, and realized it was his own, that he was on his knees, bellowing his loss into the black stone that other souls had been consumed to transform out of the dusty earth. His roar was bestial and torn, cracking the night air.

"Oh, don't make such a fuss," Belial purred, putting a taloned hand on Tuco's shoulder. "It's only a few hundred. Why, think of how many you must have earned tonight alone! A village entire, bent to you by your own power. No pure devil could have reshaped the world this way, you know. We alter the world only through the will of the humans whose minds we touch. But you, Baron Witchywine, you are something new. Something extraordinary. For the first time since the Abyss was sealed by the One Above, devils have gained a toehold in the mortal world. I am a star ascendant. And it's all due to you."

"I'll stop you," Tuco growled. "I'll stop you somehow."

Belial gave him a magma-eyed stare for a moment, and then burst into laughter. "Stop me? With what? A prayer? Holy water? Do you think any of the water in that church up the hill is sacred still? You can't even draw close to a priest without fucking him into a satyr."

"I'll think of something," Tuco hissed. "Ask Asmodeus. Ask Flavros."

"Then show me. Attack me now." The Count tilted his head back and to one side. "Here is my throat. I shan't fight you. I shan't defend myself. Rip it out. Destroy me now."

For an instant, Tuco considered doing so. But only for a moment, and then the desire fled him as quickly as it had come. He couldn't do that. He couldn't hurt Count Belial-this was his liege-lord! The mere idea of harming Belial simply wouldn't enter his mind; it was best forgotten. He looked up, blinking, confused about what he had just been doing. He had been... had been...

Belial straightened, contempt scrawled across his stony face. "So disappointing. How did the likes of you ascend so high? You can do nothing to me, you simpleton. Because we have a bargain and you cannot break it. You have sworn never to harm me or wield your influence against me. That was the deal. In exchange, I granted you those beautiful wings, and the power to set loose hell on Earth. So. Change whatever you like. Go wherever you wish. But know that it will cost you more and more and more and more. I suggest you set about acquiring more souls as quickly as possible. You would not enjoy being in debt to me, Tuco Witchywine. Good night."

And with that, the Count leapt up into the sky, becoming a dark shape winging its way through the night.

#

Tuco paced anxiously outside his family's home, which had continued to change. The brambles had grown into a thick and thorny forest, every woody vine pointed outward as if to ward off invaders. The house had grown large and strange, sprouting multiple levels, and it had been lifted up into the boughs of the thorn trees, the new dark arbor enclosing it in a black, wooden hand. How much had this cost? How many souls had been snuffed out of existence to make this change?

The guilt of it wracked him, and yet, even knowing the cost, knowing that the magic would take the power of more souls, Tuco had still gone to the estate of Lord Dacre. The noble had transformed into a huge, hulking toadman, bursting out of his fine clothes as he did, spines rippling over his mottled skin. And Tuco had told him, as with the others, that he was blessed, and so were the others in town who had been changed. He wondered anxiously now whether that would turn the corrupted in town against the uncorrupted, but there was nothing he could do about that. Any more attempts to change things might make things worse. Might bear a cost too terribly precious.

He gazed up at the house, which had split into several buildings, growing out along the branches of the massive, dark bramble trees. Funny, he thought. I had always wanted to live in a treehouse, like in the storybooks. Now that's actually my family home, and I don't get to live there. He wondered where the goats had got to, or if they'd been changed further and flown off or something.

Well, he couldn't stay here for long. He couldn't stay anywhere for long, not without risking changing it and condemning more souls to oblivion. "Father?" he called out, his voice echoing off the hills. The windows in the house were all lit, and he saw movement inside. "It's him," a voice said, and after a moment, a hulking figure appeared at the door. Little horned heads silhouetted all the windows.

"It's me, Tuco," a figure said in a deep voice. "It's your father." The door to the home had been lifted by the sprouting bramble trees about fifteen feet up from the ground. A winding set of stairs grown from thorns made a path to it, but his father eschewed these, instead making a casual hop to the ground as though simply stepping off a rock, The earth shuddered with his weight as he landed.

The demonic shape of Tuco's father was not too dissimilar from his own, but far shorter, less broad-shouldered, more heavy-set. He'd found loose leggings that still encased his powerful thighs, but the rest of his body was unclad. "Are ye here to do more to us, son?" he asked in an uncertain voice. "Only I think we may have had all the change we can manage, us. And ye did say it were best we not be close to ye."

"It's true. I won't be staying long. And... much as I'd embrace you now, I dare not get any closer. I have to leave, Father."

"Leave? Where can ye go?"

"I can't tell you that. But I wanted you to know that I've done what I can to make you safe. Others in town have been changed. Important people. The kind who would be uneasy about any talk about devil-touched. The sorts who could stop mobs from forming. I hope you and the family will be safe now. It was not me who did thisss, but a devil named Belial." He heard the lie on his tongue too late. "I mean-I bear some responsibility, of course, but the devil-"

"No, no, son, if ye say it was not you, then I believe ye." His father's glowing red eyes locked gaze with his own. "With all my heart. I know ye'd never do nothin' to harm us."

Tuco felt miserable. "No. I do hope you all are all right. But you must understand: I probably won't see any of you again. I want you to know I love you all. Could-could I see Mother and my brothers and sisters, just for a moment?"

His father's face fell. "I... I'm not certain that's a wise idea. They've changed so much already, ye understand, and I couldn't risk-" He faltered, staring at the ground.

"No. No, of course you're right. Give them my love?"

"I will, Tuco. The Almighty love ye and be with ye."

His father held out a shaking hand toward Tuco, stepping forward. And Tuco did not trust himself not to take it, so instead he turned and leapt into the air, beating his wings hard so that the wind took the tears from his eyes, flying higher and higher until the cold threatened to freeze them to his face. And here there were only clouds-no village below, no father left behind.

Belial had not lied. It was a place indeed where he belonged. And a place where, if he had any goodness left in him, he could never stay. There was only one place in all the planes where he could do no harm. And so he turned back, winging his way toward Abyssus Abbey, where he could descend once again into the Abyss.

Where he would have to stay, forever.

What Belial had told him that night made it the only choice. For the first time since the creation of mankind, the Abyss had taken hold in the mortal world. This was not just about changes, transformations. Belial meant to use Tuco as a tool. He meant to bring about the end of the world.