The Mandikhor was massive. It rose over them like the smoke of a bonfire. There was no mistaking it: though it had grown tremendously in size, it had the same scaled, lion-shaped body, the same triple row of fanged jaws. There was something else about it that was new too—here in the shadow realm, its body was marked with a thousand kinds of disease. As it moved toward them, its claws tearing the sand, Cordelia felt herself gag. Demons as a group were often disgusting; one trained oneself to cope with the horror. But there was something visceral about the markers of death that covered this creature—the ugly buboes of the Black Death decorated its arms, while its torso was bumped with smallpox, its chest cracked and runnelled with leprosy. Patches of its skin were eaten away with acidic rot, while others were red with scarlet fever. Black ichor dripped from its ears and mouth.

James backed up, pulling Cordelia with him, but sand and dirt had piled up all around them in sheer-sided dunes. There was no real way to retreat.

A sharp laugh rang out. Standing atop one of the dunes of sand was a man with pale gray hair and eyes. He looked young, and startlingly beautiful, but there was a dark edge to his beauty—it was like the loveliness of blood in snow, or the gleam of white bone through shadow.

He resembled James. Not in any specific way, but the shape of his eyes, perhaps, the bones in his face, the curve of his mouth. She had to remind herself: This is Belial, Prince of Hell. If he reminds you of James, that is deliberate on his part. In his true form, he may look nothing like this.

As the dust settled around them, he held out a hand toward the Mandikhor demon. The demon seemed to freeze in place as Belial turned to regard Cordelia with a cold gaze. “Tsk-tsk, James,” he said. “Bringing in reinforcements like this is cheating. What of the rules of fair play?”

James drew a gleaming shortsword from his weapons belt. He was breathing hard, and very pale: streaked with dirt and sand, he no longer looked like a young Edwardian gentleman, but something more primal than that. “Let her go back to our world,” he said. “Just leave her be. I’m the one you have business with—”

“No,” Cordelia said sharply. “I won’t abandon you!”

Belial made a bored gesture, a lazy flick of the wrist. Cordelia gasped as black vines exploded from the earth, twining around her feet and legs, pinning her in place. James took a step toward her; she raised Cortana and brought it down, intending to slice through the vines—